Pine needles-compost, mulch, or throw them away?

>> Clay is the finest soil structure

I agree with that. Well, colloids can be smaller, but aren't they usually organic? I wouldn't swear to it either way.

>> ... and most available mineral componet of all the soils.

I thought that clay only buffered mineral ions, holding them and then releasing slowly. Keeps them from washing away easily. I didn't think clay provided mineral nutrients. I may be wrong, or it may depend on the type of clay or its prior history.

I guess compost provides a little NPK and a little micronutrients, but I would have thought it had to be supplemented with NPK fertilizer and rock dust or micronutrients, to support rich growth.

But your flowers are growing well, so I must be wrong.

>> I continually add compost

Maybe that does provide everything, if there's lots of good-quality high-N compost, not mostly sawdust..

Corey

Soil from clay the source is everything. Is the Micro elements tied up in salts (desert/alkaline) or oxidized metals (acidic/temporal forests). K Mg Ca here is oxidized and readily available to the plants and bacterias in the soil. Especially if there is organic material present to create the needed Carbon radicals (Benzene etc) for feeding and building the plant. This is not an expert talking just a person who has spent tooooooo much time in organic chemistry. LOL

>> the source is everything.

That makes sense to me. I forget whether clay can buffer negatively-charged phosphate as well as positive ions.

Anyway, 500,000 theories and a million hours in a classroom can all be proven wrong by one by one healthy plant. And it sounds like you have more than a few.

In New Jersey, there is a certain bird that can be made from one finger - the song of that bird is "THUS I refute you!"

(Not you, just the general idea that one plant can refute 20 books. And, in NJ, one finger can refute the most well-reasoned theory.)

Corey

You are like me Cory. You ask yourself many questions and get many answers. I too hated the idea of clay as good and when faced with it as my primary source of soil I had to research many books. Very few speak favorably towards clay but many old books my father had discussed the way to ammend soils. (Soil conservation 1940's) and I have seen the land I grew up in Michigan which was sand!!! turn into soil in my lifetime by adding plants and plant material to sand to make it happen. Today it is a forest of early hardwoods from soils that would support nothing.

>> You ask yourself many questions and get many answers

YES! And if I do that enough, sometimes I may even come up with a few RIGHT answers, or "right for me".

>> old books my father had discussed the way to ammend soils. (Soil conservation 1940's)

By and large, for gardening, I find that "the older the book the better the advice". Maybe not when it comes to dousing things with arsenic and the like, but for simple, practical adivce that works 80% of the time for 80% of the people.

One 1940s gardening book advised "dig a 25-cent hole for a 10-cent plant, not vice-versa". Prices have gone up, but the principle hasn't changed.

I'm not anti-modern or anti-science, and am fascinated by technology and speculation of all sorts. But as a species we have at least 10,000 years of experience with making things grow in soil, and not all of that is bogus.

With modern advice, I find that I have to listen VERY closely to all the caveats and qualifications and conditions before figuring out whether it is even relevant to my situation, let alone right, wrong or affordable. And technical specialists may be so focused on their area of specialty that they forget to mention something they take for granted.

It's often more effective and faster to start with a simplistic "traditional" method, and then test variations suggested by observation, modern advice, "whatever's cheapest or locally available", and whimsey.

Then, if it works well, we can all have fun theorizing during winter months about WHY it works.

Good luck with your hand. Don't be TOO much the tough guy too soon.

Corey

No tough guy with my hand but I drove all day and night and got to Michigan in one day from Kalispell. I even stopped in Brainerd, MN home of my favorite movie 'Fargo'.

OK if you say so, "Mr. No Tough Guy"!

Or "Mr. Not TOO MUCH The Tough Guy".

Corey

Soferdig: "and I have seen the land I grew up in Michigan which was sand!!! turn into soil in my lifetime by adding plants and plant material to sand to make it happen" - I love it!

I am turning sand into soil in my garden in the high desert. Primarily with hot composted chicken litter (pine shavings and chickie poo from a little over a dozen hens) and any garden refuse that the hens don't eat. It's amazing what even just a few years of this has done for my "sand 10 feet down" garden. The first few years I bought a few bags of "dirt" from HD because I was desparate... but now that the girls are in full poo production, I am increasing the organics dramatically for the much cheaper cost of buying pine shavings for their bedding and shoveling chickie poo. No time and not enough chickens or horse neighbors to turn all 5 acres of sand into soil - but I've got proof that it could be done!

If I had a teleporter, I would trade you a dozen cubic yards of clay for the same amount of sand!

Well, they can teleport photons - so can sand and clay be far behind?! Lol, I would take you up on that!

I fantasize an anti-gravity barge that would float cubic miles of steer manure from feedlots, and sandy soil from deserts ... all to my neighborhood.

And move cubic miles of heavy clay from everywhere I have ever lived to people with too-fast drainage!

Irrigation would also be cheaper if you could put a pipe inlet under Niagra Falls, with an outlet in your field.
Or a dry part of the Colorado River or Tulare County.
Or somewhere in the Sahel.

Corey

Corey, I like the way your brain works! Personal anti-grav units would be very useful for carting out all the chickie poo from the hen house to the compost pile, too.

way too much imagnation, lol. I simply dream of having a small herd of goats who are trained to walk up a ramp and poo off a platform right into the compost heap

Anti-gravity or trained goats - whatever you prefer - I hope we develop them while I'm still around to see it.

I think several people have wished for goats that would only eat weeds.

I also wish for cats or squirrels trained to eat slugs.

And trained moles or voles that would dig drainage tunnels exactly where you want them, avoiding vegetable roots, and then return to their cages.

Corey

Corey you have not experienced the joy of scooping poop in a fragrant feedlot. Or standing brain dead as you water a much needed bed. Best seeing your jack Russell chasing moles around the yard. It is my only time to shut down my cranium.

>> Corey you have not experienced the joy of scooping poop in a fragrant feedlot.

True. Even when I helped a buddy with his garden in a town where sdeveral people kept horses, competition for stable-poop was so keen that I never got more than a bucket at a time, let alone a wheelbarrowfull or a "cubic mile".

We always want more of what we don't have, and less of what we're knee-deep in. I think its part of being human.

The poop is always browner in the other person's yard.

Corey

There's my laugh for the night !!!!!

No wonder the grass is always greener, eh?

Har Har Corey! Good one.

The poop is always browner in the other person's yard
especially if they are downwind from you.

Anyone want to help clean the chicken coop - oh, wait, I want all my chickie poop - so, no, stay home, everyone :-)

Corey, love your truthful sense of humor! I need to train that visiting armadillo for tilling, etc. He/she does a good job, but seldom where I appreciate the effort.

ha kmom, you know us. We'd all be sneaking chicken poop out in our pant cuffs, a la rock chips from the cons digging their way out of prison.

>> I need to train that visiting armadillo for tilling,

Every time I see video of a burrowing rodent flinging dirt, I want to train them to dig out silted-up drainage pipes, or just dig new tunnels where I want them, crossing a slope slantwise and down.

Like praire dogs. Until one goes feral or free-lance. Then it would be War.

Corey

Chickens till pretty well. I dummped several 5 gallon buckets of mostly finished compost into what will be next year's beds today. Tossed a few handfulls of scratch on it, and then let the chickies play. One thing about chickens - they are ruled by their tummies. Wherever you toss scratch or other goodies, they will, well, scratch!

I love the visuals I'm getting from all these ideas and comments!!

My chickens have been trained to shovel it is only a few though that chuck it over into the new pile.

I live in Montana with a number of ponderosa pine trees. When testing the soil with a PH meter it barely moves the meter. The soil around here is 7.0 to 7.2. So even where there is a lot of pine needles or under very old pine trees that are well over 100 years old these brown pine needles do not really increase the acidity in your soil. I agree though you should get these needles shredded and broken up well since they do have a tendency to shed water from the ground when left as whole needles in a pile.