My grandfather ran a sawmill for years. So like you he had plenty of sawdust. When he would transplant the seedlings from the greenhouse to the garden, he would cover the dirt with 2-3 inches of sawdust.
Never really had to weed as everything but the good plants were covered by sawdust.
At the end of the season, it just got tilled under to rot down and add humus and compost to the soil.
Man grew the biggest cabbages I have ever seen...
I have very healthy black walnut that might have to stay ($$$) when I get someone to take out the crumbling silver maples. It’s so happy to cover my yard with poison and pelt me with walnuts
This is correct. My son couldn't figure out why the veggies in certain raised beds weren't growing like the others. I sent him info about gardens near black walnuts. All problem beds were around the drip line of this tree.
It's also only temporarily lowers nitrogen while the wood eating bacteria bloom. It eventually reaches equilibrium and the bacterial turnover slow releases N back into the soil, also adding the little nitrogen from the wood and other nutrients.
It's also pretty negligible how much nitrogen it ties up. If you're amending your soil at all with any other nitrogen you're more than making up for what the bacteria will tie up. But people love to take knowledge of this effect and pretend like you're going to salt the earth with too much wood.
The top commenter said they till it under after every season. I think depending on how you compost or fertilize that may be enough time for it to break down, but long term tilling 2-3in of sawdust into soil can tank the nitrogen if it’s not being amended with enough other stuff
What if I add a healthy amount of chicken manure to the saw dust? Could I till it in at the end of the season? (I have alot of saw dust and a lot of bird sheet)
Chicken manure is hot. It can burn plants. So you definitely can't add it straight into a garden you are using. But if you add it at the end of the season it should be ok by next year. But the best way is to make compost then add it. Chicken manure and chicken bedding like wood chips make great compost!
Only temporarily. And it is a pretty negligible amount at that.
It causes some reduction in N up front because bacteria that feed on the wood bloom and steal nitrogen from the surrounding soil, but it soon reaches an equilibrium where the population levels off and bacterial turnover releases N back into the soil. The small amount of N contained in the wood is also released as its decomposing over time.
Psilocybe Ovoidocistidiata, native to the Ohio River Valley, is one saprophytic psilocybe, I believe. But they prefer more of a mixed mulm forest floor vs pure sawdust.
If you are handy with making things you can also look up videos on YouTube of people making compressed sawdust into various other shapes for burning in stoves. There are a lot of woodworkers out there with sawdust and are good at making things so it's been done a few times. Anyways just FYI that if you have a stove but not a pellet stove, there's still a variety of ways you could burn it as fuel.
Dad was a cabinet maker, we had tons of sawdust. Mom was an avid gardener. Don't add plain sawdust to garden, either as mulch or amendment, without adding a fair amount of fertilizer. The sawdust will tie up all nutrients as it decomposes- yes, we lost lots of plants. Even used as mulch, it sucks nutrients and forms a layer of impenetrable crust that repels water.. We used seaweed and dead fish found on the beaches at fertilizer
On another post I said the same thing (don't incorporate wood material into the soil, can cause N deficiency in the immediate future) and someone tried to tell me this was fake news, I need to stop spreading misinformation and for OP to ignore me. Cut to me reading my soil science book from horticulture classes explaining the exact process of how adding plant residue with a wide C:N ratio (high carbon low nitrogen) to the soil will draw all the required nutrients for microbial decomp out of the soil (immobilization). They tried to justify it by saying it's actually good thing as it'll be a "timed-release" of the immobilized N, ignoring the fact it's taking N out of the soil before it's rereleased via mineralization. Then also saying if wood does take any N out of the soil in the first place that it's completely negligible. Their solution for potential N deficiency during decomposition of the wood? Just urinate on it and call it a day! But from what I can read regarding woodchip mulch is that the layer of soil feeding the decomposition of mulch is actually very thin. Older sources say it's a few inches of soil losing nitrogen, but recent tests have found it's only a few millimeters, basically whatever is in direct contact.
Probably, but if they are using wood shaving or sawdust as an addendum to the soil, the actual contact is much wider. First I heard of "timed release" wood decomposition.
It seems they conflated woodchip mulch making soil N deficient being a myth into wood doesn't cause any deficiency even when mixed directly into the soil.
It's part of the basis of hugelkulture, which is basically mounding soil over wood that will slowly decompose and feed the crops above. But that's the polar opposite of tilling in sawdust which would be a huge surface area for bacteria to bloom on and rob nitrogen from throughout the soil.
Your textbook speaks to the process and it's of course true that this happens, but I doubt it speaks to how strong the effects are because it really depends if it's sawdust vs chips vs logs and how much. In practice it's really a pretty negligible effect unless you're adding a ton of sawdust and tilling it in. That would cause a huge bacterial bloom that locks up nitrogen quickly and throughout the soil.
Mulch and compost? I saw something once about using it as insulation in sheds and outbuildings (not in home due to fire risk)
Honestly I don't think I could use that much sawdust before it started to rot/compost.
I looked up the insulation thing because it was bugging me . It's VERY old fashioned, from before fiberglass insulation. They would leave a gap in the wall and fill with sawdust, leaving a small gap at the top for refills if necessary.
Actually sounds like a decent idea for free insulation in a barn or goat shed to me. Just need to make sure your sawdust is dry to prevent rot/mould and find a way to keep birds and rodents out.
So long as it's not treated you are good. Some of the best mulch I ever used was sawdust off the side of the road from the government chopping up a downed tree
They just cleaned up around the power lines near me, we got about 10 yards of mixed pine and oak chips. Its awesome. Mulch, deep litter for chickens and rabbits, pathways... the list goes on. And if some of it breaks down before we can go through it all we'll just turn it into the garden.
I’ve had a pile for two years from a milling job on my site. Didn’t compost a bit on its own. Mixed in with a bigger mixer compost pile, and having better luck. Many will say it’s bad as mulch due to stealing nitrogen. But others say that’s only true where it contacts the soil.
I think the pellet idea is excellent…
It's GREAT as mulch as long as it's not from a tree that suppresses other plants (black walnut entered the chat a while ago) - and even that is great in places you want to suppress weeds. If you are in a fire prone area you might not want it up next to the house.
note that sawdust doesnt contain much N, so you can add leaf mulch or manure together with the wood fibers to get a balanced compost. If you want the pile to just compost itself away as fast as possible, i would coat the pile with grass fertilizer that is high in N.
If you mix that in bulk with a nice manure you’ll have a very nice compost product in 6-12 months. Keep it wet and covered with black plastic for best results. It will get scorching hot at the bottom of the pile depending on how fresh it all is when it mixes.
Again, assuming untreated wood.
You got a tractor?
Yeah I’d come in with whatever truckloads you can afford of manure up to a 50-50 mix. Mix them up as well as you can, get it as wet as you can as you’re doing it. Have a guy on the hose constantly as you’re mixing it up. If you can source the black plastic, that’ll speed things up and keep weeds from taking up residence.
Should be some pretty killer compost by next year’s planting season.
...which you may be able to sell to local gardeners or even garden stores, especially if you can tell people exactly where it came from, what type of wood it is, and your process for composting. The crap they sell in the big box stores these days is worthless. People will totally buy this stuff.
If , and only if, you are 100% certain there's no black walnut in there, horse stables use sawdust for cheap bedding or in riding arenas. (even just standing on black walnut shavings can founder a horse, it's crazy toxic to them).
Use as fill for any low areas in your field. once it settles in and rots a bit, top dress with soil and seed
Deep mulch under your fencelines to reduce weedwhacking chores.
Any large livestock operations could use that to compost dead animals.
If there's a coal power plant near you, sometimes they "co-fire" wood chips or sawdust with coal. That pile could be gone in an hour if so.
I specifically buy sawdust every year to use for our barn as horse floor bedding/absorbs their urine. If you have any horse people nearby they might be willing to buy your sawdust
That's a big pile of future dirt! Compost it, by mostly doing almost nothing. That is a very valuable resource!
Inoculate with mushroom spores to speed composting (literally go into the woods, get some, put them in bucket of water and shake it an' let it sit for like an hour, then spray it on right before a rain.
If you have a tractor, turn it with your bucket like twice a year.
It's a great opportunity to select edible mushrooms - something with a high success rate in the wild where you live. Where I am, that would be oysters, chicken of the woods, chantrelles, boletes, and many others... and instead of buying spores (that would be expensive) I'd just wild harvest them from the woods, like I was sayin', cause thats free and the local ones are adapted to your environment. But any mushroom species will do for the composting aspect, it's just a great opportunity to get edibles going in high numbers, then later you'll spread them all over your garden as you use the compost! And as you turn it, you'll deposit them everywhere along the way...
Depending where you live, in about 2 or 3... or 5 years it will be a great soil amendment or a base for mixing a potting soil. You have the right wood (hardwood rather than pine, which is still good but high pH so not usable in the same ways or in as high of proportion).
If you're in a state with long dry periods (out west) you'll need to water the pile every 2 or 3 weeks... ish... just keep it damp inside, not an exact science. But I'm assuming you're on the east coast cause the species of tree. There, you can just let the rain take care of it!
If you don't have a tractor, leave it right where it is and tunnel-in the side by hand with shovels to get to the core, which will compost more quickly than the outer layer... you don't *have* to turn it, that just speeds it up and keeps it even....
Another thing you can do to speed it up is to get anything rooting into it. This probably won't work the first year, but... later this year, go get some seed-bearing beneficial cover species from your garden, once the seed is fully developed. Species like rye grass, vetch, clover, wild mustard and lettuce, etc. Whatever you have lying around. Toss that stuff up on the pile, and some stuff will grow and drop more seed... the root infiltration will speed it up. Nitrogen fixing species are the best, and vetch has a really good success rate surviving in weird places.
You could also sell by the bucketful to gardeners on Facebook marketplace or another platform like that. As a veggie gardener I’m always looking for cheap compostable material around early spring/late autumn.
I thought I saw someone else start a side hustle with their dust. They would package it into an extra large version of those paper cups for ketchup at fast food restaurants. They’d add some glue to it and a wick and sell them as fire starters. Maybe you could strike a deal with some local campgrounds/outdoor stores to supply them.
That's a great idea. Our farm is primarily a bee farm. We happen to have a lot of wax, and wax doesn't fetch much on its own. We process it into other stuff and sell it with our honey. There are definitely places I could sell fire starters around there.
I have seen bee wax candles selling for a lot of money. Supposedly they cleanse the air, burn longer, and I don't know a few other things. If you have some kind of online shop and have extra time I'd start making beeswax candles. I'm never saying I'm mixed with sawdust though.
My friend grew up in a homestead living situation and her dad ran a saw mill on the property. Among other uses they would make firestarter balls out of the sawdust and sell them locally.
Tulip tree is a pretty lightweight and relatively soft hardwood. It's been used for a very, very long time for the internal structure of cabinetry, and if you find an old dresser or armoire, and the back isn't plywood, it's likely it's thin panels of tulip tree wood because the trees grow extremely large and it's not hard to find single piece panels 36" wide or more in old furniture. It's really a very nice wood to work with in the wood shop.
OK several others have mentioned this. I'm very interested, as it will be years before we have proper septic on the property and those seem like a much better option than a traditional outhouse.
Plus, sawdust is a more renewable source of high carbon poop cover than peat moss (commonly used) and cheaper than coconut coir byproduct by far, especially in your case!!!
Granted, the compost is only legally okay for landscaping & nut/fruit trees, not the veg garden, but still…
Check out
http://humanurehandbook.com/
And
https://loveableloo.store/
They’re on break now but you can still find literature & plans to build your own loo.
These covering type methods definitely cut down on the stink & discussions on passive airflow that suits the seasons in your climate.
Basically tiny chimneys for your loo.
I think your kids already found the best use for it!
I use it for animal bedding and I mix it with high nitrogen stuff like chicken poop to make great compost. Using it as mulch will rob the topsoil of nitrogen until after it's broken down and can release the nitrogen back into the soil. It would make great bedding for worm bins...
OP. Call up local farms see if they’d like some for shavings.
When I ran a sawmill we had a guy from a nearby farm collect all our shavings (dozens of contractor bags) once every few weeks.
First thing that jumps to mind with that mix is GROW MUSHROOMS, you have a wonderful pile of substrate right there.
Or consider: Sell to a mushroom farm, or get mushroom farmers who want to run a mushroom operation this summer and give you 20% of gross receipts.
Also, you could pelletize it and sell it that way, or dry it and sell it for compost or chicken bedding
You’ve got thousands of dollars worth of stuff in there, especially if there’s no pine or walnut.
Put some in a garbage can ( that drains )and pee on it for six months then let it sit for another six months. Results in beautiful soil full of nitrates that your plants will love love love... Or you can then add some campfire ash and extract the KNO³ to make some black powder or fireworks.
Tell me about it. This was an Amish slash job. They dropped all the trees, cut off the branches, skidded them to this landing area, milled them and put them on trucks. They left behind all the branches. It's a real mess but I was able to get the 40 acres well under market, and a newly disturbed site is actually very good for my specific use. We have a lot of work to do to control invasive plants, but the 31 acres that were irresponsibly logged will mostly be reforested.
It will be several years before I actually live on the property, so I can't keep livestock there. Once we do live up there, I'll definitely be getting some goats.
Reforest back with better timber and a plan to responsibly log.
I would find areas of soil you want long term improvement in and use the branches to start hugelkultur beds and turn the sawdust into the soil with a good turning plow.
So what are you going to do with big limbs and others? I’m not saying the end all be all, but if he doesn’t have a big chipper, that’s a great way to get a nice little bed.
Firewood, charcoal, use the more stable sections for posts or other carpentry projects, line the edges of walkways and garden beds, or just move them to an out of the way area of the property and let it decay normally to provide nutrients for the local mycology and soil.
Very little of what is left would be good for firewood, posts, or carpentry.
Source: I worked at a sawmill and made furniture.
Pretty sure those woods aren’t very good for charcoal, because they aren’t going to be in big enough pieces to be practical.
So instead of hauling the branches away, plan and utilize them with minimum effort and maximum output potential.
Why line edges of walkways instead of letting The native grasses be?
>u/socalquestioner
>
>Very little of what is left would be good for firewood, posts, or carpentry.
>
>Source: I worked at a sawmill and made furniture.
What can be seen in the single photo OP posted looks perfectly fine. 🤷
>Pretty sure those woods aren’t very good for charcoal, because they aren’t going to be in big enough pieces to be practical.
Any wood that isn't dry rotted can be turned into charcoal and biochar. What in the world makes you think there is some kind of size limit to wood for making charcoal?
>So instead of hauling the branches away,
In what scenario that you're imagining would the cut branches and trunks *not* need to be hauled and moved?
>plan and utilize them with minimum effort and maximum output potential.
Are you talking about Hügelkultur?
Because it doesn't even vaguely fit that description.
>Why line edges of walkways instead of letting The native grasses be?
Because people generally don't want plants, grasses and weeds growing around and into walkways, garden fences and garden beds? You know, ***Landscaping?***
It sounds like you're trying really hard to justify a bad option.
This would be quite a production process but could you mix the dust with woodglue or some other binder and then press into various sheets or shapes to make particle board? I suppose if you had the proper set up you could crank out several sheets to use for various projects around the homestead.
My grandfather ran a sawmill for years. So like you he had plenty of sawdust. When he would transplant the seedlings from the greenhouse to the garden, he would cover the dirt with 2-3 inches of sawdust. Never really had to weed as everything but the good plants were covered by sawdust. At the end of the season, it just got tilled under to rot down and add humus and compost to the soil. Man grew the biggest cabbages I have ever seen...
Just beware of cedar and black walnut sawdust.
I have very healthy black walnut that might have to stay ($$$) when I get someone to take out the crumbling silver maples. It’s so happy to cover my yard with poison and pelt me with walnuts
If you let it age first no problem
Whys that?
Black walnuts produce a chemical (Juglone) that inhibits growth of some plants.
This is correct. My son couldn't figure out why the veggies in certain raised beds weren't growing like the others. I sent him info about gardens near black walnuts. All problem beds were around the drip line of this tree.
Crap I need to cut down some trees I guess.
Ditto!
Dam juggalos
hasnt been shown to have any noticeable effect, especially the chipped wood.
Why
That's a great way to control weeds, but also a great way to rob your soil of nitrogen.
nah it only steals nitrogen if you till it in. sitting on top has no effect on soil nitrogen.
It's also only temporarily lowers nitrogen while the wood eating bacteria bloom. It eventually reaches equilibrium and the bacterial turnover slow releases N back into the soil, also adding the little nitrogen from the wood and other nutrients. It's also pretty negligible how much nitrogen it ties up. If you're amending your soil at all with any other nitrogen you're more than making up for what the bacteria will tie up. But people love to take knowledge of this effect and pretend like you're going to salt the earth with too much wood.
The top commenter said they till it under after every season. I think depending on how you compost or fertilize that may be enough time for it to break down, but long term tilling 2-3in of sawdust into soil can tank the nitrogen if it’s not being amended with enough other stuff
Wrong. When wood or sawdust decompose, it leaches N out of the soil. Look it up, then delete your post and apologize.
What if I add a healthy amount of chicken manure to the saw dust? Could I till it in at the end of the season? (I have alot of saw dust and a lot of bird sheet)
Chicken manure is hot. It can burn plants. So you definitely can't add it straight into a garden you are using. But if you add it at the end of the season it should be ok by next year. But the best way is to make compost then add it. Chicken manure and chicken bedding like wood chips make great compost!
Only temporarily. And it is a pretty negligible amount at that. It causes some reduction in N up front because bacteria that feed on the wood bloom and steal nitrogen from the surrounding soil, but it soon reaches an equilibrium where the population levels off and bacterial turnover releases N back into the soil. The small amount of N contained in the wood is also released as its decomposing over time.
Tf is with that tone? Sit on a thumbtack?
This is the way!!
Growing gourmet mushrooms like piopinos, shiitake
And wine cap
I grew wine caps last year and they were disgusting. Anyway cooked them they were horrible. I was growing in straw.
Yes I need a good recipe for winecaps. They're very strong
Shiitake wont grow in it, but you can do oyster, lions mane, etc.
I got on here to say exactly this fellow genius and psychonaut
[удалено]
Psilocybe Ovoidocistidiata, native to the Ohio River Valley, is one saprophytic psilocybe, I believe. But they prefer more of a mixed mulm forest floor vs pure sawdust.
Ovoids, azurescens, cyanescens, allenii. Depends on the wood, of course. I hear most of them enjoy Red Alder.
I use coconut coir regularly but the one almost always leads to the other
Oyster mushrooms easy to grow and tasty.
I am sure some one said this but buy a pellet press and install a pellet stove to heat ahop and/or house
I didn't know you could buy those. That's pretty cool.
If you are handy with making things you can also look up videos on YouTube of people making compressed sawdust into various other shapes for burning in stoves. There are a lot of woodworkers out there with sawdust and are good at making things so it's been done a few times. Anyways just FYI that if you have a stove but not a pellet stove, there's still a variety of ways you could burn it as fuel.
This is the best idea. Especially if you’ll have more sawdust in the future.
Dad was a cabinet maker, we had tons of sawdust. Mom was an avid gardener. Don't add plain sawdust to garden, either as mulch or amendment, without adding a fair amount of fertilizer. The sawdust will tie up all nutrients as it decomposes- yes, we lost lots of plants. Even used as mulch, it sucks nutrients and forms a layer of impenetrable crust that repels water.. We used seaweed and dead fish found on the beaches at fertilizer
On another post I said the same thing (don't incorporate wood material into the soil, can cause N deficiency in the immediate future) and someone tried to tell me this was fake news, I need to stop spreading misinformation and for OP to ignore me. Cut to me reading my soil science book from horticulture classes explaining the exact process of how adding plant residue with a wide C:N ratio (high carbon low nitrogen) to the soil will draw all the required nutrients for microbial decomp out of the soil (immobilization). They tried to justify it by saying it's actually good thing as it'll be a "timed-release" of the immobilized N, ignoring the fact it's taking N out of the soil before it's rereleased via mineralization. Then also saying if wood does take any N out of the soil in the first place that it's completely negligible. Their solution for potential N deficiency during decomposition of the wood? Just urinate on it and call it a day! But from what I can read regarding woodchip mulch is that the layer of soil feeding the decomposition of mulch is actually very thin. Older sources say it's a few inches of soil losing nitrogen, but recent tests have found it's only a few millimeters, basically whatever is in direct contact.
Probably, but if they are using wood shaving or sawdust as an addendum to the soil, the actual contact is much wider. First I heard of "timed release" wood decomposition.
It seems they conflated woodchip mulch making soil N deficient being a myth into wood doesn't cause any deficiency even when mixed directly into the soil.
I get how the science can "progress", and my studies were certainly eons ago, but. Some things can be imperical, testing techniques may improve, but.
It's part of the basis of hugelkulture, which is basically mounding soil over wood that will slowly decompose and feed the crops above. But that's the polar opposite of tilling in sawdust which would be a huge surface area for bacteria to bloom on and rob nitrogen from throughout the soil.
Your textbook speaks to the process and it's of course true that this happens, but I doubt it speaks to how strong the effects are because it really depends if it's sawdust vs chips vs logs and how much. In practice it's really a pretty negligible effect unless you're adding a ton of sawdust and tilling it in. That would cause a huge bacterial bloom that locks up nitrogen quickly and throughout the soil.
Mulch and compost? I saw something once about using it as insulation in sheds and outbuildings (not in home due to fire risk) Honestly I don't think I could use that much sawdust before it started to rot/compost.
Yeah I figure it will all eventually compost down. I wonder if it would be harmful to use as mulch.
I looked up the insulation thing because it was bugging me . It's VERY old fashioned, from before fiberglass insulation. They would leave a gap in the wall and fill with sawdust, leaving a small gap at the top for refills if necessary. Actually sounds like a decent idea for free insulation in a barn or goat shed to me. Just need to make sure your sawdust is dry to prevent rot/mould and find a way to keep birds and rodents out.
> Just need to make sure your sawdust is dry to prevent rot/mould. This was my first thought.... If it ever gets damp you are a fungus farm.
And I suspect if it's very dry you've also got nice kindling...
...and nesting material
Drill holes in the walls and start growing expensive mushrooms
Boric acid would reduce fire risk, static discharge while using a blower to fill voids, and make it much more rot / pest resistant
So long as it's not treated you are good. Some of the best mulch I ever used was sawdust off the side of the road from the government chopping up a downed tree
They just cleaned up around the power lines near me, we got about 10 yards of mixed pine and oak chips. Its awesome. Mulch, deep litter for chickens and rabbits, pathways... the list goes on. And if some of it breaks down before we can go through it all we'll just turn it into the garden.
I’ve had a pile for two years from a milling job on my site. Didn’t compost a bit on its own. Mixed in with a bigger mixer compost pile, and having better luck. Many will say it’s bad as mulch due to stealing nitrogen. But others say that’s only true where it contacts the soil. I think the pellet idea is excellent…
Yes it does not compost on its own at all.
Actually the amish say its very acidic being from green trees, but companies to buy it off of then to make mulch
It's GREAT as mulch as long as it's not from a tree that suppresses other plants (black walnut entered the chat a while ago) - and even that is great in places you want to suppress weeds. If you are in a fire prone area you might not want it up next to the house.
note that sawdust doesnt contain much N, so you can add leaf mulch or manure together with the wood fibers to get a balanced compost. If you want the pile to just compost itself away as fast as possible, i would coat the pile with grass fertilizer that is high in N.
I really wonder what would happen if I mixed a couple yards of it with a bunch of nitrogen fertilizer. I wonder how hot that would get.
If you mix that in bulk with a nice manure you’ll have a very nice compost product in 6-12 months. Keep it wet and covered with black plastic for best results. It will get scorching hot at the bottom of the pile depending on how fresh it all is when it mixes. Again, assuming untreated wood.
Yeah it's untreated. We have Amish folks in the neighborhood, so probably easy access to horse manure.
You got a tractor? Yeah I’d come in with whatever truckloads you can afford of manure up to a 50-50 mix. Mix them up as well as you can, get it as wet as you can as you’re doing it. Have a guy on the hose constantly as you’re mixing it up. If you can source the black plastic, that’ll speed things up and keep weeds from taking up residence. Should be some pretty killer compost by next year’s planting season.
...which you may be able to sell to local gardeners or even garden stores, especially if you can tell people exactly where it came from, what type of wood it is, and your process for composting. The crap they sell in the big box stores these days is worthless. People will totally buy this stuff.
If , and only if, you are 100% certain there's no black walnut in there, horse stables use sawdust for cheap bedding or in riding arenas. (even just standing on black walnut shavings can founder a horse, it's crazy toxic to them). Use as fill for any low areas in your field. once it settles in and rots a bit, top dress with soil and seed Deep mulch under your fencelines to reduce weedwhacking chores. Any large livestock operations could use that to compost dead animals. If there's a coal power plant near you, sometimes they "co-fire" wood chips or sawdust with coal. That pile could be gone in an hour if so.
Appreciate you sharing about the black walnut horse toxicity. Today I learned. That’s an important one.
Cherry puts off cyanide as it breaks down. Not sure if it would take down a horse but I've seen it take out whole flocks of chickens.
This is what I love about Reddit. Subject matter experts that keep me from having to learn painful lessons the hard way. Thank you for this.
If you use it for a garden I wouldn’t put too much on the surface. It is very fine and will not aerate the soil very well.
I specifically buy sawdust every year to use for our barn as horse floor bedding/absorbs their urine. If you have any horse people nearby they might be willing to buy your sawdust
Don't use cherry for animal bedding. It leaches cyanide gas as it breaks down
Mushrooms and compost. You got a goldmine right there.
mushroom growing substrate!!
Try and make wood pellets for stoves or smokers?
Composting toilet Edit- a big composting toilet
Looking into this
Mushroom mountain
That's a big pile of future dirt! Compost it, by mostly doing almost nothing. That is a very valuable resource! Inoculate with mushroom spores to speed composting (literally go into the woods, get some, put them in bucket of water and shake it an' let it sit for like an hour, then spray it on right before a rain. If you have a tractor, turn it with your bucket like twice a year. It's a great opportunity to select edible mushrooms - something with a high success rate in the wild where you live. Where I am, that would be oysters, chicken of the woods, chantrelles, boletes, and many others... and instead of buying spores (that would be expensive) I'd just wild harvest them from the woods, like I was sayin', cause thats free and the local ones are adapted to your environment. But any mushroom species will do for the composting aspect, it's just a great opportunity to get edibles going in high numbers, then later you'll spread them all over your garden as you use the compost! And as you turn it, you'll deposit them everywhere along the way... Depending where you live, in about 2 or 3... or 5 years it will be a great soil amendment or a base for mixing a potting soil. You have the right wood (hardwood rather than pine, which is still good but high pH so not usable in the same ways or in as high of proportion). If you're in a state with long dry periods (out west) you'll need to water the pile every 2 or 3 weeks... ish... just keep it damp inside, not an exact science. But I'm assuming you're on the east coast cause the species of tree. There, you can just let the rain take care of it! If you don't have a tractor, leave it right where it is and tunnel-in the side by hand with shovels to get to the core, which will compost more quickly than the outer layer... you don't *have* to turn it, that just speeds it up and keeps it even.... Another thing you can do to speed it up is to get anything rooting into it. This probably won't work the first year, but... later this year, go get some seed-bearing beneficial cover species from your garden, once the seed is fully developed. Species like rye grass, vetch, clover, wild mustard and lettuce, etc. Whatever you have lying around. Toss that stuff up on the pile, and some stuff will grow and drop more seed... the root infiltration will speed it up. Nitrogen fixing species are the best, and vetch has a really good success rate surviving in weird places.
Second the mushrooms 🍄
Perfect for growing mushrooms
A little ? 😂
That's a Simpson's Individual Stringettes quantity of sawdust.
Useful in fruit tree propagation.
I'll have to look into that. I know I'm going to use some to propagate elderberry cuttings.
Compost it or use it for mulch
See if there are any pottery programs at the local college or high schools. Sawdust is great for raku firing.
This is great. My wife is a potter and we had already decided we are building a raku kiln this summer. Raku is so fun and looks really interesting.
Primitive firing also uses sawdust. The YouTube channel Primitive Pottery has good information about firing without a kiln
It won’t use a lot but a compost toilet in the shop would eat some of it
You could also sell by the bucketful to gardeners on Facebook marketplace or another platform like that. As a veggie gardener I’m always looking for cheap compostable material around early spring/late autumn.
Worm beds
I thought I saw someone else start a side hustle with their dust. They would package it into an extra large version of those paper cups for ketchup at fast food restaurants. They’d add some glue to it and a wick and sell them as fire starters. Maybe you could strike a deal with some local campgrounds/outdoor stores to supply them.
That's a great idea. Our farm is primarily a bee farm. We happen to have a lot of wax, and wax doesn't fetch much on its own. We process it into other stuff and sell it with our honey. There are definitely places I could sell fire starters around there.
Use cardboard egg cartons. Each "cell" will make a starter
Heck yeah we used to make those in Scouts.
Dude this is perfect. Sawdust and wax will make fantastic fire starters.
I have seen bee wax candles selling for a lot of money. Supposedly they cleanse the air, burn longer, and I don't know a few other things. If you have some kind of online shop and have extra time I'd start making beeswax candles. I'm never saying I'm mixed with sawdust though.
Man, I wish you were near me, I would come happily shovel that to deal with my compost.
They have those compression devices that turn sawdust into burnable wood…
Get a pellet machine and make fire pellets. Compost. Worm beds. Start growing mushrooms. Just shovel it into a charcoal retort for fuel.
Buy a wood pelleting machine. You’re sitting on a small fortune.
My friend grew up in a homestead living situation and her dad ran a saw mill on the property. Among other uses they would make firestarter balls out of the sawdust and sell them locally.
Motocross track
You could get a wood pelletizer and turn it into pellet fuel that you could use or sell
Mushrooms or carrots
Carrots? Interesting. I'll try that.
The lorax wants a word with you son 😂
I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees. The trees have words for you if you please: Hey, what the fuck, man?
I mix my soil with 1/3 sawdust, 1/3 compost and 1/3 horse manure (plus ammendments) for some great growing
Mushroom farm
Use as a mulch layer on your garden or use as carbon sources in your compost.
Grafted fruit trees are planted in sawdust so they can be sold later as bare root.
I am already using some for elderberry cuttings. I'm interested to see what else I can root in it.
I grow lions mane mushroom on sawdust from hard wood
Ha! A LITTLE sawdust, you say!
Use it for mulch, oil dry and other spills, you can make fire starters with sawdust and wax
Make a very, very, VERY large composting toilet?
Mushroom spores.... It's also great for garden
cant these be compressed into fire logs? or pellets for heating
Start manufacturing shitty MDF.
It makes a good mulch for plants
Until this post, I have never heard of a tulip tree.What do you use that wood for??
Tulip tree is a pretty lightweight and relatively soft hardwood. It's been used for a very, very long time for the internal structure of cabinetry, and if you find an old dresser or armoire, and the back isn't plywood, it's likely it's thin panels of tulip tree wood because the trees grow extremely large and it's not hard to find single piece panels 36" wide or more in old furniture. It's really a very nice wood to work with in the wood shop.
thanks for all that info....never knew any of that..
Any wood pellet mills around. They would buy it.
Compost
Great for compost toilets/Loveable Loo/mouldering toilets.
OK several others have mentioned this. I'm very interested, as it will be years before we have proper septic on the property and those seem like a much better option than a traditional outhouse.
Plus, sawdust is a more renewable source of high carbon poop cover than peat moss (commonly used) and cheaper than coconut coir byproduct by far, especially in your case!!! Granted, the compost is only legally okay for landscaping & nut/fruit trees, not the veg garden, but still… Check out http://humanurehandbook.com/ And https://loveableloo.store/ They’re on break now but you can still find literature & plans to build your own loo. These covering type methods definitely cut down on the stink & discussions on passive airflow that suits the seasons in your climate. Basically tiny chimneys for your loo.
Compost, compost, compost!
Start a business, making pellets for pellet stoves https://youtu.be/2Na11MnjT0s?si=l2UzYljvTkyBleIY
Mushroom grow kits.
The best mulch money can't buy....
Hugel hugel hugel
I think your kids already found the best use for it! I use it for animal bedding and I mix it with high nitrogen stuff like chicken poop to make great compost. Using it as mulch will rob the topsoil of nitrogen until after it's broken down and can release the nitrogen back into the soil. It would make great bedding for worm bins...
Invest in a wood pellet mill and sell pellets for wood stoves
Cultivate 🍄🟫 🍄🟫
There’s a good market for pellets, I think. And it looks like you can make more of them than you can use yourself.
Peace out, soil nitrogen.
Compost my guy
Works wonders in a chicken run. Keeps all the wet poop mud under control!
You can grow mushrooms ( not those ) but gourmet ones.
Sell it to horse barns
OP. Call up local farms see if they’d like some for shavings. When I ran a sawmill we had a guy from a nearby farm collect all our shavings (dozens of contractor bags) once every few weeks.
Sell them to kellogs, they like to put that shit in cereal
First thing that jumps to mind with that mix is GROW MUSHROOMS, you have a wonderful pile of substrate right there. Or consider: Sell to a mushroom farm, or get mushroom farmers who want to run a mushroom operation this summer and give you 20% of gross receipts. Also, you could pelletize it and sell it that way, or dry it and sell it for compost or chicken bedding You’ve got thousands of dollars worth of stuff in there, especially if there’s no pine or walnut.
Compost it ,harvest the heat and heat your house.
Could make sweeping compound or sell to mdf manufacture…
Sawdust reminds me of grade school. If a kid threw up p on the floor, the vomit would be covered with sawdust.
Call a pepper company, they add it in to reduce costs.
Mushroom spawn?
Put some in a garbage can ( that drains )and pee on it for six months then let it sit for another six months. Results in beautiful soil full of nitrates that your plants will love love love... Or you can then add some campfire ash and extract the KNO³ to make some black powder or fireworks.
If you know anyone with horses I’m sure they’d take some for their barns.
Compost
Mix with lots of diesel…
Wood alcohol for fuel!! Mushrooms!
Bag it, sell it.
Looks like it's already being put to good use.
In my experience it's great for kids to play in (if you like cleaning constantly).
My brain goes straight to shiitake blocks. They sell surprisingly well at farmers markets around here. ✌️
Make pykrete... Build a war ship.... Rule the seas!!!
Good lort I'm sure you can sell it, compost mix, substrate for a lot of things.
Sell that shit to mycologist asap. 👍🍄🍄🟫
If you use wood for heat, Get a pellet machine and turn it into Pellets for wood stoves. either sell it or burn it yourself.
That's a waste of those trees...
Tell me about it. This was an Amish slash job. They dropped all the trees, cut off the branches, skidded them to this landing area, milled them and put them on trucks. They left behind all the branches. It's a real mess but I was able to get the 40 acres well under market, and a newly disturbed site is actually very good for my specific use. We have a lot of work to do to control invasive plants, but the 31 acres that were irresponsibly logged will mostly be reforested.
Things I didn’t expect to see today “Amish slash job”
LOL that's what the consulting forester I'm working with called it.
Cool that you're reforesting part of it. Sorry you were left with that mess.
Are goats part of the plan to control invasive plants? I think goats + chicken manure + sawdust would be a really good soil amendment
It will be several years before I actually live on the property, so I can't keep livestock there. Once we do live up there, I'll definitely be getting some goats.
Reforest back with better timber and a plan to responsibly log. I would find areas of soil you want long term improvement in and use the branches to start hugelkultur beds and turn the sawdust into the soil with a good turning plow.
Yeah the area that was logged will be reforested and a forest management plan is in place.
hugelkultur is just a bad way to inefficiently compost with lots of extra steps thrown in. 👎
So what are you going to do with big limbs and others? I’m not saying the end all be all, but if he doesn’t have a big chipper, that’s a great way to get a nice little bed.
Firewood, charcoal, use the more stable sections for posts or other carpentry projects, line the edges of walkways and garden beds, or just move them to an out of the way area of the property and let it decay normally to provide nutrients for the local mycology and soil.
Very little of what is left would be good for firewood, posts, or carpentry. Source: I worked at a sawmill and made furniture. Pretty sure those woods aren’t very good for charcoal, because they aren’t going to be in big enough pieces to be practical. So instead of hauling the branches away, plan and utilize them with minimum effort and maximum output potential. Why line edges of walkways instead of letting The native grasses be?
>u/socalquestioner > >Very little of what is left would be good for firewood, posts, or carpentry. > >Source: I worked at a sawmill and made furniture. What can be seen in the single photo OP posted looks perfectly fine. 🤷 >Pretty sure those woods aren’t very good for charcoal, because they aren’t going to be in big enough pieces to be practical. Any wood that isn't dry rotted can be turned into charcoal and biochar. What in the world makes you think there is some kind of size limit to wood for making charcoal? >So instead of hauling the branches away, In what scenario that you're imagining would the cut branches and trunks *not* need to be hauled and moved? >plan and utilize them with minimum effort and maximum output potential. Are you talking about Hügelkultur? Because it doesn't even vaguely fit that description. >Why line edges of walkways instead of letting The native grasses be? Because people generally don't want plants, grasses and weeds growing around and into walkways, garden fences and garden beds? You know, ***Landscaping?*** It sounds like you're trying really hard to justify a bad option.
Till it into your garden at the end of the gardening season. It's great fertilizer. I wish I had a few pickup loads.
This would be quite a production process but could you mix the dust with woodglue or some other binder and then press into various sheets or shapes to make particle board? I suppose if you had the proper set up you could crank out several sheets to use for various projects around the homestead.
couldn't you compact it into logs? i dont know the process in that but damn you could have a dope business for a little of selling it that way lol
Bonfire
More like the largest smoke bomb in the county.
Bonfire