Wednesday, April 7, 2010

LLAMA BEANS FOR EVERYTHING

My Llamas produce the most wonderful manure ever. It is perfectly balanced in potassium, phosphorous and nitrogen. Llama manure discourages some harmful bugs and discourages deer from entering into your garden. You can compost it and make the little beans into a manure tea for your garden plants.  Over the winter, I layered fresh llama beans with leaves and hay and a small bit of chicken manure like lasagna in the garden area. It really improved the hard clay soil.



Our Llama Bean
Factory

Llama beans are sturdy but break down very well when kept moist.
 I sprinkle them right on top of a prepared planter for seeding vegetables and flowers.


The  llama beans protect the little seeds from wind and when the planter is watered it provides a time release fertilizer and it keeps them moist. We used llama beans to cover the grass seed we planted, to keep it moist and protected from the wind. Prepare llama beans tea for fertilizing flowers and vegetables and trees. Just add a shovel full of llama beans to a 5 gallon bucket add water to 3/4 full and let sit overnight. Pour it right where you want it. The tea won't damage most plants or burn in the sun. Please test an area if you are not sure. Experiment with different plants and trees.

I discovered the benefits of these little jewels last year. I was experimenting with what techniques worked best for my windy, dry climate and hard clay soil. I sprinkled llama beans into one planter and dropped in some basil seed. The other planter had steer manure and top soil and amendments I planted basil seed in them also.  The planter with the llama beans produced a hundred sprouted seeds that were later thinned and produced beautiful throughout the season. The other planter had none. Yep, I vote for llama beans. I used them everywhere.


We plowed up the old lawn in the garden and recycled grass clumps by piling the heavy clods of soil roots and grass into a long hill along the fence. I topped it with llama manure and later in the spring I planted wild flowers. The chuncky clods of lawn grew thick green grass and the flowers seeds grew into baby's breath, California poppies, bachelor buttons and dianthus and camomile. There were few weeds, even the bindweed was discouraged.



Tilled garden plot on the left. recycled grass knoll on left.
 















Our Wedding Arbor



The wooden planters in the back along the fence were set in place and filled with some of the new
 mixture and of course more llama beans.




Llama beans were spread out onto the ground













                                                                        





Then we scattered grass seed and topped it with composted llama manure, 365 days worth.





This little spreader came in handy. I spread some seeds by hands and some spots were quite uneven. The wind began to blow and this seed broadcaster did a great job.












Paul built us this wooden compost bin.  He also made me a path for dumping after I clean the corral.



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