A couple years back, a neighbor asked me about this, trying to get some grass to grow where they all had died, and she said she couldn't get anything to grow in it. I suggested she mix in a bunch of horse manure, which worked.

I dunno if that helps.

Hi Michele,

Fair warning on this one! I donÂt have a clue what IÂm talking about! Just gut feeling!

I agree with David! I think mixing it/composting it with other stuff would work great. Wish I had a bunch to dump on my compost pile! But I think using it all by itself would probably be too acidic for almost everythingÂespecially many of the alkaline-acclimated plants we all grow out here.

LOL! I bet the MGÂs are still trying to look up pine duff in their reference materials!

Happy duffing,
Skbybird

Thanks. My old tyme neighbor used it in place of peat moss for planting mix, I remember that from when I was a kid and they lived on their family homestead across the road. I have been mixing in a bushel or two of it into the soil of my larger planting holes for lilacs and roses and it seems to be fine. If would acidify the soil a little, that would be OK in my garden. My soil boils when dropped in vinegar, which is supposed to be a sign of ridiculous soil alkalinity. :-)

Cheers,
Michelle

Michelle, I think of pine needles as a fine soil additive - especially when composted. The problem with the duff is how much bark and wood it would have in it.

My Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening lists the nitrogen content of pine needles as .5%. That would make them roughly as nitrogen-rich as cow manure! I'm not sure if all pine needles are really that high in nitrogen but once you've got some bark mixed in, the nitrogen levels would drop significantly.

I did just a little searching and came up with a Carbon/Nitrogen ratio for pine needles as from 60 - 110 to 1. On the low end, that's not bad as a compost component.

Pine bark isn't on the table but Douglas fir bark at 491:1 isn't much different than wood chips. It's mulch without a good deal of nitrogen added.

Years ago in the greenhouses, we worked cedar shavings into the soil. Fertilization was primarily thru injection into the irrigation water but the cedar was there to hold moisture and keep the soil loose. It wouldn't, of course, break down quickly and that was considered a positive value. Your neighbor is using the same thinking in substituting pine duff for peat moss. A good idea but, I suppose, the inexperienced could get into trouble.

digitS'

Thanks for looking that up for me, Digits! I had tried to find information about it, but came up empty handed. Do you think the stuff under the trees where it's brown and crumbly has composted enough to use it as an amendment without composting it further?

I love the idea of using local, found recyclables rather than bags of stuff from Canada. :-) I compulsively snag spent coffee grinds from Starbucks, and bushels of chipped x-mas trees in Jan. when the city grinds them all up.

I have also wondered if I could blend up water cress and use it as a replacement for kelp emulsions. Or pond algae?
Any thoughts on that?

Any other suggested garden recyclable goodies from unexpected sources?

Cheers,
Michelle

Pine needles are often used as mulch. They tend to acidify the soil. Whether that would be a problem depends on what you're growing.

"Do you think the stuff under the trees where it's brown and crumbly has composted enough to use it as an amendment without composting it further?" If I'd have to guess, I'd say that the duff is darn-near 'petrified' plant material, like peat moss.

That same encyclopedia tells me that coffee grounds are 2% nitrogen! Using some of that in combination with the pine duff should be great! Catlady & Skybird are apparently correct about acidic nature but, as you say, alkalinity is significant in our part of the world. And, Montana extension claims that pine needle compost is NOT acidic. Suppose that it could be neutralized during the process.

What you are talking about has a real interest to me, Michelle. I know some folks that have 3 beautiful trout ponds fed by a little mountain stream. Beyond the ponds are the most peat-filled meadows imaginable and they are constantly raking algae out of the ponds. They have offered to allow me to carry this away. However, it would mean a 10 mile drive AWAY from my gardens with 10 miles back carrying a heavy load of wet, dripping algae. I have so far declined.

David is a big proponent of pond settlings (is that the right word? Muck?) in the garden. Seems like Thoreau was using Walden Pond for that purpose also but the information may just have settled in the wrong mental pathways.

I'm simply using cow manure from a nearby farm in my mixed component compost and organic fertilizer purchased wholesale because they are so convenient.

Your idea of using water cress and as a replacement for kelp emulsions sounds well worth a try. I wish there were some studies on using various easily obtained emulsions as fertilizers or insect repellents. There may be but I can't remember seeing anything other than anecdotal stories. Seems that I remember that it is Bpgreen who uses coffee as a spray.

Right now I have a windrow of plant wastes (vegetable trimmings, leaves from flower stems, etc.) in my backyard. It has been turned often the last couple of days and is drying in the hot sun. Removing the moisture from the material is my way of making Dad's compost bin a little more acceptable to his neighbors rather than just dumping buckets full of half-rotten onion greens and such on the other side of their fence.

Given enuf time, this material would turn into hay. I would be perfectly happy to store it under a tarp and use it directly in the garden next Spring without composting. It would fit well with my old approach of digging out each bed and filling with compostables. Can't do that right now since every square foot of the gardens is growing or planted (2nd & 3rd times) to something.

digitS'

Algae and other green, living things from a pond are all good stuff, and cat tails make excellent compost. That said, the pond and cat tails are at the lowest level in the place, and require being moved vertically - which if they are wet means they are really heavy. I have long wanted to start a compost mountain with the marsh weeds and cat tails, cut it off, pile it up, let it rot, and then move it into the garden. But I'd need some mechanical thing to cut all that stuff down and rake it up - I'm kinda stuck.

I've mentioned earlier how I wait until my pond is dry in Feb, then scrape off the top one inch of soil and wheelbarrow it up to the rest of the garden. Much deeper, the soil will turn white with salt, so that needs to be leached out by the pond water the next summer.

I will try growing some of my rooting roses in pine duff + sand. River sand is available anytime I am in NM.

Mike Rivers (chemist type) on the rose forum calculated how much peat it would take to drop my soil acidity by 1 point, and it was such a huge amount that it was completely impractical. Part of the reason I pick up the freshly chipped x-mas trees each year and use them as mulch is to get some acidifying action of fresh needles (and hey, free mulch).

The idea of composting the cattails and marshy stuff is a good one! I had not thought about that. Is pond muck mostly silt or organic stuff? Will both components improve clay? We have lotssss of pond muck... There is a big boggy draw on our property with 3 ponds. It would not be difficult to rake out batches of algae and watercress (if the deer flies wouldn't attack).

... and of course, the hayburners (horses) keep busy making manure for the garden. The local goat farmer has lots of composted goat manure. And there's a lot of straw left over from wheat harvesting. :-)

Cheers,
Michelle

You got a lot of stuff to work with, Michelle. Re pond muck, its about 1/2 organic matter, 1/2 clay / sand, and around here it can be really alkaline. But thats from 100 years of flood irrigation all around here, which has leached the stuff out over the years, concentrated in the draws.

You might scoop out a couple buckets and dump them somewhere they can dry - if its really alkaline, it will have white crystals all over it. Even then, mixing it up with a bunch of organic stuff, throwing it in the compost bin with all kinds of other things, or making up a bed with that and compost works fine - I do it all the time - the stuff is pretty rich, and a great resource.

I have had unfortunate experiences trying to use it straight as a potting soil - starts off ok, but stuff oxidizes and the pH seems to go up and up, and the plants die. Thats in pots. Out in the garden beds, I've never had a problem.

One thing I've kind of done before is use seed as fertilizer. We all understand the idea of a Winter cover crop. I've used Winter rye a number of times and been happy with that. But, once I tried Austrian Winter peas.

I had a good stand going into the first frosts but by Spring there was only 1% or so of the pea plants still alive. I've seen the info of "frost hardy down to zero" but that wasn't quite enuf. So, I'd done no more than use the seed as fertilizer. Having seeded heavily, it was probably fairly effective.

Looking around the web, I see that Austrian Winter peas are about 23% crude protein. Since protein is 16% nitrogen, they have a fertilizer value of nearly 4% nitrogen (if I did the math right). That's not bad for an organic fertilizer.

Austrian Winter pea seed cost about 30 cents per pound in bulk, which makes it an inexpensive organic fertilizer. And, if these commercial mixes get any more expensive - I think I'll start using it as such.

The literature says you can have problems with fungi by having too much grain or grain products in the soil. I've never heard that with regards to pea seed. Even if it was so, allowing the seed to sprout and then winter-kill may change the situation. Don't know, just thinking. Certainly, oats as a Winter cover is being utilized in this manner. Oats can't survive our Winters either.

digitS'