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COMPOST
Our sandy soil needs improvement. Adding organic matter helps
retain moisture and adds nutrients. Use the community compost
plus additional organic fertilizers such as blood meal, chicken
manure or bat guano. Deciding which is best depends on your budget
and what you want to grow. The manure and compost available at
OVF are excellent for growing all of your standard garden vegetables.
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: Never put fresh manure on young plants or
seedlings. The nitrogen rich manure commonly classified as ‘hot’ will
literally burn your new plant. Allow fresh manure to compost
before using.
Gardeners may take as much manure or compost as desired. Spread
a 1”–2” layer of manure over your plot. Next,
fill a wheelbarrow with black, rich compost and spread a couple
of inches on top. Dig in these amendments with a spade, rake
the bed out and water thoroughly. Wait at least two weeks for
weeds to sprout. Hoe or pull these weeds. Many sprouting seeds
naturally arise from compost, so you’ll need to repeat
this process each time you add compost to your plot. Turn over
the soil once again and rake smooth. Now, you’re ready
to plant!
The pile of material to be shredded and composted has been very
large lately. This is a good thing! It means that members are
bringing the material to the orchard for shredding and not putting
it into the dumpsters. Please dump your material away from the
path as far as possible so as not to block the path. Also remember
to separate your woody material and put it on the left side of
the orchard.
The new procedure of placing the screened compost wood chips
in the barrels provided is working very well. This makes it much
easier to regrind the wood chips in the shredder. Take all the
compost you want. The present method of building and cooking
the compost piles appears to be the best yet. Nine compost bins
are in a composting stage all the time. The compost crew is constructing
the bins with plastic compost material rather than the flimsy
chicken wire that was used in the past. THANK YOU to all the
members who help to make this very important function a success.
HAND TOOLS
Please be careful when you bring your weeds to the Orchard and
make sure you are not putting hand tools and other junk in the
wheelbarrow. When hand tools are mixed in with the weeds that
go into the shredder it damages the cutting hammers by bending
them.
JUNK
Do not put trash in with your weeds, such as string, wire, plastic,
stones, metal pipe and tools.
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