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Hi All Does anybody know where in the Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny area i can buy compost by the trailer load. I have a large area where the soil is not good (sandy, on a slope) and i want to plant it up during the spring and summer months so im going to dig compost and fertiliser into it. Or other suggestions on how i could improve the soil would be appreciated too. Thanks for your help Eileen
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Your best bet on sandy soil is to use well-rotted farmyard manure, or even better, spent mushroom compost. The former is usually available locally, horse manure would be fine. Apply at a rate of 5 kg per square metre.
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Hi rewolf Thanks for your reply. I have sourced spent compost from a local mushroom grower and he is giving me as much as I want. And better again, its all free. Just have to give him a buzz a day or 2 before i go down to make sure there will be someone there to load the trailer. Plenty of digging to be done now. Happy Days!! Eileen
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Eileen,
Its great that you can get SMC for free, cause your doing the farmer a favour. Word of advise, SMC comes out fresh and needs to be composted further to stablise the pH and to free up available nutrients that are good for the soil. If it is not composted it will rob the soil of nutrients as it tries to stablise in the ground and the high pH will kick the hell out of young plants. I have learnt the long hard way. I put a poly two years ago and im hoping this year ill get my yield. I put up a second one late last year and used a peat-free compost, planted nothing yet but have researched it to be very good. i have found when the SMC is composted right, when you can get it, its super, high in N,P,K and the plants thrive in it. Quiz the farmer about his practice, does he mature it, ( maturing does not mean dumping it in the field for years until looks composty-like) it needs to be turned and not allowed to turn anaerobic- this is were bad bacteria live, and the smell that is associated with SMC.
There are places that do it right Custom mushrooms, Monaghan Mushrooms.
More info can be found on this links
[/url] the Irish Peat ConservationCouncil[url=http://www.ipcc.ie/compwildpeatfreeirl.html]
Or [/url] the composting association of Ireland[url=http://www.cre.ie/]
Hope this helps
Seamus
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I wish to goodness that I had read this entry on mushroom compost yesterday as I collected some this afternoon and put it straight into newly dug beds. Now I find I should have left it to rot down. Is there anything I can do to balance out this soil please tell me there is some simple remedy.
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Hi,
All fresh mushroom and manure will take nutrients from the soil as it tries to breakdown. So your newly planted area will struggle at first. The only thing you can do is wait!
To repeat my previous post, know source of the material. THEN if it has undergone an aerobic composting process can it be sold as compost. Leaving it sit in the in some pile for three and a half years is not composting!! The centre of the pile will of broken down anaerobically and the outer skin will have broken down at a slower rate and still may have weed seeds present. It is important to turn compost pile, even if they are in your back garden! Take it from a wise old gardener!
The composting company i have used for the past two years is www.enrich.ie
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