The east side of my place borders on a 20 square miles tract of Louisiana Pacific Corp timber land. We used to have free run over there, including riding our horses, hunting/fishing privileges (several lakes) - even let our hogs graze over there when I was a kid, but now it's a high-dollar hunting lease that's patrolled 24/7. They watch us local folks like a hawk!! They even have a chopper.

Last year I made the mistake of telling one of their henchmen (thugs with a .357 Mag on one hip and a cell on the other to call their pals at Parks and Wildlife) that their *&^% pet deer were devastating my peas - DUMB,DUMB, DUMB! After that they had me under constant surveillance and I had no choice but watch their stupid, fat, tame, overfed farm deer eat my ALL my peas - and I literally mean ALL.

I spent evenings visiting shady, underground websites that sell night vision scopes, laser beam sights and muzzle silencers (couldn't find any shoulder-fired grenade launchers that take down choppers, though. LOL). But I ain't cut-out to be no Rambo and I don't wanna to spend what's left of my life in the slammer, so I forked over a few grand and built a good fence instead. :-) They have the law on their side.

Jack

Thanks for the responses about my fertilizer question. I have found a local amish guy that will sell to me for a reasonable price. However I was wondering what fishing, otters and deer and everything else in this thread have to do with fertilizer?

Nothing, Chester. We discussed fertilizer for awhile, and you weren't around, so the thread just naturally wandered to other things - like always happens when a bunch of folks sit around a campfire chewing the fat. After all, that's mostly what all internet forums are - bull sessions, with entertainment equally, if not more, important than information. You'll notice though that it rarely wanders away from gardening in general.

It's not possible to keep discussion threads narrowly focused on topic, regardless of the forum. (For that matter, it's pretty darn hard to keep a business meeting focused). But if the author monitors the thread daily and brings it back on topic with additional questions and comments, he/she can get more in-depth information on the topic. But when one abandons the thread, participants feel free to talk about other gardening matters.

Just human nature, Chester. If the campfire conversation is football when you leave briefly to relieve yourself, they'll be talking about cooking spaghetti sauce when you get back! Ain't that how it is?

God Bless,

Jack

Did we answer your question regarding supply sources for liquid fertilizer?

otter, deer, fish, rabbits, coon, all make good fertilizer
LOLLOLLOL
:0)
josh

LOL!

Pray for those poor people in Haiti, Bro Josh.

J

The difference between organic and sustainable is that a sustainable farm tries to make a full circle (grow grains for organic material and feed, put manure and straw back into the soil.) But, in practice it doesn't work as a closed loop. You have to at least use some gasoline for the equipment. Ideally you wouldn't take any produce off of the land and put back your own urine and manure...they do this in China. But that's also called sustainable living (as in, just enough to sustain your body). I'd prefer to live large.
I try to do sustainable agriculture on our farm...I grow organic and have for 12 years because that's what works best in our climate. Spraying just makes more bugs here and the only market here is for organic produce.
We use owls to keep the birds away. Plastic ones with swivel heads. Works great.

Ive been playing around for a few years now with using horses to do some of the work on my farm. They amazingly can do a lot, it helps that I have an Amish community nearby to help in getting horse drawn equipment, or convert some. But horses dont have front end loaders :0)
But those that know me enough by now know that I usaly have other motives for doing things that seem overtly organic or sustainable. What realy pushed me towards horses besides and old interest is when fuel reached near 5 bucks a gallon, and off road diesel was near 4 dollars, it got me to calculating how much fuel is burnt just tinkering around, and since Ive learnt that with an abundance of forage, horses saved me money in fuel and hours on my tractors.
But come harvest horses are great, mine dont need to have you driving, you pull em up by the pumpkin patch or sweet corn patch, they follow ya up the rows, just a cluck every now and then, they happily munch on leaves and weeds, (an occasional ear of corn LOL Taxes or wages) all we do is load the wagon, and they pull, when done they take ya back to the house.
josh

y follow ya up the rows, just a cluck every now and then, they happily munch on leaves and weeds, (an occasional ear of corn LOL Taxes or wages)

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and you say they don't have front-end loaders. LOL!

Eric

Not quite the front end loader I was thinking of, but, twoshay :0)
josh

Work Horses? Good Grief! You can't possibly be serious, Josh! That sure brings back some miserable childhood memories that I've tried to forget.

Where I live is just about as backward, illiterate and impoverished as you can find anywhere in this country but nobody has regressed to plowing with a horse - at least not yet! Horses are pets - expensive play things for rich people (and sects that oppose human progress) - and that's all they're good for. Mules, which I remember well, are loathsome creatures lol. I'm not old enough to remember using a team of draft horses to skid logs out of the woods - but I'll betcha dollars to donuts that a diesel skidder, which uses 100 gals in an 8 hr shift, is still a whole lot more cost effective than maintaing a team of draft horses (if you could even find any - I think they're extinct, except for Budweiser's beautiful Clydesdales).

Diesel would have to get a lot higher than $5 before I'd resort to fighting a plow behind a ^%$#@ mule! I'd rather starve! :-)

Jack

I agree with chester5731, most of the conversation in these recent threads don't have anything to do with original post. When ones wants to follow the thread you have to scroll through conversations on fishing, religion, politics, etc. to find a response that has to do with the OP. A bit of conversation is natural , but it should not take over the entire post. That whats the 'Kitchen Table'& 'Conversations' Forums are for. Almost 20 of the posts had nothing to do with the original post. While it's true that a lot of us develope 'friendships' on these forums, we should try to keep the post on topic, if the post evolves into something else, it should still be about growing and marketing.

Where do you folks get your water soluble fertilizer? Any place I have found the shipping is almost as much as the fertilizer.

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Not sure how much you are looking for, but most garden centers/feed stores carry all types of soluable fertilizer. We use a mix of fish & seaweed for foliar spray which is available everywhere. We are organic growers so do use chemicals

Farm co-ops, they can set you up, even with bulk organic fertilizer.
josh

I get mine through cisco, there's an amish place called e&r in Monroe indiana where you can get it here too. if you're wholesale any greenhouse supply place can get it for you. if you have local greenhouses, ask them what they'd charge you for a bag or two, or amish people who have greenhouses.
sandy

Fertrell has some of the best organic/natural fertilizers sold in the USA and they have dealers all over the eastern US. check their website to find a dealer near you who can order fertilizers by the pallet load and there should be no shipping and handling costs
boulderbelt

You don't say where you are in Michigan, but there are lots of hard goods and greenhouse supply firms and warehouses there. If you are a legitimate farm or growing enterprise with tax exempt status, you may find it cost effective to find one like that and make a trip to their warehouse to pick up a season's supplies all at once, or hopefully find your locality within one of those firm's delivery routes. Then order everything in one lump. It's a heck of a lot more cost effective than UPS or Fed Ex.

Thanks for the responses about my fertilizer question. I have found a local amish guy that will sell to me for a reasonable price. However I was wondering what fishing, otters and deer and everything else in this thread have to do with fertilizer?

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garden1908
and still off topic.

Who is the Moderator of GW. If GW had editing, could the original poster delete off topic material? GW could also use Spell check.

I use liquid fertilizer in the greenhouse only. One gallon last me the whole season. I just buy it local. Alaska Fish fertilizer must of the time.

Carry on

Eric

If GW wanted to, or any forum, they could rigidly enforce rules that prohibited off topic posts. They don't do that because their forum would be so incredibly boring that nobody would participate - and there goes their advertising revenues.

All the serious info-seeker has to do is glance briefly at each post - the first sentence tells him/her if it's of interest to him or not. How long does it take to scroll down through conversations? Most of the time, all the info is in the first few posts and the rest is just BS anyway. I have never seen a forum where every thread stays on topic all the time. It only gets off-topic when the author walks away from it. Authors don't "own" the thread - they just start the conversation. The author can bring the thread back on topic anyime he chooses simply by making a topic-related post.

The irrevevant conversation doesn't hurt a thing, but the moderator can stop it any time he wants - and kill his forum as a result.

Jack

Jack, Amen brother, and what crap they advertize.

Eric

I second that motion,

By the way Jack who said anything about plowing with horses :0)
How longgg would that take me, hmmmmm total of 48 acres, and the only horse drawn plow I own is that one bottom walk behind jobby with the broken handle in the middle of the wifes flower bed uhhhhhhhhhh LOL

No, I use them to haul firewood, pick up square bales of hay, harvest crops, they basicaly do a lot of wagon pulling. Also I do some mowing down the sides of the drive way (quarter mile) with a rotary mower, the pull a hay rake, and the manure spreader.
josh

yeah brother , and amen and bro this, but what does that have to do with market gardening? Yeah maybe they can 'kill it', but is that the point? Granted, I have only been on this forum for 1yr. as a poster, but I lurked for many years.When I decided I was going to get into market gardening then I decided to seek the advice of others here. I have found a wealth of info & advice here, many of which I feel 'friends' with. It just seems to me that you all should be e-mailing each other and leavin this all of the foru. It has nothing to do with OP. Period.

The point that chester & myself had to make was that the repeated post had nothing to do with the OP, but your own conversations. So, please out of respect for the OP and others who are looking for real responses, and not your life history(although , I admit, are interesting)please put it on the correct forum. I know I am not the only one who feels that your hijacking of these post are a bit out of line. Like I mentioned, there are other conversational forums, please use them. We come here looking for help and experience and guidence.

gardner1908 I just looked back through the postings to make sure I remembered correctly all the topics, if you are serious about market gardening you would find 90 percent of what has been posted to be valuable knowledge. The conversations on deer, crows, raccoons, are about pest that you will encounter if you are gardening for any length of time, and the experiences and the frustrations we share are things you can learn from. Granted we go off on a rabbitt trail or tyrade which is a way of blowing off steam about the frustrations we have with a society that values wildlife numbers more than the food supply we farmers try to supply. Im a full time farmer and have been for more than 10 years, and Ive tinkered in organics, but Im a sustainable farmer, and I am happy to answer any questions you have, just ask. The bit I posted about horses is me sharing a approach Ive been working on in an effort to be more sustainable, and reduce my carbon footprint. There is nuggets of pertinent information in the vast majority of the post. Most of your experienced farmers are country folk, and we dont share info the way a college proffesor does, to learn things from a country person you have to listen even through thier stories. Id be more than happy to answer any question you have, please ask, and if we get off topic, ask another question, I myself am just an old country boy and my attention span is short, and if folks quit asking or replying, well Jack, another good ole boy, and I will start BSing. But if you ask or reply, well be happy to answer. Wed like to be friends, we dont need to be adversaries.
josh

Draft horses are very usable as a 'fertilizer' factory. Some very valuable liquid fertilizer, by making manure tea. It's been used for years.

Also I have checked out using a neighbors horses to drag timber logs out of the woods. They don't have to have as straight run as some skidders need. Plus they are easier to move to the other end of log if need be, without damaging trees not ready to harvest.
I DON'T have horses, I don't feel that I have adequate pasturing or buildings for the animals.

As far as topics, maybe we need to be more specific when we title them.

I am a moderator at another forum, and we are not needed to keep the topic on topic. Our jobs are to keep profanity and improper references from causing trouble within the forum.

Well, lets keep it going and see if we can hit 100. I do use the horses the spread their own fertilizer and that of the beef cows. They also get used for a few other chores. I like not supporting the oil industry.
Anyone ever make manure tea? Just wondering what kind of setup it would take. I have read about this thinking I might like to try it but never have.

An easy way to make manure tea is to take a large barrel, 40 or 55 gallons, fill about 1/4 of finished compost, then fill the rest with water, leave sitting in sun for a couple days.
Another way is use a compost tumbler, fill with raw products to make compost. As the stuff breaks down there will be juices, put a bucket under to catch these fluids, mix equal parts with water.
josh

chester5731, good to hear from you.

My brother and I have made many batches of compost tea. We have a 25 gallon brewer. This 25 gallons becomes 200 to 250 gallons of soil drench or foliar spray.

Basic parts are. 30 gallon conical bottomed tank, oiless blower, aerator- bubbler. Misc plumbing parts.

I'll go over and tank pictures later.

Recipes are made up of combinations of compost and mollasses.

Brewing usually takes about 24Hrs.

Eric

Eric, it will be interesting to see pictures. What is the mollasses for? Do you put it on everything?

Chester ??

Think of the mollasses like adding sugar to yeast. The mollases feeds beneficial microorganisms.

See link below. Gives an overview of a small batch system and recipe.

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost tea

Chester

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Eric

Eric, that is quite the apparatus. I am going to be gone for a bit, but I will check it out closer asap. Thanks for posting the pictures.

Eric you sure you aint making moonshine with that set up LOL :0)

Ive read about making compost tea in that fashion. Eric if you wouldnt mind, could you give me the added benifits of making it this way verses the easy lasy way Ive done before, what makes this way better. If it is better, then from what I see It would be a snap to ramp it up to a few thousand gallons wouldnt it? Then one could apply it through a fertigation system, if filtered, does filtering harm the potency of the fertilizer? Do you start with finished compost ?
I look forward to your reply; cause I find this intriuging.
Josh

Josh, it's like making beer. Here is our beer brewing setup.

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Two propane burners are missing in the photo. They slide into the metal table.

Wait a minute! Josh, your leading me off topic. LOL

Systems can always be enlarged. Larger tanks, larger blowers. You would have to calculate water colunm- water pressure for proper blower. Someone like Dan-Stanley may have to chime in on this one.

This is a living culture. It needs to be used almost immediatley after brewing. I need to do a little more research. I believe the more you run it through pumps, filters, etc the less beneficial it becomes. This is my brother, the landscaper, operation. His head is full of this stuff Check out the slide show below. Maybe it will help

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost Tea Slide show

I wish GW had editing. Dan Staley is the proper member name.

Eric

manure tea is easier than you guys are showing. Just fill a burlap bag with it and hang it in a barrel. In the sun makes it 'brew' faster, but not really needed. I know 1 greehouse OWNER that his mother used this method, and he's close to 80 years old. You can do the math as far as his mother's age. I know she's been gone for over 30 years. I think his dad used it when this greenhouse owner was a child. Back in the days that NOTHING went to waste.

Marla did you look at his slide show, all theyre doing is taking or compost tea and kicking it up a notch. It looks promising.

Eric it looks as though you you built yours yourself, do yo have the basic plans, can you e-mail them to me, as your slide wants to sell the kits, but looks easy enough to build.
josh

True, you could just steap a burlap bag of manure in a barrel of water, but it's not the same outcome.

Here is a link that might be useful: What are the benefits of aerated compost teas vs classic teas

Josh, Here are the basic parts. My brother is off Island. I will ask him Thursday where he bought the parts

http://www.watertanks.com/category/246/ (30 gallon)

http://www.spencerturbine.com/files/downloads/417%20Vortex%20Regenerative%20Blowers.pdf (Spencer Blower)

http://www.coleparmer.com/catalog/product_view.asp?sku=7002530&pfx=R (bubbler)

I'll try to get part numbers for you and scratch out a design.

Eric

Thanks Eric, I realy appreciate it
josh

Eric, I also would appreciate any help you could privede in builing a "still". Do you use any other fertilizer? Also I was wondering, can you apply too much tea? My other thought was to apply it through the drip tape. I have an injector that holds three gallons that will mix at ratios from 100:1 to 1000:1. Even at 100:1 it seems you could almost continually feed the plants with it.

My thoughts exactly chester
josh

Here's a bunch more photos

The unit is made up of basic 1 1/2" schedule 40 pvc. and black ABS pipe. Easy to layout after you buy the blower, 30 gallon conical bottom tank, and bubbler. The frame is 2x2's and plywood. The brass Y with valves is a bleeder. It bleeds off some of the air from the blower. Basically a throttle. We attach a garden hose as a silencer. Muffler

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Eric

Thanks Eric
josh

We apply the compost tea through a simple 12 volt pump and a 100ft of 3/4 garden hose. I need to do some research on filters, fertilizer injectors, emmiters etc... I'm thinking the more you handle the live culture the more harm you are doing to it.

Eric

Maybe we could spray it with a boom sprayer
josh

Maybe we could spray it with a boom sprayer, the tank has a bubbler, maybe this would be more hospitable.
josh

Eric, do you just spray it out the end of the hose on the plants, or do you put on a sprinkler? How much do you have invested in the whole setup? I guess I need to get started making compost. How do you think rotted horse or cow manure would work?

Chester,

You asked earlier what other fertilizers I use. I use Hendrikus Schraven Organics and Azomite. Both are probably to expensive for large operations.

Spraying
We use a water wand in the green house and a ball valve in the nursery and orchard. Ball valve can be throttled. Mostly closed it sprays fine particulates to wide open soil drench.

Also have to mention. We use well water. City water has chlorine, fluorine etc.. not good for the micro-herd.

Investment,
I'd have to talk to my brother about that. He's back on Island now. I'll go pick his brain.

Eric

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost tea sprayer

Eric, thanks for all the useful info. I will be using well water also, so that should not be an issue. Does anyone have an idea for a pump in a 55 gallon drum?

Chester,

Need a little more information. Is this an aeration tank?, spray tank? If this is for a tea brewer, I recommend a food grade plastic drum.

Eric

Sorry, it is for a tea brewer. The barrels I get are from a dairy farm. They had iodine in them and they rinse out real well. I also use them for cattle and horse waterers.

Chester, Josh and others.

I have one more piece of information. Keep It Simple Inc. Is where the diffuser was purchased.

Here is what they say,
Diffusers; As of January 2009, I am using only, machine slotted PVC diffusers which I designed and get cut at a machine shop. Many of you will know that I wanted to stop using the glass bonded stone type diffusers because the muriatic acid used to clean them is not environmentally friendly. Via research over the winter I succeeded, by altering the depth of the slots and lengthening the large diffuser, in improving the PVC diffusers so as to match the dissolved oxygen maintenance of the glass bonded diffusers. The slots are 254 microns in width

We design our unit based on their kits.

Also good information
What is Compost Tea?
Benefits
FAQ's
Brewing Instructions
Applying Your Compost Tea
Articles
Testimonials
Lab Results
Photos

See link below

Eric

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost Tea Systems

Chester,

Take a look at this kit. It has some specs. for you.

Here is a link that might be useful: 50 gallon system

Ok now to the drawing board, better get the Tylenol, always get a headache when I think
hmmmmmmmmm think think think
LOL
josh

I like the looks of the Keep It Simple 50 gallon kit, but it sure is pricey. With a little head scratching I think I can come up with something cheaper.

Yes, Probably. It doesn't need to be steel and powder coated. You should be able to get the Specs for Tank, Pump and bubbler, from their site.

Eric