Sawdust: Wonderful Mulch! (with some considerations...)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
- www.edibleacres...
We started using sawdust in the garden back in 2017 and have gone fully into it now. It is an incredible resource and serves some amazing functions, but we're learning some approaches that help it provide benefit in the ways it can and reduce some challenges it can cause if used improperly...
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Happy growing!
"They're asleep. They don't want to be on camera today." So much love, you two.🤗
We buy our wood chips at an Amish saw mill, $20-$25.00 for a 16' trailer as high as we can load it. ($50.00 if they load it) We bought the AM Leonard poly scoop fork you talked about a few years ago...it has been worth every penny. I'm still nervous about using sawdust, but I'm glad that you are showing us how it is working for you!
Amazing deal you've got there. The sawdust is a great resource for sure if you don't use it as an active mulch directly out of the gate. In pathways, downslope of gardens, to soak up nutrients around a compost pile, all amazing uses for it we've found.
Last year we used sawdust for our deep litter method in our coop. Worked really well. We put it on our strawberry beds after it composted a bit and by far it's out produced.
I'm so happy I saw this video! I didn't think I could get hold of anything free to mulch with here in Sweden, but after this video I searched Facebook market and found two people with lots of sawdust they want to get rid of. So this weekend I will collect as much sawdust I can take with me. So, so happy that I will be able to stop all the grass that's growing in my paths now and also be able to use it next autumn. Big thank you for all great inspiration and valuable info! Love your channel🧡🧡
So glad you found that connection!
YASS! Two years ago i moved into a new house. I started a garden immediately. Last winter i wanted to cover the soil . I was driving around my neighborhood looking for bags of leaves when i saw a neighbor with a mountain of woods and a sign that said "free Please take". I filled up my exploorer every weekend This year my soil is so dark and rich. I am excited for you.
I use 5 gallon buckets full of sawdust as pee buckets. They get emptied into a covered pile, and I pull from that pile and use the sawdust as mulch during the growing season and as an additive when tucking the beds in for the winter.
Great idea! We have a compost toilet but won't add it to the garden. We just push the piles over which is a waste of a good resource. But having a separate bucket to add the nitrogen to will allow us to use the sawdust in the garden, don't know why we didn't think of that before! Thank you.
Love your heart for all Creation. Your interaction with the worms made my day. Thank you Shawn and Sasha.
Yea, they don't wanna be on camera. Awwwwww.
Someone once asked if they could use some of the worms in my compost pile for fishing. it felt as though someone was asking if they could kill my dog. Are you kidding!
@@Automedon2 too right.
@@Automedon2 Yeah, I am pretty attached to my worms, too. I was told, that as a young child I would swing worms on my swing set.
That's a brilliant idea, mulching the walkways in the spring/offseason, then in the following offseason using that composted mulch as mulch in the adjacent beds while making a trench for the addition of fresh mulch. The walkways act doubly as a weed-free walkway and a placeholder for aging fresh mulch: stacking functions! Thank you for sharing the idea. We have access to free woodchips thanks to all the arborists in the area, so I will be trying this with woodchips.
It works wonders with woodchips, too!
I have zero access to any sawdust - I just watched this so I could listen to your voice talent again, you should do ASMR … very soothing :)
He whistles his "s" drives me crazy lol
I have found that adding sawdust to my compost (food scraps) has really helped to add some texture and keep it from becoming a soggy smelly mess. I also have used small amounts as a mulch and was impressed at how the soil retains moisture.
Over time, composted sawdust has proven to be the best addition I've found for adding a loosening and lightening to our otherwise very clay-ey soils.
I have noticed mycelium growing on grass clippings usually within 2 weeks. Combining grass clippings with the saw dust may get that whole process of fungi and microbes breaking down the saw dust to move a bit faster.
Grass clippings is considered a very strong nitrogen source , mixing that with sawdust do speed up the process !
Grass clippings is perfect. Like a shot and a beer.
What about urea mixing
In East Tennessee I use woodchips in my pathways. A 6 inch layer will almost disappear in one season but I have seen a dramatic change in the soil of my pathways. They have gone from hard clay to a much darker clay.
Really glad thats working for you!
Bro you have a great voice. This has become ASMR to me. You are so chill bro, love you, thanks for being so awesome
Just this last summer I discovered a local sawmill that I can take all the sawdust I want. Unsure of how it would work as a bed mulch I got enough to do my walkways in hopes of suppressing the bindweed, So far it seems to have slowed it down a bit. I am thrilled seeing this video where after a season you can use it on your bed's as a mulch layer. I do wonder how quickly it breaks down each year.
In our moist climate with warm, wet summers and cold freeze/thaw winters it really breaks down.
I do use sawdust! I get several loads each year and make it into soil. I usually put it in between rows like you do then use it to make my soil every other year as I expand my garden. When I dig it up after 2 years, its nice and black and fluffy. Great for my garden and most of my soil is decomposed sawdust. So nuce to see others doing this as well as I have been advocating people with ample sawdust to do this same thing. Nice video find for me, thank you.
Thank you EdibleAcres.
Wood chips and how to use them, multiple bin decomp, roaches, ants, lemon juice, ducks, leaves, biochar, flat logs on the ground, rotting veg … and… no chemicals. What a great channel you have. Thanks
I've found that mulching in the late fall/winter with woodchip/sawdust in the pathways works well for me.
I'm catching the winter rains and snowmelt in the pathways, and the sawdust gets a head start on decomposition. And, I don't have MUD to deal with in the winter on the dugout pathways.
Use what you have, right.
I am planning to use it on my paths next year. I lost my access to wood chips, but have free access to a lot of sawdust.
There you go... One stream of resource dries up, you can tap into another :)
I do a very similar thing as you with the shoveling the mulch onto the beds around plants. The other way I do it is get the bed reshaped in the spring and I rake the mulch path from the previous year on top of the bed and then put transplants into it OR if I want the soil to heat up a bit for warmth loving transplants I let the soil heat up and then do the shovel on method you showed.
Great minds think alike my friend. It's definitely not the best mulch but it's part of a mulch arsenal! I like the way your mind works Sean
I haul in sawdust for the under layer in my coop and chicken yard then it gets out to the garden after its decomposed. I never thought of using it for walkways!
I live near a sawmill and have free access to a “Mount Everest “ of sawdust lol
Cautious with treated wood being cut at the sawmill. I have a similar situation, but refrain from getting it from the sawmill, as I am sure they process pressure treated wood.
Dario Cortese yes good point. But no this particular saw mill harvest the trees from the local area and just simply mill it into rough cut lumber
@@DarioCortese89 Wood is sawn and planed before pressure treating. The sawdust from a mill that makes pressure treated lumber should be free from any chemicals. Talk to them about your concerns. You will probably feel safe about taking their sawdust.
@@zone4garlicfarm Hell yes. Why should they tread it before cutting?
@@DarioCortese89 Why would they pressure treat it before cutting it?
Thank you for this idea of sawdust pathways.
Really nice! Loved your video.
Thank you so much!
i use sawdust as a mulch cover for potted plants , aged woodchips on the bottom (one of your videos) , then potted in compost , water it first to let in settle , then cover with an inch of sawdust and water again , it forms a solid toplayer, so watering from above is problematic, but it works great with wicking water from the bottom
Really interesting, thank you folks! I requested a follow up on that from one of your previous videos on saw dust - many thanks for following up on it!
Our pleasure to share notes on whats working for us.
I use sawdust in my compost piles, but not on beds, as I am afraid it might cause nitrogen deprivation if not fully composted.
Also, I live next to a sawmill, but I refrain from getting my sawdust there, as I am sure they process pressure treated wood. Instead, I get it from the DT department of a school I used to teach at. They only use untreated wood there.
Another helpful video, thanks for sharing! I noticed the audio sounds great; the lavalier mic makes a big difference.
Glad you noticed. Trying to chip away at making upgrades as we go :)
We can get sawdust for $2/pickup load from local sawmill, and they load it. Sweet deal
That is an insanely good deal... I wish we had that :)
@@edibleacres keeps the chickens happy. :)
@Templar , I'm particularly fond of mixing it with horse dung and watching it miraculously turn into perfect soil. :)
I can get a full 10 yard truck load for $100. I had 5 truck loads delivered when I first bought my property. I mainly use it to cover my compost with. It makes the blackest fluffiest soil:)!
Love your idea on using it in the pathways!
@@yLeprechaun I tried that but it will only become ashes.
Very smart. Got's lots of free saw dust. thanks!
This is so neat! Thanks for sharing 🧡🤗
I have been using sawdust for years as bedding....also mixed in with leaves....i have a hay bale raised bed with sawdust....leaves.....a little rotted maure...as an experiment...it grew tomatoes...cukes....and radishes.....for fresh sawdust it did very well.....
Thats a nice surprise. Once it has a half year or year to age it's amazing in the garden we've found.
Nice video. Nice article about sawdust use "Sawdust is my slave" (google) from a fruitgrower in Canada in the 50ies. To me it seems that mice don't like sawdust in comparison to hay, an added plus for me.
I am new to saw dust, great video
Love u guys and your garden :)
Definately planning on trying this. I tried hay and grew a fine stand of rye grass...not great for a veg garden and straw in this area is sprayed with roundup just before harvest.
I love sawdust in our chicken coop. It’s absorbent and smells fresh. We shovel it out every other month and add it in with the horse manure and hay. It makes really nice compost.
Awesome Katalin!
Does it not harden up?
I can't speak for America or for any other country for that matter, here in Australia hardwood sawdust has a lot of sap in it, which in turn causes it to repel water. It takes forever to brake down and still causes the soil to repel water.
That is an interesting note.
Sean did you find the fountain of youth?? You look many years younger than you normally do.
Thanks for that. The camera must have been out of focus! :)
really helpful. theres a bis sawmill near by. thanx
Very informative! You seem like a nice fellar too. God bless bud
I've use sawdust for 40 years. 50% soil/compost/manure and 50% sawdust, add earth worms and I have *top soil* in less than 4 week. Sawdust is immediately consumed by earthworms if it is moist. That is why to avoid the problem you mentioned in using pure sawdust, is *completely* mitigated when mixed appropriately. Never apply 100% sawdust. Always add 50% of non-saw dust and it doesn't *at all* "take a season", it really only takes a month. The key is to understand that other than the organic component of mulch and wood chips are of a completely different "organic archetexuture" from saw dust and thus has to be used differently. I wouldn't waste sawdust as mulch, but more to give you *soil* the organic "body" and increase volume.
Thank you for sharing notes here. Definitely could get faster turnaround to soil than what I've described here... The value I find in what I put forward is that as a mulch in walkways for a season I get the benefit of a quick way to put it to use right away, really solid weed supression without tilling or poly, etc., and a very comfortable and very clear pathway for the garden. Then in the fall it's automatically ready for the beds. We definitely have more compost than we need generally, so the fast turnaround isn't as critical for us.
Do you cover it David? I have untreated pine sawdust in abundance. I put it on an empty garden bed over winter and then learnt about the nitrogen stealing, so very keen to try your method. Never have enough compost.
@@jowoods5108 No...it doesn't work well as mulch, though you could use it, as soon as it gets wet it gets "thing" and can't supress weeds. You can spread it around but mix it into the top half inch of soil. The idea here is to increase top soil, not suppress weeds, per se.
Well done... We use wood shavings and hay for our rabbits... We want to use it in the gardens but it's best to age the wood a bit cuz it's really fresh... This idea will work for us for the more wood shaving stuff... We find hay breaks down pretty fast... We do compost a bit as well... But wood shavings do add up lol... We have used them all around our fence line b4 when we had guinea pigs and the sapling apple trees love it they grew really well...
I would think the rabbits wpuld have it well inoculated
@@amyjones2490 they are very good at that lol... Like chickens but different
Is pine sawdust okay for this? This video was so helpful thank you so much 💚
Does it matter where you get your sawdust from? I had a carpenter offer me a bunch of sawdust for free but he says he uses treated wood and I didn't wanna put that in my gardens. Was I being overly cautious?
No you were not!!! Please don't put that shit in your garden
I am with you. I wouldn't use pressure treated.
I'm glad you asked, and I should have touched on this. DEFINITELY skip on sawdust that comes from treated wood, painted wood, plywood, etc. You want sawdust from ideally hardwood but at least from natural sources. Thanks for bringing this up...
@@yLeprechaun cool thanks!
@@kellymichellelee true.
Thats great, but i think that sawdust could work for another year and finish breaking down since you seem to be getting frosty winters.. I 've had plants die because of adding not properly rotten woody materials
That is quite possible... Our beds definitely need to have a better, finer texture and loosening so we are hoping to get the sawdust on the beds sooner...
Thanks!
So happy to share
Hi
Nice video
Happen to be i also live where the easiest to get is sawdust
Been using it for my walkway and planning to apply it on the beds as well.
What your thought on applying dry saw dust onto the beds? Will it deprived by bed from nitrogen?
Thanks
Never used sawdust but I'm gonna try wood chips this next year
It's comfortable under foot in the mill.
Brilliant 🤗
I will not mixt the semi-decomposed sawdusht with the garden soil because the nitrogen lockdown and the PH change but in surface it makes sense to me !
@Templar I think that it will depend on the biological activity of your soil and the wood used in sawdust . At this stage of composting it's perfectly safe to use as mulch , but fungus have not completely done their task of digesting lignin and neutralizing harmful chemicals that alter soil health and fertility.
The products ,that I know ,are recommended by farmers and scientists to be mixed in the soil with a curing phase of a minimum of 4 mounts are finished compost or composted manures with the side effect of burning down the % of organic matter overtime .
I think it's always safer to do not mix the soil with amendments or soils builders materials because it shortcuts the natural cycle of decomposition and can have detrimental effects .
I am not pretending that my point of view it's the silver bullet truth and my mind is open to experiences and sciences from others.
@@erector5953 I've commented elsewhere that I used sawdust to condition some pretty awful red clay soil in South Africa. The method that worked for me was to double dig it over the course of a Summer, mixing sawdust at about 5% into the topsoil. Then add chalk/agricultural lime at 50kg per 200sq metres to neutralise. By next Spring it was ready to grow in. I ended up working roughly a quarter hectare all of which was conditioned the same way..
@@davebox588 it makes perfectly sense in clay soils to use your method with sawdust to terraform ! The % of humification it's very high on sawdust , probably more than 50 %. So simple math the 5% of sawdust have being composted to around 2.5% of organic matter and the calcium have done is job of opening pores and stabilizing humic substances .
Do you experimented any nitrogen or other nutrients deficiency in the beginning ?
@@erector5953 Thanks for your reply. I was prepared for a shortage of nitrogen, but it was something like 6 months from sawdust application to actually planting anything in it. I kept a close eye out for any signs of deficiencies, especially yellowing, but peas and beans grew no problem (in fact better than expected), and brassicas fared well. Root crops (beet, carrots, but not potatoes) were slow to develop until the arrival of some mixed compost and rotted chicken manure donated by a kind neighbour. The following season the soil felt great in the hand and grew everything I asked of it. HTH
I used chainsaw shavings one year it really stopped weeds 👍🦇🐓🌻
Did you use wine cap spores to inoculate? Where did you get them?
P.S im really looking forward to a root cellar vid and a sourdough vid. You can't buy good bread anywhere.
Search for 'wine cap' in our videos and you can see a few past videos that show our whole process. We initially got spawn from Fieldforest.net
I mix in about 5% saw dust when I till and then coat the surface with a few inches if accessible
Probably helps open the soil just a bit.
I make loads of sawdust and I have tried to use it in the garden but I’ve had low success. It seems to inhibit growth if used as a mulch directly around plants. On that same note no weeds will grow up through it. My last experiment was to see if I could turn it into charcoal for making biochar and I think with some more effort that might be the ticket. And it solves the issue of breaking up the charcoal as it’s already powder
I'm curious to know what type of climate you live in? Particularly how much rain per year? It takes a really long time if ever, for anything woody to break down on it's own, here in south central Montana. I buried some sticks in a trench several years ago and they are hardly broken down at all. I even put manure on top of them to help the process but they are still there. The dirt here is alkaline and actually repels water. We get about 10 inches per year of rain but it will roll right off until it reaches a depression. The mistake I made was covering the trench with dirt. Now I leave my trenches open and fill them with whatever compostable material I can get. I do the same in the garden pathways but mostly what I have access to is manure rather than sawdust. It will eventually break down in an open trench but it takes a lot longer here than just one year. If you put fresh wood in your garden soil it will tie up nitrogen until it is broken down. Also I don't generally put ash (burned sawdust) in my garden as my soil is already very high in lime so I'm trying to lower the ph where ash would raise it I think, so where you live makes a big difference.
I like the biochar idea. I have mulched trees and shrubs with fresh sawdust without an issue. For vegetables, I age it in a pile for three years. By that time, it won’t lock nitrogen as fresh sawdust would.
I could get a lot of sawdust for free, I think. But it would all be spruce, as here it is all spruce in the woodlands around. I wouldn't have a prblem with some woodchips as mulch on top as they last some time before decomposing but what about this amount of sawdust you are using? And after some years it makes the most of the soil of your garden beds. Wouldn't that be a problem with acidity in the end? What kind of trees is your sawdust from?
I hope your not getting tired of me.... asking all these questions...I know they are old vids but like I said I barely discovered your channel... anyways yeah what did you mean by when you said if your a little dry site?
I ask because I hail from Phoenix AZ.....zone 9 b .... it's kinda frustrating to be honest with you because there's Soo many great permaculture Gardener's or naturalists like yourself but thier zones and climate is just so different, still immensely love to watch but ....alot of factors to take into consideration.....my inclination is that maybe all the sawdust breaking down would help the invasive weeds...I deal with bermuda grass....very icky.....as always...any advice is greatly appreciated....PS .....thanks for the tip about freecyle ☃️🌲❄️👍💯🌾🌼🌹🐔🐓🤠
You had me at rich, fungal dominant soil😆😆😆😆😆
Are there any types of sawdust that I should avoid?????
If so, what should I look for....how will I know if it's something that I should avoid....thx
No pressure treated or walnut
Do you have an opinion on the KNF method of farming ?
What part of KNF ?
I don't know if putting the hay layer underneath soil is a good idea. It could flatten out and close up in an acidic, anaerobic layer. Better on top. It shuts out daylight as well for weed surpression.
Check out huegelkultur :)
I did as Sean did with a heavy layer of mulch hay and adjacent to it bed without the hay. In one year that hay produced the most rich substrate to plant into without any weed pressure. As Sean says and many others say as well try it for yourself. I too was hesitant so trialed a bed and when given the material I would gladly use it again. I plan on trying this sawdust pathway as neighbor has a sawmill and it's free. Love learning from Sean & Sasha. 👍🌱
@@cpnotill9264 I'm doing it too, I have two huge piles of raw woodchips from a hackberry and a few pines my neighbors took down and while I dont have the catering pipeline I sic my chickens on it and save all their droppings from under their roost in an empty cat food bag and mix them in.. they'll cure over the course of winter.. I'm replacing a huge swath of chips I've had out for a few months with a new load.. mulching 4" deep over cardboard that i'm using to smother some truly awful weeds.. Canadian thistle.. underground stems.. total nightmare
@@kellymichellelee Awesome kelly lee! I love hearing what others are doing with using what's available as resources for mulch! 👍🌱
Do you test to see how the sawdust changes the ph levels ?
I do not... For better or worse I haven't tested anything ever, as far as any formal/science approaches would do it.
@@edibleacres okay, thank you !! 😊
@@edibleacres this might be off but it always seemed to me like you mainly use the plants, soil life and the water as your indicators (am i wrong? are there others?). i think in industrial agriculture people try to maximize some specific variable related to some trait, and predictability really matters for commodification, that lends itself to lab tests and intensive interventions, and more recently so called precision agriculture. but if you are maximizing for eMergy and living biomass on a small scale, and for diversity and resilience on a larger scale, sure it might be biased by your aesthetics or suffer from inattentive blindness, but we have good intuitions for alive vs. dead., that seems perfectly scientific to me
should have said perfectly grounded in science, that's what i actually meant
I saw a video on using sawdust on the existing lawn. Is that possible? I plan to add it to my lawn. I have some problem areas that are bare. Hope this helps the look of my lawn.
I can't say, I'm almost always working on ways to erase lawn! I would think in very small doses it would be helpful to a lawn. Spread out with a rake and integrated...
I used wood chips one time and the bottom layer next to the soil broke down into a rich, dark and moist mulch. Made the soil great, but in my area in Central Kansas, it became full of roaches! Grossed me out. Probably wood roaches. Other times, ants bred all over. Ants were really bad in hay bales. My favorite is grass clippings but I would think saw dust would break down well
Consider getting into chicken farming :)
Does are not Roach's !
So, the chicken is an insect pest control device.
@@markwiss yep but they destroy garden by scratching the soil ! The ultimate pests bioremediation in gardens is ducks. An Army of ducks cleans fields from any insects very quick! 🐌🐌🐌🐌🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐜🐞🐞🐜🐜🐞🐜
@@erector5953Thank you. Good to know.
One caveat being to not use sawdust from treated lumber to avoid soil contamination.
Im curious if sawdust or woodchips from black walnut would be another source to avoid because of jugalone?
Scott
What is jugalone? Thank you in advance.
A hormone sent out by walnuts that prohibit many other plants from flourishing. Juglone.
I mulch with black walnut husks and wood chips but only on plants known not to be susceptible to juglone such as beans, onions, beets, carrots and parsnips. I would not place it on tomatoes, potatoes or peppers, however, as these are known to be susceptible. The range of plants affected by juglone is smaller than you might think. It is not as broad spectrum as RoundUp.
in active compost juglone breaks down in about 2-4 weeks, while all parts of black walnut have juglone in it, its the roots, nuts, bark and leaves that have the most - so sawdust from lumber is less of an issue
I have a small patch of land covered in laterite (red sand). Can I just cover the patch/red sand with saw dust and expect any improvement on that patch with time? Please, I need to hear from you. Just subscribed.
I'm not sure that just sawdust would fix it overall, you may want to add urine and other nutrients to help support new life there.
Excellent video and very timely for me. I have a question, please? have a pony and I use shavings to keep him. I started separating his poop and the wet pee shavings because I want to reuse the shavings in the garden. The manure goes to a compost pile and the shavings I lay out thin layer for the rain to wash a few times before I planned to collect and reuse it in the garden both for paths AND for soil improvement. The question is how long will it take for the ammonia to be rinsed out/evaporate? I'm in winter time so my hoses are put away. In summer I'm planning to rinse with a hose. To me, the shavings smell freshly and earthy after about 3 weeks. Would it be safe to use them within that time?
As long as they're either mixed with things to reduce the concentration (Say mixed with autumn leaves) or they are left to 'season' over the winter, they'll make an excellent additive to your garden etc :)
Edit (for winter, don't be afraid to use them now if your plants are already going into hibernation)
Put it in the compost!!!!
@Templar , exactly.
I wouldn't spend the extra time washing out the fertility... I would personally strive to add more carbon into the mix if I felt the ammonia was too high, bulk it out, absorb more. I wouldn't be afraid of that resource.
@Templar ok thanks...but fresh ammonia cant be good, it needs to settle, no?
Wouldn't sawdust from firewood be contaminated from chainsaw bar oil? Otherwise, I am thinking sawdust should be better than wood chips as in theory it should decompose more quickly due to smaller pieces, better aeration ect than wood chips. I am just starting to research sawdust so these are my initial thoughts.
Good thoughts. I think bar oil could definitely be a consideration, although so far I have seen no indication of problems for fungi or soil life to begin working on the sawdust (that is by no means any science, but by looking I'm seeing life work with it ASAP)... Sawdust is generally WAY more carbon heavy than fresh wood chips, but more surface area could balance that...
Now try the sawdust left from litterbox pellets. They have lots of nitrogen from the kitty pee.
I read sawdust makes the soil very acidic... good for some but not all plants
Good reason to use it in the paths at first so it can age/mellow/break down before being added to garden beds.
Do you have any issues with nitrogen lock up by incorporating the saw dust?
Certainly can. If deposited around established plants and acting as a mulch it can work beautifully, but if I shave the walkway and then 'work it in' to the bed it can cause issues early on.
did you just dump all 30 some yards on the ground? or did you put plastic or some kind of barrier down first? do you cover the sawdust mountain or leave it exposed to the weather?
Never plastic down first. If the weeds are incredibly potent I would definitely consider a layer or two of brown cardboard or burlap sacks over them first (yellow dock, comfrey, other powerhouse tap root plants) and then deep deep sawdust. Plastic really seems to choke the soil, so we skip it.
And it stays exposed to weather.
thanks so much for your quick answers. I didn't mean on the paths. I meant on the pile of sawdust. I'm guessing you probably used it all pretty fast. if I got a pile like that it would sit around for a while. I'm gonna try it anyway.
Have you ever tried mixing sawdust with leaves? Maybe a 50/50 mix.
That could work I bet, as a bulking agent or carbon source/cover material for an active compost pile.
What are your thoughts on coffee grounds, used or fresh, in the garden?
Seem reasonable, just use a mulch.
Used seems to be pretty beneficial my worms love it
I've been adding sawdust to my pony muck to make it better for growing in but I only put a tiny amount like 5 to 1 should I put more do you think ?
Probably more sawdust could be a nice approach... If it isn't expensive, or is free then I'd go big on sawdust.
@@edibleacres thanks it's oak so it's good stuff
Where are you located?
We are central NY state, zone 5b
@@edibleacres Thank you. I am from Rochester NY but moved to Whidbey Island WA after college. I enjoyed your video. I have been making biochar and am not sure how to add it to my garden. I have done the Hugelculture raised bed method. Do you know how to activate and apply biochar to the beds?
Would it work as a replacement for peat moss in a potting soil mix?
I have used it to help condition clay soil, but only if it's very well rotted. Sawdust is great if you have the time to let it break down but if not it'll suck nitrogen from your soil like a vacuum cleaner (I speak with some experience here).
I agree with Dave Box here... Yes, it's excellent in potting mix, so long as it has had at least 1 year in contact with garden soil, ideally mixed in after a growing season (as shown here).
I use sawdust that I’ve had in a pile for three years. By the end of three years, weeds are growing well in the sawdust, which is an indicator that it is safe to use in a potting mix.
Can I use sawdust from the sawmill in compost as carbon source? I need to know since I have access to sawdust.
Please,can wood shavings from the sawmill serve the same purpose. The challenge for me is that there is no way to know whether the wood is treated or not. Thanks.
It works for carbon source in compost, yes.
If you suspect there is treated material in the sawdust you may want to skip it.
I work in a wood shop and usually take a bagful or two home each week for this EXACT reason....they all think im crazy
Well, maybe we're both crazy :) But I suspect we're on to something actually!
@@edibleacres I wouldn't have it any other way ❤
I love sawdust and shavings in my walking paths. I do something to kickstart the breakdown process and fungal takeover that makes people crinkle their noses at me LOL I have 55 gallon drums on blocks with a spigot and I save my urine until I can fill the drum halfway which takes me about a month lol Then I top it off with water and then when I lay my deep sawdust mulch in the pathways I deeply water the paths in with the 50/50 golden treasure LOL Don't worry I don't eat any refined foods and no pharmacueticals other than a little CBD butter and an occasional brew
Believe me you won't offend me with the use of pee in the garden! We haven't made videos about it, but I've been saving pee and using it for so many garden related things for probably 12 years now. It's a wonderful resource!
@@edibleacres Love it. I'm not surprised that you are a pee saver lol It's a tragedy that we don't utilize this versatile safe nute rich stuff more. I'm slowly trying to chip away at people near me subtly suggesting it whenever possible lol
@@edibleacres For over 20 years I worked in Africa, much of it on children's projects, ........when we were upgrading rural schools and putting in pit-latrines, I would set up a urinal system that funneled pee into a 55 gallon drum, ......I had a measured stick that floated vertically out of the small vent hole, ......this showed when the drum was filled to about 10%, when it was topped off with water. It was then drained bit by bit into the gardens, .........while the urinal switched over to another drum.
Where's the snow?
It was cold for a bit and then thawed out again. We've got a little break from the cold for a few more days then back to seasonal averages.
Do the chickens eat ants and roaches?
They do.
Adding chicken manure helps it to break down quicker.
I bet!
I have a lot of dirt with poor drainage which I would like to turn into soil but also use this year. Would it make sense to blend in sawdust? Thanks for a great video!
I wouldn't mix sawdust into soil directly... Use it as a mulch to protect and cool the soil and over time it will improve greatly. You can loosen where you plan to plant but otherwise let nature take its course.
Decomposing wood absorbs a lot of nitrogen. Keep that in consideration.
Sure does. In the pathway this is quite helpful in soaking up excess nutrient that may leach out of the rich garden beds after a heavy rain.
So if I put a few inches of sawdust in my chicken run it should absorb the nitrogen from the soil as well as the fresh chicken manure then I could move it to the garden or would it need to be composted after removing it from the run then to the garden.
@@jrob8764 I would say it depends on the level of decomposition, but Id say you've got the right idea. Try a few small experiments.
questionable advice. sawdust is from the least nutritious part of the tree, with N:C ratios from 200 to 500. adding it to soil will drop overall soil nitrogen.
I think if you get stuck on simply a ratio there could be problems. What you aren't accounting for is the fact that they are a texture, size and composition that is perfect for mycelial life to digest and create fertility from. It takes moisture and time, but it happens in wonderful ways.