I am an obsessive composter. Here the main tree is the live oak - called that because it does not lose its leaves in autumn but has a change with old dropping and new emerging over Jan - March. These are huge oaks (with a wonderful epiphyte, the resurrection fern). So they drop and will kill lawns so are raked and put out for the garbage collection in bags. There are many mansions (modest ones - very big houses on big yards) and their lawn care will put out a truck load of bagged leaves at a time.
Smaller houses put out half truck loads of bags - also live oak leaves are small, oval, flat leaves and nestle very tightly so a bag weighs 30 to 50 lbs if it has much dirt raked too. I collect thousands of pounds a year and compost them in a heap in the woods.
This is the pogy bread I make for the chickens - made of their cracked corn feed, flour, any thing else like bacon fat or old peanut butter, and pogy fish I net. they are a filter feeding fish that is actually the largest tonnage of fish caught by the USA fishing fleet. pogies are of the sardine/anchovy group - high in fats, omega3, and grow so quick they do not accumulate toxins. They use them for fish farming feeds and industrial uses. I feed them to the chickens daily either raw and whole or cooked in these loafs. The chickens love them, and I believe they make the eggs especially natural.
I actually started this post to talk about composting and wandered: The biggest work in large composting is wetting the leaves. Dried leaves are like thatched roofs, they shed water. Just piled up in large amounts they would take years to do much - and then the lower sections would just mummify instead of rotting. We have almost no worms here to get in and work the compost - we flood with salt and fresh water too often for them to survive.
Water is metered here and expensive because of the swer costs tied to the water volume used. (where normal sewer treatment facilities always have lined ponds - here it has to be in huge above ground, concrete, tanks because of flooding). So I put in a well. It is 45 foot deep and took two men (me and a helper) 8 hours of hard work, and $150 of materials - then free water for my gardens and ponds.
So one opens a bag and dumps it, the other rakes it back and forth on the pile as the hose is sprayed on the leaves. A truck load takes me and my wife an hour to wet, and has the hose running the whole time over them and one gets very wet feet. 8 to 12 months later you have compost - the chickens really help by turning the compost about looking for bugs, and I put the chicken pen litter with their manure over the pile (I do not use chicken manure on anything except for where it can be left 6 months to compost before it will go onto gardens. - I keep two compost piles so the manure can be made safe for food crops)
I am taking a break, just ran the 200 ft of wire. I had to put 100 foot in conduit where it crossed some dirt roads - and bury it all. I used some old 1/2 inch PVC and pushing 12/2 UF wire into long pieces of half inch pipe is a horrible chore - then digging into the packed gravel and then the packed clay under that - tiring. Most of it went through a bit of marsh I own so it could be just exposed.
I was pleased at how well I still can dig trenches. Having put in many plumbing and electrical services I am good at it - and not bad for a used up carpenter. I hit sixty recently and my body just gave it up. tendons gone in my shoulders from throwing steel overhead too many years, feet wrecked, back has to be taken easy. old tradesmen usually wear out at about my age.
I came in for a piece of pie and glass of water and to sit down out of the sun, a warm day today. Next I have to make up a junction box where three different circuits meet (old ones from when I had electricity from a different direction.) and then tap into the house wiring with a GFCI, a switch to kill the whole line, and a socket in weather proof box outside.
This morning I made a couple bamboo grape arbors. I had cut the bamboo a wile ago to let it age - hopefully long enough or it sprouts where it is driven into the soli and begins growing. I use a lot of bamboo because I can collect it from a grove I know in the woods.
I suddenly worried I was blogging here - should I move to somewhere else? I am up to something pretty much every day so may talk too much. The time to leave is soon if I should go - I understand this forum is not really about the sort of gardening I do.
Flora, this forum, as far as I understand it is conversations about gardening techniques, a few jokes (especially about cake) but it is also a place where people ask for advice and get it. I don't expect most gardeners have the time to read long accounts of what other people are doing....We are too busy gardening
Posts
I am an obsessive composter. Here the main tree is the live oak - called that because it does not lose its leaves in autumn but has a change with old dropping and new emerging over Jan - March. These are huge oaks (with a wonderful epiphyte, the resurrection fern). So they drop and will kill lawns so are raked and put out for the garbage collection in bags. There are many mansions (modest ones - very big houses on big yards) and their lawn care will put out a truck load of bagged leaves at a time.
Smaller houses put out half truck loads of bags - also live oak leaves are small, oval, flat leaves and nestle very tightly so a bag weighs 30 to 50 lbs if it has much dirt raked too. I collect thousands of pounds a year and compost them in a heap in the woods.
This is the pogy bread I make for the chickens - made of their cracked corn feed, flour, any thing else like bacon fat or old peanut butter, and pogy fish I net. they are a filter feeding fish that is actually the largest tonnage of fish caught by the USA fishing fleet. pogies are of the sardine/anchovy group - high in fats, omega3, and grow so quick they do not accumulate toxins. They use them for fish farming feeds and industrial uses. I feed them to the chickens daily either raw and whole or cooked in these loafs. The chickens love them, and I believe they make the eggs especially natural.
I actually started this post to talk about composting and wandered: The biggest work in large composting is wetting the leaves. Dried leaves are like thatched roofs, they shed water. Just piled up in large amounts they would take years to do much - and then the lower sections would just mummify instead of rotting. We have almost no worms here to get in and work the compost - we flood with salt and fresh water too often for them to survive.
Water is metered here and expensive because of the swer costs tied to the water volume used. (where normal sewer treatment facilities always have lined ponds - here it has to be in huge above ground, concrete, tanks because of flooding). So I put in a well. It is 45 foot deep and took two men (me and a helper) 8 hours of hard work, and $150 of materials - then free water for my gardens and ponds.
So one opens a bag and dumps it, the other rakes it back and forth on the pile as the hose is sprayed on the leaves. A truck load takes me and my wife an hour to wet, and has the hose running the whole time over them and one gets very wet feet. 8 to 12 months later you have compost - the chickens really help by turning the compost about looking for bugs, and I put the chicken pen litter with their manure over the pile (I do not use chicken manure on anything except for where it can be left 6 months to compost before it will go onto gardens. - I keep two compost piles so the manure can be made safe for food crops)
I am taking a break, just ran the 200 ft of wire. I had to put 100 foot in conduit where it crossed some dirt roads - and bury it all. I used some old 1/2 inch PVC and pushing 12/2 UF wire into long pieces of half inch pipe is a horrible chore - then digging into the packed gravel and then the packed clay under that - tiring. Most of it went through a bit of marsh I own so it could be just exposed.
I was pleased at how well I still can dig trenches. Having put in many plumbing and electrical services I am good at it - and not bad for a used up carpenter. I hit sixty recently and my body just gave it up. tendons gone in my shoulders from throwing steel overhead too many years, feet wrecked, back has to be taken easy. old tradesmen usually wear out at about my age.
I came in for a piece of pie and glass of water and to sit down out of the sun, a warm day today. Next I have to make up a junction box where three different circuits meet (old ones from when I had electricity from a different direction.) and then tap into the house wiring with a GFCI, a switch to kill the whole line, and a socket in weather proof box outside.
This morning I made a couple bamboo grape arbors. I had cut the bamboo a wile ago to let it age - hopefully long enough or it sprouts where it is driven into the soli and begins growing. I use a lot of bamboo because I can collect it from a grove I know in the woods.
I suddenly worried I was blogging here - should I move to somewhere else? I am up to something pretty much every day so may talk too much. The time to leave is soon if I should go - I understand this forum is not really about the sort of gardening I do.
Flora, this forum, as far as I understand it is conversations about gardening techniques, a few jokes (especially about cake
) but it is also a place where people ask for advice and get it. I don't expect most gardeners have the time to read long accounts of what other people are doing.
...We are too busy gardening
Thanks artjak