Re: unloading compost?
- To: s*@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
- Subject: Re: [SG] unloading compost?
- From: M* L*
- Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 13:11:57 -0600
This sounds crazy, but it's true. If the truck you're using is a pickup,
you can get a device that covers the floor of the bed and has a hand crank
that goes on the tailgate. You just crank, the floor cover rolls up,
emptying its load over the tailgate, into whatever container you place
there, and it empties out the truck. I bought one, couldn't figure out how
to attach it to my pickup (had a camper shell on it), so returned it. I
think the cost was about $120. See if car supply places have them. I
bought mine at Fred Meyers, but that's a department store chain that only
exists in the Pacific Northwest. The literature and fellows who had tested
it said it would even unload cinder blocks like that, so it could take a
heavy load. Margaret L
At 02:47 PM 10/25/00 -0500, you wrote:
> With all this talk about compost--what kinds, how much, when to add
>it, etc.--I'm waiting to hear how other gardeners do the hard work of
>unloading the stuff. We get a little "home compost" from the bottom of our
>own pile of leaves and weeds, but we need more than that to topdress beds
>and build new ones.
> So we borrow a friend's truck and go to the municipal yard waste
>recyling center. There we get buy pretty nicely rotted and screened leaf
>mold with a good crumbly texture and/or mushroom compost (usually rotted
>horse manure with sawdust). They load it in with big equipment.
> Then we get home and that's when the problem begins. We're usually
>not putting a whole truck full on a given bed and so we want to put some on
>a bed and some in big empty garbage can-type containers for use in smaller
>projects. We also don't want to just dump it in the driveway. But the back
>breaking task of shoveling--from the truck into the wheelbarrow and then
>shoveling from the wheelbarrow into the can (and later shoveling out of the
>can back into the wheelbarrow to take it closer to the bed)--can be really
>time-consuming, not to mention exhausting!
> Does anybody have a solution? We've tried brainstorming about ramps
>and pulleys and all sorts of things, but it all seems too complicated in the
>end....
>
>P.S. Finally finished all the fall planting: 600+ bulbs in the north yard
>and new trellises and plantings for wisterias and climbing hydrangea.
>
>Susan and David in Urbana, Illinois, zone 5b
