Posts Tagged ‘horse manure fertilizer’
Prototype Blend
Between the thundering copious downpours yesterday —which by this morning have dropped a 24-hour accumulated total of 5 inches of rain on us— I began production of our first prototype mix of custom horse-manure-fertilized growing soil. It was an extension of my working on the rock pile we received from a neighboring farm field last spring.
That dump-truck-load of field rocks included a significant amount of dirt that surrounded and buried a lot of the stone. Slowly, but surely, this summer I have been prying out rocks and moving them down near our Rowcliffe Labyrinth Garden. As I am getting closer to the bottom of that pile, it is becoming more dirt than rocks. I decided to shovel that rich field-dirt into bags for future distribution, and in so doing realized the opportunity to mix in some composted manure to create our first dose of Wintervale old souls super soil.
It’s kind of like harvesting our first crop! There is a different reward to mixing the composted manure with dirt, as opposed to just using it to fill low spots around our property.
This will be a long-term process, as I won’t really know how successful my concoction is until a season of growing passes and I can learn the results from growers who receive our initial distribution.
Not that I have any real doubts about the potential. I have seen how robust the volunteer growth was that sprouted out of this rock pile all summer, and I have ample evidence of the accelerated growth around all the places I have used composted manure for fill.
Together, I expect they will produce even greater results.
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Pine Love
I am deftly skilled at passing the same scenery day after day without really noticing details that are plainly visible. Last time I was mowing the grass around our home, the sorry condition of a few of our pine trees suddenly caught my full attention. I hate to think of how long I have been missing signs they were not making the best recovery from the harsh winter.
When spring finally arrived, I was greatly surprised to see almost every pine tree that turned brown during the winter ended up sprouting new growth, indicating signs of life. I had figured many of them were goners. As time passed, I failed to monitor their progress closely enough to spot the few who were having trouble keeping the new growth flourishing. I hope I haven’t missed a possibility of successfully nursing them back to health.
Yesterday, I took action to give the saddest looking trees some loving. Basically, they received a dose of horse manure fertilizer and a thorough soaking of water. We are hoping to be able to give all the evergreen trees around our house a regular watering through the fall this year to do everything we can toward reducing the stress they have endured for the last couple of years. It is hard on evergreens to enter winter without a good water reserve.
I did read that it is good to pause the watering in early fall, until deciduous trees drop their leaves, to allow trees to enter a transitional phase. After leaves have fallen, it is recommended to give all trees a deep watering until the ground freezes. Those evergreens will be losing moisture through their needles throughout the dryness of winter.
Meanwhile, despite total neglect, unwanted trees around our place, like box elder and common buckthorn, flourish and multiply. It’s just not fair.
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Relative Something 