The Garden
Freesteading group focused on the discussion of gardening.
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Do you sift your compost and soil?
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Do you sift your compost and soil?
Because the potting soil and compost is such a poor soil, we sift it al and then it is good to seed use.
No longer buying compost anymore, invested in a machine to make our own and also us the normal ways. Everything that is left after sifting goes in the compost, works great for us.
The manure from the chickens and rabbits pets goes in, perfect compost comes out every couple weeks till month and ready for use right away.
Now we are still sifting by hand but in time we will infest in a better easygoing way, also for the children so they can do big amounts by hand to. Trying to show and teach the old by hand and not just modern ways. So if needed it can be done by hand, so important is it not.
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19 Replies
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So informative. Thanks
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You are welcome, tell me your experience do you sift to and what do you all grow?
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always best to sift – sieve compost whether store-bought or home-made
with store bought in my experience i have found extra-special gifts that are not mentioned on the packaging or literature
special gifts can be of great value such as
plastic
stones
gnat and other insect eggs
glass
metal nails and screws and staples [albeit rusty]
metal hinges [albeit rusty]
bona-fide
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Because of those gifts we try to also get away from soil, to protect the children. As long as we still have to use bought soil, we only let them sift the homemade compost so we know it is safe.
Crazy that with all the automatic way the soil sellers work, still sell such bad quality soil with what you call gifts.
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alas it be greed over quality
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In deed it is, sad but true.
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thats where freesteading and homesteading will reduce if not get rid of in due course
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And so it is, exactly why we work so hard on all that.
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very true
when we get back to bartering and do away with fiat-currency i feel it will get rid of corporate greed
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We don’t sift ours we just mix it in the top 3” of our garden beds. The chunks hold water, give something for the good bacteria to live in for awhile longer, and will break down later all good for the plants,
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Luxury if you do not have to sift and get no gifts, our self made compost is ful composted so fine it needs no sifting. But sifting goes fast and we just trow the chunks back in the compost machine again, potting soil must be sifted anyway.
Preparing a bed in de tunnel, for the special France gourmet potatoes. Just normal sand dirt, but with compost, rabbits manure and potash time it will change in good soil.
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So what is the machine that you got. I use a lot of purchased compost due to the size of my property
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Md_hX9dV7Js
And the by hand turned one also, started with that one and got a full mounted barrel wagon a month.
Because we can not buy enough compost to difficult and expensive, we bought this compost machine used and it was brand new so lucky we went for that one. It was a rist because it was standing at that compartment for years and they did not now the condition. If that did not work there was a 10 year old machine.
After a couple years the machine pays itself back and gives good infested compost.
The first bed is half prepared for the potatoes, the soil is so hard like a sand pan rocky hard.
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j-CFwrLwhRo
This is exactly like we ar planning our project, just that it is not connected on just one school but all Kindergarten and school in our area. And also to show and teach them, but because of the stupid rules it is almost impossible to get kitchen scraps. But we are working on that, because it is s closed system and only opened and operated by us.
My dear friend she gives her gunny pigs fertilizer and pot ashes, and getting compost in return for growing her greens at home.
At a pet shop I can get rabbits fertilizer al we are able every week, and at the Bäckerei coffee grind every day. So a start is there. In return we will give the pet store fresh salad and other vegetables they can feed, the Bäckerei some nice flowers but that is a surprise.
This year we will seed as mutch as possible, also to give to the children for at home.
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I do sift. We are starting from scratch on our homestead so we don’t have enough compost to fill our 4 16ft long beds as well as the back to eden bed. My husban dug out our creek this fall so we do have an abundance of material I have been sifting. It is full of rocks but a really good base for beds. It is hard work but well worth the effort. I agree with doing tasks manually. Our son is a little over two and loves to help with these types of chores.
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Wow sounds like a lot of hard work, be careful that you and your son do not do to much though.
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I have an old over the fire cooking grate that I put across the gorilla cart, and soft compost with a shovel/hoe system. It works well enough. Wood shavings, quail poop, leaves, food scraps, and “liquid human element”. I have been so irrationally excited for the compost I am making. I have recently discovered biochar (I made a discussion about it somewhere on here) and I am adding that to my compost as well.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Squashmania.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by
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That is a lot a good stuff, I become coffe grinding from a Bäckerei they put it in a bucket aI exchange the bucket when full. Also rabbits manure from a petshop, every week as mutch as I can pick up. Also for compost and direct use, after preparing the beds work it in.
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We sift all our store bought soil, and mainly have found glass and plastic bonuses in it. We recently went to a local stone store and bought a yard a top soil ($55). After speaking with them we learned they also sold what they called garden soil ($70/yard). We later went back and purchased that to add to our super sandy soil here in Fl. No softing needed, and the cleanest soil I’ve ever seen. We do have a small compost pile at the city house, but it has become more of a cracker jack box for seed starts as we never know what were going to find growing in it lol.
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