Chipper-Shredder
I bought this chipper-shredder from Troy-built. Shredders will turn branches, leaves, and twigs to mulch to cover top soil in your backyward and add to compost. My chipper will grind 3″ diameter branches and bleow. It’s gasoline powered. Gas engines last long and are durable, but with prices of energy going up and the possibility of living off-grid, I wish I had bought an electric chipper. They are not as powerful, the best brand doing 2.5″ diameter brancesh and below, but they can run off a diesel generator which is good for ethanol (bio) fuel. I am expecting economic collapse.
Another wise purchase would have been a tiller to turn hard soil. Instead, an old-fashioned mattox works fine, but you have to really put your back into it. Some soils are as hard as concrete, and in summer you may find a mattox to be an impossible task. However, hard clay earth can really benefit from mulch. Having healthy soil is key to farming and is just as critical as water. Without soft, healthy soil, you plants will get ‘pot bound’ and roots won’t fair well in concrete-like earth. I have found after I turning earth, a couple weeks worth of watering often turns the soil back to hard clay. Not good. The answer is to mix healthy amounts of chips and mulch into your fertilizer and soil. Chips and other fiber like straw will help you soil remain broken and allow it to breathe. So, having a good pile of ready chips is a good thing. Also, fruit trees need pruning to renew branches, so don’t let the vines go to waste– chip em.
All Healed…
My boy bunny got in real trouble today. I was switching him from one pen to another, he dashed between my legs, got out the gate, ran into the girl bunny pen, and he and the girl-brown bunny ran into a hole together. This was all in a flash. I was letting the girl bunnies borough because on hot summer days, they can retreat into a hole and stay cool.
Well, this hole was real deep, and I couldn’t pull the boy bunny out. All I could hear were weird bunny sounds. So I took a shovel and started breaking the tunnel apart. I found both brown-girl and boy bunny in at the end of the hole. They were separate but about five minutes had expired. I don’t know what happened, but bunnies can do a lot in a mere 10 secs! I may be a grandpa… The good news: my boy-bunny’s nose is all healed.
Trench Composting
Here’s an interesting approach to composting. I need walk-ways in my garden in order to water my plants. Rather than leave a strip of earth to do nothing but allow me thoroughfare, I thought I’d turn my walkway into a compost pile. This is how you do it.
Dig a trench in the strips where you plan to walk. Fill her up with table scraps (no meat!), yard clippings, basically any vegie matter that is nice and wet. Then cover it up with either dirt or wood chips. I recently bought a chipper-shredder for 3″ branches and less. I pruned one of the trees and made about fifty square yards of chip material. As I’ve filled up my trench with table scraps (some of it being the very vegies I’ve grown in the garden, roots and leaves), I pour the chips on top.
After a couple days the pile decomposes and the surface drops, allowing room to add another layer of scraps depending on how deep you dig the trench. My trenches are as wide as my foot and about ten inches or one foot deep. What I also like about trench composting is it loosens and aerates the soils. This permits you plant’s roots to grow deeper and more free. If you soil is hard and clay-like (as mine), your plants can become kind of ‘pot-bound’. Healthy soil is loose.
Keep adding layers of wet vegie waste, dirt/chips, repeat, until your compost trench pile is slightly higher than ground level. In about 6 months it will transform into rich earth/dirt and you can rotate your crop from an old row onto the trench/walkway. Be sure to mix old dirt in so the nitrogen is not too concentrated. If soil is too rich, it can burn the plant roots. Once that’s done, start a new trench/walkway on the old soil. God Bless!
Bunny Trails 