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Post by philagardener on Mar 4, 2014 6:57:47 GMT -5
Welcome, awildseedvt ! Postings elsewhere on this forum (in case you haven't seen them) say that Bonsall/SSE ended their affiliation so the info on www.gardeningplaces.com/scatterseed.htm is dated. The state and availability of his collection remain uncertain, although he is among an number of folks forming the Grassroots Seed Network, so we might hope to see things become available once again in the near future. |
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Post by MikeH on Mar 4, 2014 8:10:06 GMT -5
I work in the landscaping industry and as a result I am very familiar with miscanthus or "maiden grass" and would not suggest it for your application. It is perrenial and while it can does reseed its primary form of propigation is through rhizomes. It grows in clumps which are very dense at the base. So dense you would beat up any equipment trying to harvest it (imagine trying to drive across a field littered with boulders). Like oxbow suggested I would look into sudan grass. Not sure if its perrenial or not but I have seen it grow close to 20 feet tall in a season. Just out of curiosity, where are you located? |
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Post by awildseedvt on Mar 4, 2014 10:47:45 GMT -5
well philagardener I'm glad to see people here care about shipping seeds properly. so that looks like an interesting project, it also looks like they need a web designer, maybe I'll shoot them a message... |
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Post by flowerweaver on Mar 4, 2014 16:36:33 GMT -5
As for biomass, something that grows rampantly on my place is the Wax Leaf Chinese Privet (Ligustrum lucidum) hedge that a previous owner planted half a century ago to screen the backyard. It is a plant that is considered a noxious weed, but I've kept them for the privacy, because my honeybees get a good nectar flow off the flowers, and the song birds eat the berries. As a wood it also burns very slowly. I must constantly prune them every couple years to keep them from becoming trees. I compost everything, but I think if I got a chipper shredder I could make it into a useful garden mulch before composting it. Since there is some toxicity involved I wouldn't use it as animal bedding, though. Considering my native trees are lucky to put on one inch or less a year, it's pretty amazing these things can grow 2-4 feet a year in the same environment.
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Post by greenpond on Mar 4, 2014 16:44:05 GMT -5
I work in the landscaping industry and as a result I am very familiar with miscanthus or "maiden grass" and would not suggest it for your application. It is perrenial and while it can does reseed its primary form of propigation is through rhizomes. It grows in clumps which are very dense at the base. So dense you would beat up any equipment trying to harvest it (imagine trying to drive across a field littered with boulders). Like oxbow suggested I would look into sudan grass. Not sure if its perrenial or not but I have seen it grow close to 20 feet tall in a season. Just out of curiosity, where are you located? I am in west Michigan, near Grand Rapids. |
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Post by awildseedvt on Mar 5, 2014 14:52:54 GMT -5
interested in experimenting with growing 'alternative' crops, specifically for the uses of Garden Mulch & Animal Bedding, two expensive and very common product types in our region. This has been bothering me for a while. I was finally able today to figure out why... It seems to me that the return on investment may not be there for this type of project. Around here, garden mulch and animal bedding are typically made using raw ingredients that are diverted from the industrialized waste stream. They are essentially free starting materials and the costs to the end user are mostly to pay for the labor, processing, transportation, and equipment associated with waste disposal. In addition, many of these waste handlers get paid for accepting organic waste. It seems to me that there wouldn't be a good return on investment to make these kinds of products if additional costs were incurred by growing the starting materials. Paying for starting materials that other companies get for free doesn't seem like a good business strategy. I might pay higher prices for something like a seed starting mix if it was "certified to have never been contaminated with -cides, heavy metals, sewage, manure, or medicines". I think that the commercially available composts around here are unfit for adding to gardens. They seem to do more damage than good. If this was my project I'd go for some sort of woodland scenario: gathering the leaves and undergrowth for compost and coppicing for wood chips. Does it need to be mulched to over winter? It seems counterproductive to me, to be spending mulch in order to make mulch. Interesting, those are some pretty assumptive statements there Joe, sorry to mislead you. First of all, this isn't a business strategy nor will it be (unless we have unexpectedly high success rates) . Second of all, even with fertilizer/whatever costs for Input - you could still easily turn a profit because the bedding and mulch materials are so expensive Here -- we've already proven that with regular "orange giant" grain amaranth years back, growing it in a field that NO other crops succeeded in with absolute 0 input... This is a matter of self sufficiency for farms and landowners in my region. We are trying to find the most viable low to no input biomass crops that produce the appropriate types of stem/pith for beddings OR the appropriate leaves/stems for surface area (mulch). Your note about mulched to over winter being counterproductive, is Exactly my point... it wouldn't be ideal obviously. But that is the point of these trials, to see which crops require what - and then we can decide who's most viable for no-to-low-input vs their value/capability as a mulch or bedding. |
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