The Flip side of Fertile Soil

Turn your back on a field for a few days, or in my case a few weeks, and the weeds can get ahead of you.

The onions have been in the ground for over a month and have (presumably) set their roots and are now ready to be mulched.  But not before I weed once to create the clean slate I want for my study.

So I spent a few hours doing that before beginning the process of mulching.

Straw mulch was put down a few days ago on the areas designated for that, and because the space is much smaller than I originally planned for, I used only three full sized square bales for the entire area needing straw as compared to the 10 I thought I'd need.  This resulted in a mulch depth of about 1 inch.

Straw mulching is great, but it does takes time and money, too.  The hope of every would-be mulcher is that the time and money put in now will pay off in spades later. 

Straw Mulching

Then the less glamorous mulch, the Spent Brewer's Grain (SBG) went down today.  SBG has on the plus side of the equation that it is:

• a nice price tag (Free to any taker)
• good levels of nitrogen, potassium and micronutrients

On the other hand, it is:

• Heavy, wet & messy to handle
• Stinky (if held for a few days before applying) 
• Hard to calculate how much you'll need for a 1 inch application

A total if 165 lbs of dry grain will result in 297 lbs of wet grain. (That calculation is based on a homebrewer stating that 10 lbs of grain will absorb 1 gallon of water, which weights approximately 8 lbs.).

Though it seems like a lot of grain, it only actually covered two of the four treatment replications (Row 1 + 4) to a depth of 1".  Luckily the brewer I am working with will be brewing again next week, so more will be available then.

Spent Grain ready to become Mulching Material

Mulch of Straw (Foreground) and Spent Brewer's Grain (Background)