Melissa Murdock wrote:Hi lovely people,
I am a single 34 white female. I live with my 3 mutts ( 1 large one medium and one small) on 2.2 acres in Dorchester County, SC. I am looking for a soul mate or a roommate who cares about gardening and self sustainabilitywebpage
. I have land that I bought, but I need a partner in crime to do most projects for cheap. I can sew, and I am learning to garden. I am free spirited, love fires, 420 friendly, drink to celebrate and not commiserate. I am wanting to start a precious plastics workshop on my property in addition to adding a small pond and definitely gardens. I think there is room for goats and a pig or two. I am very open minded and just want someone to come on down, or up, or over, and enjoy fishing and the beach with me. I love the water first and foremost.
I have a 2 bed and 2 bath house, so a room mate for starts would be ideal. Its paradise in my part of the country, I guarantee you that.
Used to be progressive, now dropped heavily into libertarian after the elections shook out. Love 3d printing and crypto. Love arts and am artistic.
Anyone want to come hang out?
I tried to add a pic, hopefully it worked out
https://imgur.com/a/vEhWley
Brian Vraken wrote:Not sure whether this is a mulch topic or a gardening topic, so feel free to move it to a better home if needed.
I've had a few years of gardening under mulches on this property. Year 1 was a load of old straw and hay. Year two and this past year were woodchips.
The original straw and hay can no longer be found, having broken down it's entirety. Despite depositing 12" of woodchips between fall of Year 1 and Year two, the woodchips were very thin by this past spring, and I had to add another ~4-6" to the garden. In other words, they've been breaking down fast. However, I am not getting tremendous production from my garden - my root vegetabls (beets, turnips, carrots, potatoes) didn't do great - the plants just didn't seem to want to grow until later in the season, despite me being very careful to ensure everything was planted in soil. The broccolli didn't really form heads, yet the cabbage I grew was show-worthy, and the brussels sprouts grew huge plants / leaves, though didn't actually develop useful heads on the stalk like I would hope. I feel like something must be missing from my soil profile - I *should* have strong organic matter and microbiology now. I see huge amounts of worms, the soil (a clay loam) under the chips has great tilth. The moisture levels were consistent - the mulch did a great job of keeping the soil moist despite 6 weeks with no rain. Everything about the soil suggests great fertility except the results...
Anyways, I'm making plans for next year, and one of my goals is to be more relaxed with weed contol - just focusing on preventing flowering / seed production, and only cutting them down if they start impacting plants. My thoughts after reading some threads is that additional root mass in the soil is only beneficial from a microbiology perspecitve, and roots that decompose in place aren't a bad thing. My main weeks are thistles, plantains, and grasses with small amounts of other plants in small quanitites..
While the thistles and plantains are manageable, I see trouble with is the grasses I've been fighting. I have a fairly aggressive rhizomatic grass in my garden. Every spring at planting time, I spend hours and root out as many rhizomes / plants as I can. However, I rarely have time to put in several hours per week into the grass battle over the summer, and by the end of the season, the grass has reestablished itself across the garden.
Has anyone succesfully conquered a grass like this? The rhizomes spread as deep as 6-8" below the surface - even in the soil under the woodchips. They *do* seem to be responding to increased soil fertility. The rhizomes will grow 4-5' in length in a few months. Rooting them out is a large job, and almost impossible once a bed is planted, which is part of the reason why the garden is half overrun by harvest. I do think I need to put in a hard edging around the outside of the garden, going down 6" at least... but that will be a big job.
I've tried smothering the plants, but that hasn't been effective. They still seem to survive and find a place to emerge even with cardboard and 6" of additional woodships on top. I eventually have to clear places to plant and put my veggies, and they come up there, and work their way through gaps and seams in the cardboard layer and colonize the chips above it...
Nature is putting up a great fight to reclaim this garden space. I'd love to work with nature... but if I let it go to sod, I won't be growing a garden anymore. The best option I can think of is to grow plants that close canopy and shade out the grass, but this gets back to my initial issue - my plants stay fairly thin, and don't grow anywhere near full potential.
Oh, and we don't have many allelopathic trees here, so I don't think the poor plant performance can be traced back to that.
I'd appreaciate any thoughts and suggestions. I'm already itching to go for next season!
s. lowe wrote:While cleaning out the garage I came up with an odd plan and I'd like to hear anyones thoughts or experiences on the matter. I have a big bag of wood shavings from madrone wood that was turned into bowls, I filled up a 10 gallon bucked with it and have been peeing in it as often as I can. It's been going now for about 2 weeks getting urine at least once a day. Will the wood compost? Will it get hot? too hot for the plastic bucket? Do I need to be concerned about off gassing in the sealed bucket? Any thoughts are appreciated.
Gray Henon wrote:We've had good luck composting mammal butchering scraps in 55 gal drums using wood chips to absorb the stink. Gave it a try with some carp carcasses. Holy stink! Anyone else compost fish? How do you do it?
Emily Smith wrote:I’m in zone 7b/8a and the queen of time mismanagement. We’re 9 weeks out from the first frost date (supposed to be Nov. 16). Is it too late to start seeds? I have Brussels sprouts, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower seeds. I’ve never tried a fall garden and was wanting to this year.
Pearl Sutton wrote:I had a bad year here, out of the 300-some squash (summer and winter) and pumpkin plants I put in of 20+ types, I currently (September) still have 4 plants: 1 tromboncino and 3 (still young) kabocha. All the rest died of fungus or squash beetles. The things in better soil hold out longer (although none long enough to set fruit) so soil improvement is happening, and the ones that are still alive climbed things. I think it got them enough air flow to avoid fungus, and maybe got them up out of where the beetles can reach them so easily. So for next year, I am wondering Which squash varieties climb best? Maybe if I start with things that will go up, I'll get some squash.
Thank you! :D
r ranson wrote:
Hamilton Betchman wrote:
I want to say there is a way to calculate lye based on Specific Gravity of the oils, but I am not sure. I will look into it.
exactly! With cold cured soap this is hugely important.
However, with the hot-cured soap, this wasn't needed because you can tell if there is excess lye before you pour the soap into the mould to cure. Since our cooking oils are mixed, I want to find that hot cured soap recipe to try.
r ranson wrote:The recipe I have lost had something like this for cleaning used oils.
Heat the oils, add cold water to the oils and it precipitates the particles and odour causing stuff to attach to the water and fall to the bottom. Let it sit a while, then pour off the oil and repeat a few times until the oil is clean.