Northern Sandy Soil & Lot's of Pine Trees; No Animals for Waste...suggestions?

WendySue

This may not be the type of suggestion you're looking for, but I've heard David the Good talk about composting in an old freezer (laid on it's back, with the shelves removed) when he lived in a cold climate. The insulation helps the compost retain heat, despite the cold. I live in SW Colorado, so I tucked this idea away for future reference!

WendySue

Thanks Merin,  too bad I don't have any old freezers but it's a good idea.

bmaverick

We are in a similar setup now.  On the WI state line.  8 acres of pines.  Found a logger who is taking most of it.   Now the sun will shine and warm the place.


As for compost, you can do a barter of sort.  Find a local farmer who is mostly organic with goats.  Offer to clean the stalls to take away the manure compost for your garden.

Do you mow?  Get a rear bagger push mower.  Use the clippings as compost.  Even if you have to clear the highway ditch to get grass to compost.

Go to health stores that toss out old produce.  Add to your compost.  BUT, you will get volunteer garden plants.

Since you live far north, think of a cold-frame for fall and early winter growing as well.

Nikki

These are excellent suggestions! Thank you for sharing.

Teresa

Thanks for this thread, lots of good advice. 

"Go to health stores that toss out old produce."

Any ideas about how to approach the manager of my local grocery store about this?  Every day they have a "reduced produce" section with drastically lowered prices.  I mostly only get mushrooms from there because I absolutely love them and freeze them to use whenever.  The rest of the offerings in that section are generally wilted, moldy, gross, etc.  I assume anything not purchased that day is discarded.  But since they are still wanting some price for the stuff, which I am not willing to pay given its condition, how could I get it for free?  Maybe it would help that I'm a regular customer and routinely have them special order various types of meat for my dogs (they eat an entirely raw diet, no processed kibble crap)?  But I'm not particularly good at talking to people so what should I say?  I hate walking by that reduced produce section knowing most of that stuff will end up in their dumpster rather than being composted.

bmaverick

When at a grocery store, ask someone in the the produce depart to talk with the produce manager.  Usually the department managers are best to work with vs. the customer service managers.  When you have the manager's ear, ask in a casual way about the fully expired produce.   Weather it's moldy or what not, tossing it into a compost doesn't matter.  If the place wants money for it, then politely thank them for their times and excuse yourself.  It never hurts to ask.  Most people who are not social tend have issues with rejection.  I know, I was once in that pattern in life until a life-changing event helped to overcome that problem.  Another thing to ponder, there are 6+million people in the world, if one says no, don't worry about it, there are more places to ask.

 

Teresa

Thanks, bmaverick.  I talked to the store manager today and he said anything expired and not sold goes to an employee who feeds it to her chickens.  Bummer, but oh well.  I live in an extremely rural area, that's the only grocery store within 40 miles or so and then it's big chain stores like Wal-Mart which I know will not give anything away even though I'm sure they discard a lot.  I've heard Wal-Mart won't even let employees have expired products, insisting instead that they be discarded.  What a waste.

Would I be able to make good garden compost from straw, hay and chicken manure alone, without any kitchen scraps, maybe adding some worms to it?

karen

Well I cant add to the "just ask" answers which are all good ones.  but, I really think that you should 'rethink' about the grass and weeds.  I live in a subtropical climate and one thing I love about the rainy season is the abundance of green matter. Personally i dont care for lawns and even tho some of the "weeds" here are attractive and useful i collect most of it for my compost and then in my dry season it gets super hot and, well, dry LOL. That said, why not designate an area, for example, for collection. If you want it to remain nice looking around the perimeter plant something pretty and low and useful - pots of herbs and edible flowers maybe.  Once that area is used up move on.  Once you get started it will be low maintenance and sort of like mini crop rotation.  I am already thinking this could be fun.  You could post pictures here and give us updates. I dont know how big your property is but maybe this will help out a bit. Another thought.  use moveable compost bins.  that is, in the area I just described, fill it from the surrounds, then move the bin, effectively turning what you have built up and moving that to another bin somewhere else. Or put the bin in the garden area and do the same.  make it lightweigt an collapsible.

 

 

karen

Another thought: for extra carbon for your compost, and even to help you along during the cold season - I like to hit town on garbage pickup days and gather the boxes that are thrown out from the various food and other stores.  I know that this may not go down well with the ultra-organic folks but maybe that is a topic for discussion elsewhere.  Anyway I remove any packing tape and then do my best to shred the cardboard for the compost or I soak it and use if for lasagna gardening in my raised beds - which I am nearly fanatical about regardless of climate and a useful tool for overwintering in a cold climate (where I used to live).

 

Alison

I have had similar problems in getting enough variety for my compost at times.

Some things that have worked include adding newspaper; shredding will make it compost faster. Toilet paper rolls, used paper towels.

If you know your neighbours you might find one or two that are happy for you to get their lawn clippings.

A lady I know has her neighbours drop their scraps in a small bag on her front veranda. Being more rural it might be harder.

Being rural can also be a help. If you have overgrown roadside areas you can do some 'community pruning'.

I looked online and found a stable that was happy for me to pick up a trailer load of horse manure for free. It wasn't local, but well worth the trip.

I have found a couple of coffee shops that will happily give used coffee grounds....worms love coffee grounds.

Adding a little garden lime will help the acidity of the pine needles to be neutralised.

If you have any old pallets you can build a compost pile inside 4 joined together. Wire mesh can be made into a circle and wired up to then have the compost material just added lasagne style inside. When done both ideas can be moved at the end of the compost cycle.

Also, it might be of interest to know that potatoes grow very well with a heavy application of pine needles. Some of the best potatoes I've grown were after I cleared two neighbours yards of pine needles and put them in the potato beds.

MissPatricia

When I lived in the city, my husband collected bags and bags of leaves from the neighbors (they had put them by the curb for pickup)and we piled them on our small garden. We had also used a lot of newspaper in the garden. We had a great garden after that. Now I am semi-rural. What I did before I started raising chickens was I dug holes or a trench in my garden and buried my kitchen scraps right in the garden so I would not have to expend so much energy moving compost. I also put my cut grass/leaves in there too. It might not be a perfect system, but the matter does decompose. Now I put all the chicken manure/wood chips from the coop every fall into the garden on top of the soil. The chickens get my scraps all year. By the way, are you using your pine needles? They'll add to garden soil too.

Cherlynn

Miss Patricia, I loved your idea of digging a trench and dumping your food waste there along with leaves and other stuff.  My husband suggested that I run our veggie and fruit waste through the blender this summer and dump that into the garden.  Made a big difference on what survived our drought and what didn't.

bmaverick

kquinnhobbs, I had worked in the packaging industry not to long ago in my career.  Sadly, using cardboard as a compost should go down as a no-no for anyone doing organic.  Cardboard is made from GMO plant stalks and GMO plant remains.  The glues used in the binding agents are GMO gluten.  Again not a viable solution.

As for the newspapers, make sure it's just the plain black and white pages without the color inks.  Color images and color in general uses a thermal heat lamination of layers  that stuff, even in low concentrations is not healthy to compost.

I do like everyone's thoughts here to recycle FREE things.  The biggest thing is to ask yourself, how was it made and how was it used.  That is the understanding in knowing what to use. 

Alison

Thanks for the info on cardboard. It's good to get an insight into what's in it.

StacyLou

Bmaverick - thanks for the info. I used some cardboard underneath hay this year to control weeds in our garden pathways. I thought I was being clever in my re-use of it. I didn’t know that it was made from GMO plant material. I won’t make the same mistake next year!

I used paper grocery bags and packaging paper in the same way. It’s got me wondering if these were actual paper products or if they contain some sort of GMO junk. I’ll definitely be more mindful going forward. Thanks again!

karen

alison, what's in cardboard is basically dead material. There can be a lingering issue of chemical materials used to turn cardboard into dead paper but that isnt a monsanto/GMO issue. The monsanto/GMO issue is the raw materials sourced to start the processes of manufacturing paper and adhesives and even food stuffs such as corn starch. While I know that organically produced corn starch can be found at an exaggerated price, using it as adhesive in boxes is quite different. The scale of use is staggering. To me this is like deciding not to use any computer products manufactured in China, or not using plastics. Paper is ubiquitous in the world and cardboard is just another convenience product. Unless you are completely off grid it is difficult to conceive of no use of paper products - which bmaverick are all produced initially the same way as cardboard. As for cardboard alone I am attaching some interesting research about the manufacturing process of both the corrugated cardboard and of the adhesive used in its manufacture. I Implore people to do your own research instead of just accepting what anyone says, including me

Personally I maintain that what I produce is through the organic method. I cannot ever determine if everything that i throw into my compost is organic itself, no matter how hard i try. I am constantly trying to convince a producer of organically "grown' apple cider not to advertise as pesticide free. That is not honest. Pesticides are used everywhere and winds carry this stuff everywhere. I have seen a study in Canada in which it was proven that even organically produced food contained pesticide residues.

What we can we do.
In the first instance, "get over it" to some degree, exercise trust and buy heirloom, organic and non-gmo products. In the second, keep working, as on sites such as these, to educate more and more people to the contaminants that exist in every sphere of our lives and work against Monsanto at every turn. In the third, try to live as naturally and organically as you possibly can. To those of us living in congested areas with auto fumes alone, we just do our best and make a point - not of shaming people - but as already noted, educating. One of the best ways to do this is by example.

As for cardboard, I have two choices. We dont have an incinerator so the cardboard gets thrown into a garbage dump and then who knows? I choose to pick up this garbage and use it myself. Dextrins (e.g. corn starch glue) which are used as the adhesive for corrugated cardboard, are water soluble which is a good reason to soak in water before using. it just pulls apart. This is a further degradation of the starch but as noted earlier, it is basically a dead bit of vegetation. Just like adhesives made from wheat, rice etc that are used in this way. Grower producers will continue to use Monsanto products to produce acres of pine trees and corn to sell to paper manufacturers because these seeds appear to be more reliable and thus put more money in their pockets. The paper people will continue to buy these massive produced products because it is cheaper and affords them larger profits. This is capitalism at its finest, folks. Monsanto wins. Except when it comes to me. I pick up the free cardboard, itself not a direct GMO product, and thus am free from purchasing contaminated hay or straw or sugar cane (used a lot here in Ecuador) or glyphosate to build my compost and grow my food.
Margaret Mead said: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
I am choosing to be one of these people as all here are. Be thoughtful about the information you pick up. Be committed to changing the world we live in. compost everything LOL according to David the Good - who BTW uses all sorts of paper products in his compost and even talks about using paper plates because they can be composted!!!!!!

https://www.adhesivesmag.com/articles/84472-packaging-enduser-starch--and-dextrin-based-adhesives note how they call these products "non-toxic" and "biodegrable" I can agree that they are biodegrable but the non-toxic concept is obviously up for discussion

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Corrugated-Cardboard.html and I like this part : in the future " ...containers will be manufactured using kraft paper produced from recycled packaging rather than trees...[and]...Leading packing companies are already operating paper mills that make fresh, clean kraft paper by de-inking and pulping used containers" YES!
Blessings

bmaverick

kquinnhobbs,

per the first article of dextrin and starches, the article states that, "Only a few plants yield starch in sufficient quantity to be economical: corn, wheat, potato, rice, tapioca and sago. The quality of the starch must be high to produce high-quality adhesives."

Corn, wheat and rice are the upper ends of the GMO saga in this country.  90% of corn is GMO.  Only pop-corn and Indian corn are not GMO.  BUT, as the saying goes, give them time, they will figure that out too.  Indian blue corn chips is all we ever use.  Sadly wheat is even higher GMO percentage than corn.  The IgA protein called gluten is harvested for building materials and even in caulking adhesives.  Now back to the cardboard, have you ever made your own home-made Elmer's glue for kids projects?  It calls for flour.  Yes, wheat flour.  Wheat has GLUTEN.  Gluten in the Latin means .... GLUE.  Elmer's glue and Elmer's wood glues for building or cardboard adhesives is using GLUTEN as a bonding agent.  And most Wheat is GMO.

Now, GMO wheat is harvested in fields that are sprayed with Round-Up (aka glyphosate) for harvest time.  The best and better wheat goes to the food industry, the so-so and crap wheat goes to the industrial industries.  We no longer make glue from horses.

As for the second article, "At the corrugating plant, only a few other raw materials are needed to make a finished box. Corn starch glue is used to bond the corrugated medium to the liner sheets. Because so much glue is used, rail cars or large tanker trucks deliver it as a dry powder that will be stored in huge silos at the corrugating plant until it is needed."

Corn is highly GMOed.  and again round-up (aka glyphosate) is used to harvest it.
Since 2005, Corn and the production of ethanol for a fuel additive was made mandatory.  With the Green Earth policies, other materials are now widely used for the cardboard materials besides using trees.   Run down to the postal office, get one of those all white USPS priority boxes.  Since the box has an outside skin, the new non-tree materials are used.  Corn stalks, wheat stalks, and even soy are now used as cardboard materials.

Soy BTW is 98% GMOed here in USA.  It's widely used too.  https://greenchemicalsblog.com/2014/06/19/soy-based-materials-continue-to-expand

Growing your own food, processing it and storing is a very laborious task.  We use glass as much as we can.  This past week, I got 90 Mason jars in great condition off of a CL ad.  They guy was retired, and found that using freezer bags was less work.  I just thanked him and took the jars.

Not only do we do things organically, we also look at the FOODIE perspective, as in where does our food come from, how is it processed, prepared and how are the leftovers used.  It's a full circle on the homestead.  Anything we bring in or ponder to buy gets a deep thought process first.

With the GLUTEN saga, it  has tied so much in understanding about the entire food cycle.  With our family having GLUTEN problems, we can not even do home upgrades without calling or reading the MSDS sheets first.  No particle board either.  So, our cost is higher.

ines871

oh dear, I had NO idea that cardboard is made from GMO-crops. Horrors!

Good thing that thus far most of it has been laid-down in the Lasagna-method on the perimeter where next to no food is grown..

Ruth Ann Reyes

The title of this thread literally describes my parents place! They have very sandy soil, as they live on the bank of the Kankakee River...They have no animals waste...and TONS of oaks and pines. They've kept it pretty simple and just built small raised beds and add to them each year w/ organic store bought soils and compost. Not ideal, but...it gets the job done. I just visited them last week and their garden was producing and looking good 😁