Are Pine Needles good for compost?

[Bill Donovan]

Are pine needles (ground up with a lawn mower) good for compost?

Thanks

Bill Donovan

[animaux]

They are excellent. I collect pine needles from any neighbors who have conifers which shed. We don't have all that many in Austin. I will sometimes drive to the piney areas near Bastrop (an hour or more drive) just to collect pine needles.

[Salty Thumb]

animaux wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Probably if you age them enough and mix them with other things, you will be okay, but for the record:

"... This indicates that the chemical compounds could theoretically be extracted from the pine needles and used on unwanted grass and weeds as a natural herbicide. In order to do this, pine needle composition was researched, and it was discovered that pine needles contain polyphenols and monoterpenes, both of which have been connected with the inhibition of the growth of some plants. Fresh pine needles were then broken down and the compounds extracted with either ethyl acetate or water, and tested on dandelions and grass. Isopropanol was added to the ethyl acetate extracts, as they were not of appropriate consistency to spray on plants. Several different concentrations of each extract, a 5:1 water to isopropanol blank solution as well as a synthetic herbicide were tested for comparison. Grass and dandelion seeds were tested with the same concentrations and conditions to see if these compounds would inhibit germination. "

I also found that walnut leaves have inhibitors too, according to here:

I've never composted pine needles myself, and I'm just reporting this in case someone has used pine compost and wondered why all their plants died.

-- ST

[Tom Jaszewski]

All speculation and falsehoods aside, it makes a fantastic mulch for Pinus plantings of the same species.

[Jim Lewis]

inhibition

Do NOT use pine needles as mulch with blueberries!

Jim Lewis - [e-mail] - Tallahassee, FL - Only to the white man was nature a wilderness -- Luther Standing Bear (Ogallala Sioux Chief)

[Phisherman]

Yes! However, if you azalas or other acid-loving plants pine needles make excellent mulch.

[animaux]

What speculations are you talking about. I think I've seen a few and wondered if they were the same. I suppose we love pine needle mulch down here because it doesn't compact like shredded wood in the sun and though delicate, breaks down very slowly. If I HAD to buy mulch, I'd buy pine straw bales.

[Tom Jaszewski]

Pine needles are not always an appropriate mulch. For me to assume that because I like something makes it the best choice seems silly and baseless. This really becomes obvious when assessing compost derived from different sources bilogically. Pinus for the most part are fungal dominated soils. Pine mulch isn't a very good choice for vegies and turf. IMHO (and some smarter than I)

BTW Vic how the heck is your garden these days? and you? :>)

[animaux]

I have never been better and the garden is trying to sleep. The days are 70s and we had a few almost freezes, nothing too speak of. I believe our garden is finally at a stage where things can be allowed to grow and things are settling in. The coming spring will be the fourth in this garden and it should be the best year to date.

I keep threatening to rent a sod cutter and this winter on a warm day I intend to do that and remove many thousands of sq ft of sod. Sod, the waste of the century, IMO, of course!

Other than that, my life is indeed beyond my wildest dreams. I don't like the idea of having anything in common with Rush Limbaugh, as it seems he now includes, with bravado, terminology of recovery in his lengthy diatribes of hatred. I'm a liberal and want to say FU, but I'm a Buddhist, so I say ILY. That'll have to do. :)

How's the slots?

V

[John Bachman]

I do a considerable amount of composting - about 35 yards per year, probably more next year. I use a lot of leaves, grass clippings and manure. The leaves invariably have some pine needles mixed in. One year later , when I have beautiful compost the one defect is the pine needles. They are black from the surrounding compost but otherwise unaffected. I have no idea how long it take to compost them as I have only been doing this for three years and it takes longer than that.

John

[David J Bockman]

Feel free to tall me it's none of my beeswax, but I'm curious what sect of buddhism?

Dave

70s and we had a

coming spring will be

intend to do that

IMO, of course!

and want to say

doesn't compact

slowly. If I HAD to

[animaux]

Tibetan Buddhism in the Mahayan tradition. I study under, but not directly, Pema Chodron. She is a western born Tibetan Buddhist nun, who lives at Ghempo Abbey in Nova Scotia. Of course, I also study the working of The Dalai Lama, naturally!

Victoria

[Bill Oliver]

Why not?

billo

[Jim Lewis]

See above. Blueberries are sensitive to those things -- a fact I discovered after I mulched my 2 dozen blueberries with pine straw then complained to my local Florida fruit-specialty nursery that the plants weren't doing well. They said to get rid of the pine straw, give the plants a one-time dose of Miracid, and mulch with oak leaves. I did and my berries have been doing better every year since.

It pays to deal with a specialty nursery, or at least a _real_ nursery and not one of those mass-market "home centers."

Jim Lewis - [e-mail] - Tallahassee, FL - Only to the white man was nature a wilderness -- Luther Standing Bear (Ogallala Sioux Chief)

[Tom Jaszewski]

LOL blueberries in florida and the problem is the mulch?

Read some literature on blueberry production in habitats suited to growing bberries and pine straw is used.

[Tom Jaszewski]

maybe it's residual glyphosate.

[gregpresley]

Actually, Tom, southern blueberries are NATIVE to Florida, and are pretty widely grown in the northern part of the state, where they are also found wild in the woods and the national forests. I think they're sometimes called rabbiteye blueberries or some such thing. They are a variety of vaccinium - vaccinium ashei - the other blueberries are vaccinium corymbosum. Both produce edible blueberries, although the southern ones are a little less complex in flavor (to my palate) and more mealy in texture. I have never heard about problems with mulching them with pine needles however. The IFAS unit of the University of Florida is located in Quincy, Florida now, (although part of their project may still be located in Monticelly, Florida) and experimentation on this variety of blueberries is part of their mission. If I were living in Florida I would contact them to find out about how best to grow the blueberries there.

[Salty Thumb]

"gregpresley" wrote in news:brh1p9$38ico$ [e-mail]:

What's kind of interesting is the nursery is reported as recommending the addition of muricid and then oak leaves as mulch. I'm assuming muricid is some type of acidic supplement, but aren't oak leaves going to make the topsoil more basic (and therefore eventually getting you back to where you started)? Of course that doesn't answer why the blueberries were underperforming with the pine mulch.

Anyway, just to keep things straight, the original post was about pine needle compost, not mulch.

[David J Bockman]

[Tom Jaszewski]

oops, guess I'd better put the dunce hat on. Thanks for the enlightenment!