One of these alternatives is elemental sulphur — a byproduct of the oil and gas industry that is plentiful and cheap in Western Canada.

But should you use it?

Over the past seven years, a fertilizer product combining elemental sulphur with compost has shone a spotlight on this nutrient.

Produced by Calgary-based Bio-Cycle Solutions, Bio-Sul has proven quite popular, with about four million acres’ worth sold to date.

Elemental sulphur can be a safe and effective source of sulphur for crops, said Doon Pauly, an agronomy research scientist with Alberta Agriculture, the province with the most experience with its use.

But using it requires a rethink of fertilizer management practices due to the extended time it takes to become useful. That’s why elemental sulphur fertilizers are generally applied, usually by spreading, in the fall.

“Elemental sulphur needs to fit into a longer-term management process,” said Pauly. “You can’t put it on for immediate crop needs; you apply it for a long-term sulphur level in the soil.”

Bio-Sul does require long-term thinking, it’s different from other elemental sulphur fertilizers on the market, said Neil Wiens, who developed the product.

According to Wiens, it tackles some of the biggest challenges of elemental sulphur, including high salt content and particle size. The compost itself accelerates translation to sulphate, kills diseases and reduces dusting and fire risks.

“It emerges very rapidly in the soil once it hits the soil in the right conditions,” said Wiens.

(Particle) size matters

When most people talk about conventional sulphate fertilizer, they’re usually referring to ammonium sulphate. For all of its arguable inefficiencies, the advantage of ammonium sulphate is that it’s already in the form required to facilitate crop growth. By contrast, it takes time for micro-organisms in the soil to oxidize elemental sulphur (the process which turns it into sulphate).

The efficiency of the oxidization process depends largely on the particle size of the elemental sulphur.

That means not all elemental sulphur products are created equal, said Pauly.

“For that oxidization to happen the sulphur has to be in contact with the soil organisms and as close as possible to their size,” he said. “We are talking about organisms that are a thousandth of a millimetre in size. So if you put on golf ball-sized chunks of sulphur the chances of that being oxidized are pretty close to zero.”

So how small do these sulphate particles have to be?

About 30 years ago renowned soil scientist Henry Janzen suggested they should be under 100 microns in size.

“That’s still huge compared to the organisms but you’re talking about something that is a fraction of a millimetre in size.”

Safety issues

There are dangers in elemental sulphur in its raw form. It’s dusty, which creates an environmental and safety risk due to the explosive nature of sulphur.

This is why most commercial elemental sulphur fertilizers are mixed with bentonite, which reduces dust and allows elemental sulphur to take on water, expand and disintegrate. Spreading and other physical agitation brings the particles closer to the size required for oxidization.

The difficulty with bentonite-amended elemental sulphur is that it’s hard to determine when the sulphate will be available to the crop. Again, this calls for long-term management, said Pauly. “You can’t predict it. You need to apply it for a long-term sulphur level in the soil.”

That term shouldn’t be any more than three years due to the high salt content of sulphur, said Pauly.

“I don’t like seeing it applied at any rate higher than a crop will remove over three years. If the crop is removing 20 pounds a year then I don’t like seeing any more than 60 pounds of sulphur applied,” he said.

“Sulphur is very mobile. Depending on rainfall, slope and other factors in the field, it can move from its place of application and end up in a lower spot on the landscape or move with groundwater off the field.

The compost factor

Bio-Sul is comprised of 70 per cent elemental sulphur and 30 per cent compost — mostly from food waste. Wiens said Bio-Sul has been created as a safer, more cost-efficient alternative to commercial sulphur fertilizer.

It also comes with the added social benefit of repurposing food waste. Bio-Cycle Solutions collects up to 32 tonnes of waste per day from grocery stores, restaurants and malls. This is composted and amended with elemental sulphur to create a nutrient-rich compost base. Its low salt index helps reduce the salinity risks associated with other elemental sulphur products.

The big advantage of Bio-Sul over ammonium sulphate fertilizer is price, said Wiens.

“When you factor out the cost of nitrogen out of ammonium sulphate, you’re looking at – depending on the time of year — an average of around 40 cents per pound of sulphur. We tested at about 20 cents per pound of sulphur.

“It’s a product that helps you logistically. Being able to take ammonium sulphate out of your tank increases your efficiency in the field by about 25 to 30 per cent because you don’t have to stop every 60 acres to refill.”

Bio-Sul is composed of a range of elemental sulphur particle sizes from 10 to 2,000 microns. The company claims this variety of sizes provides an extended breakdown period starting with the smallest particles, which are available to the crop within the first 12 months.

Microbes required to convert sulphur to sulphate are already present in the compost, kick-starting the oxidization process. Compost also eliminates the need for bentonite because it reduces dust and the risk of fire, said Wiens.

The product requires an initial application of about 200 pounds per acre with availability averaging between four and five years.

Although some producers have expressed concern over putting waste product into their soil, composting and the basic nature of elemental sulphur help eliminate crop diseases such as clubroot as well as salmonella and E. coli, said Wiens.

“Disease is tested for all the time. Basically, the composting process kills all those uglies. Even if they were to get through — which they don’t — the wonderful thing with elemental sulphur is that nothing lives in it. Any bugs that would be a problem would get absolutely nuked.”

UPDATE: The article previously incorrectly stated that Bio-Sul was comprised of 30 per cent sulphur and 70 per cent compost.

This article originally appeared on the Alberta Farmer Express.

The post It’s cheap and plentiful but is elemental sulphur a fertilizer option? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

PhD student Desmond Essien is investigating the potential of using biofilters as an odour mitigation technology for use in swine barns in Manitoba.

Essien spoke about his research at the New and Emerging Research sessions at last month’s Prairie Livestock Expo.

A biofilter, Essien explained, is essentially a layer of organic material (typically mixture of 30 per cent compost and 30 per cent wood chips) that supports a microbial population. Odourous air is forced through this material and is converted by the microbes to carbon dioxide and water.

Research first began in North America in 1999 when Dick Nicoli, a professor at University of Minnesota started to explore the concept.

Nicoli began by building a 750-sow facility and placed a biofilter on it. He then invited guests to a series of lunches at the facility. When not a single complaint about smell was received, Nicoli realized he was on to something and the research on biofilters gained traction.

Essien did a literature review of the science since that time and found the research is encouraging.

Studies reported:

• A reduction of ammonia of 45-75 per cent;
• A reduction of hydrogen sulphide of 80-95 per cent;
• A reduction of odour of 70-95 per cent;
• A reduction of particulate matter of 80 per cent; and
• A reduction of volatile organic compounds (VOC) of 76-93 per cent.

The wide range in the results was largely because the effectiveness is seasonally dependent.

Moisture content is the most critical part for the efficient operation of a biofilter. Generally a sprinkler system on automated timers is used to maintain optimum moisture content (50-60 per cent humidity). But Essien points out that achieving the optimum levels is a fairly tricky process because it’s difficult for farmers to determine what that moisture level exists at in the biofilter.

The most accurate measurement is known as a gravimetric method which involves taking a sample of the medium and putting it in your oven to determine the moisture content. The problem with this method is that it’s impossible to get real-time results.

To get real-time results, other methods have been used: a “load-cell” method (measures the change in weight of the material); a time domaine reflectometry (TDR) method (passes energy through the system and produces a waveform reading that is analyzed to determine moisture); and soil and hay moisture probe method. But none of these methods are as accurate as the gravimetric method.

Essien says he is working on combining these methods.

“I want to use the gravimetric method and calibrate them to the load-cell method, the TDR and the soil and hay moisture probes,” he said.

The optimal operating temperature of a biofilter is between 30-35 C. In winter it is a huge challenge to reach these temperatures. However, Essien said that research from Minnesota was showing that the air exhaust from the barns has shown to be warm enough to keep the biofilter operational in winter.

The final factor affecting the efficiency of a biofilter is the empty bed contact time (EBCT). This refers to the amount of time the air has to be in contact with the biofilter. Early tests were using 20 seconds or more contact time, but it’s been determined that a 70 per cent reduction in odour can be achieved with an EBCT of just three seconds.

Construction costs including materials and labour, typically run between $80 and $270 per 1,000 cfm. Operating and maintenance costs are estimated at between $5-$15 per 1000 cfm annually.

During the opening remarks of the Emerging Research session Andrew Dickson, Manitoba Pork’s general manager, noted that there is a desperate need for more hog barns to make sure that production facilities run at full capacity.

With this projected growth, and odour being one of the big complaints of people living nearby hog barns, Essien is convinced odour mitigation will be an important consideration for the industry’s future.

The post Biofilters a natural way to control hog barn odour appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

That’s the finding of a 12-year study by researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research Centre, led by soil scientist Frank Larney.

In the study, published in Agronomy Journal, Larney and company wrote that the crops fix nitrogen through a symbiotic relationship with soil microbes — in this case bacteria — that live in their roots. The bacteria pull nitrogen from the atmosphere and then convert it to a plant-available form that’s readily available during the growing season.

When the plants are harvested and the root system dies, the roots slowly decay, releasing the remaining nitrogen for the use of future crops. This sort of soil-building activity is very important, Larney said.

“Soil is a limited resource, and we need to be improving our soil quality, or at least maintaining it, in order to keep growing food,” said Larney.

Larney and his team went beyond this however, and examined a conservation package that included reducedtillage, narrow-row cultivation, cover crops, and manure compost to protect and bolster the soil. They avoided tillage as much as possible to avoid open soil.

“You don’t want to have a bare soil situation because you’re losing moisture, which is very valuable in a semi-arid area for growing crops. And you’re also exposing that surface soil to wind and water erosion,” said Larney.

Farmers can also plant dry beans in narrow rows to increase soil protection. Farmers usually plant beans in wide rows, and cultivate between the rows, which works up the soil and increases the risk of erosion. According to Larney, dry beans have now been bred to stand up taller, making them better suited for narrow rows.

Larney and his team also planted cover crops. Cover crops are useful for two reasons: They provide a protective cover over the soil through the winter months, and they use up any leftover nitrogen in the soil after harvest. If the soil was bare in winter, water and wind would steadily chip away at it, and might cause the nitrogen to move away.

“Another name for them is catch crops,” said Larney. “They’re basically catching anything left over in the soil in terms of nutrients, rather than leaving them in the root zone where they could potentially leach into groundwater.”

They also used manure compost to bolster the organic matter in the soil. Year after year of growing crops can put a strain on organic matter levels. To combat this problem, Larney and his team added manure compost to the fields to try to replace the lost organic matter. With the large cattle feedlot industry in the area, manure is readily and widely available.

“We produce a lot of manure and a lot of that is being turned into compost,” said Larney. “Many irrigation growers are quite keen on using compost on their land, and we found that we could improve soil quality over time if we applied the compost.”

The post Pulses plus conservation practices equal healthy soils appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

That’s because what they’re learning — and what they’re eating — comes from the school’s yard.

Two years ago, this tiny school of 130 students decided to dig up part of the schoolyard lawn and fill it with gardens and fruit trees. Picnic tables and park benches, and more recently, a greenhouse soon followed.

It began as an upgrade to the playground and coincided with efforts to start a recycling and composting program at the school.

Plus, say staff, only about half of their students, who also come from Amaranth, Kinosota and Reedy Creek, had gardens at home.

That’s despite this being a rural area, and a long drive for groceries; Alonsa is located in north-central Manitoba on the western edge of Lake Manitoba.

“There were a lot that didn’t know anything about gardening and composting,” said Brooke Gabel, high school science teacher.

But they do now. Alonsa’s school’s edible schoolyard has helped students improve their food choices too. The students were incredibly happy to taste the vegetables they’d grown themselves, say other staff. The school uses the garden to provide healthy snacks in the school canteen and meal programs.

“The kids are absolutely amazed that something is coming into their classroom that they grew and harvested and cleaned and cut up,” said Mindy Zalluski, educational assistant.

“They say how much better things taste.”

Volunteers in the area readily pitched in to help the school convert its yard. It was financially supported by a grant from Healthy Together Now and the Alonsa Conservation District that also assigned Green Team staff to care for the garden over summer while school was out.

“The conservation district was really proud to see this initiative happen in our community,” said Shawn Gurke, Alonsa conservation district manager.

“Our mandate is conservation education, and because of our location sustainable agriculture is a very important part of that,” he said. “This is another way to get kids to want to get outside and to teach them something at the same time. And they’ve learned to appreciate the value of having their own food source.”

The addition of the greenhouse is part of a longer-term plan. Students will be able to grow things to host their own farmers’ market. It can help with fundraising for events such as graduation. It’s also going to be a year-round classroom for learning to grow things.

“This year the (high school) science class will be participating in greenhouse activities,” he added. “I’m hoping that we’ll eventually see a full horticultural program in the school.”

Meanwhile, the schoolyard has become a community conversation piece.

People rave about how beautiful the schoolyard now looks. The students take pride in it too.

At first, some would thoughtlessly snap branches off trees, said Zalluski.

“They didn’t seem to realize that if you break a limb it’s not going to grow,” she said. “It took some educating and lots of talking, but now we have kids running around saying, ‘don’t touch the trees, you’ll kill the trees. We want them to grow so we can get apples and pears.’”

Gurke said other CDs are impressed every time he talks about what’s happening in Alonsa. Despite growing interest in local food, it’s not all that common yet in rural Manitoba to see schools converting yards to gardens.

“I’d be more than willing to share what I can to help other CDs and schools get involved with this,” he said.

The post Tiny school turns school turf to gardens and orchards appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Compost is one of nature’s best mulches and soil amendments. Most gardeners know the value of this rich, dark, earthy material in improving the soil and creating a healthful environment for plants. Understanding how to make and use compost is in the public interest, as the problem of waste disposal continues to grow.

A few of the many benefits of compost are:

• Reduction in garbage volume.
• A rich, natural fertilizer cuts back on use of chemical fertilizers.
• Improves soil aeration and drainage.
• Helps control weeds.
• Decreases the need for costly watering.

The following tips are from the River Keepers, and for more information on building your own composter, go to riverkeepers.org.

• As soon as decomposition begins, the volume of the pile will decrease. Don’t be tempted to add more materials at this point, as this resets the clock on that batch.
• You will maximize your composting efforts if you aerate by turning or mixing the heap about once a week. A garden fork or hay fork work well.
• Finished compost is usually less than half the volume of the materials you started with, but it’s much denser. When finished it should look, feel and smell like rich, dark soil. You should not be able to recognize any of the items you originally placed in the pile.

Some common problems to watch for are:

• If the compost is too wet, turn it more frequently or add dry brown material.
• If the pile doesn’t heat up, add more green material to the compost; may need to add water; may need to aerate.
• If there is an ammonia or rotten egg smell, turn the compost or add brown material to dry it out.
• If large amounts of dropped apples or kitchen scraps attract wasps or other unwelcome pests, turn more frequently.

Here’s some ways to use finished compost:

• Mix compost into the soil to improve it.
• Spread compost on lawn to fill in low spots.
• Use as mulch for landscaping and gardening.
• Mix compost into potted plants.

Key materials for composting are nitrogen-rich ‘greens’ and carbon-rich ‘browns,’ water, and air. Examples of greens are green leaves, coffee grounds/filters, tea bags, plant trimming, fruit and vegetable scraps, eggshells and fresh grass clippings. Examples of browns are dead plants, sawdust from untreated lumber, twigs, and dried grasses, weeds, straw and leaves. Water allows microbes in your compost to grow and help decompose material. The compost should be moist. Air aids in decomposition and controls odours. A good recipe is one part green to four parts brown.

Some items not to compost are:

• Meat, fish and animal fats — These materials may attract unwanted visitors to your compost pile.
• Shredded newspapers or office paper — The paper may contain chemicals that are not good for your compost. Recycle them instead.
• Ashes from your grill — Wood ashes can be very useful in small quantities, but BBQ grill ashes should NEVER go into your compost pile.
• Dog and cat feces — These materials can add diseases to your compost, and they have an unpleasant odour. Use chicken, horse, cow, and rabbit manure instead.
• Sawdust from treated lumber — Sometimes lumber is treated with harmful chemicals.

With a small investment of time, you can contribute to the solution to a community waste disposal problem, while at the same time enriching the soil and improving the health of your yard and garden.

The post The importance of composting appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“There are a lot of misconceptions as to what composting actually is, some think that if you have a pile of manure it’s called composting, it really isn’t,” said Mario Tenuta. “So we want to talk to growers about what would be some recipes for composting.”

The University of Manitoba soil ecologist is one of several researchers operating out of the Glenlea Research Station just south of Winnipeg, where a pilot composting project aims to introduce producers to the practice.

Piled in pyramid-shaped windrows about six or seven feet wide and just as tall, visitors to the site can see what composting looks — and smells like — at various stages.

“If you’re doing it properly, you shouldn’t have a smell,” said Tenuta, adding the final product is stable, dense, nutrient rich and easy to transport.

But it takes the right combination to get the desired results.

“We don’t want too much water, we don’t want too little, we don’t want too much nitrogen and we don’t want too little nitrogen, there is a right sweet spot,” said the researcher. “And once you mix all that stuff together the microbes take over.”

Those mighty microbes — bacteria and fungi — also provide the heat.

“In soil the heat generated by microbes is inconsequential, because soil is a good conductor of heat, and it wicks the heat away from the microbes, but a pile of organic material is a good insulator,” said Tenuta. “So the heat that those microbes are generating in the pile stays in the pile and the pile starts to get warm.”

And don’t think winter will stop those organisms from heating things up.

“So our work has shown that we have no problem composting in the winter, even if it’s -30 outside we can compost… because the microbes are generating enough heat, and that manure is a wonderful heat insulator,” he said, noting heat is crucial to removing animal pathogens and rendering weed seeds inert.

St. Norbert-based market gardener Bruce Berry of Almost Urban Vegetables knows the problems that can accompany improperly composted manure first hand.

“It’s much better for us to have compost in our hands than some manure that was turned a couple of times,” he said. “What we’re finding is that with some of the materials we are bringing in, they’re loaded with weed seeds, so I’m really just importing next year’s hours in the garden weeding.”

But for now, Berry doesn’t have to worry about the quality of his compost. He’s importing it from the pilot project at Glenlea.

“For me it’s a great enabler to have decent-quality stuff to work with, it’s just going to up our game,” he said, adding intensive vegetable production requires nutrient-rich soil.

The compost made at Glenlea is also used on the site’s 24-year-long organics study.

“The compost additions every several years is enough to keep that system going, so nitrogen is fixed biologically, through legumes, be it alfalfa, soybeans, and… compost addition provides the phosphorus,” said Tenuta.

Turning compost is also crucial, he added, noting aeration is part of the composting process. At Glenlea, mixing and turning is done with the help of some specialized machines.

“Think of a bale buster, or a Kitchen-Aid mixer,” he said. “Basically a big huge thing like that and you throw a bale under it, and it had these grinders… then we can start adding the solids, we can start adding the water, and mix it up. Then we open up a side chute, and out it comes.”

However, windrows can also be made using something like a front-end loader. Compost is turned with something similar to a snow blower, but much less dramatic.

And while the Glenlea study is currently focused on manure composting, Tenuta would like to expand the scope of composting projects in the future.

“We’d like to see this demo project grow, for example… how much food do people eat, say at the University of Manitoba? Think of all that organic material and also all those paper towels,” he said. “That’s all compostable material… and we’d like to be diverting that to Glenlea, mixing in this animal manure and composting that material — so it could then go back to providing nutrients and a healthy product for the soil.”

The post Winter no barrier to composting appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Yes, that reminds me of the “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” nursery rhyme. Fortunately, people leave out the “quite contrary” part. Well, they usually do.

This year, my garden has hosted rabbits enjoying buffets of tender salads and vegetable side dishes. One morning, I admired our pole beans, which almost had reached the height to begin climbing on a structure. After work, I ventured to our garden to check again, even though I wasn’t expecting the beans had grown into the clouds.

Unfortunately, my lush bean plants were now green sticks.

The rabbits had been at work, too. I think the rabbits have invested in special equipment this year: They are pole-vaulting or parachuting into our garden.

At least one of these “Hairy Hare-dini” characters has been able get through all sorts of barriers.

Not only do we have a chain-link fence around our yard, but we also have a mesh fence around the garden. The chain-link fence allows easy access for the small rabbits, but we thought the mesh fence was impenetrable.

Our three dachshunds are another measure of defence. They regularly chase rabbits around our yard.

This year, we added our homemade compost to our garden, which was promoting good growth prior to the rabbit attack. I would be happy to divert some vegetable peels to the rabbits to chomp instead of my tender bean leaves. I think these rabbits prefer “garden-fresh” produce, though.

With a few more tweaks on the barriers, some added compost and our dogs spending more time outdoors in the nice weather, my garden may return. I remain hopeful.

Have you tried composting? Composting is a natural form of recycling that serves a variety of purposes. If you enjoy gardening, composting provides soil amendments to add to your garden. Instead of going to the landfill, your vegetable peels can be broken down by bacteria and other microbes to produce rich material to add to your garden.

Think “green” or “brown” when deciding what to compost, but leave out the protein foods such as leftover meat. Green materials include lawn clippings and kitchen waste. Brown materials include leaves and wood chips.

Eggshells can go in the compost bin, but do not add foil, plastic and paper products to your compost bin. Leave out diseased plants and weeds that have gone to seed.

A variety of invisible organisms, including bacteria, and visible organisms, including earthworms, feed on the plant material. As a result of the action of these “critters,” the plant material warms within your compost pile. Warm temperatures above 110 F promote the breakdown of the materials.

If you decide to begin composting, you can purchase a structure or build your own using plans in the resources provided with this article. Consider these tips if you want to begin composting:

• Choose a good location to place your compost bin. It should be level and have drainage, with access to water (rain or your garden hose). Because compost bins are not always attractive to your neighbours, consider a little camouflage. You may want to hide your bin or surround it with flowers or plants.
• Consider a bin no smaller than 3x3x3 feet and no larger than 5x5x5 feet.
• Be sure to mix the material thoroughly. Use a pitchfork.
• Keep the compost pile moist but not too wet. During dry weather, you may want to “water” the compost weekly.
• Avoid adding branches. If you use them, chop them in a wood chipper first.
• Cover the pile with a tarp or other cover during dry weather. This helps prevent moisture loss and excess moisture from heavy rain.
• Turn the pile before the major freeze if you add a lot of leaves in the fall.
• Do not turn the pile during the winter in cold climates.
• Be patient. Depending on the environmental conditions and composition, compost may be ready to use within six months (May to October).

For many more tips and details, see these Extension Service web-based composting guides:

• North Dakota State University Extension Service
• University of Maryland Extension
• University of Illinois Extension

You can make some “compost starter” by trimming veggies to enjoy with this delicious dip.

Spinach Artichoke Dip (Slow Cooker)

• 2 (14-oz.) cans artichoke hearts, drained and coarsely chopped
• 1 (10-oz.) package frozen spinach, thawed, drained and squeezed dry
• 1 c. shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 c. fat-free Greek yogurt, plain
• 2 (8-oz.) blocks 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, softened and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• Fresh vegetables (baby carrots; red, orange, yellow or green bell pepper strips; broccoli; cauliflower; zucchini; and/or sugar snap peas)

If time allows, place spinach in the refrigerator overnight to thaw. Otherwise, run hot water over spinach until it has thawed. Coat slow cooker with cooking spray.

Add all ingredients to slow cooker. Stir to combine, cover and cook until heated through, 1-1/2 to two hours on high or three to four hours on low. Serve warm with raw veggies.

Makes 20 (1/4 c.) servings. Each serving has 100 calories, 5 grams (g) fat, 7 g protein, 8 g carbohydrate, 4 g fibre and 300 milligrams sodium.

The post Tips on naturally recycling your kitchen wastes appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The couple lives and gardens near Lake Wahtopanah at Rivers, which first of all meant enclosing their garden area within a 12-foot-high fence to keep the deer from feasting on their produce.

“When touring Winnipeg Conservatory I saw bales positioned in squares with compost piled in the middle and vegetation growing in them,” Leanne said. She began to research the idea on the Internet and found a book by Joel Karsten on Straw Bale Gardens.

Her neighbour was only too happy to give her bales that had been used to protect her trees over the winter. “They wanted to get rid of the bales and I needed bales to try out this idea, so I thought it was a win-win situation for both of us. I placed them strategically in the section of my garden that was covered with landscape fabric,” she said.

Leanne said anyone trying this idea needs to start early as the bales must be “conditioned” for 10 to 12 days prior to planting. This involves placing the bales cut side up so they can absorb applications of water and granular fertilizer.

Lawn fertilizer that has at least 20 per cent nitrogen is required for conditioning bales — not the slow-release kind, she said.

“To start conditioning the bale, you sprinkle half a cup of high-nitrogen fertilizer over the top surface of bale then water by hose until it disappears into the bale,” she said. “Second day water bale only and third day fertilizer and water; alternate this process on four to six days.

“Days seven to nine you add a quarter-cup of fertilizer and water. Day 10 use one cup of 10-10-10,” said Leanne, noting she recommends anyone planning to try it, to download the book.

After 12 days, the bacteria inside the bales starts digesting the straw, making nitrogen and other minerals available to the plants you grow in them.

Squash and tomatoes don’t get dirty because they are high off the ground, which also makes picking easier.

Next year, she plans to leave more room between the bales to give plants such as squash more room to spread.

“Rebar at the ends of the rows would be perfect for making a trellis or staking,” she said. “I used landscape fabric under flax straw between the rows in my raspberry patch but you still have to pull weeds between the plants.”

The bales should be located in a sunny location with access to a water supply. A soaker hose running along the rows would be the ultimate way to go, but we managed with an overhead sprinkler system,” said Leanne.

Ed and Leanne constructed some raised garden beds, in which she grew beans and perennial herbs, but she said she prefers the straw bale approach.

Another gardening idea found in the area was an easy way to make a pea fence using electric fence posts with chicken wire attached to them. Anyone can build a fence this way as the posts have a spike on them that easily pushes into the ground. The electric fence posts should be placed about 28 inches apart at the most. The posts have hooks on them on which the wire can be hung.

The MacKays had everything from apples to zucchini growing in their garden. Leanne had planted new varieties of raspberries which were producing tasty fruit.

“Next year I hope to plant at least 25 bales,” Leanne said. “This method of gardening means less weeding and (it is) easier on the back.”

The post Garden flourishes in recycled square bales appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Leaves and grass clippings amount to nearly 450 tonnes of yard waste generated annually in their community, say town of Stonewall staff.

And it all might end up as a methane-emitting mountain of mush in a landfill somewhere, were it not for the enthusiasm of a nearby farmer to compost it all for his own use instead.

Lloyd Jensen began composting Stonewall’s leaves and grass clippings produced by its 1,800 or so households about a decade ago.

“I just thought there’s got to be something better to do with it than hauling it to the dump,” says the self-described hobby farmer with about 70 acres of land he grows wheat on just a mile east of town.

At that time, Stonewall was also paying tipping fees to haul yard waste to its transfer station — anywhere from at least four to six bags of yard waste per household per week — and the costs worried town officials.

Jensen said the idea of using it himself presented itself after he asked the local contractor hauling it if a truckload could be diverted to his place where he was making compost for the family garden. The contractor even waived the cost of delivery saying it reduced his hauling costs — and that’s when the “stuff” of Jensen’s farm, which he today calls S’toons ’n Stuff (he also grows saskatoons and cherries) began to take shape.

Applied straight to fields

Today Jensen takes all the yard waste Stonewallers leave out in plastic bags, which are diverted to his farmyard. He then hauls the bags in a front-end loader out to one of his three small fields where he breaks open the bags and dumps, spreads and discs the yard waste directly into the soil.

“I just run over the soil with a deep tiller and an ordinary old tractor, and do that a couple of dozen times. It takes a lot the first few passes because it’s all clumpy so you have to spread it out and move it around. Then I take the discer out and just flip the soil over so you’re burying it into the soil as much as you can.”

The field is left fallow for a year after, which works on his farm because of the nature and scale of it, adds Jensen.

“This is my hobby. This is not my living,” he says. His day job is a flight services specialist with NAV Canada.

The town now pays Jensen tipping fees they’d otherwise be paying a nearby landfill to take the waste, and he estimates his savings on fertilizer is anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000 a year.

He grows wheat on these fields. The yields are lower but he’s still as happy with the results.

“I get decent yields and I have low inputs. It’s good for the soil. It makes the land easier to work and the water retention is fantastic. It doesn’t dry out nearly as fast and surprisingly where I had the water holes before, they’re absorbed very quickly.”

He’s undaunted by the work involved. It takes him about 30 minutes to spread three truckloads of yard waste.

“I don’t golf,” he says. He’s motivated mainly for the satisfaction he gets of seeing something put to good use.

“It’s about using junk,” he said. “This is garbage the town would normally take to the dump. We’re reusing it all.”

Fundraiser

“We” also includes local gardeners. Jensen also sets aside leaves and grass in windrows to compost for a full two years. His brother built a screener that sifts it smooth, after which it’s made available free of charge to town gardeners. A local business keeps a bin of it stocked, and residents helping themselves make donations to the palliative care program.

“It’s been a pretty good fundraiser,” he adds.

Town of Stonewall CAO Robert Potter said they’ve lucked out the day Lloyd came through their doors.

The basic rate they negotiate with Jensen to take the yard waste annually costs less than using the town’s equipment and staff to run their own composting program, said Potter.

Plus, Lloyd is the end-user.

“We still generate piles of yard waste,” said Potter. “But at least we are doing something No. 1 environmentally and No. 2 cost effectively.”

Both the town and Jensen are waiting to see if this initiative qualifies for support from the province as Manitoba moves to boost community composting and divert more yard waste from landfills.

Earlier this month the province launched Tomorrow Now, a new green action plan with goals that include tripling the amount of organics Manitoba diverts from landfills by boosting organic waste collection and processing of food, yard and wood waste.

The provincial target is to divert 85 kg of organics per person by 2020, which is a lot more than the current 30 kg Manitobans now divert, and even higher than the national average of 65 kg per capita.

The initiative is backed by a $1-million annual fund that will become available to eligible municipal and commercial composting facilities.

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Experimental extraction of struvite, or magnesium ammonium phosphate — the same greyish-white crystallized minerals that kidney stones are made of — has shown promise as a way to extract valuable nutrients from manure and put them in the seed row in a much more user-friendly powder or granular form.

At the recent Manitoba Soil Science Society annual conference, Yeukai Katanda of the University of Manitoba’s department of soil science, presented her findings from an experiment that looked at how struvite performed as compared to mono-ammonium phosphate fertilizer in terms of canola seedling toxicity.

Because struvite is less soluble than MAP, Katanda and her colleagues suspected that it could be placed alongside the seed in much higher quantities without killing the newly growing plants. Too much MAP in the seed row, even at levels that the growing crop requires, dissolves and leaves behind salts that can kill seedlings.

“We concluded that hog manure-derived struvite has potential to be applied at higher rates than those that are possible with MAP,” said Katanda. “Whereas MAP would induce some toxicity, struvite proved to be not as toxic.”

Manure and groundwater

Does repeated application of liquid hog manure on pastures pollute the groundwater?

Ainsley Hamm, a researcher from the university’s department of animal science, said that so far, based on her work done at a test site near La Broquerie, the answer is no.

To determine whether this was happening, Hamm identified the bacterial composition of pig slurry. Each month from May to September she looked for their presence in the soil and groundwater, which lay just four to 12 feet below the surface at the site.

After a spring application of slurry, samples showed that the concentration of one type of clostridium bacteria had increased, but by the end of the growing season, their numbers had tapered off.

“Unlike soil, in groundwater there were no significant treatment differences,” said Hamm.

Her team also looked for zoonotic pathogens such as E. coli, salmonella, and Yersinia bacteria, in the pig slurry, but could not find any. A single sequence was found in the cattle fecal samples, but since such bacteria make up around one per cent of the gut ecosystem, the researchers deemed it insignificant.

Coliform bacteria were found in the groundwater samples, but they were not necessarily of fecal origin and they couldn’t be traced back to the slurry or the cattle manure.

Testing of well water samples later the same fall found only a single genetic sequence out of 13,000 tested that could have come from the manure application.

“So overall, there is very little evidence that slurry bacteria are being transferred to the groundwater,” said Hamm.

From the Grainews website: The great pigs-on-pasture experiment

Compost and potatoes

Does a one-off shot of compost boost potato yields and help fend off early dying syndrome?

The statistics from research in Manitoba don’t really suggest that it can, said soil scientist Oscar Molina.

He and his fellow researchers tested single applications of separated, composted hog slurry solids on fields of Russet Burbank potatoes.

Varying amounts of compost were applied and incorporated into the soil to a depth of 15-20 cm, and levels of verticillium fungus were compared prior to application and before harvest.

“When we looked at disease, the reduction was not that big,” said Molina, who noted that plots where a soil fumigant was applied did show significantly less verticillium presence.

In terms of severity of early dying, the compost-applied plots showed a slight reduction of 10 to 30 per cent, however.

Forty tonnes of composted hog manure solids showed a 14 per cent yield increase over the control, which used typical production practices.

Despite the limited effect from a single dose, Molina suspects that repeatedly adding microbial-rich compost, or higher applications of up to 80 tonnes per acre, could over a longer period of time boost the population of beneficial micro-organisms populating the soil ecology and “create challenges” for the verticillium fungus that damages potato crops.

“It can survive in soil for 20-30 years, so it’s going to be there,” said Molina. “Even if you stop growing potatoes for 10 years and then start again, you will have it because it doesn’t just disappear.”

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