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over winter crops?
George Shirley wrote:
songbird wrote: .... you must also be fertilizing? I don't, but wife loves Miracle Grow. ah, ok. and yeah, hard to keep organic matter in the soils in warmer areas. some clay can slow the rate of loss down. Our "native" dirt here is two inches of sand over five feet of Houston gumbo clay, put in at build to raise the houses above the minimum flood zone, saves on $$$ but is very bad for gardening, hence the raised beds. that will be where any earthworms will hide from the heat when it gets too bad out. however, what i meant was that if the compost is disappearing then add that on top and it will get mixed in eventually as you plant. especially with that shallow of a bed. i guess i'm lazy that ways. think plants and worms can figure it out well enough without me messing it up. are the beds isolated from the subsoil clay you have in place? like by a weed barrier fabric or sheet plastic? Yup, but the barrier fabric is pretty much gone by now, has been in place since early 2013 and was intended to rot away eventually. oh, that's ok, at least you have sand and clay if you ever need it and the worms can get in and out. i hope they will continue to live there. it's a good sign when the soil can support a diverse community of critters. .... Yup, we both grew up on small farms, almost always had composting in place, plus we had large critters for several years and they dropped enough good stuff on the land that it became very rich. Horses, mules, cows, goats, etc. Improved grass lands, eaten by large critters then given back to the earth. In Louisiana we had access to friends who had large critters and we always had a pickup truck. Go clean out a rain shed that had two feet of excrement that was aged from two to five years, take an axe, cut out large chunks, use the hay fork to toss into truck, repeat many times. Take it home, put the stuff through the wood chipper and blow it into the garden, Use the tiller to turn it under, water, plant seeds, jump back as they grow. I miss those days, about the only big critter poop you can get here is Black Cow in bags and that is from huge feed lots and no telling what was going through the critters and into the bags. i know. i don't buy the stuff any more, but i did try a few bags when i first put in the strawberries. decided i could grow/harvest green manure crops for a fraction of the expense and run it through the worm bins. i envy younger people who can handle larger animals and have the inclination. you can do a lot of regenerative grazing on beat up farmland to bring it back to prime condition, run chickens through right after you graze and the chickens will pick through the cow plops to get the fly grubs, and scatter the plops around. in those winter sheds, this guy takes whole shelled out corn and sprinkles it in there once in a while and then as the pile builds up he doesn't do anything until after the cows come out of the shed and then he puts his pigs in there and they root through it all and turn it looking for the corn. i think that's a great idea for stirring compost... using an animal to do it. for me, worms are about as far as i can go for now. eventually i hope i can do some quail here just to get a population back that has been eradicated. songbird |
#2
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over winter crops?
On 8/31/2016 9:49 AM, songbird wrote:
George Shirley wrote: songbird wrote: ... you must also be fertilizing? I don't, but wife loves Miracle Grow. ah, ok. and yeah, hard to keep organic matter in the soils in warmer areas. some clay can slow the rate of loss down. Our "native" dirt here is two inches of sand over five feet of Houston gumbo clay, put in at build to raise the houses above the minimum flood zone, saves on $$$ but is very bad for gardening, hence the raised beds. that will be where any earthworms will hide from the heat when it gets too bad out. however, what i meant was that if the compost is disappearing then add that on top and it will get mixed in eventually as you plant. especially with that shallow of a bed. i guess i'm lazy that ways. think plants and worms can figure it out well enough without me messing it up. are the beds isolated from the subsoil clay you have in place? like by a weed barrier fabric or sheet plastic? Yup, but the barrier fabric is pretty much gone by now, has been in place since early 2013 and was intended to rot away eventually. oh, that's ok, at least you have sand and clay if you ever need it and the worms can get in and out. i hope they will continue to live there. it's a good sign when the soil can support a diverse community of critters. ... Yup, we both grew up on small farms, almost always had composting in place, plus we had large critters for several years and they dropped enough good stuff on the land that it became very rich. Horses, mules, cows, goats, etc. Improved grass lands, eaten by large critters then given back to the earth. In Louisiana we had access to friends who had large critters and we always had a pickup truck. Go clean out a rain shed that had two feet of excrement that was aged from two to five years, take an axe, cut out large chunks, use the hay fork to toss into truck, repeat many times. Take it home, put the stuff through the wood chipper and blow it into the garden, Use the tiller to turn it under, water, plant seeds, jump back as they grow. I miss those days, about the only big critter poop you can get here is Black Cow in bags and that is from huge feed lots and no telling what was going through the critters and into the bags. i know. i don't buy the stuff any more, but i did try a few bags when i first put in the strawberries. decided i could grow/harvest green manure crops for a fraction of the expense and run it through the worm bins. i envy younger people who can handle larger animals and have the inclination. you can do a lot of regenerative grazing on beat up farmland to bring it back to prime condition, run chickens through right after you graze and the chickens will pick through the cow plops to get the fly grubs, and scatter the plops around. in those winter sheds, this guy takes whole shelled out corn and sprinkles it in there once in a while and then as the pile builds up he doesn't do anything until after the cows come out of the shed and then he puts his pigs in there and they root through it all and turn it looking for the corn. i think that's a great idea for stirring compost... using an animal to do it. for me, worms are about as far as i can go for now. eventually i hope i can do some quail here just to get a population back that has been eradicated. songbird My Mom always had several dozen laying hens, she sold the fresh eggs to folks in town at a good price. The chickens had free run of the ten acres during daylight hours and then went to their roost before dark. We also fed them "laying hen feed." The yolks of the eggs were a deep, golden color and the taste was much better than those from the supermarket. Chickens, ducks, etc. do a good job of fertilizing the fields too. Our guinea hens roosted in the tallest trees on the property, they didn't much like hen houses but they went there to lay their eggs. The occasional hawk would get one once in awhile but those roosting trees always had deep green leaves. Lots of guinea poop on the ground. |
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