Sarah Petis

Thank you for all the great replies everyone and the support to go for it Mike! Lol.

Thanks for mentioning the ph Ben, that's definitely something for me to keep in mind!

From what my neighbor has told me, the burn pile was used to burn fallen branches and leaves. My neighbor was the last one to use it before we bought the property, he burned some branches last year and caught all the grass on fire! When we came to the property it was only a couple weeks after and the ground was black with ash & and tree next to the pile lost half of its leaves. So it's definitely time to retire the burn pile, lol! The watermelon vine came back this year, but no melons. I'm not familiar with biochar, but there is a bunch of stuff growing out of it like wild lettuce, sow thistle, dog fennel and some other stuff growing out of the side that gets the most sun. I figure I don't know what else to do with it, so i thought it would be a fun experiment. Maybe I could put some logs around it like a raised garden bed to help with erosion a little too.

Hi Matt, thanks for your reply. Those are two things I didn't think of! Erosion & sinkholes. I'm kind of a long that train of thought too, that it could probably work okay enough" for mullein anyway, I'd think. Lol. I've read some stuff about it before and did see that the practice is a bit specific on the way they're built from the "in-ground upward. So I guess I couldn't call it a proper hugle bed, but I suppose if I do decide to cover it with dirt I'll put some updates on here and let people know how it turned out!

When I moved, there was a large burn pile over 2 feet tall and probably 6 or 7 feet wide on the property. Since then it's been the go-to where I throw fallen branches from the river birch & pecan tree. Last year I noticed a watermelon vine growing out of it, so I let it grow, got 3 small but tasty melons! Anyway it's about 6 feet tall now from all the dead and fallen branches I've tossed on there. My neighbor keeps bugging me telling me to go ahead and burn it already, he's worried about copperheads, but it's too close to other trees, close enough to definitely singe if not catch them on fire, (he already caught my yard on fire once! Long story. But I'm not trying to do it again!)

So I started thinking with the volunteer watermelon growing out of there - could I just cover the whole thing with top soil and turn it into a huglebed? There was be a lot of air pockets, but I assume they'd decompose eventually and I could shovel things around or add more dirt if I had too. I live in coastal Carolina zone 8 and really want to grow some mullein for tea and thought that might be a good place to goes it since up north it's always found on sloping land.

Looking for advice on if I could keep it simple and just bury it, of that would work? And how the ash underneath may change things? Thank you for all y'all's wisdom!!

I was reading info on compost lasagna here, maybe I got a little too excited and acted a little too soon, lol. But I got a truck bed load of horse manure mixed with what looked like wood shavings. I put down cardboard about the diameter of a pallet & covered it with the manure & shavings mix, then cardboard, and so on for a few layers and topped it with cardboard again. I thought, "okay, that's it, now we wait a few months and I can start planting." It's been probably 5 months, I transplanted squash into it and they started turning yellow and didn't grow at all. I gave em a couple weeks and after 2 died, I moved the rest somewhere else where they're doing much better. So, I'm guessing it's not nearly broken down as it needs to be? And lacking in nitrogen still? There is still cardboard on top, it's falling apart, but I think it's been thoroughly baked by the hot sun in coastal Carolina. I was thinking about covering it in some sheet plastic and pinning it down to create heat over the mounds, would that help break it down more and maybe it'll be ready next year? Thanks so much!!

Hi, I feel like this might be a silly question, but I have some plants growing in my yard, they're in the lawn, growing out of a "base of grass." I don't want them to get buried by the grass, I can't weedwack the area because I don't want to hit the plants I want to keep, so I've literally gone out there a few times with scissors to cut down the grass that's growing up around & in between the plants.

My question is, how do I go about making this little space (2' x 3') a "garden bed" and or, how do I stop the grass from growing in between the plants? Can I simply put down mulch around the plants I want to keep to kill the grass? It gets a little more complicated because this plant spreads by rhizome (no, it's no bamboo, lol) & I want it to continue to spread. So if I put something like mulch down, will it be able to still sprout up through the mulch? I think that eliminates any type of fabric. Anyway, I thank you very much for your replies!!

Raising the moisture level definitely helped. They moved out of my compost bin. However, they're still in my compost lasagna, since the seasonal rains have been pouring down, I think they like the high ground that the lasagna compost provides, I suppose they can live there for a while until I'm ready to use it 🙂

Great info, thank you. I forgot about Spinosad. I had used it once before on aphids on my azelia bushes in combination with DE and it worked quite well. Didn't even think about it for ants. I bet you have it much worse in TX than eastern NC. I moved here last year so this fire ant thing is new for me. They're popping up all over the yard so I'm definitely going to try what I've learned here and put it to good use.

Good morning and thank you for the replies. As many of you have suspected, my compost bin and lasagna layers are on the dry side. It's been quite dry here and no reals rains for a while. So that's certainly an area I can improve on.
I like that idea of the little stream, I'll try that soon as well. I do have DE as mentioned, was wondering if I could use that or not, I was worried about hurting the worms, but now I know it won't bother them. Thank you all for your ideas, I'll try some things and see what works!

Thanks for the replies. I also just found them in my large compost lasagna piles as well :/

Hi, I have a simple compost bin in a storage container/plastic tub with lid and recently fire ants have moved in. We have a lot of fire ants down here in the southeast. I'm not sure what to do about it, I'd rather not use powder to kill them, compost doesn't seems like a good place for that. I've used borax and sugar water mix with no results. Any suggestions? Thank you!