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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 19, 2022 11:52:42 GMT -6
I posted a video last Summer, in the Weed thread, on how to prepare thistle as a food item. I'll re-post it here. I love listening to that girl's country accent, "Ortichokes" I've still not actually tried this myself, though I'd have to wear some good leather gloves, I'm not as tough as the girl in that video is.
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Post by woodeye on Aug 19, 2022 15:56:02 GMT -6
Good video! Boy if you get hooked up with a gal like that, there's no telling what she's gonna fix you for supper, the pasture's the limit. I thought she was gonna make a thistle whistle with that first chunk since it's hollow, but all of a sudden she ate it raw instead. Who knows, there may be thistle dispensaries someday, sure sounds like some good stuff!...
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 20, 2022 10:33:59 GMT -6
Woodeye,
Sounds like you've got plenty of thistle material to experiment with there. About all I've ever used thistle for was in making weed tea for my garden or using dental floss to secure thistle down to my homemade beau d'arc blow darts. If you try any of these things please keep us informed.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 20, 2022 14:35:09 GMT -6
Here’s a link to a Texas A & M publication about composting. I haven’t read it all, though I’ve looked at Chapter 2, but I thought it might be good to link it here so that I can find it again and others who may want to read it have easy access. aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/earthkind/landscape/dont-bag-it/
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 20, 2022 14:36:54 GMT -6
Warning: picture-heavy post (and not all attractive pictures either) After I watered the garden this morning, my husband helped me build up our new compost pile. This is in the tumbler where we’ve had some kitchen scraps and yard trimmings, but it wasn’t very full. Part way through our process I realized that it might be good for me to grab the camera and do a little documentation. A week or two ago my husband and I did some clean up around our house and pulled up or cut down a lot of nandina (heavenly bamboo) sprouts. We put them straight into the compost even though they were little bushes because we wanted their green leaves to fall off there. Today we pulled the skeletons of those bushes out, put them on the driveway, and ran the lawnmower over them. We also had some trash bags full of garden waste that we didn’t compost last year because of potential for diseases or insect infestation. We put the waste inside contractor trash bags and left them in a sunny but not conspicuous part of our property for the last eight months or so. We wanted to solarize any fungus or virus and kill any insects. My husband emptied those onto the driveway, too, and ran over them with the lawnmower. Some of the residue was tomato plants, some pumpkin and cucumber vines. Because this is all old, the nitrogen component is pretty well gone, so it’s carbon. We don’t really lack carbon, but it’s easy enough for us to use this system, and I think this stuff breaks down faster than shredded live oak leaves. He has a bag on the mower, so he just dumps the bags into our compost tumbler.
While he was doing that, I was mixing up a slurry of cottonseed meal and alfalfa pellets. The meal is a meal, but I took a picture of the pellets I get from the feed mill. I like them because they’re small, about the size of rabbit chow, but these are livestock feed. I mixed the meal and pellets with water and let it sit. It sometimes takes several additions of water and stirring to keep letting it break down as the alfalfa expands a lot as it absorbs water. I used two scoops of cottonseed and three scoops of alfalfa. (Cottonseed is acidic, which is not a problem for me. It could be problem if your soil is already acid.)
My six year old son had made us a pile of leaves recently with his toy excavator, and he was excited to have my husband use those in the compost as well, so they got shredded and added, too. (I think this is somehow a link with the photo, and I can’t seem to fix it.)
After the leaves, I added in some clean Zeolite and Bentonite clay from my cat litter bag, and then I found a bit of charcoal and some ash in my galvanized trash can where we dispose of woodstove ashes. This is how it looked before I gave it a good tumbling. (The ashes/charcoal are just the very small bit in the center. Most of what looks like ash is the cat litter spread in a big spiral around the top surface.)
It’s not usually too hard for me to find some weeds. I had volunteer tomatoes in a bed in the back and some weeds. The largest was a passion vine that I noticed recently trying to take over a Texas sage bush. Just 5 minutes of pulling in the back yard gave me some additional nitrogen to mix in.
I try to tumble as I go so that things get mixed better.
We had a break then because I needed to pick up a neighbor who needed to drop her car off for repair. After that and lunch my husband and I did a quick walk in the “way back” of our property to grab some horehound and a few thistles and some pokeweed. The thistle heads did go to the trash, but the rest went in here. All this time the cottonseed/alfalfa slurry was still in its bucket absorbing water. We then mixed the weeds in, added the cottonseed/alfalfa slurry, and mixed again.
After all that mixing we still needed more moisture, so we used a simple watering can to add, mix, and add again. We figure it’s better to have it too dry and need to add a bit than to get it too wet to start with. We’ll check it again later this evening to see how it’s coming along.
We still have room in the tumbler for kitchen scraps, but we wanted to get a good batch of material started in here, but there’s room for us to add either more nitrogen (likely to be needed) or more carbon (unlikely to be needed) depending on what the pile needs.
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Post by woodeye on Aug 20, 2022 17:18:04 GMT -6
chrysanthemum, Thank You for taking the time to post photos and document all the how-to's involved in your compost pile. I can use your technique on a lot of the stuff I have in my backyard. I also like the idea of bagging plants and so forth to solarize them...
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Post by woodeye on Aug 20, 2022 17:20:32 GMT -6
Here’s a link to a Texas A & M publication about composting. I haven’t read it all, though I’ve looked at Chapter 2, but I thought it might be good to link it here so that I can find it again and others who may want to read it have easy access. aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/earthkind/landscape/dont-bag-it/ Cool. I put the link on speed dial, I'll check it out. Thank You!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 20, 2022 18:28:28 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum,
That looked beautiful to me!
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Post by hmoosek on Aug 20, 2022 21:28:06 GMT -6
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 21, 2022 14:23:21 GMT -6
Thanks, guys. My husband and I were out this morning as soon as it was light, and I stopped by the compost bin to check whether it was heating up. I could actually feel the heat coming out of the crack where the door joins before I even opened it. When we got home from church, I put a thermometer into it. I don’t own an official compost thermometer, but I do own a soil thermometer. It turns out, though, that my compost was already hotter than the soil thermometer could read, so I went to the meat thermometer for the oven and got a reading of about 142 degrees. My son had left a ball in the “way back” of our property yesterday, and he wanted my company in finding it this afternoon. (It’s not a huge property, about three acres, but we named all the different portions when we moved here so that kids could tell us very precisely where they wanted to be.) As I walked down there with him, I pulled up a few more horehound plants, and I turned them under in the pile when we came back up. I’m pleased with it so far, but I’ll take the oven thermometer out there again a couple times to make sure that things don’t get too hot (like over 160). In that “way back” area, we have lots of charcoal from an area where we have had bonfires before when we haven’t been in drought. I hadn’t realized how much there was until I was walking there yesterday and today. I was thinking that I could shovel up some of that and add it to my compost. Biochar is pretty new for me, but I’ve done reading about how it is a helpful aid in composting, and that helps charge it with nutrients. Because I haven’t had but small amounts from the ashcan before, I haven’t figured out just how much one can safely add, but I may just have to figure out what would be an appropriate amount to add in this situation and continue my experiment. Do you have any suggestions, heavyhitterokra?
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Compost
Aug 21, 2022 19:11:22 GMT -6
Post by woodeye on Aug 21, 2022 19:11:22 GMT -6
chrysanthemum, you have your next batch of compost perking right along, that's great news. I haven't checked the temperature of mine, but so far at least it's not smelling bad. I do need to get that other composter put together and get a bigger batch going. I've been trying to get caught up somewhat in the shop, had a good day out there today so hopefully during this coming week I can get started on the Lifetime tumbler.
That's an excellent idea to have the youngsters tell you the named area they will be at on your property.
I looked at images of horehound online, if I have any growing on this plantation, I've never seen it.
As for the biochar, the only things I have read about it is posts from heavyhitterokra, I'm sure he'll be along to help you with that...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 21, 2022 19:47:43 GMT -6
I’m not sure how the horehound got started on our land. Maybe it escaped from an herb garden or something, but it grows in really disturbed soils. It’s in the mint family but very bitter. The previous owners of our property apparently used to own a ranch somewhere south of here, but there was a period of time when they had sold that ranch but hadn’t yet bought new land, and they brought 50 miniature horses to these three acres. I’m sure they fed them on hay, but the horses ate every scrap of palatable vegetation that grew on the ground and maybe even every scrap of leaf litter, too. Horehound, those huge thistles, and lots of cedar were not palatable, however, and the land was just covered with them in the places where anything actually grew. A lot of it was just bare white rock that the neighbors called “the moonscape.” We’ve been pulling horehound and thistles ever since, and we’ve actually made good progress. Horehound does have some medicinal uses, so I don’t want to eradicate it completely as I have used it to make tea and cough drops, but I figure I’ll always be able to find some when I want it.
I wish we could come up and help you with that Lifetime tumbler. It’s a little far, though, and now that we’re all healthy again, it’s time for us to get back to schoolwork.
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Post by woodeye on Aug 21, 2022 20:35:33 GMT -6
Thanks, Chrysanthemum, I appreciate you saying that. It's way too far to drive for something like that.
I'll get to that tumbler, I could have worked on it today but I was anxious to work on some fun projects that I have going on in the shop. There just isn't enough hours in the day for me to work on all the fun stuff I want to everyday.
I can't remember if it was cough drops or just candy, but my younger brother always liked Horehound.
That's plenty of miniature horses for 3 acres. Mercy! There used to be a miniature horse ranch that's about 15 miles from here, they had those little things running everywhere. The smaller they were, the more they were worth. They sold some back in the 90's for upwards of $8,000. Needless to say, I never bought one. I did sell them walking sticks with horse heads carved on them though...
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Post by woodeye on Aug 22, 2022 12:10:27 GMT -6
Here’s a link to a Texas A & M publication about composting. I haven’t read it all, though I’ve looked at Chapter 2, but I thought it might be good to link it here so that I can find it again and others who may want to read it have easy access. aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/earthkind/landscape/dont-bag-it/ I've been studying the chapters, I have read it from the very beginning, I plan to read it in full. I'm currently halfway done with Chapter 2, so have a long way to go. I found one particular excerpt that goes along with the Charles Wilber process and explains the turning of the compost pile. It is exactly as you noted, chrysanthemum.
"The most important consideration in turning compost, apart from aeration, is to ensure that the material of the outside of the pile of units is turned into the center where it will be subject to high temperatures. If desired, piles can be combined when they are being turned, particularly if long composting periods are used."
Also found this tip about the temperature drop of the compost pile. It would be especially important for a bigger compost pile that is not in a compost tumbler.
"A temperature drop during the first 7 or 10 days of composting is a good indication that turning for aeration is necessary."
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Post by woodeye on Aug 22, 2022 18:46:26 GMT -6
Manure Hotline Update: I just got a text message from a friend in Seminole inviting me to a birthday party Saturday. Not my birthday, but that's fine. I'll be too busy with a wheelbarrow and shovel to do much partying anyhow. Lots of animals there, so manure for compost is my goal. Wish me luck, I'm going in...
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