The lazy garden

[skent]

I did the triangle thing three tears ago, worked good. Added more twine as needed.

Two years ago I went with the plants in a row. Plants were 4 feet apart with T posts between and on the ends. Had 8 plants and all did well, was able to get all around and between for picking. Did the same last year and now again this year. Seems I always have T posts around, might as well use them.

For my Lima beans (King Of The Garden Pole Beans), I use cattle panels, 54" high and 16' long. Three T posts per panel and use nylon ty wraps to secure them 8" off the ground. The plants grow and wind their way up and makes quite a harvest. Generally the plants are 4" apart so I get 48 plants growing on each panel.

Steve

 

[Gfsimon]

Steve, that's a great idea, but don't you have a problem with the plants chaffing against the twine? I also have a big pile of t-posts (I think they must multiply /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif), so I may have to give your idea a try also.

Jerry
<font color=orange>SE Minnesota</font color=orange>

 

[blair]

I also use the 16 ft cattle panels with 3 T-posts each for tomato growing, as well as peas. This work much better than tomato cages or stakes. The panels are approx. $12 at Tractor Supply.

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

I usually use soft yarn or twine (cotton) for tying the plants up. You want something that's going to rot on it's own if you happen to leave a little scrap of it lying around. If I'm using twine, say for beans or cukes, I'll use the heavy duty nylon stuff.

 

[fishman]

Jerry,

You can also use a pair of your wife's OLD nylons. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif You can get several dozen ties out of a single pair, and they stretch so no plant damage occurs. I'm sure I'm not the only one to try this trick. . .

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Has anybody tried one of those rotating drum composters? I was wondering why I couldn't do the same thing with an old blue barrel. Have to drill some holes in the end to let the water out and keep any pressure from building up. I was thinking I get a lot of wind, and if I let these things lay on the ground, they might just roll themselves, and all I'd have to do is move them from one side of the field to the other every now and then. Whatdaya think?

SHF

 

[toddler]

Unless you get a lot of wind, once there's a bit of compost in the drum, I can't see it moving much. But you could easily design some way to have the wind turn it if you mounted it. Why don't you draw it up, and patent it. Just mount the equivalent of an overgrown weather center airspeed indicator on the end of your bucket, and away you go. Give the companies selling the drum composters some competition from the "Lazy composter"
Todd

 

[RJohnson]

SHF,
I have one of the rotating barrel composters and they do make compost very fast, BUT. There is always a "but", there is a little bit of science involved in getting your nitrogen and carbon balanced. I live in the city and the city won't pick up grass clipping (nitrogen source) anymore, so I bought one to use in my garden. Grass clipping are my main source of organic material and without a carbon source they will turn into a wet stinking mess. I added saw dust (carbon source) to mine and it works quite well. The composter has screened air holes on the ends (keeps out insects) and drains in the bottom. You must turn it a number of times after you fill it to mix all of the materials together.
You must turn it every day (about 3 or 4 turns) or otherwise it takes too long to make, if it sets too long the anerobic bacteria take over instead of the aerobic bacteria. By turning it over everyday you introduce air into the decomposition process. When everything is working right the compost gets very hot and this helps kill weed seeds and speeds the process. When I let the grass get too long (like right now/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif) and the composter is quite full, it is all I can do to crank it by hand. Don't know how the wind could do it but anything is possible. If it was me I would just buy one but then again I am sort of lazy/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif.

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

You gotta turn it everyday? Hmmm. And with piles I'd only have to turn them once a month or so.

SHF

 

[JOR_EL]

Hi Randy, /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

If someone made a windmill powered(geared down for power) rotating composter, and it turned (let's say) CONSTANTLY, would this be too much? In other words, does the decomposition NEED some "static" time, to build up heat, or whatever?

Once a good balance of ingredients was settled on, and with a sprinkler/timer set to spray whatever amount of moisture was required(if any) into the ends(thru screened ventilation holes), it seems that such a setup would be as close to automatic as you could get, needing only loading/unloading.

Is this a new recipe for fruitcake, or an idea with potential? /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

Oh yeah!, ...do rotating composters have "tumbling baffles" of some sort inside, like the agitator in a washing machine? Are they essential to getting good mixing? (No!,No! ... AGITATOR, not alligator /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif )

Thanks for any thoughts (anybody?) ,

Larry

 

[JOR_EL]

Re. the auto-windmill composter idea:

If the mix DOES need some "rest-time" it would be a simple matter to stop the windmill (overnight/for a day/ couple days/whatever), ...then let it start again . not much work to this, ...and schedule probably not critical, in case you forgot, or were gone.

Does this make sense? /w3tcompact/icons/tongue.gif

Larry

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

A weight that heavy would probably take a pretty good wind to turn (15-20 mph? Maybe?) So, it wouldn't turn all the time, only when the wind blew hard enough, which may be once or twice a week or month. I guess we're definitely onto windmills, because I don't think there's enough wind to just throw the barrel on the ground and let it blow around as in my original idea. Besides, I'm up here in Michigan and most of us are still nervous about being seen with a bunch of blue barrels lying around. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

SHF

 

[JOR_EL]

Steven,

I'd think power required (windspeed) would all depend on the gearing. Light wind = big blades, low gear, slow rotation (which would probably be ok?).

Remember the old " Give me a long enough lever, and I will move the earth" physics-class lecture!!

Larry /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Agreed, but it might take REALLY big blades. We've got a couple of engineers here, maybe someone can come up with something? I remember seeing a rock tumbler once that ran off a windmill. It was supposed to tumble about a 1/2 pound in about a month's time (wind allowing). Seems something like that might work if it was built on a larger scale.

SHF

 

[RJohnson]

SHF,
How about an electric motor to turn the barrel. You could hook it up to a battery and have a solar battery charger hooked to it. Put a timer on it so that it only turns once a day and let the sun charge up the battery the rest of the time.
I would also suspect you could have a windmill battery charger too if the daylight hours were not long enough or too cloudy.

Randy

 

[EdDekker]

I looked at using a plastic barrel, cutting an access door and vent holes, and rolling the barrel across the yard to mix the pre-compost. I decided it was a lot of work and I was not in that much of a hurry.

I considered maintaining the optimal carbon-nitrogen ratio and rototilling the pile every week. This was still more work than I was willing to do.

I decided it was easier to make a pile and turn it once a month or so with the FEL. I till the entire pile into my garden in the fall.


Ed