WORK WONDERS WITH WOODWASTES

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In the long run, wood decomposition and the humus that results from it-will actually add nitrogen to your soil. But while the wood's still decaying, you'll probably have to supplement the garden's supply of the element. Fortunately, the task of getting more nitrogen in the ground is an easy one. You can, for example, add cottonseed or alfalfa meal to your woodwastes. Or-on the other hand -you might use an organic nitrogenous fertilizer . . . or compost your tree pieces with cow or chicken manure.

I've found the best way to solve this garden dilemma, though. I simply use sawdust as bedding in my horse stalls. The fragments perform admirably in the steeds' parlors (the ground-up wood retains moisture . . . so well that saloon-keepers used to cover their floors with it). More important, the "tree sand" gets to load up on animal-given nitrogen. When the sawdust is soaked, I till it into my soil . . . and the results are healthy plants and heavy yields.

Of course, people have used trees as fuel, furniture, food-and more-for centuries. But a lot of folks are just beginning to appreciate the "leftover" benefits of wood. In fact, I know several agricultural businessmen who've profited by switching from straw to woodwastes, including an orchardist who saved $180 on tree mulch . . . a blueberry grower whose crop yield doubled . .. and a dairyman who cut his cattle bedding costs by $5,000 in one winter alone!

And judging from the produce that "crops up" in my vegetable patch, I ain't done so bad by the technique myself. So take my advice: If you want to improve the plant life around your homestead . . . don't "waste" woodwastes!

WHAT I SAW AT THE SAWMILL

Once you find you've been bitten by the woodwastes bug, you'll probably want to scrounge up a supply of free tree leavings. And the first source that'll likely come to mind may be what else?-a sawmill.

Well, time was when that logic made a lot of sense. In those days anyone who approached a lumber plant was immediately hit by heavy clouds of smoke. Then (if the person wasn't driven away by the acrid pall) he or she would dimly perceive the cone-shaped incinerators where-gasp!-they actually burned precious bark, sawdust, and slabs . . . just to get rid of them!

Nowadays, however, things are different . . . because sawmills are wising up. Let me tell you about a bark-hunting visit I made to a plant in McClure, Pennsylvania just to show what I mean.

When I drove up toward Jim Bickel's sawmill, I expected to see the traditional globs of billowing smoke. Instead, I encountered vast mounds of decomposing wood pieces . . . piles so large they practically rearranged the region's topography! Huge front-end loaders were shifting materials in the various "hills" ... emptying a fresh load here carting some of a darker pile off over there. I parked my pickup truck near a butte of bark chips just before a huge farm truck-its high sides stuffed with wood leavings-forced its way by my vehicle. After that fellow roared past, I heard a large chipping machine whining away near a mountain of leftover lumber slabs.

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