Compost and N TX

[BB_TX]

Any of you north Texans know of a place where I can buy bulk compost, preferably north of Dallas. My wife wants a new garden for next spring and I want to buy a couple yards of bulk compost to till in to prepare the soil.

[gsganzer]

BB_TX,
Go to the Denton landfill on Saturday's. They sell several products such as DYNO Dirt, DYNO Compost, DYNO mulch, DYNO topsoil. They have a large composting operation where they take tree limbs and other wood products, grind them up, add bio sludge and compost and blend. I bought some for my wife's planters. It's around $30.00/yd. I mixed mine with some aged horse manure. If you need some horse manure, I can set you up with a truckload.

[BB_TX]

Thanks, gaganzer. I looked up the city web site and found the location. Don't need a truck load of manure, but may consider a bucket full later.

[roho]

Truck load of horse ma** were U'r at, I bet U can put him in contact with truck loads of horse manure! Now that's horse country & I bet People beg u to take it off their hands, feet & place! I'm outside of HouTex & we got R share but I think ya'll got us beat! Real horse country! [img]/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[BB_TX]

You are right roho. They are scattered all over this area, but east and a little north from Denton (toward Aubrey) there are some really impressive horse farms.

[gsganzer]

As BB TX said, the real impressive horse ranches are in Aubrey and Pilot Point. The sandy soil in that area is great for raising horses. By the look of some of those spreads, you'd swear horse breeding is the most profitable business in the world. In reality, they probably all have second incomes.

My next door neighbor has 6 - 7 horses. The manure supply is infinite.

[fractal]

Check to see if there are any commercial mushroom plants near you.

I got some mushroom compost this year. They wanted 5 dollars a pickup load (2 dollars a yard). My F350 limped home I had them put so much in it. It is GREAT stuff. Huge amounts of organic material. Almost all the nutrients are gone by the time they harvest, but it is a great way to incrase organic matter. I tossed a couple of handfulls of triple 16 over the plot before I tilled it in and my garden went nuts this year. Durned gophers loved the soft, fertile soil as well [img]/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img].

Anyway, nothing you buy "cheap" will be fully composted. Mushroom compost is one of the better bulk organic material addatives you can find. Cow compost can be problematic depending on what the farmer fed them. My father had a bumper crop of tomatoes all over his front yard when he had a truck load of cow crap dumped on the front yard 40 years ago..

[RobertN]

That stuff can be really great. They do the same thing around here. They charge you $8-15/yd to dump the stuff originally. Then they make thier compost pile and charge you $25/yd to get it back [img]/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

The stuff is usually pretty good. They run "stuff", wood, green stuff, ect through big shredder/grinders. We occasionally run in to small particles of junk in there, bot not too much. Most common thing we find is roof shingle particles.

The expensive stuff is usually nitrified. They gas it up with ammonia to get a high nitrogen content in the product. This can be good, because as you add the compost to your soil, the microbial action will lower the nitrogen content for a period of time. When the microbial action slows down, the nitrogen level comes back up. Gassing the compost helps keep the nitrogen level up during the timeframe that it would normally drop. This is good for the plants. It sures makes the compost smelly though [img]/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[MF1455v]

BB_TX
It might be to far be there was a large mulch and compost place behind Sams club in Plano. The one on Spring Creek right off of 75.

Also I bought a load of rock from a guy last fall. He was tell me he had some good rich compost/dirt that mixed well with that black dirt in our area. I will try to find his number. I think he was located just north of New Hope around Altoga.

[BB_TX]

Thanks MF1455v. I just found out that Plano's composting plant is only about 4-5 miles north of me, on FM 545 just east of Melissa by the feed lot (hmmm? wonder where they get their composting material?? [img]/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]). $28 a yard. They are only open on weekdays at the plant so I may have to slip out a little early one day.