This year I am applying a serious amount of organic matter to the vegetable garden and a new hazelnut growing field. My source is a dairyfarm over in Wisconsin that markets their composted dairy manure as Cowsmos. I have two 1500-pound totes of straight dairy manure compost and two totes of this mixed with biochar – a more persistant form of organic matter used as a soil ammendment.  I had help from a dear friend this week to get the material applied for use in vegetable production for my produce CSA and also to benefit the hazelnut planting going in next month.  The latter was carefully set up to help determine the relative benefit of biochar vs. simple compost. This will be a long term evaluation.

Making use of used feed bags to make paths among beds to be topped with composts.

Transferring the moist compost to the front loader for transport to the garden.

Five-gallon buckets full of biochar/manure mix (darker – to left) and simple manure compost (lighter brown – to right) in area worked up for hazel planting.