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| I have a furniture factory nearby, I had gotten half a dozen garbage bags of fine (mostly maple) sawdust early in the year. My cousin and uncle each took 2 bags for chicken coops, and I used 2 bags to mix in more with chicken litter and horse manure, also tried mixing it in sandy soil along with organic coffee chaff from (a little farther away) roaster.
Coffee chaff seemed to work as "compost activator" with leaves early in the spring when we didn't have much for greens. Too fine to use as mulch - tended to blow away (same with sawdust) and to mat when wet. But factory is emailing me saying they've got more sawdust (guess all the chicken people told them the same my cousin told me - too fine and hardwoods not absorbant enough), and I know the roaster always has chaff (I've picked up burlap recently). Is there any good way to use these by-products (together or separately)? |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| What you have is really dust, or various sources. Dust does not work as compost or absorbent bedding. The coffee debris makes ab incredibly good addition to compost piles. |
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- Posted by lazygardens PhxAZ%3A Sunset 13 (My Page) on Sat, Oct 20, 12 at 13:53
| Mix the two with shredded paper and compost it. I suggest that the roaster and the furniture factory look into making pellet fuel out of their sawdust and chaff ... there are small pellet mills. |
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| I'll mention the pellets, thanks. BTW, DH shredded a bunch of leaves with the lawnmower (too bad we don't have a bag). Since they are so fine now, would you mix more like 50/50 with the coffee chaff? I also have old mulch hay, so there is *some* bulky stuff going down as a "winter mulch" or "lasagne" on the beds. Just not sure how much brown to put on when the browns are fine like these shredded leaves (and I didn't go pick up more sawdust) and not in their natural bulky state. Burlap covering will count as a brown too. |
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