[Market-farming] Another Cotton Burr question
TxBeeFarmer
TxBeeFarmer at HotPop.com
Wed Feb 13 13:40:49 EST 2008
Thanks Steve. Those links look very promising. I'm going to look at them
right away.
TxBeeFarmer (Mark)
West Texas Zone 7b
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Diver" <steved at ipa.net>
To: "Market Farming" <market-farming at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 8:58 AM
Subject: [Market-farming] Another Cotton Burr question
> West Texas Mark -
>
> "Back to Earth" is the compost facility/brand in West Texas
> that composts cotton burrs. So you could learn a few things
> by listening to those guys.
>
> The bottomline is that farm-scale composting follows
> tried and true methods for "how" to build and manage
> compost piles and windrows for C:N, moisture, temperature,
> feedstocks, microbes, organic matter humification. In
> addition, there are a half dozen practical methods for
> turning large piles with tractor setups.
>
> In my way of thinking you would greaterly benefit from getting
> into composting to increase the organic matter content of your
> soils and to enhance the biological activity of your soils.
>
> But you don't need 4" of compost. Now way, Jose. You can
> eventually manage organic managed farms with a quarter-inch
> or an eighth-inch. If you could make enough for a 1-inch
> application to get started that would be awesome, but you
> don't need more than 2 inches of compost and certainly not
> 4 inches... which could plug up your soils digestion system.
>
> Much of the horse dooky you read about "inches of compost"
> comes from urban horticulture where neither scale of application
> or cost of purchasing does not matter.
>
> You can learn what you need in a nutshell among these three
> items on farm-scale composting:
>
> Farm-Scale Composting
> ATTRA-NSAIS
> http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/farmcompost.html
>
> Compost Production and Use
> John A. Biernbaum and Andy Fogiel
> Department of Horticulture, Michigan State University
> http://www.hrt.msu.edu/course/HRT491/Compost/CombinedCompost.pdf
>
> The Art and Science of Composting
> Leslie Cooperband, Univ of Wisconsin
> http://www.cias.wisc.edu/pdf/artofcompost.pdf
>
>
> To explore practical ways that farmers manage compost
> piles with tractor-based equipment, feed mixers, augers,
> manure forks, and gadgets, check out back issues of
> Farm Show on CD-ROM:
>
> Farm Show magazines
> http://www.farmshow.com
>
> The bottomline is that you can increase the capacity of
> your soil with biology management. This includes
> composts, compost teas, cover cropping, microbial
> inoculation, organic amendments, and related practices
> that exponentially increase the bio-effect of the rhizosphere.
>
> That's what Texas needs, not more Roundup-Ready GMO cotton
> and Roundup-Ready GMO corn that is propped up with synthetic
> leaching commercial fertlizers and sprayed with herbicides.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Steve Diver
> Austin, TX
>
>
>
>
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