Hello! I'm new to this forum (in Marietta) and new to gardening in general, so I'm gonna have a lot of dumb questions, and this may be one of them. After successfully growing cayenne peppers last year from seeds, I decided to try the Square Foot Garden based on Mel Barthelomew's book (it seems really easy). I've already built my 4ft by 4ft box, but I'm having trouble finding "5 different kinds" of compost needed for the soil. Home Depot and Pike's both only had cow manure and mushroom compost. What other kinds are there and where can I find them? I only need about 1 cubic foot of each.
Thanks!!
Where can I find "5 different kinds" of compost?
You can use:
Cow manure
mushroom compost
soil ammender: comes in various forms - I like the teeniest tinest stuff that looks like bitty pine bark nuggets. Mr. Natural is another brand.
Worm castings if you can find them, maybe at a nursery.
Well rotted straw - get a bale and keep it out in the rain and let it begin to break down for future use. It is scrumpious!
County compost if your county makes it and gives it for free
Home compost although you might not have started on that yet
Leaf Mold which I highly recommend you begin to make in the fall if you can, it's lucious
GGG
Hi Wildestflower,
I'm close to the same area as you and I'm a big fan of the SFG methods. You don't really need 5 different kinds of compost. Any decaying organic matter helps the plant. The version of SFG I read actually didn't say you needed 5 kinds but I can see why they would say this. Plants need a lot of different chemical nutrients and the more types of organic material breaking down, the more variety in nutrients you'll get.
Mushroom compost is awesome. Basically they feed all kinds of organic stuff to the mushrooms and you get what is left over so lots of variety. But it's expensive and I have used composted cow manure on lots of stuff with equally good results.
GGG had lots of good recommendations. I especially like the county/city compost. People dump all kinds of leaves there and if you ask them for the 'old' compost you get something resembling really rich soil. The city here charges $7 a pickup load and I spread it by hand so it takes like 2 hours but it is more than worth it.
The chicken houses around you probably have VERY high nitrogen composted chicken manure for sale cheap.
Horse farms are also great, there are a ton of them around here.
There are a lot of ingredients out there, the keys are to find things that are cheap, AND mix together to give you a good mix of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous, carbon and trace minerals.
AND keep the soil as light and well-drained as possible while still keeping good water retention.
Jeff
If your are going to the Spring Round-Up in Jonesboro you can order
Worm Casting here at this thread!
Donna
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/697802/
Hi Wildflower, I'm up near you in Woodstock, doing SFG this year as well. I used the Mushroom Compost, Black Kow, Organic Valley Compost and Cow Manure, threw in some chicken manure pellets from Gardener's Supply, and wet down the beds with Fish Emulsion before planting.
There is a horse farm up here that sells a load of composted manure delivered for 50.00 a load (I have no idea how much a "load" is) - I want to get some but until I find out how big a load is I won't know if I can use it all or not...lol. If we do get some, I'll drop you a d-mail and let you know. Maybe you can come get a rubbermaid storage tub full or something one Sunday from me.
I want to use it in my beds this year, plus add it to my compost pile that I've already been loading up with kitchen scraps, leaves, wood ash and other bits. My biggest problem is getting green stuff - everyone up here treats their lawns (if they have them!) with chemicals, and we don't have much grass to speak of being in such a woodsy area :(
Welcome to the area and to gardening - you'll love it!
~Sunny