I am living with my youngest son, Sam. I have a plot of his "side yard" covered with cardboard so I can dig up for garden space. I helped him empty his garage so it would be converted into a room for me. We found two shelves in the garage we had to remove. They were 2x12x 20 feet. Hard as nails. I'll have to cut them to length of what I can dig up. Sam is not an outdoor type with yard work. He does mow, but leaves the pine cones on the ground. I have raked up the pine needles and pine cones and thought of running then through a chipper but the advertisement for the chippers say "they don't work on pine cones." So my compost pile is about 6 feet wide by 7 feet long and 3 feet high. I will try to turn it some but I do hope it starts composting. Oh, some pine cones are still falling at irregular times that I add to the pile as well as the new fallen needles. I watered it well and then added some bark chips that were growing grey mushrooms. Maybe that will be some "compost starter."
I have been trying to clean the fence line of dead and dying arborvitae trees with the green ivy. The nursery said nothing much works to kill it, just keep pulling it out.
maybe I'll have to write this up and post it on my stubstack.com.
Yeah, write it up and add some pictures. We’re getting a little too much rain right now so I might cover the compost pile with a tarp until turning again. Your pile sounds really big. If the pine cones are still solid in the spring, you can screen them out and give them another year. I’ve found that leaves are slow to break down, and corn cobs. I use a machete to chop some things up smaller - like corn stalks.
I received this important qualifier and very well-informed comment from a friend, reminding me that organic is OK for a home garden, but not efficient for larger scale:
"While I agree with your concerns about genetically modified plants and the like (even excessive reliance on hybrids), having grown up on the other side of the world, I have a slightly different view of "organic" farming. My conclusion is that growing an "organic" garden for personal use is one thing. But trying it in large scale farming leads to disaster. Take India for example. It was a case of endemic food shortages and starvation. Then the "Green Revolution" happened during the late 1960s and following. This was an effort spearheaded by the West (mostly America) to improve agricultural output. As a result of using high-yield seed, fungicides, fertilizers, etc. the farm output of India increased dramatically. Though there are still many who live on subsistence diets, India has become a net exporter of food. Much suffering was alleviated and life spans have increased. I witnessed the same thing in Pakistan. The people are far better fed now than when we moved there in 1960.
A negative example is what happened just a couple of years ago in Sri Lanka. There the government bought into the "save the environment" rhetoric and banned the use of industrial fertilizers. The food output plummeted to one quarter of what it had been and people began to starve. They rose up and kicked the government out.
I've also read that with the introduction of western farming practices in Japan after World War II, the height of the average Japanese increased by four inches. The reduction in malnutrition was that dramatic!
So, while I have no problem whatever with someone going "organic" in their own vegetable patch, I sure wouldn't want to see it mandated on a large scale. Already been there and it wasn't pretty!"
I am living with my youngest son, Sam. I have a plot of his "side yard" covered with cardboard so I can dig up for garden space. I helped him empty his garage so it would be converted into a room for me. We found two shelves in the garage we had to remove. They were 2x12x 20 feet. Hard as nails. I'll have to cut them to length of what I can dig up. Sam is not an outdoor type with yard work. He does mow, but leaves the pine cones on the ground. I have raked up the pine needles and pine cones and thought of running then through a chipper but the advertisement for the chippers say "they don't work on pine cones." So my compost pile is about 6 feet wide by 7 feet long and 3 feet high. I will try to turn it some but I do hope it starts composting. Oh, some pine cones are still falling at irregular times that I add to the pile as well as the new fallen needles. I watered it well and then added some bark chips that were growing grey mushrooms. Maybe that will be some "compost starter."
I have been trying to clean the fence line of dead and dying arborvitae trees with the green ivy. The nursery said nothing much works to kill it, just keep pulling it out.
maybe I'll have to write this up and post it on my stubstack.com.
Yeah, write it up and add some pictures. We’re getting a little too much rain right now so I might cover the compost pile with a tarp until turning again. Your pile sounds really big. If the pine cones are still solid in the spring, you can screen them out and give them another year. I’ve found that leaves are slow to break down, and corn cobs. I use a machete to chop some things up smaller - like corn stalks.
I received this important qualifier and very well-informed comment from a friend, reminding me that organic is OK for a home garden, but not efficient for larger scale:
"While I agree with your concerns about genetically modified plants and the like (even excessive reliance on hybrids), having grown up on the other side of the world, I have a slightly different view of "organic" farming. My conclusion is that growing an "organic" garden for personal use is one thing. But trying it in large scale farming leads to disaster. Take India for example. It was a case of endemic food shortages and starvation. Then the "Green Revolution" happened during the late 1960s and following. This was an effort spearheaded by the West (mostly America) to improve agricultural output. As a result of using high-yield seed, fungicides, fertilizers, etc. the farm output of India increased dramatically. Though there are still many who live on subsistence diets, India has become a net exporter of food. Much suffering was alleviated and life spans have increased. I witnessed the same thing in Pakistan. The people are far better fed now than when we moved there in 1960.
A negative example is what happened just a couple of years ago in Sri Lanka. There the government bought into the "save the environment" rhetoric and banned the use of industrial fertilizers. The food output plummeted to one quarter of what it had been and people began to starve. They rose up and kicked the government out.
I've also read that with the introduction of western farming practices in Japan after World War II, the height of the average Japanese increased by four inches. The reduction in malnutrition was that dramatic!
So, while I have no problem whatever with someone going "organic" in their own vegetable patch, I sure wouldn't want to see it mandated on a large scale. Already been there and it wasn't pretty!"