Not sure if this belongs here I'm sorry. I only have a broken cell phone to access the internet and it's not the easiest thing LOL
So, squash pits you dig down then load them up with ashes, biochar, rich biomatter, etc, bury them with good soil, plant your melons and squashes on top, basic idea yes?
What about in heavy clay? I mean I could probably make bowls from this stuff straight out the ground it's so much just clay beneath my feet. I thought squash pits would work to use the land to grow food sooner, and be a convenient way to bury some... Solid waste.... And put it to good use.
I dug in some pits, using the clay for Adobe to insulate my cabin, and then it rained. Now I have wells, and second thoughts about the squash pits.
I'll be mounding up on top before planting so I'm not so much worried about the squashes drowning, but I am worried about the pits leaking.... Maybe I should reconsider the pits all together? Maybe I should come up with a different pit design? Maybe I should abandon the thought of using that specific organic material as nutrients down in the buried squash pit? Or maybe I'm overthinking this?
Since the pits are already dug, I personally would try it as an experiment. Squash love growing in crude compost. I would mound them up quite high as the organic matter will settle down and create a risk of drowning in the lower areas which will be somewhat anaerobic. I guess it depends on normal rainfall that can be expected.
This past year rain was very weird. Dry the vast vast vast majority of the time, with sporadic heavy rain. Not sure what to expect next year. Where I'm putting them the hoses don't currently reach so I'll be hauling water unless I re work things. So I guess the water trap might even be a good thing potentially
Are you taking about human poop in squash pits?
If so your concern that you will taint your wells seems reasonable.
I would use a some other way to compost the humanure.
For fast turnaround you could turn it into biochar and add that to the pits.
If you have time you can use the above ground carbon heavy piles described in the humanure handbook, or some version of vermicomposting.
I love using pits for all my squash and melons. We have pretty heavy clay. It really helps not having to amend a large area. We use unfinished compost including meat products, small round broken branches, ashes, etc. Top with some decent soil and mulch and plant of top of hill. I have not used humanure personally. I will say that not much was left at bottom of holes once the plants were pulled at end of season (I dug one up because I was curious). We have a lot of precipitation, including a recent 1 in 1000 year rain event... Nothing - or at least nothing visible - got washed away from the bottom of the pits.
I think I would follow the Humanure Handbook closely which is available free online specifically for humanure. I would still use the holes in which I would have no problem using gross materials, but maybe not humanure.
Good tips thanks a lot! I use liquid humanure (sorry, I am new to the community I don't know all the polite terms lol) mixed into my "swamp juice" liquid plant food. I have a bottle of white vinegar that is sitting with eggshells bones occasionally I'll toss some rusty something or other in there. Not an exact science. A cup or so of that(and some wood ashes if it smells too vinegary since I'm always adding and subtracting stuff in there), "liquid humanure"(#1 LOL), rainwater ideally (or aged tap), leave that sit till the algae blooms and the skeeter babies start to grow.... Plants eat that up like 3 star fine dining lol
But squashes are much heavier eaters and my pie pumpkin patch this past year out of an old (carbon heavy. Half composted wood chips, and other junk) compost pile did *much* better than my butternut squash. Butternut was in rabbit droppings but it just struggled along till I started giving it the swamp juice.
Also it's just me here which has an impact on the humanure safety from what I understand. Just me, I don't take any medicine or even Tylenol, very minimal processed food, etc. But yes definitely a little more uneasy to start trying to use solid humanure in the garden than I am with using the liquid stuff.
Another thing about where I want to put the squashes, it's uphill from a shallow little pond I started digging in last year, so runoff definitely a concern. When I say small I mean suburban backyard landscaping scale. Toads breed in there and their used pond water is also a favorite snack of my garden. There's cattails growing in it tho so it is definitely also able to survive a bit of extra nutrients.
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