Pine cones, paper and no till composting

[ScottinAtlanta]

All you need to do is strew the pine cones on your driveway and drive over them several times. Next week, sweep up the fragments.

[zeroma]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael
I have been trying to build soil in a fairly large garden space (45 x 65) for a few years. I have been adding leaves (never seem to get enough). I have been growing winter wheat as a cover crop each fall. I have been adding Earthright and watering it in. Basic soil is mostly clay. Things are getting better, but slow. One man recommended I try planting turnips next fall. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Grass clippings. Just keep piling them on all summer around your plants.

The idea is to minimize the time any soil is bare.

If you ever do have bare soil I recommend a paper layer first then grass clippings over that. Sometimes you can "feed the worms" by sprinkling a little cracked corn and coffee grounds lightly on the soil before laying the paper and mulch.

I never till. (or almost never) To me that is a step backwards in most cases, at least for soil improvement. Let your worms do the tilling for you. Their holes make a structure that lets the soil breath, but that doesn't collapse at the first sign of rain. A garden fork or broad fork can be used to break up deep heavy clays.

I also don't till in cover crops. I mow them. Use the green tops for mulch and let the roots decay in place to form channels in the soil.

Isle ways and walk ways between crops should never be bare dirt. Either grow a cover and keep it mowed or a thick mulch. So you don't compact the soil while walking or working in the garden.

Chickens can be a help if controlled precisely with fencing or a "chicken tractor"
They will scratch and "till" the top layer of dirt without compacting the soil. They also will peck at weed seeds and bugs. A good way to scuff the top of the soil without destroying the structure underneath. But just a day or two. Then rake it smooth and seed directly a few days or a week later....then get a mulch on it quick as possible. (once the sprouts get big enough)

Manure is your friend, but use it wisely. Give it time to decompose either on your garden or in a compost pile.

Just a few tips. There are as many ways to improve soil as there are soil types.
__________________
Scott


I had to look up my source for the cracked corn idea... Thanks Scott. So.....

Yesterday we went for a nice Sunday drive - stopped at a pet store just to look around and stretch our legs when the cracked corn idea hit me.

I asked the clerk for cracked corn, like you'd feed a bird, she looked at me funny. Oh what kind of bird do you have she asks?

So I said it wasn't for a bird, but to feed the worms in my yard. You should have seen the look on her face with that one. Made my day.

Yet, she did not have cracked corn.



Scott, do you ever use corn meal? I have that in my kitche for my corn muffins.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by zeroma

So I said it wasn't for a bird, but to feed the worms in my yard. You should have seen the look on her face with that one. Made my day.

Yet, she did not have cracked corn.



Scott, do you ever use corn meal? I have that in my kitche for my corn muffins.

Rolling on the floor laughing at that one!

I also love the looks I get. I just tell them I am organic and they nod in that knowing look and say Oh! I see!

To answer your question, I get creative. I have used corn meal, yes. Coffee grounds, rolled oats, rice, even an old spoiled box of grits a mouse got into. Last year I even used 3 1/2 boxes of breakfast cereal the kid suddenly decided she didn't like anymore. All I did was crumble it up first. But if you are in farm country, cracked corn is REALLY easy to find.

[zeroma]

Cracked corn, corn flakes, or maybe even some really stale pretzels?

I guess the worms don't care???? I'll find cracked corn somewhere around here. We have Farm and Fleet and other Feed stores in the area.

[zeroma]

Gathered up more pine cones today. Yesterday was really windy so I got a wind fall! 2 18 gal storeage bins full. When the wind dies down, I'll be out there driving over them. Our 16 year old grandson is going to visit this week end so I'll recurit his help.

[Got Worms?]

Originally Posted by zeroma

Oh and one more thing I'll do. I read that worms love to eat not just paper, but cracked corn. So I'll sprinkle cracked corn down first, right in the ivy, to draw up the worms to work this clay ivy hill.

I would be leery of putting cracked corn down. The chances of drawing rodents to the area are just too great. Squirrels and chipmunks will more than likely be drawn by the pine cones for the seeds within, but corn will be a good food source for rodents like mice and rats. The more food rodents have; the faster they multiply. They're easy to attract, but very hard to get rid of. If you do put down corn, don't leave it on the surface, at least mix it into the soil, though I don't recommend putting it down at all.

Worms will be happy with leaves and other organics that rodents can't use as a food source. Try the coffee shops for spent grounds. Offer to leave some 5 gal. buckets to fill (if warranted) and get grass clippings and yard waste from others.
Whatever you decide to do...good luck, and I hope your reclamation of the area works out well.
Charlie

[John3]

Thinking about the pine cones - this might work if you have some plywood around. Lay some plywood down in the area where you are going to dive over the pine cones then put another plywood over the pine cones that are on the bottom plywood and drive your car over it remove the top plywood and vacuum the crushed pine cones. Might work.

[zeroma]

Thanks again Charlie. I think I'll forget about the corn all together. We have a problem with the squirrels already. One has decided our home is him home. It is going to cost $600. for the repairs on the the cedar siding over the gararge and to fix the entrance hole(s) at the back of the house. The guy is coming on Monday in fact.

I do plan to cover the pine cones well with other organic stuff, including coffee grounds. If it ever stops snowing! today we had big flakes out there again. No I'm not talking about the neighbors!

John3, I was thinking of using large corrugated boxes like you suggesst with plywood. Top and bottom. I didn't think about the vac part of your idea though. Thanks for that light bulb. I've been saving some of the bigger size shipping boxes I've been getting.

[nnjjohn]

Ladies and gents, from northern new jersey here.. Still cold like winter in March! Have a couple questions .. my home gardens are about four seasons old in respects to me tilling them each spring with an electric tiller .. thing works great.. is there such a thing as over tilling a garden? how many times should I tiller and how close to planting? I do kill a lot of worms using the tiller.. so wondering if it is best to till now and just spade or hoe come planting time. Also, I have a horse stable close to my home where I fill 5 gal buckets of what appears to be a mix saw chip straw and horse manure stable bedding .. is this pkay to tiller in a few weeks before planting? this will be the third season using this method.. I figure each season the break down of this matter has to be helping, just not sure if the wood chips are responsible for the low test nitrogen level my test kit indicated a week ago. tia, John

[zeroma]

Plan B is needed. Today was sunny and in the 50's - time to road kill the pine cones. I bagged up one plastic trash can bag and 1 woven reusable grocery bag of cones. Put them smack dab in front of the car tires - got in the car - run over, backup up, repeated maybe a dozen times.

Excited to see my 'broken apart' crumble, I switched off the car, opened the first bag. Disappoinment is not even close to what I felt when I dumped the contents of the bag back into the big storage bin. Pine cones are extremely stuborn.

It was so nice outside I decided to just brake up the ones I could by hand, just to be outside for a while. The soggy pine cones that looked like cigars broke apart somewhat easy, by those big open ones are still impossible to break. I thought for sure they would just crumble under the weight of the car tires.

I'm thinking that maybe the whole cone will have to work. My reason for wanting smaller bits was the more surface area, (smaller bits) the faster it would break down in the ground with all the other compostable and free organic stuff I'm collecting. After all, if I broadcast the whole pine cones first, into the English ivy, it will fill in some of the spaces without compacting as much as coffee grounds and shredded paper.

[bughunter99]

Hi Zeroma,

-Don't add soil, it will cool your compost down.
-Add a bit of compost to the mix to get the micros you want in their and producing. If you don't yet have any compost, you can consider add compost starter.
-Your current ingredients are skewed towards a very slow breakdown ( Lots of carbon). To speed things up you need to get some nitrogen in there. If grass clippings are not available consider alfalfa meal, or blood meal to help heat things up.
-The ivy will grow up through everything if it is well established unless you smother it very well. Make sure the first layer is big thing cardboard. Craft paper will not work as a light barrier, it will break down in a week. You need something more substantial and thick.
-Make sure you keep the area moist so that it degrades faster and keeps working
_If your additives are deep enough, just bury the kitchen scraps in the pile so that mice etc won't be sniffing it.

Stacy

[zeroma]

Thanks bughunter99

What I'm trying to do is make a layered bed to kill the ivy and improve the soil, not make a hot compost heap. The one think I have learned over the course of the 6 seasons of living here is that Ivy loves this place. It is very well established with big thick stems that I think go half way to China. That's how thick they are layered on top of each other. GRRRRR

I will be adding greens and browns as I go, not too concerned how long the cold compost takes to rot. After all, compost will happen eventually! I do add all the greens I can find.

My hope is that by the fall I can plant some bulbs, shrubs, perminant garden/yard plants. I won't be tilling but creating healthy and as organic as possible, soil. Cardboard is my second layer plan after I spread my cone collection.

[John3]

zeroma this might solve the ivy root problem
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/a...rapple-lg..jpg

[Got Worms?]

Zeroma, how big is this area? Regardless of what or how much organic material you bestow atop your Ivy, it still may not succumb by fall.

I don't see why you don't just put down a couple of layers of blastic... aka: black-plastic... mulch. If the Ivy isn't gone by fall, you might be able to plant some stuff through the plastic and remove it once the Ivy is dead, dead, dead!
Charlie

[zeroma]

Originally Posted by John3

zeroma this might solve the ivy root problem
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/a...rapple-lg..jpg