Tub Grinder Used To Make Cornstalk Bale Mulch

Tub Grinder Used To Make Cornstalk Bale Mulch MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 22-1-41 "I've used it on 15,000 of my trees and about 5,000 others and they're doing great," says Steve Lorentz who uses a tub grinder to lay down a mat of mulched cornstalks around the base of his young trees to keep down weeds and limit rodent damage. The Stanton, Minn., tree farmer is finding cornstalk mulch works as well as commercial plastic mulching material but costs much less, as little as $1.50 per tree. He gets 5 by 6-ft. cornstalk bales from local farmers. He uses a Patz tub grinder to shred corn-stalks into 1 to 3-in. pieces, then blows the material around the base of the trees in an 8-in. deep mat through the machine's polyurethane hose. Lorentz equipped the tractor-pulled grinder with a hose swivel that pivots 270 degrees so he can blow the mulch up to 15 ft. in any direction from the grinder. Using the tub grinder, Lorentz can mulch up to 400 trees per hour. The mulch lasts about two seasons be-fore it degrades and that's about ideal for the young trees that are hardy enough to do with-out it after that length of time, he says. Lorentz also planted 200 tomato plants into a 6-in. thick cornstalk mulch this year and uses it on flowers planted around his house with good results. He wants to make the system more mobile, perhaps by mounting the grinder on a truck, to make it more practical, he says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Steve Lorentz, 33249 35th Ave., Stanton, Minn. 55018 (ph/fax 507 263-4021).

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