You can make a wonderful compost for your garden using alfalfa pellets and wood pellets. It is perfect for containers, transplanting, top dressing, and it makes a really effective peat moss alternative for conditioning soil. You can make this in small spaces and is perfect for gardeners with limited compost resources.
How to Make Compost from Inexpensive Wood Pellets & Alfalfa Pellets in 30-60 Days: Full Experiment! https://youtu.be/zroauGIzVQA
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wondering if pellets have chemicals…..thanks for info
I live in area with lots sand south central ga….lots of peanut n cotton grows but my yard had to hold water…plz help….yes added peatmoss …will be adding vermiculite….hopefully will help …
Great ideal, I've used the alfalfa pellets in my garden but didn't think of wood pellets as well… Thanks for the info 😊
Another option is horse bedding pellets. It's not as compacted as wood pellets and easily expanded when sprayed with water. Just fyi. 🌱
Great video and very informative. I do have a question though, if you don’t have the ability to have a compost tumbler is there an alternative for mixing? Thank you!
🌟Gary Thanks again or the tips and tricks!🌟
This seems like a huge waste of money and tbh resources that could be put to better use. This is way more expensive than peat moss and I'm not so sure it's near as good, but I'll pretend it's equivalent. I don't understand why you wouldn't use something like a basic coir instead of peat. It's already a common substitute with established ways to substitute it effectively. As far as peat's main benefit soil consistency and drainage coir is just as good. To be clear I am not saying it's a 1:1 substitution in the sense you won't need to make other changes amendment wise compared to prior regiment of amending your peat based soil, but it's just as good perhaps better than peat in most cases than peat. The main issue with swapping them is ph. Coir is neutral around 7 where as pear can be as low as 4. Given ppl use as high as 1/3 peat in a mix that sorta over all ph difference substituting the coir will evveft nutrient absorbtion. This is neither good or bad btw it's just to be accounted for. Whether it's good or bad depends on the crop. For me coir made my container plant mix drift towards 8 overtime and I saw a lot of micro nutrients deficiency. I diagnosed this as the issue by watering with a super low ph solution and as that solution adjusts to the soil oh it would drift thru the entire range of ph preferred by each nutrient, albeit that is suboptimal and not a permanent solution to the issue but it does show enough absorbtion of the previously locked out nutrients to make the plants look better and help you diagnose soil ph is the issue. Oh this is important my soil got to 8 because I used lime in the mix because I was using a recipe that used peat. The fact is lime is used in those recipes to offset the low ph peat. With coir you don't want lime or the soil will likely have too high a ph. Anyways, coir is a very good soil conditioner as far as drainage and aeration go, it's also inert. If you know how to use it it can easily replace peat. If your soil ph is too high use something like elemental sulfur or ferrous sulfate. Do not use ammonium sulfate or ammonium nitrate and a few others you'll see recommended. The problem is they are using the term change soil ph" incorrectly when they refer to those other compounds acidifying soil. For example you will burn your plants with nitrogen acidifying soil with ammonium sulfate because the acidifying process creates nitrate and a ton of it. For this reason you cannot add enough ammonium nitrate to significantly change soil ph in a reasonable time. Ferrous and aluminum sulfate as well as elemental sulfur are best to actually change soil ph permanently in a reasonable time. Interestingly however when I said I diagnosed the issue using the ph drift method my solution used ammonium sulfate to get the solution ph super low. You wouldn't want to keep watering with that solution tho for aforementioned reasons
I did this when you put out your first video on this. Worked great.
Thanks for the compost recipe! I like your compost tumblers too. Right now I’m just using a tote with holes drilled and turning it with a shovel. Yours looks easier.
Do you have to compost it or can you throw the wet mix direct into the raise bed dirt?
Looks like an interesting project ! Any idea what the PH of the finished product is ?
Gary, this may seem like a dumb question but can I mix this with my existing compost pile? I throw banana peels, ends of veggies, egg shells, napkins, avocados that were overripe, etc. It’s a beautiful thing. But, I want even more compost because I’m greedy like that. Lol. Thanks in advance.
Very cool.
I appreciate your willingness to experiment and change your soulless recipes as necessary. Great video!!t Thank You.
0:00: 🌱 Learn how to make compost using alfalfa pellets and wood pellets.
2:43: 🌱 Learn how to make compost for container gardens using a compost tumbler and alfalfa pellets.
5:16: 🌱 The video discusses how to compost quickly using a mixture of greens and wood pellets.
8:07: 🌊 The video demonstrates how to properly soak and expand compost for a compost tumbler.
11:06: 🌱 The video demonstrates how to use compost in your garden and the process of composting.
Recap by Tammy AI
I have friends save bags of leaves for me in the fall– no weeds or trash, just leaves that I can compost. I'm going to put them through the shredder and mix with the alfalfa pellets and see how that turns out.
Instead of hardwood fuel pellets can you use the pine bedding pellets? Does it make any difference?
I only grow in containers. No room in my small yard for an in-ground garden. I use 4 GreenStalk planters and about 35 grow bags, mostly 5-gallon bags. I made my own potting mix this past spring based on one of your videos. It worked great, and I had a successful gardening season. To replace the existing potting mix in my containers with this compost would be cost prohibitive for me. I always add amendments to my potting mix when growing a new veggie crop each season. Could I make some of this compost and just blend it with the existing potting mix in my containers? How much would I add? Thanks, Gary.
Excellent video🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
i have done this method for years. i do use a mix of about 1/4 royal oak pellets, always looking for them on sale, and 3/4 wood pellets. for liquid i use drunk compost and it works even faster. i was checking out some videos about auto-toxicity of alfalfa on legumes that i discovered last year so now i have slowed down a bit on alfalfa and i am grinding beans (weight of whole grains not ground) and layer feed to mix (ground) with the wood pellets and it seems to work just as well. the fungal growth in the compost can't hurt either. it's kind of a pain to grind all those grains though.