i havent had that issue on my rocky, clay soil. i just put down cardboard, drive a 5ft stake through the center of cardboard, place my raised bed, place the tree roots on cardboard, tie tree to stake, mound with good draining soil, tamp, then mulch with 3in. woodchips. i have about 70 trees/ bushes planted this way and all are growing well with no care. ive even done it without the raised bed with good luck.Anne Miller wrote:To me, it would be wise to look at another area to have your garden.
From your description, the soil may have been depleted of minerals needed, standing water, and then there is the risk of "the septic field gently slops down into the old garden area."
I live where it is very rocky so we made raised beds by combining "leaf mold" found on our property under trees, bought soil, well-aged manure, and some clay from our property.
The problem with trying to plant fruit trees into a raised bed is that the roots will still have problems hitting rocks below the raised beds.
We dug large holes, then added lots of organic matter, and the fruit trees we planted just never did well.
Maybe others will offer some better solution than I have been able to.
like i said at the beginning of this thread, as long as youre dumping it on a carbon source outside nature will do the rest. ive stopped using the bucket/ chips inside. instead i pee in old milk jugs and store under the sink. when full i dump them on a arborist pile of woodchips in the back yard. in winter i store the full jugs in the garage until spring then dump them out on the pile. just make sure you have a good amount of chips. a yard is good 2 yards , better.Aurora House wrote:
Mike Phillipps wrote:
Steve, I agree the salts and ammonia is getting leached out by water-runoff. As you said, just left in the bucket the salt will just accumulate. To clarify though, salt itself doesn't stink. What stinks is 1) urea decomposing to ammonia, and 2) anaerobic decompostion/composting.
I totally agree with your 'relevant conditions' for compost to be warm and aerated, but I'm skeptical that new material has to be added to the middle of the heap. Yes warmth "kick-starts" it, but digging into the center might just remove heat from other material in the pile, so while I could be wrong, I'm skeptical that there's any overall improvement on the pile, or at least enough to justify the extra effort.
I agree small buckets aren't big enough to get hot on their own without additional help.
We humans tend to have too much salt in our diet, that is why when hiking your supposed to pee on a stump or rock or other durable surface so the wildlife trying to use it as a salt lick don't destroy some innocent plants. So if your bucket is under a roof I can see salt building up to preservation levels.
Putting it in the middle of your heap I see as having the benefits of surrounding the new material and aerating the stuff replied on top.
hey Corey. so how's the pears doing? mine are doing great but some of the grafted horizonal branches started breaking from the weight of new growth. all the vertical ones are growing gangbusters! if the horizontal ones breakoff completely, no biggie. i got plenty more vertical ones. hopefully they fruit soon. the trees now 12ft. tall.Corey Schmidt wrote:Thanks, Steve. No worries if you can't find it. It looks like all of my aronia grafts this year dried out, some of them after appearing to take, but 3 of this year's pear grafts on mt. ash are growing, and the aronia from last year growing fast (for here).