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ninnymary said:

Bee, those are some nice pumpkins. As to the bags of leaves, I figured it will take 7 bags to fill the coop floor about 1 foot high. Every quarter, I think I will have to replenish. So I figured 4 quarters x 7 bags = 28 bags to last me all year. Is this wrong? If I keep the leaves in the bags to use throughout the year, will they decompose in the bags? Over here I can only find leaves in the fall.

Mary

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My coop is 10x12 ft. and I store 4-5 compressed, large bags of leaves for winter and I rake three large tarp loads into the coop at the beginning of the season...like I'll be doing this week...which is about equal to 4-5 compressed bags of leaves.

The rest of the year I add other things...green stuff, kitchen scraps, hay cleaned out of the nest boxes now and again.

You could store that many and you won't go wrong, but I'm doubting you'll need that many leaves in that small coop/run setup. You could use the rest of them on the garden but I'd put them on there now so they have time to compost down before garden time.

I always poke holes in my leaf storage bags to allow for air flow...or any bugs that want to crawl in there. Both are good.

Twenty ducklings composted leaves the fastest I ever saw. I added bags of leaves to their pen to keep it from being so wet and nasty. Over 3 months, I added 42 bags of leaves. The duck poop, water they splashed all over the place, and their flat ducky feet matted those leaves into some bodacious compost! I put a few chickens in the duck pen every so often to scratch it up and turn everything for me.

@Beekissed , I may have already asked this... but, do you think that this would work using sawdust and shavings from dried wood/lumber? I have access to all I can haul from a cabinet shop. I have used it in my compost pile and it did well. But it was combined with a lot of manure/hay/leaves/etc. Since it's all 'indoor' use wood, I don't think it's treated for insects. At least, it didn't appear to have ANY effect on the insects in & around the compost pile.

Cane ... Are you aware that the sawdust from a cabinet shop very likely contains melemine ( the hard plastic white coating that goes onto cabinet walls and shelves ) as well as glue that binds the MDF particleboard in their manufacturing process ?

canesisters said:

@Beekissed , I may have already asked this... but, do you think that this would work using sawdust and shavings from dried wood/lumber? I have access to all I can haul from a cabinet shop. I have used it in my compost pile and it did well. But it was combined with a lot of manure/hay/leaves/etc. Since it's all 'indoor' use wood, I don't think it's treated for insects. At least, it didn't appear to have ANY effect on the insects in & around the compost pile.

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I think you are correct in thinking you might have to add some additional materials to get the same effect. I think the success of wood chip vs. sawdust or shavings is the difference in particle size and type that composts at different rates, compared to the universal size and shape of the sawdust or shavings, which doesn't allow a lot of air into the mass and composts at the same rate.

Wouldn't hurt to try it, though, in the absence of the actual wood chip. I know they say fresh wood chips with all the green leaves and such is the most ideal, so maybe you could mimic that with the addition of the hay and leaves mixed in well with your woods?

If it were me, being me, I'd sure 'nuff try it in one end of the garden to see if it works, then proceed to use it everywhere else if it does. I'd say if you add enough manure/nitrogen to just about any pile of sawdust, shavings or wood chips you'll get you some good mulch when it all rots down.

I've been meaning to show this to you, Bee. This is a perennial flowerbed that I mulched with about 4-6" of untreated bark mulch, the kind you get from the lumberyard after they have stripped the bark off of the logs. It usually has a little bit of cord-wood in it as well. I should have mulched it again this year and definitely will next as it has completely broken down in only two years. It was applied directly over top of the unbroken sod, after spreading out a thin layer (less than an inch) of composted steer manure. I will confess, I did kill the grass with Roundup because I was dealing with quack grass and the intention was not to grow edibles in here. I would not of course do that with a garden, but rather use newspaper and cardboard.

This is a core sample from the lawn next to it, for comparison. This is clay soil too, but from fill dirt, not the crazy red clay I have everywhere else in my yard. This stuff is more sandy, but still very dense.



This is the surface of the bed after I finished weeding it. The mulch has completely broken down after 2 years.



This is a handful. See how soft and crumbly! Like you said, pulling weeds from butter.



This is a core sample from the bed, about 8" deep. You can see the clear line where the amended soil breaks free from the clay and how deep it is.



And here come the chickens, excited to eat up all of the earthworms I just exhumed. LOL.



Yeah, for @canesisters sawdust and shavings, I would definitely make use of it, but I would mix it with lots of stuff like leaves, grass clippings, spent hay, etc. The chips you'd get from Asplundh or whomever for doing your BTE are going to have lots of bark and leaves chipped up with them which is going to help it break down nicely. I put the chicken bedding on my garden after it has composed, but it takes a lot of manure and stuff to get those wood shavings to break down being that they are all cord-wood.

bobm said:

Cane ... Are you aware that the sawdust from a cabinet shop very likely contains melemine ( the hard plastic white coating that goes onto cabinet walls and shelves ) as well as glue that binds the MDF particleboard in their manufacturing process ?

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Not at my cabinet shop.

@canesisters , here is something else you could do with your sawdust...vermicomposting!

@journey11, I LOVE your pics and description of your composted bark on the flower beds! This is the kind of information this thread needs...just more pics and stories of success with this method. I'd love it if those who are trying it will do before and after pics, if possible, so that folks can see that visual transformation. It's impressive...I can't wait to see the soil under these chips after they've been through a winter of wet and snow.

Today we are doing the final clean up of the garden(pulling up the flowers that were killed in the recent frosts) and finally spreading the three piles of chips I've had on standby to try and bring the garden up to the proper depth.

I'll most likely haul more chips to augment that supply before the snows fly.

All the flower stems/roots, etc. are just thrown into the middle of the garden and will be covered in chips...they are just part of the whole composting process. I can't say how much I love that fact...that I can compost right in place on my garden and don't have to haul these flowers away so they won't be in the way of the tiller come spring. I LOVE it that I can throw stuff on this garden all year and it just adds to the goodness.

I'll also be adding all our wood ashes to the garden and to my coop this year, as both places will allow them to be composted along with the other materials and will balance out the pH of both. The plan is to empty them into my wheelbarrow until I get a barrow full, then place them on the garden or in the coop. I'll keep a lid on that WB to keep them dry.

LOVE this composting garden!

Pulled up HUGE flowers...they were up to 7 ft. tall..and deposited them onto the garden and covered them all with wood chips. Then proceeded to put down chips in the front flower beds and then started spreading the first pile in the garden. Finished that and started on the second pile right outside the fence but didn't get finished.

Tomorrow is another day...hope to finally get all the chips on the garden tomorrow.

Hope to borrow a lawn sweeper from my brother soon so I can capitalize on all the leaves in the area. Those in the yard will be raked and stored for coop bedding but, after that, I hope to use this lawn sweeper to take advantage of thick leaves in other parts of the property to place onto my garden.

That is, if he ever gets out here before the winds disperse the leaves into the woods, never to be retrieved.

Laced the wood chips in the gardens with 19/19/19 and also a bag of pelleted lime. Don't know if they will have the desired effect, but only time will tell.