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Post by steev on Jun 4, 2015 20:42:33 GMT -5
Sounds like a problem about making it easy, even profitable, for them to cater to your needs. Without knowing the storage space available to them, the quantity they generate daily, nor the regular frequency with which you can clear the backlog, I certainly can't solve this equation for you; however, I can offer three examples.
A rabbit rescue, adoption, and boarding shop I found has to discard quantities of used bedding, etc; they had to pay to dump it until STEEV-MAN! came to their rescue; I go by ~twice weekly to haul off their trash-bagged bunny-bedding for mulch/soil amendment on the farm; they don't pay to discard; I get organic material; that's a win/win.
A redwood lumber-surfacing mill produces huge quantities of clean sawdust weekly; I show up Friday morning; they're pleased to fork-lift a huge bag (~600#) into my truck; I give them last-week's empty bag; free disposal for them, free OM for me, another win/win.
A fire-extinguisher company has to re-charge tanks, disposing of the powdered mono-ammonium phosphate fire-retardant, dumping it into lidded 5-gal buckets; when they have 13 buckets (that's as much weight of that I want to carry), they call me; I go get it to take to the farm, dump it in 35 gal trash-cans, and return the buckets; free disposal for them; free fertilizer for me; you know what that is.
Maybe you need to provide a 5-gal bucket to support kitchen bags, so they can fill, tie, and set aside for your REGULAR pick-up; many companies will be pleased that their waste is being re-cycled, rather than trashed; see what you can work out with them, to your mutual benefit.
FREECONOMICS RULE!
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Post by MikeH on Jun 5, 2015 5:48:07 GMT -5
this may be a dumb question but going to ask it anyway. Plain clay kitty litter (clean of course!!) ... would there be any future in mixing a handful of that with a handful of soil when transplanting into desperately sandy soil? I was thinking it would maybe act like those water saver crystals (which supposedly don't work anyway, never tried them, don't trust weird chemicals in veggie gardens). Thought it might be a way to help buffer the transition from pampering to reality for the seedlings. and that will help the soil building process. It's bentonite clay - also used for lining ponds and such so the question might be if the plants can get the moisture out of it, maybe. Anyone ever tried this? Raised beds get around the soil problem. Our veggie gardens are located at the bottom of a slope so drainage is a problem. It's made impossible by the clay soil that is there. Amending is a hugely time consuming & expensive proposition which may or may not workout right away. So we went to raised beds which instantly solved the problem. In the process, we discovered square foot gardening which allowed us to maximize yield. Not everything is appropriate to raised beds unless you have a lot of space - melons and squash run everywhere and tomatoes are space hogs but we have grown them in raised beds and they have produced for us. If you can't do raised beds, you need to add organic matter. The best for that is wood chips. If they're on the surface, they won't tied up nitrogen. If they're tilled in, they will. But you need to till them in to start to change the sand quickly. I think that you could still plant if you created "pockets of fertility" wherever you were planting by digging an oversize hole and filling it with compost and planting into that. The plant would have a pocket of good soil while the surrounding sand/woodchip mixture was slowly improving. There's some pretty good info from the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. Also, look at what Paul Gautschi has done with wood chips. We are heavy user of wood chips as mulch. We find that the "edge" between them and the soil is incredibly alive - red wrigglers, centipedes, millipedes, sow bugs, white rot fungus. Overtime, the mulch is consumed into the soil. We can see areas around our fruit trees where the soil is black and very friable. Outside the wood chip circles, we still have concrete sub-soil. Wood chips work transformative magic on dirt turning it into great soil. |
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Post by prairiegarden on May 8, 2016 0:16:06 GMT -5
Have been trying to access wood chips or even sawdust for years with no luck at all. Found some sawdust two hours away but they'd rather burn it than bag it for sale, and insurance won't allow them to let anyone else bag it themselves. The only company selling wood chips is almost 4 hours one way from here and they deal only in dump truck loads, that would be fine but the shipping costs are prohibitive. I'm pretty much out of luck in that regard it seems,
Using sopping wet cardboard covered with enough soil/ sand and whatever mulch I can find to stop it from blowing away and then planting into cuts in the cardboard. Tried using just mulch but the wind still dried it out too quickly. Will see if it works, it can't hurt. Worst that can happen is I lose some seed and some effort but maybe it'll work for some plants anyway. In any case it'll encourage earthworms who tend to like paper and soft cardboard.
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Post by philagardener on May 8, 2016 6:23:07 GMT -5
Any local electric company / tree company that might be chipping up tree trimmings? It is hard to glean firewood anymore because they grind up everything 8" in diameter and less and just put larger trunks on trucks and haul them away.
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Post by MikeH on May 8, 2016 8:03:54 GMT -5
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Post by eastex on May 12, 2016 6:47:38 GMT -5
I have been trying to source coffe grinds for a few weeks now. I'm getting closer I think!
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Post by philagardener on May 12, 2016 20:35:21 GMT -5
I have been trying to source coffe grinds for a few weeks now. I'm getting closer I think! Sounds like something may be brewing . . .  |
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Post by steev on May 12, 2016 21:28:07 GMT -5
Coffee grounds: best thing ever for mulching roses; also primo particle-size for any soil-amendment use. I only drink one "9-cup" espresso pot of coffee daily, just to kick-start my brain/gut (yes, that's prolly what I've got for brains); I've saved every pot of used grounds for years for direct use, not composting, thinking them too directly useful to be diluted; while they've not actually said so, I think my roses agree.
Wish I could score coffee grounds in as great quantities as I can redwood sawdust, but I just haven't put in the time to check out local coffee-houses and I think too many folks in the Bay Area are hip to this stuff; I'm pleased that it should be so, even though it is more competition for what was previously seen as "waste"; I have more than enough "waste-streams" to keep me busy and my land fertile.
I'm hoping more people realize that pee-ing in the yard is useful water and nitrates, rapidly used by many organisms; not stench, as when pee-ing in a stairwell or on concrete. I have issues with the whole "waste-disposal" industry. Just don't think they've "got their shit together".
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Post by prairiegarden on Oct 17, 2016 11:31:54 GMT -5
Well I tried using the clean kitty litter to see what it did in terms of turning back into clay to use for cob heat sink sort of liner for the outside of a wood stove. Most of it does not dissolve back into clay. I read somewhere that it is often partially baked as Nathan mentioned so it won't revert to simple clay, which can tend to be dusty. So the rest of the bag will just get mixed into the soil as it is of no use to make cob. Even after a week of soaking and pounding it with a piece of 2x4 daily only dissolved maybe 1/2 of it. There's enough of it that's not baked that should help fill some of the sand interstices and help retain moisture. Now wondering if it might be a good idea to dissolve as much as possible before doing that to prevent clumps. That's probably the plan for next spring....
The good thing about the cob experiment is that it crumbles well so will incorporate into the soil easily, so it isn't a waste of more than time..and now I know. A friend is not convinced and wants to try another brand which is not clumping. . Somehow it seems likely that all of these will be treated in some way to keep down dust. We shall see.
Or, perhaps it's time to reconsider an aquaponics system.
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