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I wanted to edit my reply but editing doesn’t work on my wifes phone. It also gives me a headache using it.
I wanted to change that last sentence to….beneficial in compost if you have lots of other “green” stuff to balance out the “brown” shavings.
Do you know what wood the shavings are?
A friend of mine has a saw mill and saws mostly larch and some oak.
The oak saw dust is very acidic.
The larch sawdust is somewhat acidic and stays around a long time and doesn’t decompose quickly.We use it in our compost toilet.
It sort of rots down a bit but it does have a nice crumbly texture.
The first builders bag (1tonne bag) of compost toilet emptyings is at the top of our field “maturing”. It doesn’t smell and has grass growing in it (Sorry Charles… I should weed that).If the wood is pale soft wood shavings I would have thought they would be beneficial in compost.
Having a read through the data sheets fluroxypyr sounds terrible for equatic life. It is a neurotoxicant and possibly causes kidney problems.
Fluroxypyr-meptyl seems just as bad for your kidneys and also reproductive systems and development.
Its CAS (whatever that is) name is..
1-methylheptyl ((4-amino-3,5-dichloro-6-fluoro-2-pyridinyl)oxy) which, taking bits of words out gives aminopyr…. which is a bit worrying.
I wasn’t much good at chemistry.Hi Charles / all,
My friend got back to me today.
He uses a herbicide called Squire which has an active ingredient amidosulfuron. So far I haven’t found any particularly bad problems with that one on the internet.
The other is called Dock Start or Dock Star (it was a bad phone line).
It is Doxstar……
An emulsifiable concentrate containing 150 g ae/litre (14.68% w/w) fluroxypyr (present as
216 g/litre of fluroxypyr-meptyl) and 150 g ae/litre (14.68% w/w) triclopyr (present as
209 g/litre triclopyr butoyl).Whatever that means
That is one good thing.
I was getting a bit concerned as I am picking up 7 small bales of straw today.
These are left over from a straw bale house build and were made for straw bale building. They are baled very tightly and heavy for building. It did make me wonder that if a farmer knew these bales were destined for building homes and not feed or bedding, then the crop could be sprayed with something that wouldn’t be a problem if the bales are just used for building and not other uses.
I have just sent a local farmer an email with a few questions about aminopyralid herbicides and using his straw. He is a good guy and also wants me to rebuild the big gearbox in his wind turbine saving him a fortune so I think he will look into it well.I am not sure though. The haylage I have fed our cow on could have also been made for horses. I think the farmers may spray with the intention of making finest hay for horses, then the weather doesn’t turn out as they hoped so they make haylage or silage from it of varying quality.
Do they spray straw with it?
I shall plant up the 5 beds I have made up with the same plants to test the compost. Two of the five 3m x 7m beds have had several tonnes of old horse manure on them.
The other three have had cow manure and straw bedding from our own cow. Unfortunately I got the straw from various places and also fed the cow on haylage and hay from various places too.Thankfully this year we have made our own hay and hope to make some haylage too.
We made the hay from between the rows of our blueberries, orchard and nut areas. I am trying to mix agriculture and gardening in the same land area.Blimey. That is bad stuff. I didn’t know this herbicide existed and its lingering consequences.
I have just sent my mate a text message asking about the big pile of cow muck he brought me a week or so ago.
If there is any doubt I shall barrow it down and spread it around our christmas trees. I shall check its effect on christmas trees first.Ah ok.
I woodchip as much as I can. I have probably filled about 20 big builders bags (the ones that are about 1 cubic metre) over the last year, still not enough though.
If it is shredded with the leaves on and is left in a bag for sometime it gets very hot and decomposes to something nearing compost quite quickly.
More woody stems and chipping during the winter, so less leaves and sap makes a chip that lasts much longer in the bags.
Anything over about 1.5 inches diameter I consider to be choppable into firewood unless it is very wiggly shaped, so I don’t chip any bigger stuff.If I want to make fast rotting compost I drag some fallen dead, half rotten branches from the hedge and blast those through the chipper too. This seems to inoculate the bag of wood chip pretty well with spores and bacteria.
We are completely off grid.
We have an array with a peak power output of 3.5kw. This feeds our batteries we have in a little shed, then inverters change the DC electricity to 240v AC.We have been running on just 8 of our 16 panels for two winters, so 1.75kw (peak output). In the summer we have plenty of power. In winter we have to be very frugal with our electricity consumption. To keep the batteries at a good steady state of charge and everything ticking along ok we had a fridge, a freezer and computer used for an hour or so each day.
Much more than this would bring the battery voltage down too low and gives an indication of how poor their winter performance is.
As a country solar panels are a part of a renewable energy setup but they need to be used in conjunction with the grid for most people to keep them going at night and in the winter. Wind, hydro and other renewables need to also go into the mix.VAMS?
I use loads of cardboard in our composting. It is part of the brown bit of the mix of greens and browns.
I use cardboard, straw, old hay, woodchip etc in my compost. I guess you could just increase the amount of the other brown ingredients.