Is that the beef steak, the poop, the broccoli or the tomatoes, or maybe all of it with syrup?!!^_^
Is shredded paper ok?
Mostly, all of the above! I really envy having enough manure that you can grow in sand, but the beef and tomatoes appealed to me even more than the compost tea.
I do like the name "cow poop soup". It would be a great martketing name, except that I understand it has to be used fresh and oxygenated to be good.
Don't know anaything about sorghum formulas.
I thought you might get a kick out of the "cow poop soup". Sure works so I usually keep a barrell of it right besides the garden during growing season. My shubs and flowers get it also when they are lucky. I was raised in Conn. and lived in RI for many years and that soil is wonderful and loamy and I never used any kind of fertilizer or watered it. Thats why gardening in Fl. seemed so labor intensive but it is what it is. Every year I add the manure to my vegie garden and till under.
Out there I have drip irrigation which is a pain cause you have to move it all to get tractor in to work it but it does save water. If I was on city water I couldn't have all the water hogs I have. With 2 ponds and a pool that evaporate from time to time water is really important around here.
Our well is shallow but has held up very well over 46 years and been thru droughts. This year we have been blessed with a little rain every day and I am sure thankfull. One year our canal out back of the pasture went completely dry and it sure was a sad sight to loose 18' of water. It has come back pretty good but nothing like it used to be. It provides water for my irrigation system in my front yard. 350' of shrubs and flowering plants. Lived for years with only a sand front yard then in 2005 made some major changes. I learned how to dig all the ditches and put the pvc pipe and sprinkler heads in. I put 85 sprinkler heads around permiter and 8 large rotors down the center. Made a diagram so I would always know where pipes are running in the event of repairs.
I have mowed a few large rotars heads off but thats an easy fix.
I feel sympathy for you all that are gardening in clay soil. I'm sure its a challenge. If you were closer to me I would furnish you with cow poop. We have a few people that I don't even know that see my piles out back and stop and ask if they can have some. I fill their pick ups if they have one.
Happy gardening to all. We are eating better vegies than the rest of the country. I tell myself that every time my back starts to ach. LOL
Bonnie
Moo poo brew?
My Dad did the same except with rabbit and moose droppings. Hey Question? We got a chipper/shredder and last night ran several bags of clippings, plant cuttings, some wood etc through it. Speaking of cow poop, that is about what it looked like. Except unformed into patties. Just splat splat. Green, gloopy stuff. I just dug in with my gloves and strewed it as best I could between my plants and such. Finally got a garden fork and used that to strew it and then try to mix with soil as I could. So we aren't talking compost, but the raw stuff. So is that okay? It will sit there all winter and heaven only knows what it will look like come spring. I have lots more to run through as I start cutting down the plants. I have lots of area to spread it about, and one bed will be empty of flowers as all it has in it is dahlias which will be dug up. Really need to amend that one as it was the straight 'garden soil' delivered by the landscaper. I also have two barrels of pretty well rotted but not completely done yet that I was thinking I would strew rather than leave in the barrels all winter. Worried about freezing and breaking the containers.
>> strew it and then try to mix with soil as I could. So we aren't talking compost, but the raw stuff. So is that okay?
I think that spreading it on top of the gorund is 100% OK, sheet composting or mulching. No mnaure, so I am guessing it would not matter too much even if it touc he4s plan t stems.
Turning it under ground is probably also fine, unless there is so much wood that, when the wood breaks down, it steals nitrogen away from roots.
The fact that you are adding lots of greens at the same time you add wood helps provide N.
And the wood chips are probably fairly coarse, which keeps the nitrogen deficiet less severe (but it might last a year or more if the soil is hungry.)
And if you don't add a lot of wood, the problem is not very big (unless your soil was already low in N).
I suspect that when we add N, it gets taken up or washes away very quickly. Then the remaining wood gets digested by microbes for months or years. They become very hungry for N to balance the C in their diet, and they suck up every atom of N before the roots can get to it.
If you turneed very much uncopmposted wood under, bear in mind that you might have to provide more N for your plants than you expected, until the wood finishes breaking down. As if anything you planted had a tapeworm that made those plants REALLY HEAVY FEEDERS. Maybe keep top-dressing - green matter on the surface will trickle down into the soil, and wood does no harm composting on the surface. Anything that eats it on the surface CAN't steal N from your roots becuase the roots are down there and the wood is up top.
I like to let wood compost in a heap where at most it prevents N form being lost. THEN turn it under after it's mostly digested.
Or, use the wood chips as top-mulch. It protects the soil and breaks down gardually.
Short answer: no problem, just don't turn excessive sawdust or fine shavings under in soil that's already hungry.
No, I wouldn't call the wood component at all excessive. A very small part of the green. And the shredded paper, even with all the turning of the drums was clumped not broken up. i went in dry but picked up moisture from the other stuff. Not sure I want to do that again but I am a bit short on brown stuff. Don't have too many trees. May poll my neighbors for their leaves. Just so I don't have to take them...
Good, then no problem. One thing about wood: it will add mechanical sttructure to the soil for as long as it takes to decomose.
I never understood why so many people warn against turning uncomposted sawdust underground, but never warn against doing it with paper. Do the extra ingredients in paper provide some N?
I don't know, I just like to feed my compost heap, and then add beautiful black stuff to the soil.
BTW, another way to use to use lots of wood in gardening is called "hugelculture". Instead of layin g mulch on TOP of the soil, away from roots, they bury it UNDER the root zone. Like, entire logs or brushpiles. It decomposes over years and acts like a huge sponge, absorbing water and releasing it to roots during drought. I guess the roots get their N from soil nearer the surface and water from deep down.
We planted a blue spruce on the site where we had inherited a rotten woodpile. They built a little mound (the landscapers) on top and then planted the tree. I has grown phenomenally well. Gorgeous. I figure it has wonderful rotten stuff down there. We bought the house 15 years ago and it was half rotten then. You know, if I had an acre or two to play with, I would set up all sorts of test fields just to see what happens. But I don't think I have another 20 years to hang around and see what happens. Why do the most interesting things happen when you are too old to experiment. Well, I will carry on, with the help of you all here. I am hale and healthy, and am only looking at statistics for my eventual cancellation date. lol. So I will continue as if I had another 66 years to go.
Good attitude! I used to read about forestry and daydream about what I would do with a few hundred wooded acres ... if I knew I would live fore a few hundred years.
I read an SF novel once (Way Station?) The premise was that many alien races travelled from star to star and needed one small room on earth as a way station ... with a human caretaker. Because they didn't want to spill the secret to a new human every 50-100 years, they were able to make him stop aging, as long as he was inside the little cabin in Maine that served as a way station.
But not even the lure of imortality could keep him from stepping outside most nights to watch the sunset and listen to the wind in the trees and the birdsong. So he aged eventually an yway.
What I wonder is: how, in MAINE, can you hear anything over the buzz of the mosquitoes and horse flies and deer flies and no-see-ums?!? It was like Newark Airport when the 747s were lined up at minimum separation distance, circling the airport. Except that they BIT.
Neat book. I will have to look it up. I used to read SF only from the time I discovered doubleback ACE books when I was 14. Still pick one up now and then if they look interesting. Back then it was pretty much all Poul Anderson, Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, etc. Now, who knows.
I have never been to Maine, but I am reading a series of mysteries with a touch of the SN that are based in Maine. Aside from the creepies (isn't that Cujo country lol) I would have thought it was gorgeous and very primeviel (sp). How disappointing. Mosquitoes we got, along with no-see-ums, but not much of a bother.
Heinlein and Anderson, my heros! And Niven, Pournell and H. Beam Piper.
I have never heard of H. Beam Piper, but remember the other fondly. I found Simak's book "Way Station" at Alibris and have it coming. Thanks for the suggesting.
You are welcome. Siamk often has believable "just folks" characters.
Piper is best known for "Little Fuzzy", but "Police Operation", "Lord Calvan of Otherwhen" / "Gunpowder God", all of the Paratime stories, Space Vikings " and "Junkyard Planet" are better.
I think "Junkyard Planet" was renamed "The Cosmic Computer".
Most of his work is public domain now, at Project Gutenberg. Free eBooks.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/8301
Neat. I wonder if I can download any of them to my Color Nook. I will ask my daughter. She knows all about that stuff. If not, then I can download to my desktop and just read them there. Or I will check with Alibris my used book vendor. That is where I found the book by Simak. thanks again for the info. Will give me a whole new run of books to read.
Yup. I went to my Nook Store and they have what I guess would be all of his books. I got the Cosmic Computer. I suspect it will be really strange considering how long ago it was written.
It was written at a point in time that is now past.
In SF, it was still the "Campbell era" and a story was 10 times more likely to get published if it fitted with his viewpoints.
Cosmic Computer is especially fun if you like guns. If not, there's still lots of fun stuff.
"Perfect justice? That's the LAST thing we want.
Most of the planetary population would be in jail in a month!"
Piper once went to an SF convention, back when all fans were "print" fans becuase there were so few SF movies and no TV SF. But they still had movies at night. And Piper went to one.
But he didn't realize that was "Turkey Night".
The all-time-worst-SF-movie they were showing was "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". He walked out early on and another escapee asked him "Do you READ this stuff??"
"Read it?" Piper replied in a disgusted tone.
"I WRITE it!"
Check out any of the ParaTime stories. The short stories might be even better than Lord Kalvan / Gunpowder God.
This message was edited Sep 19, 2012 6:58 PM
that's funny. I remember when attack of the killer tomatoes came out. I did NOT see it. I am (for good or bad) a 'blood and guts' SF movie fan. Starship Troopers is a great favorite. And I bought the book. I remember that the early SF stories were published in the small mags, quite often, in serial form. Then in 1960, they had the 'doubleback' full length (still probably only 130-150 pages) stories. Great fun.
Since I read 'Starship Troopers' and worshipped Heinlein as a kid, I was horrified with what Voerhoven (spelling?) did to it as a movie. The idea that they forgave Johnny for getting a student killed "be4cuase he wnated to win" was not my idea of classic Heinlein.
But I loved the cute kids stomping on Bugs, and teasing the heavily-armed troopers to let them play with assault rifles.
I had no expectations of the movie so I enjoyed it. I am pretty sure I read the book later, or so many years ago (as in decades) that I had forgotten it. I am over half through the Fuzzies. Pretty entertaining. Yes, very light weight, but I like the characters and of course the fuzzies.
A contemporary author (Niven? There were Kzin in it.) wrote a short SF story or novella closely following the movie "The Treasure of the Sierra Madres" ... something like that. He incldued some homages to SF classics, also.
He had one alien critter like a Gila Monster, with a poisonous bite, golden fur, big eyes and a high-pitched cry that sounded like "PAAAPEEE JAAAACK".
Loved their escape, when one of the cops asked "Whbatg did they do, whittle a gun out of a bar of so0ap and bluff their way out?"
There are 2-3 follow-on novels, plus at least 1-2 written by other authors imitating Piper's style.
that's funny about the gila monster's cry. I vaguely recall a SF writer by the name of Niven. They were all the best reading. All things considered, amazingly free of bloodshed. They had young folk books called "Tom Corbet" and " Tom Swift". I read and collected them all before going off to Ace doublebacks.. Also the Hardy Boys. Never got into Nancy Drew.
Tom Swift! I grew up with him.
There was a series for his father,
"Tom Swift and his Motorcycle"
"Tom Swift and his Electric Searchlight"
Titles approximate, and I never ready any. Just saw them listed somewhere.
Me too. I never realized it started with his father. I guess there were several written after I stopped reading them. Wish I had kept the collections I had. Once a week or so my mother took us to Adler's book store and I could buy one book, always hard cover. I believe they were about $6 apiece. That was a lot back then. All books were donated to the school library after I left home. Good thing as Fairbanks was flooded and they would have been lost when the basement went under.