On Friday, November 12, 1999 at 12:00:00 AM UTC-8, John Coggins wrote:
If you grow tomatoes, they like calcium in the soil. Somebody here
suggested using joint compound as a soil additive so I guess crushed
drywall would work as well.


I got an old schoolhouse and the lot for property taxes back when. They obviously heated with wood and coal. Ash disposal was behind the school. After tear down, plowing and some grading I decided that drywall should help cancel out the coal ashes and I had a bunch of scraps. Made big mistake. Figured a good way to chop it up would be to put it through my shredder (old and well used). From the first chunk I threw in, I couldn't even see the machine for the cloud of dust. When finished I ran the shredder and sprayed it with water until it shorted out the engine. That was about 5 minutes after I started the water bath. Runoff was still running white at that point. I haven't even tried to start the machine since.

Results of the ash pile? Still won't grow anything except a few sparse weeds after 30 years.

Harry K