[compost_tea] Re: Watering (orchard mulch)

From: David Hall <dchall8_at_texas.net>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:14:37 -0000

--- In compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com, "Tim Kiphart" <kiphart@e...>
wrote:
>
>
>    David Hall Said:
>   The radio guys are very clear about the differences between East
>   Texas cedar, a true cedar, and the Hill Country "cedar," a true
>   juniper.  The true cedar is not to be used as a mulch while the
>   juniper is what they are promoting as a cure for high irrigation
>   costs.
>
>    Tim Kiphart Said:
>
>   A little taxonomy might help.  True cedar as you say is from the
genus
> Cedrus; where as, juniper is from the genus Juniperus.  Local Texas
> vernacular interchanges juniper and cedar.  Cedar post are
juniper, cedar
> mulch is juniper (unless it is from outside of Texas).
>
>   We have NO true Cedrus in East Texas, or Texas for that matter.
>
>
>   Tim

I HATE when I spend three days working on a reply and when I click
the Send button, Yahoo says, "Huh?  Who are you??" and my message
has e-vaporated.  I'll see if I can summarize in less than three
days.

Tim's right.  My radio gurus keep talking about the East Texas cedar
being a true cedar.  Turns out it's all juniper.  You just can't get
a good radio guru anymore (c;  But really, they are real good.  I'll
ask them about this and maybe they can publicly clear it up. 

We have two different cedar mulch type products available here. 
The "East Texas" product is called Cedarcide.  It is a granular
product that smells like a strong cedar chest and is used like a
mulch to repel insects, snakes, slugs, etc.  From what has been said
here, this product is probably not the best mulch for trying to
benefit microbes or plant growth. 

The other mulch product is made in central Texas from ground up
cedar trees.  This material is first cooked and the gasses captured
and distilled for the chi-chi herbal oils market.  The remaining
dregs (cooked wood chips) is dried, bagged, and sold as a mulch. 
This is the material mentioned in the link to Malcolm's website. 
This is the one where he extolls the virtue of this material as a
potting medium all by itself.  As Dr Ingham suggested, it is
preprocessed and quite heavily I might add. 

If you look further into Malcolm's website
(http://www.malcolmbeck.com)
you'll find plenty of references to using the central Texas cedar as
a mulch directly on the ground immediately after it has been
ground.  I'll talk to him and/or Bruce Deuley about that. 

David Hall
San Antonio, TX




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Received on Tue Nov 16 2004 - 13:32:33 EST

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