Be joyful though you have considered all the facts
It was the combination of finding an eggshell in the compost and staring at our soil test results that did it. I started researching and one thing led to another. But I figured it out, the basics of it, anyway. The result is a long text, so I’m serializing it over the next couple of …
Continue reading “Of Eggshells and Calcium in Soil, Compost – Part 1”
Plangarden and Gimp are handy tools for moving things around in the garden without too much back ache. This is a preliminary map for the Spring 2010 Garden – not the veggies yet, but at least the structures. The hoop house will be moved from its present position (light blue) over beds 8, 9 (still …
Two peppers reached maturity while we were in Belgium. What a succulent red, and so photogenic! They’ll be going onto the pizza soon. The plants will stay indoors and might give us our earliest peppers next season.
After two weeks of virtually no blogging, it’s lists like these that can get me going again. Yesterday I listed this week’s goals, today I’m looking at the Big Homesteading Plans for 2010. There is some sort of order here, but don’t ask me which. Chicken coop (cob? attached to greenhouse? moat?) and 6 (?) …
To do this week: plan Spring and Summer garden inventorize left-over and saved seeds read all the gorgeous seed catalogs that arrived while we were gone order new seeds figure out a better seedling “hotbox” – buy seed mats? enroll in bee school, chicken class, and pottery The plants under row cover in the hoop …
A few weeks ago I used up all my compost. I had two full Earth Machines and one pile overflowing its chicken wire container. Not all of this compost was done yet, but after mixing it all up and adding straw, it was just the right mix of finished and unfinished for my purposes: mulching …
Whew, we got the plastic on the hoop house frame right in time, a couple of hours in fact before the snowstorm blew in. We used 6 mil landscape plastic, which turned out more opaque than we thought it would: will it reflect and diffuse the sunlight too much? Well, it will have to do …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShCEKL-mQ8&feature=related I just watched a beautiful and well-paced BBC documentary called Farm for the Future. I’m totally re-energized by it. I wish I could find a permaculture course that’s nearby, affordable, and spread over a couple of weekends and evenings (not the luxury-resort two week intensive). In the meantime, I shall be hitting the books …
Continue reading “Tools for Transition: A Farm for the Future”
I set up the kindling dryer – very simply the old soil screen under the shed roof. Amie and I hauled some more kindling, because I figured once it starts snowing it won’t be visible and for the picking anymore. I also finished the putting to bed of the beds. As I was looking around …