The Dons' Organic Garden

cheers bro im gunna reaserch my ass off on thee best place lol i used there seawed on my sunflowers and tjay grew flowers like more than one its almost autem here so im gunna collect as mutch as i can but hping to find a lift tjen ill have more options im im gun a germ these beans soon i think it will be really interesting 2 see how it turns out compared 2 water only soil should be fun 2 eather way gunna learn alot

tbh there are a tone of trees here where i live so i should be sweet on the leaf mold does it have to be in a state of decay or just collect leaves from the ground ? im also not good at working out carbon nitrogen ratios i think its 3 to 1 on isent it

giglewigle said:

tbh there are a tone of trees here where i live so i should be sweet on the leaf mold does it have to be in a state of decay or just collect leaves from the ground ? im also not good at working out carbon nitrogen ratios i think its 3 to 1 on isent it

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for leaf mold? its like 60 to 1 range.

cool if the leaves are dead and brown its considered carbon

o guess it would be good 2 have alot tho on hand tho better too mutch than not enough

giglewigle said:

o guess it would be good 2 have alot tho on hand tho better too mutch than not enough

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believe me, you can never have too many dry leaves!!!

giglewigle said:

i think it will be really interesting 2 see how it turns out compared 2 water only soil should be fun 2 eather way gunna learn alot

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That's the right attitude, for sure.

Yeah of one can find plush, foot-thick regions where the leaf litter is decomposed, dark, and the trees grow especially great, and the ground is especially lush, supporting tonnes of life and roots, and its all cushiony, I would say that'd be ideal.

If you have active friends that know their back country that would be a huge plus / great start, otherwise i would just go explore, or check out google earth.

Leaves themselves will compress several times over, so @calliandra is right .. Hard to have too many!
a pile contains a tonne of air and space at first, so the finer, and richer you can get, the more finished leaf compost / beneficial humus you will have, the better

Leverage buddy.. it will essentially equate for multiple times its volume in original leaf matter.

If collecting whole leaves, though.. might want to inspect them a bit from one area to another, and shred them to speed up the process. Save a lot of time. Wishing I had now!

Got slammed with snow before We finished filling all the things, so now the plan will likely be to unleash some worms on the piles..

Or.. take a 100 gallon at a time and run em thru a few of the 25 gal worms farms for say 6 wks each. Make a bit finer, more refined VLC .. vermi-leaf compost.

I don't really like calling it leaf mould anyway haha,
its a white rot fungus that's the prerequisite to any leaf "mould" or "rotting" wood being useful to us, or 'composted'.. Maybe leaf fungi or leaf fungals would be more accurate haha
@ShLUbY will hopefully verify this (methodical?) madness for us..

DonTesla said:

That's the right attitude, for sure.

Yeah of one can find plush, foot-thick regions where the leaf litter is decomposed, dark, and the trees grow especially great, and the ground is especially lush, supporting tonnes of life and roots, and its all cushiony, I would say that'd be ideal.

If you have active friends that know their back country that would be a huge plus / great start, otherwise i would just go explore, or check out google earth.

Leaves themselves will compress several times over, so @calliandra is right .. Hard to have too many!
a pile contains a tonne of air and space at first, so the finer, and richer you can get, the more finished leaf compost / beneficial humus you will have, the better

Leverage buddy.. it will essentially equate for multiple times its volume in original leaf matter.

If collecting whole leaves, though.. might want to inspect them a bit from one area to another, and shred them to speed up the process. Save a lot of time. Wishing I had now!

Got slammed with snow before We finished filling all the things, so now the plan will likely be to unleash some worms on the piles..

Or.. take a 100 gallon at a time and run em thru a few of the 25 gal worms farms for say 6 wks each. Make a bit finer, more refined VLC .. vermi-leaf compost.

I don't really like calling it leaf mould anyway haha,
its a white rot fungus that's the prerequisite to any leaf "mould" or "rotting" wood being useful to us, or 'composted'.. Maybe leaf fungi or leaf fungals would be more accurate haha
@ShLUbY will hopefully verify this (methodical?) madness for us..

Click to expand...

yeah man basically... if you're not seeing fungal hyphae in the leaf litter itself, then it is not necessarily a fungal dominant pile, unlike what you would see with wood chips, and finding hyphae/mycelium throughout the pile.

I've noticed with my leaf pile that it's been more of a frass and VLC dominant pile, with very little fungal presence to the naked eye. and yes, preshred everything, speeds it up tremendously. The pile is full of pill bugs, native earthworms, and other insects and the compost at the bottom is just straight black, fine particulate of carbon and really a pleasure to see it broken down so cleanly.

so i would agree, calling it leaf mould would imply that it was broken down by fungus and not arthropods/annelids. Now if you were to go out to a forest, and find leaf litter on the floor that has mycelial growth all over it, it might be a good experiment to take some of that and inoculate your pile at home and see if the fungus takes hold and then breaks the pile down. I would think it would look very different to that of a vermi/insect decomposed pile.

sweet cheers for the onfo guys i was thinking theres aspot im gunna grow vegies at theres like a think bit of bush near mine alot of trees i rekon im gunna do piles of leaves there as well that way in a year or so if i van get the good soil there it may be a spot to grow in who noes im about half way now threw flower i tokk a nugh the other day just to see if the weed is as good as that when its read iol be stoked it took ,e an hour 2 make a coffie i kept forgetting i allready put the milk in so i kept getting it out if the fridge lol

Oh man, thats interesting, raking in the yard here, it can be more white than black in spots/zones/layers, its seemingly fungal dominant everywhere! Actually found more white mycelium at home than in the hikes to spongy regions. But I also did my first major leaf mould hike with about a half foot of snow on the ground. haha. it was a bit hardcore. may have something to do with it.

Speaking of leaf and wood compost..

Screening a half dozen buckets of our beautiful red Dugfir out..
will load more pics soon. This stuff is amazing, can't wait to go back to the mother pile / acreage / big field of fallen, rotting trees.

I've been thinking of growing blue oyster mushrooms in logs this spring. I've read they also do really well in beds and straw logs. I was thinking I could set up a cage like for compost but instead just layer shredded leaves, straw, and grain spawn. Maybe have a sprinkler with a timer aimed at it for hot days. I wonder if the material left over from the mushrooms would be a good substitute for peat moss.

with leaf molds what i couodent have in my back yard i was gunna make a big pile in tje bush near mine maybe what colours shouod i avoid in my back garden im seing alot of white when i pulled up my potatoes

bit essentielly i wanna get a huge pile somewhere somewhere and theres a tiny lake like u could wal around it in 5 minets theres alittke illend where all thise birds chill and whatever this might be a good place foe some bim

DonTesla said:

That's the right attitude, for sure.

Yeah of one can find plush, foot-thick regions where the leaf litter is decomposed, dark, and the trees grow especially great, and the ground is especially lush, supporting tonnes of life and roots, and its all cushiony, I would say that'd be ideal.

If you have active friends that know their back country that would be a huge plus / great start, otherwise i would just go explore, or check out google earth.

Leaves themselves will compress several times over, so @calliandra is right .. Hard to have too many!
a pile contains a tonne of air and space at first, so the finer, and richer you can get, the more finished leaf compost / beneficial humus you will have, the better

Leverage buddy.. it will essentially equate for multiple times its volume in original leaf matter.

If collecting whole leaves, though.. might want to inspect them a bit from one area to another, and shred them to speed up the process. Save a lot of time. Wishing I had now!

Got slammed with snow before We finished filling all the things, so now the plan will likely be to unleash some worms on the piles..

Or.. take a 100 gallon at a time and run em thru a few of the 25 gal worms farms for say 6 wks each. Make a bit finer, more refined VLC .. vermi-leaf compost.

I don't really like calling it leaf mould anyway haha,
its a white rot fungus that's the prerequisite to any leaf "mould" or "rotting" wood being useful to us, or 'composted'.. Maybe leaf fungi or leaf fungals would be more accurate haha
@ShLUbY will hopefully verify this (methodical?) madness for us..

Click to expand...

i think its mostly dry n shit and all clay im hopi g to do something to get tje soil really good do some compost piles tjere has 2 be a lot of leqves n stuff around tho ill just have 2 watch out for snakes and spiders

Baby pre 98 Bubba Meltdown (xChernobyl) busting through the glacial sand with ease!!

Looking like the bubba pheno (early guess)

daum is that frost allready

im dryng some testers atm

bit aerly but i really like the head high so fuck it its wrapped like a mother in paper towl in a glass jar outside

Pg George pheno, un iced, under cmh/hps, ran in coco (in this case)