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buzzy_gw

love gardening on the cheap

buzzy
18 years ago

I'm so glad to find this forum!

I put a bunch of cheapskate ideas up on my favorite (forever to be nameless) forum, and everybody thought I was downgrading the neighborhood. They're a hoity-toity bunch over there. I invited other responses and got...2

But now I've found YOU! The absolutely right audience for clever cost-cutting.

My favorite right now is toilet paper rolls. This is so cool! I quit buying peat pots, quit using seed flats (transplanting is so boring) and now have all seeds growing in toilet paper rolls I've saved up all year. They are PERFECT little seed starters, pop them in the ground and they melt.

Also quit buying planting soil. DH built a compost sifter out of hardware cloth and 2 X 4's. It fits over the wheelbarrow, which is just the right height for working while sitting down on the bench made of a driftwood plank sitting on two logs.

Not just cheap but lazy.

Sifted compost is the only seed starter I have used for years and haven't lost anything to fungus, mold etc., though sometimes it shows up, I just pick it off. Weeds are also easily spotted and pulled.

Another cheap trick I've used successfully for years is this substitute for Reemay row covers:

Used dacron sheer curtains from Goodwill, etc. Put them over PVC hoops over your garden and keep carrot rustfly, cabbage loopers, away. It works. You can use them one at a time or sew a bunch together and cover a huge bed.

Also from Goodwill - old flat sheets - I discovered this when doing a garden maintenance business - spread your old sheet and toss grass clippings and weeds on it, gather up and haul huge quantities to compost bin with little effort.

Used nylons for plant ties - ugly but effective, and stretchy, so you don't bind your plants.

I used the rocks I dug from the garden to edge my beds - cement is very cheap, and I made little rock walls with fist sized cobblestones and cement - 2 layers high. They look quaint.

look forward to reading everybody's excellent cleverness here,

ciao, Buzzy

Comments (26)

  • mid_tn_mama
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Welcome. Those old snooty forum folks don't deserve you. But we do!!!

    Of course you probably know about using plastic miniblinds cut up to make plant markers. Use a china pen.

    This year I have lots of saved seeds and hope to fill my pantry and freezer full with food for the year.

    I've been successful at growing potatoes from the eyes I find in my potato peels. Actually I bury them all for organic matter and some make potatoes!! Absolutely free from the "garbage"!!!

    I save all those glycerine bags from shoe boxes and other items and use them in my big folgers can that I keep my seeds in.

  • mydivinegarden
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Hello Buzzy,
    Thanks for sharing all your tips. I have lots of native New England fieldstone in my yard. I thought they were too small (1 to 3 inches in diameter) to do much with and was wondering what I would do with so many of them. Then I came across your post. Would you mind sharing a picture of the rock wall you created? I would really be interested in finding a way to use these small rocks in the garden. Thanks in advance and be well.
    Dee

    "I used the rocks I dug from the garden to edge my beds - cement is very cheap, and I made little rock walls with fist sized cobblestones and cement - 2 layers high. They look quaint."

  • chuckr30
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I just made some molds to make my own cement bricks. They will be used to edge my flower beds, so the grass will be easier to mow. The mower will go right over the bricks, as I place them flat side down, not edge up.

  • bassketcher
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    has any one tryed to used bed sheets for weed barrier. I would be interested in any ones take on that.

  • Turtle_Haven_Farm
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I just started the T. paper rolls for seed starting this year. That is a fantastic idea!!! My tomato plants are doing great! - Ellen

  • butrflycrazy
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    HEY EVERYONE...I'M A NEWBEE SO BARE WITH ME BUT EXACTLY DO YOU USE TP ROLLS AS SEED STARTERS? I JUST STARTED AN ORGANIC VEGETABLE GARDEN AND A WILDFLOWER/BUTTERFLY GARDEN SO I'M LOOKING FOR ANY TIPS I CAN GET. OH AND ANY IDEAS ON A COMPOST SIFTER I'M KINDA ON THE SHORT SIDE SO IT WOULD HAVE TO BE EASY TO USE... THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR ANY AND ALL HELP! :-)

  • sylviatexas1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Yes, how do you make a tp cylinder into a flowerpot?

    and didn't someone also have a method for rolling newspaper around a cylinder to make seed starter pots?

    anybody know how that works?

  • sylviatexas1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I posted a response to the one about newspaper pots, so that thread is near the top again.

    and here's a link to the one about tp.

    Here is a link that might be useful: make seed starter pots from tp/paper towel rolls

  • Tyrell
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Buzzy,

    Among the things you said was "Not just cheap but lazy."

    Well, I've laid claim to the title of "World's Laziest Person" for several decades now. I love one definition I read years ago: Efficiency is intelligent laziness.

    So dat's what I am, EFFICIENT!

    But you talk about a compost sifter, which to me contradicts laziness. Composting is just extra work with no benefits. The same materials people put in a compost pile, they could put right in their gardens in the first place, as mulch.
    That would start improving the soil sooner, eliminate weeding, save water, and in the end, put More nutrients into the soil. (Composting results in a loss of nutrients, both into the air- as ammonia- and into the ground from leaching.)
    I've gardened for 34 years now without spending one cent for fertilizers, "soil conditioners," soil tests, and never tilled or pulled a single weed.

    If there is an easier, cheaper way to garden, PLEASE someone tell me about it.

  • sylviatexas1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Tyrell, this is the second time you've made that claim, which is contrary to gardening practices over the world & across the ages.

    On the "Compost From Thrown-Away Materials" thread, someone asked you to explain or justify our claim, & you never responded.

  • adirondackgardener
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    >Composting is just extra work with no benefits.

    Seems rather silly to me.

    Mulching is composting on the flat with a greater area of exposed surface. I'd be interested in hearing how this reduces losses of the nutrients from the materials into the air. Mulching also does little to kill off weed seeds or insects.

    Yesterday I mowed and raked up a mountain of grass clippings. I could have spread them on top of an already thick layer of mulch where they would have sat and eventually work their way down. Instead I mixed them with some stockpiled woodchips. Now it's 4 yards of composting material and already they're starting to cook. It will go a long way to establishing new beds next year. It's like money in the bank.

    It would be amusing to watch Tyrell go out in March and clear eleven feet of snow off the garden so he could mulch because composting is too much work.

    Wayne, (risking it all by composting,) in the Adks.

  • buzzy
    Original Author
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Hi folks --

    been a while since I checked this string, so I have to catch up. Hi everybody!

    For those who want to know how to use TP rolls: use as a substitute for peat pots. Don't worry about closing the bottom, just hold a couple fingers over the bottom, fill and tamp down, and put in a container to hold them up - I like to use the flats you get from the nursery, with the open bottoms. When your seedlings are ready, pop the TP roll into the ground, making sure no cardboard sticks up above the soil surface.

    TP cardboard doesn't last a long time once it's wet, so you can't hold the seedlings forever, you've got to plant in a timely manner.

    Why compost? I gotta defend Tyrell here - he's right, "sheet composting" or mulching is an old time technique that works great - look for a great old book "How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back" or "The Ruth Stout No Work Gardening Book" for heavy hay mulches under which you slip your weeds or kitchen scraps. You don't need the hay necessarily, but without some supplement I haven't found enough material to keep the mulch thick.

    This is a great way to garden. BUT...

    Not the only way. I compost for convenience in the winter, as someone pointed out, and to deal with unsightly garbage like the eggplant that comes to my house to die.
    Then sift the compost in the spring for great potting soil, the best. Fill your toilet paper rolls with crumbly, fragrant compost. Magic. Straight-up compost is all I use for houseplants, also.

    Is this the ultimate material to use, giving you the fastest growing, most productive plants, with the least amout of problem? I don't know! All I know is gardening has been going along fine for millenia without mining peat bogs. and it seems to work for me.

    I get a little cranky about having to buy all the best gadgets and doodads before you can attempt something -- phooey. that's why I like this forum! creative cheap! An outlet for the anti-consumer!

    I just read Wm. O. Douglas (former Supreme Court Justice from Washington state) "Of Men and Mountains," a memoir of his youth climbing mountains. He and his buddies headed out with a wool blanket loaded with bags of flour slung over their shoulders, and hiked in heavy old leather work boots. Not an inch of neoprene, anodized aluminum or freeze-dried anything. It's a beautiful book. Might make you cry, it's so pretty.

    Buzzy

  • Tyrell
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    "On the "Compost From Thrown-Away Materials" thread, someone asked you to explain or justify your claim, & you never responded."

    Sylvia,
    I just started posting here about a week ago, and I find the format very clumsy and hard to use. I haven't seen the post you refer to above, and wouldn't know how to get back to it! Any help would be appreciated.
    "Tyrell, this is the second time you've made that claim, which is contrary to gardening practices over the world & across the ages."

    You didn't specify, but I assume you mean my claim that there are no benefits to composting. Maybe I should have stated that a little differently, like "there's nothing that composting will do for gardens that mulching won't do-quicker, better, and with less work."
    Let me say that, just like everyone else, I accepted "the general wisdom" on composting till about 10 years ago.
    But let's look at two of its most often stated benefits, that it "kills disease organisms" and that it breaks down organic matter faster. The first is simply unrealisitic, and the second, while true, is not a benefit. Let me elaborate.

    Anyone who has ever worked in a hospital, especially in surgery, knows how difficult it it to sterilize things and keep them "clean." And that's in a tiled room or on stainless steel gurneys and counters. So the idea that you can sterilze something as messy as a compost pile is just not believable. Just ask yourself if you would want to be operated on with a scalpel or eat with utensils that have come out of even the hottest part of a compost pile? And when you're dealing with living organisms, the diseases composting supposedly kills, only One has to survive. Populations can build right back up into the trillions within days.

    Now, the second main claimed benefit, that composting breaks down organic matter faster is absolutely true. But is it really a benefit? First, at least some percentage of nitrogen is lost to the atmosphere as ammonia during the rapid decomposition in composting. Nitrogen is the nutrient that most needs replacing in soil each year, both because plants use a lot of it, and because it is very soluble, so washes out of the soil easily.
    And that brings us to the other reason that organic matter breaking down quickly is beneficial. One of organic fertilizers' advantages over chemical ones is precisely that they break down more slowly. Plants need only tiny, microscopic, amounts of various nutrients each day. So it isn't necessary that a lot of them are available on any given day. In fact, if all the nutrients are "available," meaning they will go into solution as soon as water hits them (actually carbonic and other acids, but we won't go into that), a certain percentage of the nutrients can be washed right out of the reach of your plants' roots.
    When the same materials that would go into a compost pile are placed on top of soil as mulch, their nutrients are released slowly, but still in more than sufficient quantities to meet your plants' needs.
    I am a little puzzled at how defensive some people get about this issue. First, I have no "ax to grind" or anything to gain or lose personally. If not a single gardner composted next year, it woudln't put one penny in my (nearly depleted) bank account. Second, I'm not trying to tell anyone they should stop composting. If it gives them a sense of accomplishment, or just makes them feel good, that's great. I am just trying to present facts, to get people to think about this practice. I would hate to have someone not garden at all because they mistakenly believe that to be an organic gardener, you must compost. There have to be some people who would let that discourage them from gardening- becuase they are just too busy, don't feel like doing the work, or because of age are no longer able to.
    If someone disagrees with the facts on this matter, I'm more than willing to listen to what you've got to say. But let's not let it disintegrate into personal comments. Saying something is silly contributes nothing to a discussion.

  • adirondackgardener
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ruth Stout is one of my garden heroes and a thick mulch is a key ingredient in my gardening scheme, yet there are a number of compost bins around the garden because muilching is not always appropriate at all times.

    Mulching is a just another method of composting and lots of, if not most compost-making gardeners do it in addition to their "traditional" composting. It is convenient and easy but is not practical for all organic materials, at all times and in all locations.

    I've got a pile of raspberry canes and woody brush by the garden and load of fresh horse manure coming in a day or two. It's going to be hard to mulch intensively planted raised beds with those materials right now. What would you propose I do with them now?

    Mulching a garden that is buried under several feet of snow for up to 5 months of the year is not easier than composting. Composting during this period is not "just extra work with no benefits."

    What does seem silly to me is that you are using a system that works for you but I don't believe you are thinking past your own particular conditions.

    By the way, who's promoting this silly notion that one can't garden without composting? I wasn't aware that this has become an issue and can't seem to find a thread about it.

    Wayne in the Adks.

  • madmagic
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    There are lots of organic materials I use as mulch (or lasagna layers) directly on my garden. Shredded leaves and used coffee grounds, for two examples.

    But the bags of used coffee grounds I collect from a local coffeeshop also include paper filters. I take the filters out of the garden and layer them in the compost heap on top of high-carbon yard waste (leaves, twigs, thin branches, etc.) and high-carbon household waste (cardboard paper towel and toilet paper rolls, junk mail, etc.) I often alternate high-carbon layers with layers of weeds and other young green plants.

    From my experience, I believe composting in piles at least three feet wide and high accelerates the breakdown of high-carbon organic materials. If the high-nitrogen materials are outgassing within the compost pile or leaching nitrogen down with water, it seems reasonable to me that some of the free nitrogen would be taken up by the microorganisms and used to decompose the surrounding carbon.

    Mixing or layering high-nitrogen materials with high-carbon materials in a mulch or lasagna compost right on the garden doesn't seem to result in as quick a breakdown. Perhaps a slower decomposition results in more organic materials being made available to the garden plants, but I wonder if the greater surface area of the garden bed also results in greater losses of organic materials due to wind erosion?

    Tyrell, I don't disagree with your style of adding organic matter to your garden -- I use it myself. Nor would I ever say someone needed to have a compost pile to make a garden, organic or non-organic.

    I do think lasagna-style composting or mulching is not for everyone, nor is it right in every situation.

    For example, I don't like to put toilet paper rolls or coffee filters or small branches right on the garden surface. Partly because they don't look as good to me as compost or a fine mulch, partly because they seem to take longer to decompose.

    Personally, I'd rather do the work of building, turning and screening the compost materials which I don't want to put directly in the garden, then adding the compost to the soil. It seems to me that this process -- combined with adding organic materials right on top of the garden soil -- provides a mix of different products from different processes.

    In a similar way, I mulch with shredded tree leaves, dig leaves (and leaf mold) into the topsoil, pile up leaves alone to break down into leaf mold through fungal processes, and mix leaves with high-nitrogen materials in a bin to compost through bacterial action. Different processes to provide different benefits to the soil ecosystem.

    I think everyone is in agreement on the larger goal: the greater the quantity and the greater the variety of organic materials you add to your garden soil, the better your soil will become. Claiming any one method for introducing organic matter to the soil is superior to all others -- at all times, in all situations, for all people -- doesn't fit with my experience.

    Hope those opinions add more light than heat to this very interesting discussion. :)

    All the best,
    -Patrick

  • Tyrell
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Patrick, often people seem to read things into my words, and those of others, that just aren't there.
    For example, you wrote
    "Claiming any one method for introducing organic matter to the soil is superior to all others -- at all times, in all situations, for all people -- doesn't fit with my experience."
    If you read my post, you'll see I never said anything remotely like this. People may infer I meant this, or even that I implied it, but the simple fact is, I didn't Say it.
    I prefer to deal with facts- like composting does break down organic matter faster, and IMO that is not an advantage. If you start getting into "interpratation," it causes all kinds of problems.
    Some comments on a few other things you wrote.
    "I take the filters (in coffee grounds you get) out of the garden and layer them in the compost heap"

    But why do you do this? I ocassionaly get hair from my barber, to use around high-nitrogen crops like corn, melons, and peppers. It has tons of those bands the barber puts around our necks, but they are paper and will disintegrate. I just leave them with the mix.

    Something else you wrote
    "For example, I don't like to put toilet paper rolls or coffee filters or small branches right on the garden surface. Partly because they don't look as good to me as compost or a fine mulch, partly because they seem to take longer to decompose."
    On the last, faster decomposition just isn't a desirable thing, for the reasons I gave. But I don't leave all kinds of unsightly things laying around in my garden, either. I always cover everything with grass clippings. Unless someone was spying on me when I put them out there, no one would even know what's under the clippings.
    (Just last week, I got an opportunity to add some unique organic matter to my garden. A neighbor was having a full-size palm tree taken out by the city. They are notorious sites for rats' nests. And the crew cut many huge fronds off it. I asked if I could have some- got a puzzled look!- and got four of them. I layed them out on my lawn, and the longest one measured 12 feet 4 inches, with the other three being only inches shorter. I laid them in my garden, and covered them with the next two mowings of my large lawn. By next spring, I expect to find hardly a trace of them.)

    And this
    "but I wonder if the greater surface area of the garden bed also results in greater losses of organic materials due to wind erosion?"
    I would be highly doubtful of this? The finer, partly decomposed materials will always be near the bottom, right on top of the soil. The rougher material on top has never been moved in my garden by even the strongest winds in this area. Of course we don't get hurricanes or-until this year- tornadoes, but I think the garden would be the least of people's worries if those struck?

    And this
    "Personally, I'd rather do the work of building, turning and screening the compost materials which I don't want to put directly in the garden,"
    That's your absolute right, Patrick, (though I might not "defend to the death" your right to do it? lol) but I've had the experience, here in "the real world," of giving something from my garden to someone. They just looved the whatever, so I would ask why they didn't garden themselves. And more than once people have responded with something like, "Oh, we would love to. But we only want to grow organically, and all that work composting, tilling, and weeding.." It really is a tragedy that many people know they Could, not Have To, but could garden without doing "all that work."
    Finally you wrote
    "Hope those opinions add more light than heat to this very interesting discussion. :)"

    You seem like a reasonable person, and think I am, too. I try to keep as open a mind as possible. I am constantly checking out books from the library on "the latest" in gardening. I read one on Lasagna Gardening and two on Weedless Gardening just within the past year. (As soon as they start talking about tilling, though, they lose me.) If I could find a way to grow fruits and veggies that is easier, cheaper, and produces the same or better results as the mulch method, I would switch in a second.
    So far I haven't.


  • buzzy
    Original Author
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    hi guys,

    re unsightly mulches - here's another tip from Ruth Stout: she put her heavy hay mulches and sheet compost (read kitchen garbage) on her vegetable garden. She also mulched her flower beds, but in this case she covered the ugly mulches with old decomposed mulch from the bottom layer, so it looked all black and crumbly and pretty on top. I don't do that because it seems like work to me - where I want stuff pretty I just dump a wheelbarrow of compost from the bin - unsifted - in my opinion, easier

    but hey, that's just me

    the earth never tires... said Walt Whitman

    peace, Buzzy

  • madmagic
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Hi again Tyrell. :) You wrote:

    "Patrick, often people seem to read things into my words, and those of others, that just aren't there."

    "For example, you wrote"

    "Claiming any one method for introducing organic matter to the soil is superior to all others -- at all times, in all situations, for all people -- doesn't fit with my experience."

    "If you read my post, you'll see I never said anything remotely like this. People may infer I meant this, or even that I implied it, but the simple fact is, I didn't Say it. "

    Well, here are some words you did say Tyrell. :) From your first post on this thread, above:

    "Composting is just extra work with no benefits. The same materials people put in a compost pile, they could put right in their gardens in the first place, as mulch."

    From your second post on this thread, above:

    "You didn't specify, but I assume you mean my claim that there are no benefits to composting. Maybe I should have stated that a little differently, like 'there's nothing that composting will do for gardens that mulching won't do-quicker, better, and with less work.'"

    And from your post on another thread in the Frugal Gardening forum: (see Re: Compost From Thrown-Away Materials)

    "Well, I realized a few years ago that composting has no advantages over mulching, which is the way I've gardened for 34 years now."

    As a reasonable man talking with a reasonable man, I sincerely invite you to explain how your statements above are so remote from my statement that you quoted, above:

    "Claiming any one method for introducing organic matter to the soil is superior to all others -- at all times, in all situations, for all people -- doesn't fit with my experience."

    I genuinely wasn't trying to read into your words, Tyrell. Nor am I trying to set up a straw man here. The conclusion I reached (and spoke to just above) seems to me to follow directly from the words you wrote, also quoted above.

    To summarize: If composting is "just extra work with no benefits" or "there's nothing that composting will do for gardens that mulching won't do-quicker, better, and with less work" and "composting has no advantages over mulching" -- then, doesn't it necessarily follow for you that mulching is a superior method for introducing organic matter to the soil? At the very least, superior to composting.

    If you disagree, I cordially invite you to explain where and how and why. As I said, to me it seems to necessarily follow from your statements above. No unreasonable implication or straw man argument was (or is) meant here.

    I prefer to deal with facts- like composting does break down organic matter faster, and IMO that is not an advantage. If you start getting into "interpratation," it causes all kinds of problems.

    Well, it is a fact in my garden that sometimes mulching is the best way of introducing organic matter; and sometimes composting works best -- for me. :) Interpret that as you wish.

    Further, I disagree with your blanket statement that breaking down organic matter faster is not an advantage. Sometimes, in my experience, a faster breakdown is most certainly a welcome and greatly sought-after advantage.

    I'm willing to offer the reasons for my opinions if you would like to hear them.

    "Some comments on a few other things you wrote."

    "I take the filters (in coffee grounds you get) out of the garden and layer them in the compost heap"

    "But why do you do this?"

    I've already answered this question Tyrell, in the paragraph where it was written, the two paragraphs immediately following, and in the substance of what I wrote for the rest of that post.

    Please scroll up and re-read what I wrote and if it isn't clear to you then let me know, okay? :)

    "Something else you wrote"

    "For example, I don't like to put toilet paper rolls or coffee filters or small branches right on the garden surface. Partly because they don't look as good to me as compost or a fine mulch, partly because they seem to take longer to decompose."

    "On the last, faster decomposition just isn't a desirable thing, for the reasons I gave."

    Respectfully, I disagree with both your conclusion and with some of your reasoning. And as above, I'm willing to offer my reasons for my opinions, if you would like to hear them.

    "And this"

    "but I wonder if the greater surface area of the garden bed also results in greater losses of organic materials due to wind erosion?"

    "I would be highly doubtful of this? The finer, partly decomposed materials will always be near the bottom, right on top of the soil. The rougher material on top has never been moved in my garden by even the strongest winds in this area. Of course we don't get hurricanes or-until this year- tornadoes, but I think the garden would be the least of people's worries if those struck?"

    Indeed, a hurricane does usually re-arrange priorities -- and gardens. :)

    Wind erosion is certainly far less of a problem on soil surfaces covered with a mulch or compost layer. Equally so, water erosion. However, neither compost nor mulch are 100% effective barriers to the physical actions of wind or water. Physical erosion will happen, even if greatly slowed by a layer of organic matter.

    Further, I didn't state this point directly in my prior post, but it seems to me to directly follow from other statements I made. Decomposition -- in a mulch, lasagna bed, or compost heap -- is a chemical and biological process as well as a physical process.

    Biochemical forms of surface-layer erosion (most signifigantly the leaching of nitrogen down into the soil and nitrogen outgassing into the air) also happen with all three forms of decomposition.

    It seems obvious to me that the greater surface area and the lower density of a mulch piled right on the soil would tend to increase the biochemical erosion of nitrogen -- and of carbon.

    "And this"

    "Personally, I'd rather do the work of building, turning and screening the compost materials which I don't want to put directly in the garden,"

    "That's your absolute right, Patrick, (though I might not 'defend to the death' your right to do it? lol)

    Heh. Not to worry. :) My garden is worth living for, not dying for.

    "...but I've had the experience, here in 'the real world,' of giving something from my garden to someone. They just looved the whatever, so I would ask why they didn't garden themselves. And more than once people have responded with something like, 'Oh, we would love to. But we only want to grow organically, and all that work composting, tilling, and weeding..' It really is a tragedy that many people know they Could, not Have To, but could garden without doing 'all that work.'

    I agree we should all try to help more people garden with less work. If you do a search on the Soil, Compost and Mulch forum here on GW for my prior posts, you'll see plenty of examples where I've given my time and efforts to helping people do more with less. And I do the same in my daily life, out here in the real world. :)

    "Finally you wrote"

    "Hope those opinions add more light than heat to this very interesting discussion. :)"

    "You seem like a reasonable person, and think I am, too."

    Thank you. I try to be, and I try to assume others are too.

    "I try to keep as open a mind as possible. I am constantly checking out books from the library on 'the latest' in gardening. I read one on Lasagna Gardening and two on Weedless Gardening just within the past year. (As soon as they start talking about tilling, though, they lose me.) If I could find a way to grow fruits and veggies that is easier, cheaper, and produces the same or better results as the mulch method, I would switch in a second."

    "So far I haven't."

    Fair enough, that's your experience and I wouldn't suggest you change what you do, if it works for you. It's your garden. :)

    I do respectfully disagree with your blanket claim there are no benefits or advantages to composting, over the composite or lasagna mulching processes you've described.

    As I wrote before:

    "Tyrell, I don't disagree with your style of adding organic matter to your garden -- I use it myself. Nor would I ever say someone needed to have a compost pile to make a garden, organic or non-organic."

    "I do think lasagna-style composting or mulching is not for everyone, nor is it right in every situation."

    All the best,
    -Patrick

  • led_zep_rules
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Tyrell said in another forum that composting was too much work, because you had to turn it, put in the right mixture of things, and water it just so. Actually you need to do NONE of those things. Just pile stuff up and it will rot. Composting, like gardening and many parts of life, is as hard as you choose to make it. I have composted for years and nothing could be easier. Pile up, leave it alone, put it in the garden.

    After compost cooks down, you can put it anywhere in your garden. Whereas one cannot put fresh horse manure on a garden, it needs to be composted first. I would not want to put many inches of leaves around growing plants. You would wind up with plants smothering when the rain and wind blew the leaves around. You can shred leaves first, but that takes more time and energy than just dumping them in the compost pile. I use some leaves as mulch, but couldn't use all the ones I take that way. I certainly wouldn't put heaps of rotting citrus peels and mango pits around my growing plants, or weeds with lots of seeds. They need to be composted first.

    Some people just dig stuff like that into their gardens. But then the digging in is work, and you would need to be far from the plant roots, and have your garden extra big to have room to 'compost' directly in the soil. I grow my plants close together so that wouldn't work for me. Also digging holes in clay is harder than piling it up, and what about all those winter months in WI?

    I make a lot of lasagna beds and pile stuff in directly and cover with a small amount of soil, but I have to wait for it to compost a bit before I can plant there. And most of the ingredients of my lasagna bed aren't things one would put directly around vegetables : manure, wood chips, whole leaves, massive amounts of old fruit, etc. So do you not use things like that, Tyrell, or do you mean that you lasagna things like that and don't call it composting? And do you never use manure because that can't go into a garden right away? I get all I want free from a neighbor.

    I get old produce from others so have large quantities of fruit & vegie scraps at times. I would smother my garden if I had to put everything on directly instead of letting it break down in size to be the fabulous fertilizer/dirt known as compost. If you are putting stuff down where you aren't actually gardening now, that is just sheet composting. (Like Tyrell with the palm fronds and grass clippings.)

    Marcia, compost lover

  • PacNWest
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The origional post was "Gardening on the cheap". I shift out the many river rocks in my soil and used them along the pathways between the raised beds. Helps warm everything a bit more and now I have this lovely soil.

    You all make me laugh with your long arguments about composting. Mine is a no work system, throw stuff on the pile and let it decompose. Can't imagine paying the garbage man to haul it away. But I am lazy too, so sometimes while weeding in the garden, I let them lay where they fall, if they haven't gone to seed yet. Standing on a soapbox and getting all worked up about what to do with it just takes the fun out of gardening.

  • ruthieg__tx
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Truth is...seems like everyone on this thread is right and no need to get panties in a wad...I do all of the above...I have compostitis...I have a new bed by my back door and I walk out the back door and dump a bucket of kitchen waste on top of the bed...sometime later I'll come back and make sure all is covered with some dirt or leaves or whatever I can find...I have a big tumbler and I love dumping stuff in there...and I love emptying it to use on my garden or in my beds and I have a big bin in the same area as my garden and lots of waste goes in there too...I have a wire ring in one area too...The important thing as I see it is to use it or make in one way or another...

  • rain1950
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Hengal; I use old carpeting to kil off grass when I expand my beds. Takes just a couple months to get bare ground. Have used old shingles the same way.

    I use every method mentioned in composting. Living on the Kitsap Penninsula; that big windstorm left gobs of fir branches in my yard; like money falling outta the sky. I'll strip off all the small branches then cover the bigger stuff with dirt in some corner and give it a year.

    Have a source at work for lumber from packing crates; mostly 1" pine, plywood and OSB with a bit of treatment it lasts pretty well.

  • recluse
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I think a cotton sheet would break down too fast as a weed barrier. I can't say that from experience; just from what I've read. Cotton sheets/clothing were recommended as composting material in the book I read, if I remember correctly. But, a polyester sheet (fake "silk" or "satin") would probably work.

    I use cardboard as a week barrier. It works great, but you have to keep it wet (soak it or drench it really good when you lay it) so it doesn't dry up and blow away! It's FREE!

    When I began my lasagna bed, I used old carboard boxes as the bottom layer (week barrier/grass killer) double thick. I didn't break the boxes completely down, just opened the top and bottom. Just remember to remove all the tape, plastic doesn't degrade (this I know from experience).

    Things I've recycled for use in the garden (gardening on the cheap):

    an old grill with a hinged top and slatted side work surfaces (can't think of the name of those things right now) ...has become my potting bench/tool holder. I keep trowels, shears, sharpie, gloves, etc, in the covered grill right by my garden so I don't have to go to the shed everytime I need something. It doesn't look unusual in the yard and it keeps the old grill from the dump till it falls apart.

    Free cinder blocks I got from a store that moved. They didn't want to haul the blocks and I needed walls for my raised beds.

    Free Used bedding from guinea pigs, hamsters, etc, from a pet store for use in my earthworm farm/compost (I let the worms compost the stuff I don't want to put directly in my garden beds).

    Earthworms...I get them from my piled leaves (used as mulch during winter) and piled up rocks. I agonized over spending $20 for red worms/wigglers to compost the small amount of kitchen scraps I can remember to save and the manure I wanted to use on my beds. Did some research and found that regular garden worms will do the job too (just slower), and for FREE.

    Manure/humus from Walmart for $1.27 for 40 lbs. I use this as new bedding for my earthworms when I take the bedding from them to add to my garden beds. It's worm castings and compost for FREE.

    That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure I'll remember more later.

  • recluse
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I wrote 'week' barrier instead of weed barrier at least twice in that post...my apologies....I do mean WEED barrier not weak barrier.

  • billyet
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I'm trying to keep weeds out of my slightly raised strawberry bed--I just transplanted everything into new dirt because neighbor's cats had polluted my previous plot so I had to haul that dirt away. Now she has a cat fence which we hope will keep them where they belong.
    But now I've weeded, put in clean soil, divided & transplanted surviving plants, I am worried about how to keep the grass out of the new bed. I've dug a lot up, but this grass is virulent.
    Has anyone used cardboard as an edging?
    I've used it for lasagna, & worm food. Would it break down too quickly to be of use?
    Or, anyway, short of building a wall or doing carpentry, is there any way to make a good, innoffensive edging--an easy way?

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