Having a great garden can be a lot of work.
Trust me, my main garden this year is a complete mess. After being gone at work for much of the spring and early summer, I did not even get it all planted. Many of the plants are volunteers and sprang up from seeds left behind by last year’s plants. The rest of the “volunteers” are weeds, which are not as welcome. It is hard to fight the weeds from another state, or any job site.
Honestly, except for harvesting some of the produce, I’ve kind of given up on that garden. I will not be planting it next year, as we are planning on building our house and moving down to our actual land. That is where my heart is now, not up at the guest house that we are staying in. I am working on planting down on the land, though.
BACK TO THE BLESSING
For those of us who enjoy growing our own produce, it helps to be aware of what local resources are available. Often, there are compost sites in nearby areas. We had some back up in Wisconsin and we have some in Arkansas too.
In Wisconsin, residents of the city we used to live in could drop off their yard waste for free. Whatever grass clippings, leaves, or branches city residents wanted to get rid of could be dropped off there, free of charge. The city would then make huge piles to compost the materials, and then allow residents to pick up the compost for free too! It was a huge blessing for us for many reasons.
For one, our garden became very rich and was the happy home to hundreds of earthworms. For another, it gave us the chance to meet some great people in the area. (It was where I first met @bluerthangreen and @olympus-mons.)
Now, down in Arkansas, we have a lot of work to get done preparing our homestead. In a nearby town, there is usually a good supply of mulch available for free. Unlike the compost site in Wisconsin, they have a skid-steer to load it for you, at least when the equipment is working and people are not on break. Even when I have to load it by hand, the price is still right.
USING THESE GREAT RESOURCES
As we phase out the existing Green Brier, Poison Ivy, and other “not so useful” plants on our land, we will be replacing them with a variety of edible plants. Additionally, we will be working on building up the soil, which is mostly clay and rock in a lot of areas. Mulch will work wonders as we work towards these goals. Here are a few of the ways that it will help.
*Work as a weed barrier to help prevent the regrowth of undesirable plants.
- Break down over time and turn into topsoil.
- Protect the soil that does exist by preventing wind erosion.
- Work as a moisture retainer to help the plants that we plant stay watered.
I borrowed the dump trailer that @bluerthangreen owns to pick up a load yesterday. On rare occasions during the summer, the site also has compost available, and such was the case yesterday! There is currently a “4 bucket-load limit” per visit, but still! Getting four free bucket-loads of compost for free. is a great bonus.
I had the man fill in the front of the trailer with the compost and he topped the back of it off with mulch. These two are huge resources for a gardener, and I am so blessed that just by taking a short drive I can get such an amazing amount of them!
SOMETIMES QUICK AND EASY CAN HELP
Trust me, I do know how to compost and I also have a wood chipper, so making my own compost and mulch are things that I do. However, picking up a trailer full of them is certainly a benefit of being a modern gardener. As with anything, having a trustworthy source is important, and I cannot personally vouch for these materials by claiming that they are 100% contaminant free or organic. Sometimes you can see things like plastic mixed in with the compost or mulch.
Still, I think that it is worth our while as modern gardeners to be aware of what incredible resources may be available to us in our local areas. No matter what scale we garden on or how much time and effort we invest in it, having resources like compost and mulch can make the job much easier, and it can help us get better results too.
Do any of you enjoy free, local resources like these? Have you met anyone interesting at your local compost site, like I did with @bluerthangreen and @olympus-mons? Do you use mulch on your gardens? Feel free to let me know in the comment section below, or perhaps even make a post of your own about it and let me know!
As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:
proof-of-free-compost-and-mulch
Until next time…
Don’t waste your time online, invest it with steemit.com
I didn't realize that there were places that offer free compost and mulch, but I've done some research on how to make it for smaller gardens using old coffee cans as "mini-composters." I haven't done any gardening this year but this inspired me to get to it. :)
Very cool. Look or ask around and see, you might be able to get some compost when you do get started. Also, I really like your name.
Thank you! :)
Hello @papa-pepper, how are you? Sir can I plz have your 10 mins tonight? I wanted to interview you for my next post. I'll just ask some question. those question will be beneficial for minnows and newbies aswell :)
This comment has received a 0.14 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @shehryar, @shehryar, @shehryar.
We were so lucky to catch the guys trimming limbs along our rural county road this spring! Ryan stopped and asked if they could dump their wood chips in our pasture and he agreed. When I got the knock on the door and told him where he could dump all the woodchips he could possibly have, I ran and grabbed 2 dozen farm fresh eggs and handed them to the driver. He must have really liked those eggs because he brought 5 more loads over the next week! Upvoted and resteemed!
Yeah, those guys love finding a place to dump the chips. Great job!
Man! You are already back up and hard at work!
Yeah, life can get like that... steemit doesn't sleep.
Gardening is one of my no. 1 hobbies. There is nothing more satisfying than to see the volunteers coming up. I also make my own compost. The clean, earthy smell makes the effort worthwhile to put back in the soil what we harvest from the soil to enjoy.
Thank you for your post. Always enjoy the content and the way you present it. I've still got so much to learn but will get there eventually.
This is a good read. I cant wait to own a piece of land. I would like to get into herbal remedies and teas. For now i will work with my little 5 gallon bucket garden lol
What are you planing on planting? We mostly focus on plants and vegetables for our own needs, but this season we planted some flowers for sale.
Check out my beautiful garden located by the river:
https://steemit.com/life/@drumsta/my-vary-own-garden-behind-a-lake-house-for-self-sustainability-vegan-lifestyle-and-food-freedom
In my area, it's great. We have one place for wood chips and another for leaf compost. All for free. I love it because our gardens are extensive and our compost bin isn't enough and buying compost is cost prohibitive. The free resource means that I can have as much as I want as long as I am willing to do the work. For free, I am always willing to do the work.
gardening is good but it requires more hard work
and modern techniques
i think everyone should adopt modern techniques
This is amazing. We have so plenty of that here but nobody cares. People here always wanted to be employed and neglect the important resources that give us food. That is why I'm gonna check from time to time @ronaldjayrama on this. I saw his farm in the province and I've been there. I like the guy especially on his love for farming and self reliance and sufficiency.
@papa-pepper Yeah, I totally agree with you. Modern gardening can result in lush farmlands in a few weeks
Have you had any experience with rooftop or container gardening? Since moving to my new house I haven't been able to find a spot where there's enough sun to successfully have a garden and I miss it! I have a flat topped garage that's adjacent to my patio and those are the areas that get the sun the majority of the day. I started thinking about doing some sort of a container or rooftop garden next summer and don't know much about that sort of gardening yet. Thanks for the info!
This is so wonderful, I am very impressed with your article
Thank you.
To plant a good crop it requires good knowledge also master @ papa-pepper.
Nice post man, you can't handle a lot of things alone :D
Add some prpper and it will be more fertile.
Great work, man. Am glad I found you through our little crypto chat.
Best
T.
Compost and mulch are the backbone of growing organic food. Over here in Brookhaven Suffolk Long Island NY we have access to monster amount of compost. Provided by our town of Brookhaven which gets it from it's residence 's mostly oak leave yards.
Cool, gotta love a great supply!
@papa-pepper
I really like the compost. It is the best garden material. And we can add whenever we can get compost material. This is the advantage of owing some land. Without land, all that is left is some pots to grow in.
It will be interesting to watch as you build up your soil with good compost. I hope that you will continue to post about your compost work for me and others to see and to learn.
Thank you
Francis
very impressive @papa-pepper
I follow and upvote you !!!
Damm You thought me a lot of new things in only this one article man😁 I am gling to try out and apply some of these tips when my mom tells me to help her on the garden
Great idea,I've never done any gardening or planting before.
But i would love to give it a go.
Nice post thank you for the share we wait the new .... Followed
Good lock
LET'S EAT CHINESE AT HOME | 在家吃中國菜..
https://steemit.com/food/@youss/1-let-s-eat-chinese-at-home-or
How big is that garden you are working with? Appreciate the initiative of using local and organic products. Wish I could push myself more often to spend some time around the house. I know the effort involved so I'm impressed by anyone maintaining a nice garden.
As usual, a pleasant and informative post :)
We don't have a compost site I know of here in my region of France, but we do drop off a lot of branches and such at the local dechetterie (Communal Dump ? Not sure of the English name).
I seem to remember the town offering free installation of a composter a year or so back. we asked for one but the application never seems to have arrived, so we still use the old one :)
My grandmother back in Denmark has a huge compost pile, and I helped her dig into it a few months ago because she'd accidentally buried her electric dog collar fence (Which really just makes a loud beep when the dog gets too close to the fence... the electric part stopped working maybe a month or so afterwards, but the dog still religiously stays in her garden, which is nice... before it'd run after anything or anyone moving out in the road nearby, or lose itself in the nearby fields).
Ah, got sidetracked... something to do with composting ?
Ah, yes, I helped my grandmother dig some up, and she was pleasantly surprised to see the bottom had already turned to earth, so we proceeded to spread it in her garden :)
Oh, and a question.
Have you ever managed to get a compost hot enough (and with the right composition of materials/bacteria, etc...) to be able to compost meat and bones ?
The bones take a while, but if cut in pieces a "perfectly" managed compost can actually break them down, though at a much slower rate (nobody's been fool enough to propose creating a composting GMO organism capable of rapid bone breakdown... way to easy to end up with a boneless pandemic XD)
Truly blessed
Very good post. Up voted.... I gave up on my garden years ago after the rabbits, Racoons and squirrels ate everything.... now I just have remnants of flowers that they dont like and those are doing well.
Cool garden papa-pepper...u can plant alot of vegetables and your favorate spicy pepper...update us soon at your beautiful garden..👍
@papa-pepper
Can you send me a photo of you wearing my shirt?
I just got yours yesterday and I wanted to add it to one of my posts.
Thanks so much!
Compost really bring s good results , of course. But I agree, gardening can be so tedious at times. So many things to do. Really got to focus on the positives. Harvesting of course but just the simplicity of being with nature and getting dirt in nails. Just a city slicker, you understand.
Keep the pictures and articles coming. There is something so pure and healthy in gardening.
In 2006 I asked my dad to talk to city and see if they could bring some of the leaves to my property that the dump just landfilled (within city limits, you are able to rakes your leaves on the street and they pick them up and take them to a park where they are loaded into dumpsters hauled away). I just wants a few loads. Instead, they brought all of the leaves. When I got home from work, approximately 2 acres of my land was covered in 4-8 foot compacted piles of leaves, all the way to the end of my road. I panicked since I was sure someone would complain or I would be fined.
To my delight, the neighbors didn't complain. By spring, the piles had reduced to around 1/3 their original size. Luckily, my neighbor and brother has a bulldozer. I spent the next three years turning the leaves over with the bulldozer. In the end I had around 2 acres of rich black dirt approximately 1 foot deep. It was incredible. I planted my garden right on top and my plants were the most supersized I've ever seen. Man did they produce.
Compost and mulch... They add such richness to any garden.
I up-voted.
Wow, interesting job. In gardening people usually use 2 types of fertilizer, organic and non organic. Compost fertilizer is included in organic fertilizer, in my opinion it is better, although the yield produced from plants we planted is not as much, when using non-organic fertilizer.
I am not a gardening person at all. Pretty embarrassing for me, my wife's 86 year old grandfather comes over and does the gardening every Friday. We did plant our own tomatoes and herbs, I was into it for about a 3 weeks then got over it. After reading this blog I may try my hand at gardening again.
Allow me to encourage you if I can!
One thing that I've learned is that when one generation passes on, a lot of the memories and stories do too. Perhaps it would be a good time to not only learn some gardening, but to ask some questions and learn some more about your wife's family history, if you would be able to garden with your wife's 86 year old grandfather.
yes i have worked in horticulture for over 20 years and run a business installing urban irrigation in Sydney Australia -- i like to see the way your heading -David
Such a great service provided in the free compost. I understand that there's a market for the worms as well. Don't know any details but I was amazed at the information.
I to just discovered that their is a mulch and compost FREE source in the next town over. I haven't been there yet, but am taking a trip there today. Happy Gardening, Garden Gnome
Excellent suggestions on resources! I know our city does yard waste pick up, but have never gone the extra step to see if they offer compost and/or mulch. Am going to have to check into it. Thanks!
Nice compost @papa-pepper, have tried cow dung?
Oh, I also love working with the earth, to plant, grow vegetables, and in return receive not only the gifts of nature in quality of the crop, but also vital energy, which gives us the earth when you work with it.
This is our first year doing a garden. We got our property at the end of March. We used rabbit manure, cardboard boxes (had alot of those thanks to the move) and then mulch from the recycle center. So far it's working out great!
I want to do gardening but i'm afraid I will not be successful
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Thast's amazing that people can get free compost. Here in the UK the won't even take your compost items. I amp
planning a homestead, long way to go yet, mainly saving the cash to buy the land. If I ever get and funds from here that were they will go, I want to buy a woods and rejuvenate that with some food produce as well. Goo luck with yours and keep us all posted (getting all the tips).
Nice post! Up-voted and followed! Check out our recent post on aquaponics, we all got to support the gardening community! https://steemit.com/life/@steemtobefree/one-hell-of-a-way-to-grow-the-best-food-our-trip-to-the-aquaponic-ouroboros-farms-in-half-moon-bay-california
good post. thanks for sharing
We work on our patch all of the time. Been making compost for a year now. Small batches from kitchen scraps. Don't have a truck to haul compost, but I never thought about using buckets and hailing it home. Started a worm farm too. Love your posts. Thanks as always. 🐓🐓
Good post
This comment has received a 0.14 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @hamzaoui.