composting methods and why i do what i do

[ducks4you]

@RUNuts I throw everything waste at my birds that I think that might enjoy exCEPT chicken. Sometimes there is a little bit of meat on a steakbone or porkchop bone, or leftover fish from eating out that I don't want, and I give it to the hens. ALL old bread, stale cereal, lettuce cores, sweet pepper tops, old zucchini, cucumber ends go to the birds. I make Sangria by squeezing oranges and lemons and leave them in the wine. When it's time to throw those away I give it to my birds and they eat the insides to the peel. They love old apples, black bananas and any other fruit. I open up the bananas and they leave the peel. I LEAVE everything that the birds don't eat. Every 6 months I take my tiller inside their run (and a shovel to get in next to the coop) and then shovel out and remove the top layer. It makes terrific compost.
Your chickens won't eat what they don't like, but it will decompose anyway.
I give cabbage pieces and old carrots to my horses.

 

[baymule]

x2

 

[RUNuts]

Sounds like a plan! After watching all the utube videos, I don't think we can go wrong. Make a pile and nature happens. Keeps the parrots busy. I cleaned a fence from some vines (honeysuckle and blackberry were losing to the sumac (? have to look that up)) so I cut everything. See if the blackberry can get a leg up with my help. Need to throw some mulch at it also. The berrys have been anemic.

So the parrots have this large pile of viney, pokey stuff. I keep throwing food at it and they are working the edges. If I can lay it down (cardboard anyone?) and cover it with chips, we can play bird on the mount! For about 2 hours, then it will be flat again...

How do I make sure the vines are dead before I bury it? Between the sumac and the honeysuckle, every node is a new plant. Leave it uncovered for 3 months?

 

[baymule]

There are some things that go on the burn pile. If I never want to see it again, if it lives despite what I do to it, if I totally hate, despise and loathe it, I burn it.

 

[flowerbug]

...
How do I make sure the vines are dead before I bury it? Between the sumac and the honeysuckle, every node is a new plant. Leave it uncovered for 3 months?

i leave it on top of the pile to dry out in the sun. in SE Texas that might happen a lot quicker than it does up here.

right now we have a pile of wild grape vines in a pile drying so they won't regrow. eventually i'll move them someplace and bury them, or perhaps i can weave a fence out pieces of them. we'll see...

@baymule thanks for the scoop on the poop. nice to have such helpers as dung beetles around. too cold for them up here. also, for fun sometime you can turn any wood scraps into charcoal instead of ashes. charcoal lasts as a garden amendment for quite a long time.

 

[ducks4you]

I have been trying to find the time to remove the rest of the THORNED blackberries. I have heard from SO MANY people about planting thornless, but I am not even sure about those. These blackberry bushes love to spread. I have experienced LESS spread from my mint! They DO burn Very well.

 

[digitS']

We had some quack grass pulled and in black plastic bags that I sat in the corner of the garden several years ago. DW asked me about them. I said that it was spring and they would be dead by fall and could be composted. She said, "I bet that they aren't dead." I could hardly believe it but she was right!

@ducks4you , at one garden, the neighbor had blackberries. As I understand it, most varieties are not good choices for this far north, so one has to choose with hardiness zone in mind.

Anyway, his plants did okay but it was the oddest thing watching them squeeze out the raspberries that he also planted. It was a slow march that I watched over about a 20 year period. The blackberries obviously had some problems with the winter cold and the raspberries didn't. But, the raspberries didn't want to grow near the blackberries. They lost a couple feet of ground under the trellis each year. Finally, they encroached about 4' into my garden. The blackberries had completely displaced them on the trellis! I intervened on behalf of the raspberries or they would have been chased further into my garden.

Steve

 

[RUNuts]

Then something must be wrong in my corner. I've been mowing, yanking and burning the corner at least every other year. It is not sumac. Close to trumpet vine. Grows like the weed it is. Peppervine!
http://www.foragingtexas.com/2008/09/peppervine.html

I'll be horn swaggled. This is slightly edible. I did not know that. Well, the parrots grabbed it up and didn't die.

If you do bury it in the compost pile, you will be pulling it and it's children out for weeks.

 

[Beekissed]

Another iron lover plastic hater. Love rusty iron fences and gates

NY, look at these prices at my local Restore for iron fencing...

https://www.facebook.com/habitatmov...912025572462/1677930832270566/?type=3&theater

i've never seen sheep poo. do they do pellets or plops? does it smell good like horse poo?

It's like big rabbit poop...not much smell at all if it's not concentrated into one place and peed on.

 

[flowerbug]

@RUNuts we had sumac (not the red kind) growing in the north hedge it took me a few years of cutting back every new growth i could find to get rid of it, but that did work.

honey suckles, much worse, i can't remove all of them so it will be an endless battle until i can. birds droppings mean small plants all over the place where i don't want them. when i cut them back they seem to regrow easily. with so many i have a very sustainable supply of small stick fodder. too bad the wood is so cruddy.