Ed Laivo with Dave Wilson Nursery, we’re composting.
This is a compost tumbler. I’ve had this thing about three years now. Not bad, as long as you keep trying it. Some important thing with tumblers, if you don’t keep turning them, the compost just sits and does nothing, so as long as you get inside these tumblers and keep turning and keep working them. About two months, you can create yourself some really, really, really fine stuff. And boy I’ll tell you what, in this day and age, compost has become gold and so if you are into gardening, and you haven’t gotten into composting, this, this is some place where you really want to take and spend some time.
I’ll tell you what, the best thing about compost isn’t making it, actually the best thing about compost is using it. We got a tomato here that we planted a couple of weeks ago. Because it’s been so cool, I’ve delayed putting a good layer of compost down. And that’s mainly because; I want the ground to heat up as much as it can and that cool spring, but the ground wasn’t heating up much at all even despite the fact that was in raised beds. So here we go, we’re going to put a nice layer of compost down around this tomato. It will love us for it. Composted most of the, rest of the beds so, we’re really, this is really, I say this just for you, Here we go. Nice, at least two inch layer of compost down here, I put it down in the bed there. Young tomato, we’ll go ahead and compost it a little bit better, a little bit more after this tomato gets growing. Of course we already have older ones over here that have been composted and growing well. This one right here of course, is loving every bit of compost we put on it so far.
I experiment with lots of different varieties and containers. This variety right here is a Pakistani Fruity Mulberry. Real important; one of the things that I’ve don in this container for years is, I always have had, a mulch on the top, because when your container growing, containers will dry out fast but a mulch helps to at least cut the main place the containers dry out from and that’s the surface. So I like a nice, thick mulch in the containers. Now, if I’m, look at, at, at a plant that actually has a salt problem where it’s sensitive to salting containers, I like a larger bark because a larger bark will actually act and you can actually see this, come in close, the bark will act as a filter. So if I move this, you can actually see where the salt in the water and we have high salts in our water, have collected and you can see the difference in the color of the barks here. The salts actually, are filtered through the barks.
So if you’re trying to grow say, blueberries in area where you have a really high pH in a lot of insoluble salts in your water. This larger bark is wonderful to add to your top dressing to both cut down the evaporation and at the same time, definitely eliminate the salt from collecting at the root zone, which can be very detrimental to blueberries. I’m experimenting always with rootstocks, varieties o see how well they’ll do in containers, and this variety right here is actually a “Zaeger” hybrid rootstock that is wonderful for growing a cherry tree in a container and what a crop we had on this cherry tree this year. It was impressive and just a standard being cherry. Now you may very well have the opportunity to be able to grow a standard being cherry in any container, which is definitely going to be a benefit to people with limited space.
My favorite rootstocks are apples, Budagowski 9. A very fibrous rootstock, loves to be in containers. The production on this tree is very nice; I kept it limited this year. I’ve got about six apples that I’ve allowed to set. This is a young tree, but definitely, the tree does very well in the container with of course the, on the Budagowski 9 rootstock also known as BUD 9 rootstock; very cool. I really do like the light containers too. I, I know in the past, I’ve probably stuck more to the Terracotta pots but the more I get into temperature and looking at temperatures of pots, the light seems to favor lower, or heating up at a slower rate than the darker colored pots, so I like those a lot. Problem I have with ceramic is that ceramic heats up slow but It doesn’t cool down slow either so it almost acts as an oven once it does heat up, so I had problems with ceramic.
I love wood, wood is probably the best insulator but not necessarily the best looking. One time, I came around the corner here and I turn to roll it this way, and I lost my footing and while I was trying to gather my footing, the thing rolled off the hand truck and rolled right into the pool.
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