A friend of mine in DFW here she tells me that when her tomatoes get all mid summer scraggly from the heat she cuts back on them and waits until the Fall for a 2nd burst of growth. I may rethink my plan of using cuttings and just try to nurse those mater plants via trimmings past August and beyond.
I have a volunteer mater in the tree ring and the others I transplanted to containers but they are slow pokes—but maybe they will be late producers in the Fall if they make it that far. Or if I make it that far, eheheheheheh. Just kidding!
MDF is Medium Density Fiberboard. All the woodworking shops that make kitchen cabinets, furniture and the like, use MDF and end up with huge sacks of the dust which they are glad to give you, because otherwise they have to pay somebody to take it to the landfill.
At first gardeners were hesitant about using MDF dust for composting, because it is NOT like pure natural sawdust: it contains 10% or more chemicals (gums and binders) which we gardeners were suspicious of. The main binders are U-F (Urea-Formaldehyde) and Melamine.
However! Researchers have found that the U-F and M break down completely and rapidly into nice Nitrogen (mostly in the form ammonia) and that quickly gets the sawdust cooking compost-wise. They record no production of toxins of any kind: everything breaks down into N, CO2, and water. The resulting crumbly compost has a nice texture and is a good soil amendment.
Would like to know what anybody else thinks of this. Has anybody checked this out? HOw did you use it?
I did some experimenting when a woodworking friend give me 4 huge sacks of the stuff, and I'm finding it's actually a great free soil amendment, side-dressing, compost cooker and bulker.
Sounds like a plan.