ducks4you
Garden Master
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2009
- Messages
- 11,769
- Reaction score
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- Points
- 417
I am too cheap to buy stuff like that. Then, again, I move the same amount of material that you talk about in two days, between my 3 horses and 12 chickens! I think that they work VERY WELL in suburban/small town lawns where your neighbors want things tidy.
ONE thing for sure, patience is the key to good composting. It's good to plan, too. The soiled bedding that I am this winter dumping along my pasture fence lines are NOT attractive to my horses. They won't be putting their heads through the fence to eat any of it, so the occasional weeds that I will be spraying shouldn't be a hazard to them.
In addition to gardening articles I also continue to read up on horse articles. There was a recent one about selenium in the soil, and another about treating toxins from nut trees. I examined ALL of the trees on my property when we moved here to be sure that no poisonous trees and those with toxic leaves were growing anywhere where my horses could consume them. I always need to think ahead bc my animals don't.
You can spray, but you need to know how long to keep your horses OFF of the sprayed area, and what sprays NEVER to use where they graze, inCLUDING the areas that they may occasionally graze.
There are other solutions, too. We have a weed tree called, the "Tree of Paradise." It can grow 5 ft in a year. It isn't harmful to my animals, but the roots will grow the tree back. I had one of them as a sapling growing roots right under the cement block that covers the cistern close to the house. I cut it 3 inches down but couldn't reach the rest of it. So, I took a used cottage cheese container and covered the roots and put a brick on top last year. I smothered it. Doesn't bother me that I have plastic in the bed. I can dig that out later.
ONE thing for sure, patience is the key to good composting. It's good to plan, too. The soiled bedding that I am this winter dumping along my pasture fence lines are NOT attractive to my horses. They won't be putting their heads through the fence to eat any of it, so the occasional weeds that I will be spraying shouldn't be a hazard to them.
In addition to gardening articles I also continue to read up on horse articles. There was a recent one about selenium in the soil, and another about treating toxins from nut trees. I examined ALL of the trees on my property when we moved here to be sure that no poisonous trees and those with toxic leaves were growing anywhere where my horses could consume them. I always need to think ahead bc my animals don't.
You can spray, but you need to know how long to keep your horses OFF of the sprayed area, and what sprays NEVER to use where they graze, inCLUDING the areas that they may occasionally graze.
There are other solutions, too. We have a weed tree called, the "Tree of Paradise." It can grow 5 ft in a year. It isn't harmful to my animals, but the roots will grow the tree back. I had one of them as a sapling growing roots right under the cement block that covers the cistern close to the house. I cut it 3 inches down but couldn't reach the rest of it. So, I took a used cottage cheese container and covered the roots and put a brick on top last year. I smothered it. Doesn't bother me that I have plastic in the bed. I can dig that out later.
