Is it ok to give the poultry weeds to chew on? How do you figure out what is what? I do let my ducks and chickens out but when I do some weeding, can i put htem in the cage, or should i burn them, or put them on teh compost. (I'll ask this last part in another branch of the forum as well.)
Yes, not only is it OK, I personally think it is essential. Getting the birds to eat weeds is half (if not more) the reason I have them. Please what ever you do don't burn them.
I toss weeds in to my chooks regularly. The only ones I avoid are things with very annoying seeds - like cobblers pegs, or that will shoot again from the tiniest bit - like Singapore Daisy. I'd only compost them if I was sure they weren't going to spring up out of my compost later. Definitely never burn them.
I promise to stop burning them purple. What should I do with my palm fronds? I dont' want enormous piles of the them and i do'nt want to use them as mulch as they are too hard to manage and too ugly also. I have a friend who uses all garden rubbish as mulch and I don't like the look of it. So i need a different solution.
ps. My ducks do almost nothing throughout most of the day. I know this as they sit very near to our dwelling and I can observe them all day. Its only early in the morning and late afternoon they eat. And hthen when i put them in their pen and they eat the laying pellets I give them. Should I stop feeding them laying pellets. I don't give them that much. Only two double handfuls per day for five ducks.
I saw that buying a shredder isn't a possibility for you at present on the other post. But you can hire one for a day. Have a REALLY big prune the day before then spend the next day with the ear muffs on and rip into it.... You are more likely to find a really powerful one in a hire place too. If you do get around to buying one - Greenfields is the name to look out for. GardenLen recommended it to me when I was shopping for one. It's a ripper and so far nothing (apart from any empty fuel tank) has stopped it... Not that I've done palm fronds, but the chap who sold it to me says that they set one up at the Garden expo each year with a ute load full of palm fronds to run through it. They always run out of palm fronds before they run out of people wanting to see it do palm fronds!
hehe, if only we could overcome our addiction to aesthetics... Perhaps you could lay them down as mulch first and then put your straw bales over the top. This will help the fronds break down and keep things looking tidy. I wish I had too many palm fronds
I have been collecting mine for some years. They now make a nice, untidy pile at the base of a big useless palm. Much to the continuing horror of my tidy neighbors. A match is tempting, however i tried to hire a mulcher last week and found none were big enough to handle the hard woody bits of frond. The closest hire place, that has a big enough muncher, is 80k away. Most hire places don't like them as they always break down and are unreliable mechanically. In my case making biochar with palm fronds is not possible because i live is fire-free suburbia. I know PP is not into bio-char yet but it is an an acceptable (-only just-, without clean burning technology) environmental solution as it sequesters CO2 for eons and promotes the growth and preservation of soil micro-organisms. I am hoping that fungi and time may help, in the meantime the pile may make a home for lizards, snakes etc.
Only through ignorance of the advantages and the time to find out MA it seems worthwhile on the surface if a bit like hard work.
I meant the "yet", I'll convert you to the True Faith one day, brother/comrade? PP PS I might throw a bag of sugar on the palm-pile to see if that encourages the fungi. I note the mulched Useless Palm has just put out an amazing 12' foot green frond/shoot. I might be able to sell it to a shopping center that needs instant greenery? Although I notice my local shopping-center-mall makes do with huge and many plastic ones (!!!) that offend me mightily.
This place is full of good thoughts that i haven't had myself. I like the idea of potentially hiring a good mulcher. I don't know what sort is available locally but certainly its a reasonable idea to spend a hundred bucks on hiring one for a while and putting through all my logs and palms fronds. Or perhaps i'd need a woodchipper for that. Anyhow.... I also like purples idea of laying down the palm fronds and covering them up with straw. I'll consider this further. Cheers all.
