What did you do in the garden today?

[MotherofOrpies]

In Germany it is forbidden to wash you car on your property ( some do it anyway) and here, most carwashes capture the runoff water, recycle and reuse it , so most of the water isn’t wasted

 

[MotherofOrpies]

I ordered from Etsy, they aren’t popular here

You get bombarded with free fartychokes ( that says it all) here

 

[MotherofOrpies]

I tried it once, just for grins and giggles. Yes, you can certainly start a seed in an eggshell, but I found that I had to up pot that seedling in only days. For the tomato and pepper plants that I start indoors, I find the 3-inch net pots about the right size for 8 weeks before transplanting. I want to avoid up potting whenever possible.

Another problem I had with eggshells is that you cannot bottom water them. I overwatered my starter plants and lots of them died on me. I had to go to a bottom watering system and then I had more success. Sure, overwatering was my fault, but we all need to find methods that we can do successfully. I learned I have a bad habit of overwatering plants and killing them. It's much better for me to bottom water my trays and let the plants/potting soil wick up the water they need.

Are you expecting some kind of benefit from the calcium in an eggshell to be transferred to the seedling? I don't think that will happen, due to the chemical breakdown of the eggshell which can take years for the calcium uptake process. But I would be interested to hear your results in your experiment. Good luck.

I need all the eggshells I can get to re feed them to my chickens, whenever I give away or sell my eggs, I don’t get the shells back, and I only give my chickens their own eggs, I don’t want any antibiotics or other stuff from commercial chickens fed to my chickens, and they hate oyster shells

 

[chickengr]

Since you have chickens, have you consider using them to make your compost? I used to make compost in pallet wood bins, but it always took me forever because I did not turn the bins. Now that I have chickens, I just toss all the compost stuff into the chicken run and the chickens will turn it into compost in a couple of months.

Well, they eat almost all the kitchen scraps I toss into the run and what does not get eaten by them turns into worm food. Then the chickens scratch and peck the compost litter looking for juicy worms or tasty bugs to eat. Saves me a lot of feed money in the summers. All that scratching and pecking breaks down the litter into compost faster than a compost bin.

Composting chickens are the best. But I like to hear how people make compost for their needs. The more I get into composting, the more I enjoy it. There is just something special about taking waste products and turning the stuff into Black Gold compost, in whatever method you chose.

my chicken run is 1/2 acre, lol. too big for composting. but I have been thinking about making a pallet compost bin in their run.

 

[SkyAJK]

Today I planted a mung bean sprout that popped up in my dish rack tray. I cooked mung beans last week and 1 bean got out and it sprouted.

I wonder how big a mung bean plant is and how much will it produce? I am looking forward to see it grows every day.

 

[SkyAJK]

I have a compost bin in the middle of my chicken run.The bin is covered all the time. My compost bin is dried so there are many insects turning my compost and BSF.

My chickens stand around and eat any insect that got out of the bin.

I used to put compost stuff in a bottomless plastic pot and I found that mice/rat dug into it and so that was the last time I did that. My big compost bin have a mesh at the bottom end.

We have so much rain that I stopped composting now, it stinks up the place due to the heat and humidity. I don't compost any food stuff and I don't compost chicken poops anymore.

 

[SkyAJK]

In Germany it is forbidden to wash you car on your property ( some do it anyway) and here, most carwashes capture the runoff water, recycle and reuse it , so most of the water isn’t wasted

We used to hose our drive way, footpath, water our garden, wash our cars in the drive way. Then for a few years we had no rain, and there were talk of recycling sewage water for drinking water...etc....

For many years, we changed our old habit to use water wisely. Take shorter shower, no bath, use water that was used to wash vegetable to water plants, use a bucket in the sink to wash my dishes.e.tc.. For many years I did not wash my car at all.

Then come the rain and for many years we got so much rain that our rain water dams were full. The water authority then had to release the dams water and this flooded the whole city 2011.

That is not all........

What next after that was the water supply company increased water price because they say that people are using less water now, and their infrastructure had been build so we must pay for it.

Now we have so much rain, it is raining dogs, cats,chickens..day in day out..I am ....

 

[gtaus]

I need all the eggshells I can get to re feed them to my chickens,

From what I understand, a commercial layer feed should contain all the calcium the chickens need for a healthy diet. I have a couple small PVC feeders in the coop that have extra calcium and grit if the chickens want more. They don't eat much of that.

I also save our eggshells, let them dry out a bit, then crush them in bread bags into small pieces. I mix those eggshell pieces into my chicken scratch and toss it in the chicken run.

I really don't know how many eggshells get eaten by the chickens out in the run, but whatever they don't eat ends up being composted in the chicken run litter. Of course, whatever eggshells the chickens eat breaks down the calcium much faster in their digestive process and makes it more usable for composting in the chicken poo. My thought is that the small pieces that do not get eaten out in the run will break down a bit faster in the compost because of their small size and relatively larger surface area exposed.

It's a shame that so many people just toss all those eggshells into the garbage can. For those of us who have chickens and/or make compost, we consider those eggshells a valuable resource.

I think if more people had chickens, we would have a better world with less garbage filling up our landfills. Well, at least most food waste and other organics can be recycled through our chickens.

I bet there is something good to eat in that trash can!

 

[gtaus]

my chicken run is 1/2 acre, lol. too big for composting. but I have been thinking about making a pallet compost bin in their run.

My chicken run is 13X30 feet. I dump all my grass clippings, leaves, kitchen scraps, etc... on one end and the chickens will eventually scratch and peck all that stuff to the other end. By the time it reaches the other end, it's Black Gold compost with almost everything ready for my gardens.

I started out with a compost bin in the chicken run, but over time I just decided to convert the entire run into a chicken run composting system. After the chickens ate all the grass in the run, and dug up everything to bare dirt, I thought it just made more sense to make it into a composting system. Keeps the chickens up and out of the mud when it rains.

I don't think you would need to make 1/2 an acre into a composting system. But you could probably create a large pile of organics and stuff for the chickens and just let them work it.

 

[chickengr]

Today I planted a mung bean sprout that popped up in my dish rack tray. I cooked mung beans last week and 1 bean got out and it sprouted.

I wonder how big a mung bean plant is and how much will it produce? I am looking forward to see it grows every day.

if can grow up to 2 ft and produces well.