Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: Timo on March 14, 2010, 10:17:41 am
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Getting serious now..Went and talked to my sawmill guy,and got me some lumber cost figured.Think I'm going with 2"x8" white oak for my bed frames.
Now....I have been told here lately that horse/mule manure is a great growing medium. (dry of course). One fella told me that he uses no dirt at all just mule poop.
What say you garden experts?
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My garden is too close to the kitchen window. My next door neighbor dumped cow crap in his and we could smell it for a week. I've heard Sheep manure is the way to go if you don't want to smell anything. I dump bags of Black Cow in mine every year and mulch with Spanish Moss.
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I put manure in all my beds last year that came from an old milking barn. It was hard and dry and had lost it's smell. I would not use fresh manure alone for garden soil. I good mixture of manure and soil will give you a good percentage of organic matter to make the soil more friable. I turned one of last years beds yesterday and planted spinach and lettuces and the soil in the bed was full of earth worms. They, the earth worms, are what you want is your garden. They eat rotting organic matter and poop fertilizer in a form that plants can use, but also aerate the soil so roots can breath.
I would compost any fresh manure or just use it as a top dressing after the plants have gotten established. Making manure tea with fresh manure will give you a nutrient rich tea that benefits plants and is added directly at the root level where it is needed and is most effective.
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Pat...my Grandpa used to have a Contraption that he made (old Blacksmith)...He used to fill this big Tank on Wheels half full of Manure....half with ground Water....the Tank had a big shaft going into the side...and inside it had a big prop that He had gotten from the Shipyards in Marquette.... the tailshaft of this had a Pulley on it...and He run a Leather Belt from the Minneapolis Moline tractor's PTO to this Shaft...and fired up the Tractor....and made Moo Soup...as he called it...... ::)....and then We would go and spray it all over the Vegetable Garden....and I swear to God....you could almost sit and watch the Cukes and Squash grow on a nice warm day....after thsi Gruel was spread on them......
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Cool thread. My wife and I are are planning to build raised beds for veggies in the next couple of weeks. I'm not too keen on manure, though, especially with these going in right behind the house. I was thinking of getting some rich topsoil and black leaf compost instead. I have several leftover bags of fertilizer that I was planning to use as well. I forget which, but its the kind that makes the plant grow big as opposed to the roots. I scoped out Lowe's and found 2x10 cedar lumber for the beds, which were priced reasonably. How tall do you guys make them?
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The deeper(within reason) the better. The less work the roots have to do while they grow the better. Leaf mold is excellent soil additive. Leaves contain almost everything the tree need to grow. When they fall the worms take over, break down the leaves and make it possible for the tree to uptake and reuse the nutrients. I know folks that use only ground up leaves in their garden except for a few additives like lime and trace minerals that may not be available to the plants.
A good source of info for a small raised bed garden is a book called The Square Foot Gardener, by Mel Bartholomew. Lots of good info for small spaces.
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Still to danged wet around here to get anything done. can't get the truck anywhere close to get some bedding brought in. Probly go with some good dirt and then mix manure/straw in Pat.
I'll try to get some pics when I get started.
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i've always heard cow manure was the best. don't know if i'd use mule buscuits. been told it doesn't do well as a fertilizer. hence the term, "ain't worth jack $hit."
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Horse manure works pretty well. One of the best things about horse manure is the heat it generates in composting. The heat generated kills all the weed seed in a couple of months. It does need some composting though because weed seed goes through pretty fast and isn't killed by the digestive track. Chicken or turkey poop is some of the best fertilizer you can find for greens because of the amount of nitrogen. If you use too much it will burn the plants though. It is hard to beat good old cow poop though.
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Chicken poop will grow some Okra and hot peppers real quick.
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I got lucky and found an old building comming down and they sold me all the old 2x12x12' timbers. Composting can be just as addcitive as bow making. I would drive around in my pick up and have gardeners dump all their lwan shavings. I found at the beach the tractors would rake up the sea weed couple times a week and it was easy to get a pick up load full of sea weed. Duck farm was near by and provided a great place for duck manure. Cedar shavings from a shudder factory near by and I had all I could handle. Gardening is really fun and rewarding, raised beds even make it more pleasurable. Steve
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I've got 150 lbs of composted turkey manure coming. Three 50 lb bags for $17 bucks each. Ought to keep my eight raised beds, sixty foot asparagus row, spice bed, blueberries, raspberries, and my other's assorted wild flowers happy. Rebuilt my two raised bed cold frame tops in the past two days. Our seed order came last week. Up here at 3500 ft in the NC mountains it's all about soil temperature.
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Steve, I used to love using sea weed when I lived on the coast.
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Up here at 3500 ft in the NC mountains it's all about soil temperature.
That sounds funny to me. We consider anything under 6000 a low elevation.
Steve, you are right about gardening, it is therapy for me. Beside the therapy, I should have peppers and tomatoes to eat by mid April and squash by the end, I can hardly wait.
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The sea weed is good stuff, I would run it over with my lawn mower and chop it up pretty good then let it sit out for at least one day befor I mixed it in the compost. Has all kinds of trace meinerals and heavy in nitogen. Steve
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one of my grandpas grows tomatoes, mellons, greens, turnips, blue berrys, black berrys, oranges, satsumas, ect. along with raising worms, quails, and rabbits. so he uses worm castings, quail and rabit poo for his, and by the end of the growing season he invites people over for coffee just so he can weasle them into takeing some of it off his hands so he dont have to plow everything under lol, so it must work. ;D
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I am currently setting up an aquaponics tank. It works like hydroponics, but the vegtables float on the water, and you put talapia or some other fish in the tank to provide circulation and nutrient, and you can eat the fish.
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oh, awesome thread. i just built a little raise bed out of some scrap would from my girlfriends work. im gonna try not to kill these strawberries
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Justin, do the plants rood right in the water? I have always been curious about this. Tilapia are facinating fish when viewed as a farm raised fish. Fertilizer run off from farms creates massive algae in creeks and the Tilapia thrive on the algae. They basicaly convert sunlight to protein. In 1982 I was drawing up plans for a tilapia farm in Imperial valley, which is a desert farming valley that uses water from the Colorado river. All the canals and irrigation ditches are loaded with tilapia. In 1984 I sent a paper off to the dept of agriculure on this, in 1990 six years later I got a letter from chiquita bannana company asking me if I would be interested in interviewing for a job with them they were going to use ground up bannana peels to feed Tilapia in the imperial valley on a super modern temp controlled fish farm. I think they were successful with this but never really followed up. I always wondered if my paper was any influence on this farm. Steve
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There are several types of system. You can use styrofoam to float plants like lettuce or use grow medium and pump the water like a hydroponic system. As Im sure you know, talatia grow from egg to full size in 10 months so it makes quick protien.
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How big is Full size, Justin. Ours in the wild get up to 1-5#. Ten months is pretty fast.
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Unreal weather here in the UP, mid march and temps are in the mid 60's. Been doing spring cleanup every evening
cleaned the garden up tonight so just for kicks I planted a few collard seeds, curious to see if they will grow this early
nights are still cold. Usually I plant the cold hardy stuff, like carrots, peas and cabbage etc in April with the stuff like cukes, peppers and tonatoes well into May
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They should be alright, Dana. Usually the Mustard green seeds do good early.
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Up here at 3500 ft in the NC mountains it's all about soil temperature.
That sounds funny to me. We consider anything under 6000 a low elevation.
Yeah, I spent two winters skiing Aspen Mountain and two summers working on a ranch along the Frying Pan river at 7000 ft. I also spent a cold January in Leadville at 10,000 ft. It snowed on the 4th of July in Aspen and I had to use short growing season vegetables in my garden. Mountains around here in NC are more gentle and forgiving.
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Grunt, where'd you live in Colo? I lived a year in Glenwood Springs and the first time I snow skied was Aspen Mountain. And then Snowmass and Sunlight. I spent a lot of time up in Rock Springs, Wyo in the crazy days of the late 70's.
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Gotta say, I've never peeked in here, till now! Raised Beds, Gardening, see, we do have something in common!
As for raised beds, my neighbor and classmate's wife, was an extension officer and Purdue grauate! Raised beds were here specialty! She Liked horse manure! Hoping to get out there this week if it stays dry. Radishes, onions, sweet peas, and beets, Oh yeah!
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Grunt, where'd you live in Colo? I lived a year in Glenwood Springs and the first time I snow skied was Aspen Mountain. And then Snowmass and Sunlight. I spent a lot of time up in Rock Springs, Wyo in the crazy days of the late 70's.
Mullet,I lived in Basalt, down the valley from Aspen. I was there in the late 70's also. The sure were crazy days. Pounding the moguls by day and chasing the ski bunnys at night. Plenty of mind alterating substances.
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Still rainy here.Temp seems to like hanging around 40degreesNot the best drying out weather. :'( Got a couple days of sun coming,then snow forecast again over the weekend.
One of the toughest,wettest winters I have ever endured. Oh well, Spring will get here sometime? ???
Good reading about everyone's ways of doing/growing, stuff. keep them coming.
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Here is my raised bed, 19'x60', added at least 6000 pounds of composted horse poop to it so far. I can get a ton loaded for $15 near my home by a guy who has 300 miniature horses.
Lots of weed seeds in composted manure, the black plastic keeps the weeds out.
This is an early in the year shot when everything is still small.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/ekrewson/plasticgarden.jpg)
Everything grows together later. Here is one cucumber plant, only one.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/ekrewson/100_0114.jpg)
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How big is Full size, Justin. Ours in the wild get up to 1-5#. Ten months is pretty fast.
1.25 to 1.5 pounds, water temp effects it. Hybrid tilapia can get to 2.2 # in 36 weeks.
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Grunt, Basalt, where Jimmy Buffet moved to and came out with Changes In Latitude's, Changes in Attitudes. Same time he drove his Porche into the river drunk 2 weeks after he moved there. :D
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Eddie...I have Kin in Glenwood Springs...and have hunted all over there from White River National Forest.... Grand Mesa...Rifle Gap...I have hiked all of them there Mountains before