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#16
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organic matter ???
On 10/6/19 8:29 AM, songbird wrote:
if you can find some plain cardboard (usually places will give it away for free) or newspapers you can put that down first and then top with your mulch and that will do a great job of smothering weeds for a while. I tried that on some little trees I am truing to get rid of. First I cut them back to the ground. Then I placed a big old piece of cardboard on top of them with a big old rock to keep it in place. The SOB's just grew out around the cardboard. These were 2' x 2' pieces of cardboard!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Next attempt, I am going to try to girdling the branches. I really, really, really do not want to use round up on them. Oh and they are completely immune to cussing at them! |
#18
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organic matter ???
T wrote:
....smothering... I tried that on some little trees I am truing to get rid of. First I cut them back to the ground. Then I placed a big old piece of cardboard on top of them with a big old rock to keep it in place. The SOB's just grew out around the cardboard. These were 2' x 2' pieces of cardboard!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! little trees coming back from seeds or coming up from roots or what? is it a bush? do you know what it is? cardboard is cheap enough and it can always be put down in bigger pieces and a few layers and overlap the seams so light doesn't get through. one thing nice about it though is that it is also an organic material which will eventually end up as worm/plant food. in your rocky soil you might have a hard time burying what bits of it are left, but to keep them from blowing away .... in one low spot here what i did was cover the cardboard with chunks of bark that a friend gave me from his firewood splitting. so it just looked like a layer of bark being used as a mulch. after the 2nd season i had to refresh the cardboard so i did that, but that gave me four years of weed free coverage for an area that was otherwise always a lot of work to keep after all the weeds that would sprout there. as a low spot any seeds from the surrounding areas would get washed into there or blown there. recently we came into 550 engineering bricks so we've covered the entire low area there with landscape weed barrier and then put the bricks down so i won't have to redo the cardboard any more and we have a brick path from and to nowhere but it is a good temporary spot to store and use the bricks until we decide to do something else with them. Next attempt, I am going to try to girdling the branches. if you're going through all that just cut them off with some loppers. they work really well and are not that expensive. i have a pair that i can use to chop off branches up to three inches thick and they don't need any electric power or anything do use them, just a little muscle power. i use them to keep any sprouting trees out of the north hedge and to trim branches or to cut up brush into smaller pieces. very handy. i use them quite often as we have a lot of honeysuckle bushes that can use trimming. I really, really, really do not want to use round up on them. Oh and they are completely immune to cussing at them! what you could be doing with them is letting them grow and then cut them off and using that organic matter as a top mulch to hold in moisture. eventually they well break down and turn into humus (in an arid climate that's going to take a lot longer than here so you should get a few years out of them). around here pieces of wood laying on the ground last several years. where they are weeds aren't - ok, well weeds will grow around or through them in places. i still like them left as larger pieces instead of going through the effort of chipping them (some people buy wood chippers to deal with brush and leaves, but i want the organic materials here to last as long as possible so i never have chipped anything and don't want the added expense and maintenance of yet another machine to deal with). songbird |
#19
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organic matter ???
T wrote:
.... Ya. I have heard the bad stuff can ruin your garden! I will make sure and get something that has been hot composted. some chemicals are unaffected by hot composting. Seems to me that scat would be so full of grass seeds that hot composting would be the only safe way. I have tried burying table scraps, but it does not depose. Seriously. decompose. What Happens When You Bury Kitchen Scraps in the Garden? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQFB9M2UdK0 Did exactly as he said. Could not figure out what those balls rolling around my garden were. Then I realized it was avocado pits from two years ago that worked their was out of the soil. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! an avocado pit is a big chunk of pretty hard organic material so it takes some time to break it down. the other thing is that most gardeners have more moisture and soil to work with to begin with. in an arid climate things are going to work much more slowly. in a moist bucket with worms if you put a fresh avocado seed in there it will sprout. i dry mine out for a few months before putting them in, or if you have a way to crush them or cut them into pieces then they will turn into humus faster, but i see no real reason to add work to the process if i don't have to. i like to keep things simple here. No wonder I have no worms!!!! they need moisture and organic matter and enough depth to the soil to escape the heat (if they are earthworms) in the middle of the summer. for me it freezes solid here too in the winter so they also like to get down below the frost line if they can. if they can't they'll hibernate or leave cocoons behind for the next generation to continue when the conditions improve again. in the middle of a prolonged dry spell you can dig down and find them curled up in little balls waiting for the rains to return. the common composting worms (the red wrigglers) live near the surface and you may not even have them in your area other than in some woodlands, but then perhaps not if those woodlands are isolated enough that they were never introduced there. when i first started worm composting here it was during a spring dry spell - i could not find a single red wriggler even under logs or at the bottoms of some of the ditches. so i did use the belgian night-crawlers to get going and they have done pretty well, but eventually i did get some red wrigglers for the surface layer of the worm buckets and i also found a few other species of worms here to use in them so i have around 4-6 species of worms in them and around the property. i like worms so when i come across a good book or article about them i'll put it on the reading list. songbird |
#20
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organic matter ???
On Sunday, October 6, 2019 at 8:50:22 PM UTC-4, T wrote:
On 10/6/19 6:30 AM, Pavel314 wrote: On Saturday, October 5, 2019 at 11:13:43 PM UTC-4, Muggles wrote: On 10/5/2019 8:55 PM, T wrote: Do you dig in the sheep scat or just throw it on top? About compost ... what do you have access to that you can use for compost? -- Maggie I built a three-bin compost system some years ago. Each bin is 4 feet wide, 6 feet deep, and 8 feet high. We fill one with weeds each summer and rotate using them each year as they compost. Here's a pictu https://hosting.photobucket.com/albu...psp7iob3xu.jpg Paul Hi Paul, The bin looked open. And does it get hot enough to kill weed seeds? -T The bin is open to the air; the sides are woven field fencing and the removable doors in the front are metal mesh stapled to 2x4 frames. My wife, who uses the compost, says that she does indeed get weed seeds in the home grown compost. However, every year we get a pickup truck load of compost which does not contain any weed seeds at the county landfill for $10 . For starting seeds, she fills the bottom 2/3 of the pot with the home brew, then makes a sterile mix of county compost, peat moss, and perlite for the top third.. Any weed seeds in the bottom section die out before reaching the surface. Paul |
#21
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organic matter ???
On 10/7/19 6:01 AM, songbird wrote:
little trees coming back from seeds or coming up from roots or what? is it a bush? do you know what it is? They are about 1' tall. I think they are aspen of cotton wood. I will strip off the bark at the base of the branches and leave all the leaves there. That should do the trick. When I catch them at about 6" tall, I can pull the out. They have a deep tap root. |
#22
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organic matter ???
On 10/7/19 6:14 AM, songbird wrote:
T wrote: ... Ya. I have heard the bad stuff can ruin your garden! I will make sure and get something that has been hot composted. some chemicals are unaffected by hot composting. Seems to me that scat would be so full of grass seeds that hot composting would be the only safe way. I have tried burying table scraps, but it does not depose. Seriously. decompose. What Happens When You Bury Kitchen Scraps in the Garden? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQFB9M2UdK0 Did exactly as he said. Could not figure out what those balls rolling around my garden were. Then I realized it was avocado pits from two years ago that worked their was out of the soil. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! an avocado pit is a big chunk of pretty hard organic material so it takes some time to break it down. the other thing is that most gardeners have more moisture and soil to work with to begin with. in an arid climate things are going to work much more slowly. in a moist bucket with worms if you put a fresh avocado seed in there it will sprout. i dry mine out for a few months before putting them in, or if you have a way to crush them or cut them into pieces then they will turn into humus faster, but i see no real reason to add work to the process if i don't have to. i like to keep things simple here. No wonder I have no worms!!!! they need moisture and organic matter and enough depth to the soil to escape the heat (if they are earthworms) in the middle of the summer. for me it freezes solid here too in the winter so they also like to get down below the frost line if they can. if they can't they'll hibernate or leave cocoons behind for the next generation to continue when the conditions improve again. in the middle of a prolonged dry spell you can dig down and find them curled up in little balls waiting for the rains to return. the common composting worms (the red wrigglers) live near the surface and you may not even have them in your area other than in some woodlands, but then perhaps not if those woodlands are isolated enough that they were never introduced there. when i first started worm composting here it was during a spring dry spell - i could not find a single red wriggler even under logs or at the bottoms of some of the ditches. so i did use the belgian night-crawlers to get going and they have done pretty well, but eventually i did get some red wrigglers for the surface layer of the worm buckets and i also found a few other species of worms here to use in them so i have around 4-6 species of worms in them and around the property. i like worms so when i come across a good book or article about them i'll put it on the reading list. songbird From what I have heard on youtube, a good garden is basically growing on top of a worm bed. My avocado pits were whacked with the hammer side of an ax. I should make sure over the winder to occasionally water my worm (singular) and my microbiome. I had a little frog for a time last year! Thank you for the tips! |
#23
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organic matter ???
T wrote:
.... From what I have heard on youtube, a good garden is basically growing on top of a worm bed. if you look into the biology of worms you find out that they are little bacteria factories. what they ingest and grind up together is food for the bacteria they have in their stomach and they feed off what the bacteria give them and any other nutrients they can pull out. the biology of a good garden soil is more bacterial than fungal, but there are plenty of simple fungi in garden soil too. if you compare that to woodland soils or soils under perennial beds you will find that those are dominated by fungi more than bacteria. microbiology of soils is a good winter topic too and also fits in nicely with studying composting. My avocado pits were whacked with the hammer side of an ax. that'll do it! they turn a pretty interesting color of orange if you cut them and leave them to oxidize in the air for a few minutes. I should make sure over the winder to occasionally water my worm (singular) and my microbiome. if it is really dry out, yeah, it won't hurt. just make sure not to waterlog your garlic or bunching onions. I had a little frog for a time last year! that's fantastic! do you know what species it was? Thank you for the tips! always welcome, i love gardening and encouraging wildlife (the non-pest kinds) and try to always increase diversity. i was just youtubing a video of a food forest with over 500 edible plants/trees/etc. any place in the world you can do that, even a desert. takes time and effort, but once you get going it keeps building on itself. like you are finding out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?68=&v=Q_m_0UPOzuI imagine you are these folks and look where they started 10yrs ago: https://www.weforest.org/newsroom/di...-just-10-years give 'em ten more years and keep adding whatever will grow there and they'll be even further along. love it. have fun. time to get outside to get my mess cleaned up and improved. some seeds to pick. songbird |
#24
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organic matter ???
On 10/9/19 8:55 AM, songbird wrote:
I had a little frog for a time last year! that's fantastic! do you know what species it was? No clue. He did not come back this year. Had a praying Mantis this year! |
#25
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organic matter ???
T wrote:
On 10/9/19 8:55 AM, songbird wrote: I had a little frog for a time last year! that's fantastic! do you know what species it was? No clue. He did not come back this year. aww. well keep at it. every bit of shade, cover and moisture you can provide gives them more places to be. we've had some toads here for the first time in several years and i was so hoppy to see them when they were so tiny and then i would see them around later as they kept growing. i've seen a few different species of frogs here this summer, including one i don't recall seeing before and then i forgot to look it up while the image was fresh in my mind so not sure i could find it now if i looked. perhaps. a good project for a few minutes. thanks for reminding me. Had a praying Mantis this year! those are always so interesting, like aliens, can you imagine what they would be like if they could live longer than just a season and keep reproducing!? i used to keep them in a terrarium with the venus flytraps for a while to observe and feed them and then i would let them go. usually they were the green ones. here at this place we have both the green and brown varieties. songbird |
#26
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organic matter ???
On 10/9/19 8:55 AM, songbird wrote:
From what I have heard on youtube, a good garden is basically growing on top of a worm bed. if you look into the biology of worms you find out that they are little bacteria factories. what they ingest and grind up together is food for the bacteria they have in their stomach and they feed off what the bacteria give them and any other nutrients they can pull out. the biology of a good garden soil is more bacterial than fungal, but there are plenty of simple fungi in garden soil too. if you compare that to woodland soils or soils under perennial beds you will find that those are dominated by fungi more than bacteria. microbiology of soils is a good winter topic too and also fits in nicely with studying composting. My guess is that the microbiome is everything. Without the worms and organic matter for the proper culture, you get poor yields. No wonder hydroponic produce tastes like cardboard. My avocado pits were whacked with the hammer side of an ax. that'll do it! they turn a pretty interesting color of orange if you cut them and leave them to oxidize in the air for a few minutes. They still did not decompose! They worked their way up and out of the ground and rolled abound (yes, even the flat ones). Took me forever to figure out what they were. I have dug up vegi table scraps TWO year old that did to decompose. Does Peat Moss qualify as "organic matter"? I should make sure over the winder to occasionally water my worm (singular) and my microbiome. if it is really dry out, yeah, it won't hurt. just make sure not to waterlog your garlic or bunching onions. The plan is to water every three weeks after a rain event. Otherwise let the rain do its thing. Forgot which treat you made the comment of raised beds. I agree with out. They would dry out and blossom rot would be the least of my issues. The only benefit I see if that they are easier on your back. |
#27
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organic matter ???
On 10/9/19 7:48 PM, T wrote:
didÂ*toÂ*decompose. did not |
#28
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organic matter ???
On 10/9/19 7:48 PM, T wrote:
whichÂ*treat which thread |
#29
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organic matter ???
On 10/9/19 7:48 PM, T wrote:
withÂ*out with you Gee Wiz. I am batting 1000 today! :'( |
#30
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organic matter ???
T wrote:
songbird wrote: .... that'll do it! they turn a pretty interesting color of orange if you cut them and leave them to oxidize in the air for a few minutes. They still did not decompose! They worked their way up and out of the ground and rolled abound (yes, even the flat ones). Took me forever to figure out what they were. I have dug up vegi table scraps TWO year old that did to decompose. Does Peat Moss qualify as "organic matter"? yes, make sure it is sourced from a sustainable producer. i don't use it here much any more though because if you take bagged leaves and other stuff and bury it for a few years it will end up looking like peat moss. i just dug up a stash from several years ago and if i'd have lit a match it would have probably blew up since there was so much methane coming out of it. but then i have clay and moisture to seal things in down deep enough. i was rather surprised by that. looked exactly like peat moss. it is now all stirred in with the garden soil in that garden and looks pretty good. the problem with peat moss is that when it gets dry it can take more than a simple quick watering to get it rehydrated. mixed in with garden soil that is kept moist it is an excellent material, but it is not a heavy fertilizer, like most composted materials the benefit is from the improvement to the soil structure and the habitat it provides for the bacteria/fungi/etc as it gradually decomposes. i think in a pretty active garden soil it breaks down further within a few years but if you keep adding organic material as you garden each season that isn't too much of an issue. songbird |
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