Does anybody have a good suggestion for getting rid of sawdust. I recently discovered that my city does not allow sawdust to be put out to the curb, I was hoping to do something alittle more enviromentally friendly than that anyway.
I’ve got a composter, but there is only so much that can go in.
Buster2000
Replies
Buster,
Does your city have a Parks dept, or an arborist? Likely they have a place to dispose of clippings, chipped tree limbs etc that they generate, and may let you drop off there.
Regards,
Ray Pine
Buster,
What the !@#$% is the city thinking not taking sawdust? Doesn't it seem like it's about the least harmful garbage you could possibly generate? Maybe I'm missing something.......Anyway, sometimes pet owners will take some sawdust. For horses, rabbits, etc. Also, if there are any ceramic artists nearby, they sometimes use it in raku kiln firings.
-Paul
<.......Anyway, sometimes pet owners will take some sawdust. For horses, rabbits, etc. >I've heard that walnut can be real bad for horses; sometimes fatal. Can't remember exactly why. Anyone?
We had a lady that used to take our sawdust for her horses, actually it was the planer/jointer shavings, and she was careful about what species. We were using mostly domestics at the time, and can't recall if she had issues with walnut in particular. My suspicion is that animals are allergic to some just like we are. I do remember that she wouldn't take any that contained exotics. I'm sure the horse owners out there will know a lot more than I do.
-Paul
Walnut will cause conditions very favorable to a hoof disease. The disease will put the horse down and it will have to be destroyed. This does not apply to dogs, cats, humans, pigs, goats, etc. Walnut shavings also will not leach out the nitrogen absorbers as quickly as other species, so will take longer to become safe for mulch.
When I sold 20 yds of shavings a day for horse bedding to owners of show and racehorses, we had them sign a disclaimer that said they knew the risks, but also stated we would do our best to segregate the Walnut shavings. The fellow we contracted to haul the shavings would come and clean out the good shavings - mostly Poplar, and then we'd run walnut, he'd clean it again and landfill the Walnut, then we'd go back to our usual product mix. We never had a problem. Some folks complained because the high Mahogany loads would stain the hooves pink, considered unattractive in the show ring.
The horse people would then clean the stalls and recycle the mix of manure and shavings into their alfalfa fields for good tilth and fertilizer.
Shavings and sawdust are things that should be recycled on site or near site as much as possible. Easily done, requires no turning or mixing unless you want to hurry things.
Dave S
Thanx for the info, Dave. I had thought it was something like that.
-kevin
p.s. I'm planing to get a sawdust compactor and using the "logs" to keep my shop warm. How's that for recycling? mmmm...toasty...
Kevin, do you have a source for that "log compactor"? I would love to do that as I heat both my house and shop with wood and haul all the saw dust out to the woods to spread out on the trails we have made for cross country skiing. It would be nice to heat the shop with it if feasable.Thanks, Brian
Sorry, Brian, but I do not have a source for a sawdust compactor. I do want one, but it is far down on the list. I wouldn't imagin that they "wood" be to hard to find. ...Sorry for the pun, I had a bit too much turkey ;)-kevin
Walnut: 2 problems with this particular wood (1) it causes laminitis in horses, which is an inflammation of the tissue that connects the hoof wall to the main bone of the foot, fatal in the sense that a severe case leads to the horse being euthanized (rotated pedal bone, yuck! really nasty and very sad).
and (2) walnuts shavings contain a natural herbicide, so if you spread them in your garden, you'll have a very sad garden.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Edited 11/24/2005 10:11 pm by forestgirl
Jamie -Walnut sawdust and shavings have been shown to be toxic (herbicidal) to certain other plant species and types. Not all. To err on the side of caution is the best bet, by all means and simply dispose of walnut shavings separately from others.It's the juglans something or other in walnut that makes it nasty. Some reading I've done suggests that the roots of the living walnut tree exude this into the ground and will kill other plants growing within the root zone of the walnut tree. I suspect that it's a matter of the species of walnut as well since at our last house I had a carpathian walnut growing as a street tree and right at the base had several other bushes and ground cover.But, as noted, no sense tempting fate. Get rid of walnut shavings and sawdust separately.As for the rest of the stuff, as others noted, it makes excellent mulch over landscaping so long as you add something to balance out the nitrogen robbing effects of adding raw carbon material to the soil. Mixing horse or chicken manure with it will greatly enhance the breakdown of the carbon in the wood waste. The down side of horse manure are the weed seeds it contains although proper and thorough composting will often or should kill off the weeds.
DennisS,
Why would you add nitogen rich items to your mulch? The purpose of mulch is to prevent weed growth and moisture loss. The manure would help brake down the mulch faster but this defeats it's purpose, doesn't it?
If you want to compost see my previous post.
Tim You buy a cheap tool twice and then you're still stuck with a cheap tool!
Sorry, Tim, I wasn't clear. I was refering to the compost pile itself. Too much raw sawdust and shavings results in an excess of carbon stuff - that's only, and I stress only on the advice of any of the reading I've done on the subject of composting. However, I would think that too much raw woodwaste in the form of sawdust and shavings would tend to rob nitrogen from the soil as well leaving the landscaping material wanting.
Most of the waste from my shop goes on garden pathes and such in an effort to keep down weeds and grass. It does a pretty good job without any added nutritional supplements.
Sawdust can be composted and then used as mulch around trees and other plantings. I put it into a 3 sided bin and let it age for 3-4 months so the stuff leaches out that normally steals the nitrogen out of the soil, starving the plants. If you have some of the commercial "compost aid" and sprinkle that in and wet it as you pile, it can be ready to use in a few weeks. Test it by putting a handful on green grass. If it turns yellow in a few days, then it is not ready. Fresh sawdust can be used for walk paths once it is adequately wetted down.
I have successfully used sawdust as mulch around 450 trees from sapling to 25 foot tall as well as vegetable and perennial gardens for many years.
Dave S
It's good to mix the sawdust with grass clippings and food waste, to get that nitrogen balance right. Of course, you also have to turn it from time to time, and make sure it's moist enough.
Mine goes to a farmer who uses it in his chicken coop, and as mulch
in his orchard.
Buster 2000
I agree and disagree with some of the posts for using sawdust as a mulch or in a compost bin.
First, sawdust can be used as a mulch as long as it does not get mixed into the soil. This goes to point 2. If the sawdust gets mixed into the soil it will leach every bit of nitrogen out of the soil rendering it unable to grow anything until the sawdust is completely broken down.
Sawdust is very very very high in carbon. A handfull of sawdust needs about 5 gallons of nitrogen rich material to compost into anything usable. The problem is you can't get the sawdust to contact all that nitrogen rich material easily. You would still need to turn the pile every few days to make sure things are mixed. I would highly doubt that sawdust can be composted into anything usable as a fertalizer or soil ammendment in only 3-4 months. It may look good, but I would guess the sawdust was not really broken down and would continue to suck the nitrogen out of the soil as it continued to compost.
The rule of thumb is about a 40:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio. This is about a 4:1 by volumn. 4 parts shreeded leaves to 1 part nitorgen rich material (grass clippings, green material from your kitchen). Sawdust is off the scale in carbon content. If you want to compost your sawdust, do it in a seperate pile and add some very high nitrogen ammendments such as bloodmeal and then turn it often and in a year or so you might yield some low quality compost. The sawdust does not have the mineral content that leaves do.
I did a lot of research on this as I had a 135 year old oak milled and ended up with 200 - 400 gallons of sawdust. I used it as mulch on my vegtable garden. The sawdust worked great as a mulch and the veggies grew great. The next year I learned that this was a no-no on gardens because of the carbon content. So I scraped off as much as I could. I tilled the garden and added more compost and manure, but the garden was essentially baren all year just like I had been told it would be because of the sawdust in the soil.
If you want to use it as mulch, use it in places where it will never be tilled into the soil. Compost at your own risk.
Tim
Howdy Buster. I sure wish you were in Kansas. I use all the sawdust I can get for composting. I agree with the other posters in that you need a lot of nitrogen to break down all of the carbon in saw dust. But I compost around 3000 tons of chicken manure a year, very high in nitrogen. Tree Chick is right about the effects on horses. Not good. An alternative is to use the walnut dust on rose beds. Walnut saw dust will act like a herbicide on sprouting and emerging plants. But it will not kill an already established plant like a rose. Makes for a lot less weeding and a more beautiful rose garden. I apply compost in the fall and work it in and water deeply then reapply the walnut sawdust early in the spring before the weeds start to pop up. You may ask landscaping contractors in your area if they want any sawdust. We have a couple here that make thier own and the demand has grown so much that they now buy some from me. A lot of poeple dont like chemicals out where the kids play. More than you wanted to know so I'll quit. good luck.
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