Toil
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fafard shrimp/seaweed compost at agway - anaerobic palette

I wanted to look at some in the microscope and have some thing nice and neat to make some seed balls. Much to my dismay, the entire palette smelled like athlete's swamp.

there was another palette that seemed fine. have you ever tried to clue in an agway employee that the compost was anaerobic? They actually said it's supposed to smell because it is shrimp and seaweed.

I did my best, and told them fafard would probably reimburse them. I have no clue if that's true, but I figure in the course of pursuing it they will find out what anaerobic means.

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rainbowgardener
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I don't really have any idea what you are talking about (well I got the general gist that you were looking at some kind of compost stuff that had gone all nasty and anaerobic and the store didn't care).

What in this usage is a palette? what kind of a place is agway? fafard?

would you expect that a finished seafood compost would have living critters to look at under your microscope? Especially after it has been packed and shipped and stored and whatever else? You know more about it than I do, but that would not have been my expectation...

Toil
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rainbowgardener wrote:I don't really have any idea what you are talking about (well I got the general gist that you were looking at some kind of compost stuff that had gone all nasty and anaerobic and the store didn't care).

What in this usage is a palette? what kind of a place is agway? fafard?

would you expect that a finished seafood compost would have living critters to look at under your microscope? Especially after it has been packed and shipped and stored and whatever else? You know more about it than I do, but that would not have been my expectation...
never worked retail, eh? A palette is a wooden structure, built to accomodate a forklift. Things are piled on top and secured together, and it makes for easy transport. Over time the amount that fits on one has come to mean a unit of measurement.

Fafard is a very good company that makes media and such for the horticulture business (they make the soilless mix that is pine bark instead of peat). Agway is a farm and garden and pets and horses store.

The compost was in bags, and I'd say fafard does a pretty good job. Each bag has lots of perforations. I've looked at it in years past and it's always been good looking/smelling. This batch may not have been fully finished.


I do expect to see plenty of critters! Finished compost is always pretty quiet, but you culture it and it explodes. Many of the microbes are made to survive all kinds of things. Protozoa just form cysts for instance, and wake up with the water. Or check out rotifers - they reproduce asexually, so they are easy to match up. All over the world, it's the same. So they have gone dormant as their environment dries, and when the dust blew across the planet over oceans and mountains, they travelled too.

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gixxerific
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You mean "pallet"

Palette is too fancy for here. Maybe in a painters mixing board. :wink:

Toil
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:oops:

lol yes I mean pallet. sorry I am a frenchie

The Helpful Gardener
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Mas oui, mon ami... :wink:

Agway is an old Northeast farm store coop that got bought out by Southern States a decade back, but they kept the name because, well, we ain't a Southern state...

And anaerobic shrimp and fish will kill a lot of plants this year, I bet...

Which Agway, toil? I probably know the owner...

HG

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agway north haven on state street.

and now I am making seedballs with the bags from a good pallet and I have to screen it first! :x

tons of sticks and other unfinished browns. I think someone really screwed up and they had to get it to market. I am using the stuff left overfrom screening as mulch, but id rather buy both seperate.

If I am spending actual money for compost, I expect it not to suck!

Fafard, you disappoint me.



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