fav organic materials

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by zeroma

Pine cones and coffee grounds are on my menu this year for my new no till area. Even thous pine anything won't really change the pH much after it composts, I'm hopeful for a bit of change.

Limestone lives here - well anyway limestone based/clay soil is what we have.

Anyone use cocoa bean mulch? I know about it being poisious to dogs and cats, but I have used it when up in Wisconsin, where clay was the soil of the day and I loved it for adding texture and a wonderful scent (at least at first). We were close to the Hershey's processing plant there.

I LOVE cocoa bean mulch. It supplies a bit of nitrogen, effectively mats together as a weed barrier, moisture retainer, adds great stuff to the soil and looks fabulous. The smell only lasts until the first rain or so but that is OK.

Where in Wisconsin is the hersey plant. I'm in the Chicago area and drive up to racine, kenosha area from time to time. I'd definitely hit the plant if the mulch was cheap. Down here it is around $6 a bag.

Stacy

[dice]

I amend the gardens with greensand (for the micronutrients like
iron rather than forthe potassium) and rock phosphate about
every 5 years, and I use composted leaves, grass clippings, etc,
but I have had the best results with aged horse manure, either
spread a foot deep over the whole garden and turned in or
mixed with compost and soil in individual planting holes
for tomatoes. (Rabbit, llama, and alpaca manure would be good
choices, too, but I have not had them available in the same
quantities as horse manure.) Chicken manure I mix into grass/leaf
compost and let it cook a few months before using it.

These days, it is necessary to test manure for undigested
herbicides before using it:
http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/aminopyralid/bioassay.html

(I use liquified kelp, fish emulsion, dissolved humic acid,
and molasses when watering in transplants in the spring, too.
After years of organic soil amendments, the top foot of soil
is quite fertile, so if I do not have one or more of those
in spring when it comes time to plant, it is not a showstopper.)

My most effective winter cover crops in terms of growth the
next summer after turning the top growth in have been a mix
of bell beans (fava bean relative) and hairy vetch. I alternate
and use winter rye some years (depends on what the soil is
like exactly; winter rye does a good job of filling the top foot
of soil with roots and provides a lot of top growth for mulch
the next summer, while the bell beans and hairy vetch add
more nitrogen to the soil). The sprouted bell beans and vetch
are popular with the local squirrels in fall, so there is a lot of
attrition. (I think of it as natural thinning.)

edit:
One thing about winter rye and hairy vetch: they both flower late,
last week of April up here. That is when one typically wants to
cut them, to avoid having them become summer weeds. If you
have an early crop to plant, the cover crop is in the way.
(Not a problem with bell beans, you can cut them down any
time.) Where you need to plant something before the winter rye
and hairy vetch have flowered, one might be better off with a
fall cover crop that is winter killed, so you can turn it under or
plant right through the dead top growth the next spring.

[zeroma]

Originally Posted by bughunter99

I LOVE cocoa bean mulch. It supplies a bit of nitrogen, effectively mats together as a weed barrier, moisture retainer, adds great stuff to the soil and looks fabulous. The smell only lasts until the first rain or so but that is OK.

Where in Wisconsin is the hersey plant. I'm in the Chicago area and drive up to racine, kenosha area from time to time. I'd definitely hit the plant if the mulch was cheap. Down here it is around $6 a bag.

Stacy

http://yellowpages.superpages.com/li...e&divopen=true


They are in Burlington, WI just west of Kenosha.

I called them and they don't sell cocoa bean mulch. As I recall, I had to buy it at a retail store/big box type store. It was worth having as a cover mulch.

WARNING: The day we spread it out the hubby and I had to go to the store for brownies and we ate them, drank hot cocoa and sat in the grass enjoying all that heavenly aroma!

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by bughunter99

-2" top dressing of very finely chopped leaves in the fall
-Home grown compost plus vermicompost mixed into the soil fill for each planting hole.
-Neptunes Harvest Fish/Seaweed for intermittent feeds.
-Interplanting of beds with beneficials.
-Free well degraded horse manure about 1 month prior to planting
-Rockdust for remineralization
-water from the bottom of the koi pond. (I have a bottom drain)

-Stacy

Organic need not be pricey to accomplish, the more like nature, the better.

I wish this site allowed editting. I want to amend my post above to REMOVE free horse manure as it is no longer safe unless you have a way to prove the horse didn't eat hay sprayed with aminopyralid.

-Stacy

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by zeroma

http://yellowpages.superpages.com/li...e&divopen=true


They are in Burlington, WI just west of Kenosha.

I called them and they don't sell cocoa bean mulch. As I recall, I had to buy it at a retail store/big box type store. It was worth having as a cover mulch.

WARNING: The day we spread it out the hubby and I had to go to the store for brownies and we ate them, drank hot cocoa and sat in the grass enjoying all that heavenly aroma!

LOL, the other great thing about it is that its crisp edges keep the cats out of the bed.