There are plum and pear trees planted. The garden is sprouting beans, peas, greens, tomatoes and peppers. Everything is in order for the best summer yet!
I finished the final rain barrel installation this morning and I am glad to say that, after a nice heavy day of rain, I've got about 220 gallons of rainwater waiting for me to use it.
I've begun work on the chicken coop. I will post some progress images soon. The main garden bed has been prepped and I've planted some popcorn as well as kale and other greens there as well.
I've got Nasturtium flowers growing on my edges and I even got my hands on a moon flower to help the local bats this year.
This is going to be a banner season!
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
Life after PDC
I am currently working on several projects right now. Most of them will come to fruition in the spring. I don't want to make any promises at this time, but the projects include some permaculture design, chickens, blacksmith work, gardening in my backyard and potentially doing some community work in the Brightmoor area in preparation for a bigger move one day soon.
Not to be too cryptic about everything, I'll disclose some info on some of these. The foundations for the chicken coop are in…sort of. I plan to break ground on this project after the weather breaks in the spring. Finally… I have the design pretty much planned and now I just have to take the time to complete it. It should be fun once I get started, which will make it a bit easier to complete.
In conjunction with the coop, I am planning on having the gigantic oak tree removed from the middle of my back garden and after that, I'll dig a couple of swales and get some fruit trees started. This will be in addition to increasing the garden space again this year and getting the vegetables in early using cold frames and maybe even the greenhouse chicken coop.
In the meantime, I'm working on building a small blacksmithing operation. At first glance, most of what I'm doing with this is going to look pretty sad. I'm building my forge from found and recycled materials. I got my hands on a boatload of incredibly old tools, some that my grandfather used 70+ years ago. Everything is old and a bit beat up, but we have all the tools and supplies that we need to get started now. The plan is to begin by attempting to forge some knives and cutting tools. We may try to make some of our own blacksmithing tools as well. I'll be posting images and videos as we are going along.
More to come in the next day or so...
Not to be too cryptic about everything, I'll disclose some info on some of these. The foundations for the chicken coop are in…sort of. I plan to break ground on this project after the weather breaks in the spring. Finally… I have the design pretty much planned and now I just have to take the time to complete it. It should be fun once I get started, which will make it a bit easier to complete.
In conjunction with the coop, I am planning on having the gigantic oak tree removed from the middle of my back garden and after that, I'll dig a couple of swales and get some fruit trees started. This will be in addition to increasing the garden space again this year and getting the vegetables in early using cold frames and maybe even the greenhouse chicken coop.
In the meantime, I'm working on building a small blacksmithing operation. At first glance, most of what I'm doing with this is going to look pretty sad. I'm building my forge from found and recycled materials. I got my hands on a boatload of incredibly old tools, some that my grandfather used 70+ years ago. Everything is old and a bit beat up, but we have all the tools and supplies that we need to get started now. The plan is to begin by attempting to forge some knives and cutting tools. We may try to make some of our own blacksmithing tools as well. I'll be posting images and videos as we are going along.
More to come in the next day or so...
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Permaculture Design Exercise
These are the images and a short description of my final design exercise in my certification course. I am hoping that I don't get an email from the institute telling me that I have issues with my design. The way I understand it, if I don't hear from them, I'll have my certificate within a couple of weeks.
I chose a piece of property that I may one day be able to develop, since it is family land. It belongs to my grandfather.
The total property is 40 acres or about 16.5 hectares. The boundaries form an upside down L shape and there is a small creek that runs through the middle of the property year-round. There is a house on the site, along with several outbuilding structures near the main road. There is a small marshy area in the NW corner of the property and lots of wooded land around the borders.
I chose to place a new house site in one of the empty grassy fields, SW of the existing house, because of the contours within that field and the access to water and other resources. Building an earth-sheltered house into the side of a hill works better because you can add features to the house using the elevation change of the hill that help with the natural cooling and heating cycles of the year. being on a hill also provides me with a much broader sun exposure during the winter months and that is important for both the greenhouse and the solar array I will be implementing to provide power to the house and outbuildings.
My current design establishes an approx. 2000 sq ft house, a 625 sq ft animal shed, a 150 sq ft blacksmith shop and a small chicken coop near the house. The house itself will be earth-sheltered and be made of primarily wood harvested from the property and cob or cob mixed with other recycled materials. This is kind of the way they build earthships, except earthships are way more extravagant than you need for everyday living. The other outbuildings will use either timber and cob or timber, cob and recycled bricks. The only thing I would build using newly acquired materials is the blacksmith forge, which would be composed primarily of refractory bricks, surrounded by cob.
There is a 625 sq ft (these numbers are not set in stone and only came from the fact that I used a specific scale on the grid paper to make sure everything would fit to scale) kitchen garden just outside of the house to the West, with an herb spiral next to it. These will supply the house with all sorts of everyday needs in both herb and vegetable produce. The main crop garden is in Zone 2 and measures about 10,000 sq ft. This is where you grow all of your crops needed for year round living. huge amounts of root crops for winter root cellar storage are grown here as well as the long germinating varieties of beans and corn and tomatoes and squash...etc. The kitchen garden is composed of a lot of greens and small everyday meal plants, where the main garden grows the large plants that we harvest and preserve or freeze.
There are several food forest sites all over the property where we grow fruit trees along swale mounds and understory berry bushes and other edibles. I have designed 3 dams on the property as well to attempt to harness the water on the site so that I can pump some to the house and use the rest for irrigation and possibly even aquaculture (fish) one day. The stuff in the bottom of a fish pond is about the most amazing fertilizer you can find anywhere.
I think that about covers it. There is plenty more that I could say, but I'll just post the images and you'll get the point I think.
This is an actual topographic image of the site with the boundaries superimposed.
This is my design. It is definitely subject to change since this is my first attempt ever.
An image of the house site with the outbuildings. Hopefully it isn't hard to understand.
Finally, some of that food forest I was talking about. This picture also shows one of my designed dams.
With any luck, I'll be doing this kind of thing for a living within the next year or so. The design aspect is only one of many in permaculture. I also get to go out into the field and survey and move earth to build dams and swales. There is home design and building. And, of course, I'll also be doing some blacksmithing and selling my products to people online and locally.
I chose a piece of property that I may one day be able to develop, since it is family land. It belongs to my grandfather.
The total property is 40 acres or about 16.5 hectares. The boundaries form an upside down L shape and there is a small creek that runs through the middle of the property year-round. There is a house on the site, along with several outbuilding structures near the main road. There is a small marshy area in the NW corner of the property and lots of wooded land around the borders.
I chose to place a new house site in one of the empty grassy fields, SW of the existing house, because of the contours within that field and the access to water and other resources. Building an earth-sheltered house into the side of a hill works better because you can add features to the house using the elevation change of the hill that help with the natural cooling and heating cycles of the year. being on a hill also provides me with a much broader sun exposure during the winter months and that is important for both the greenhouse and the solar array I will be implementing to provide power to the house and outbuildings.
My current design establishes an approx. 2000 sq ft house, a 625 sq ft animal shed, a 150 sq ft blacksmith shop and a small chicken coop near the house. The house itself will be earth-sheltered and be made of primarily wood harvested from the property and cob or cob mixed with other recycled materials. This is kind of the way they build earthships, except earthships are way more extravagant than you need for everyday living. The other outbuildings will use either timber and cob or timber, cob and recycled bricks. The only thing I would build using newly acquired materials is the blacksmith forge, which would be composed primarily of refractory bricks, surrounded by cob.
There is a 625 sq ft (these numbers are not set in stone and only came from the fact that I used a specific scale on the grid paper to make sure everything would fit to scale) kitchen garden just outside of the house to the West, with an herb spiral next to it. These will supply the house with all sorts of everyday needs in both herb and vegetable produce. The main crop garden is in Zone 2 and measures about 10,000 sq ft. This is where you grow all of your crops needed for year round living. huge amounts of root crops for winter root cellar storage are grown here as well as the long germinating varieties of beans and corn and tomatoes and squash...etc. The kitchen garden is composed of a lot of greens and small everyday meal plants, where the main garden grows the large plants that we harvest and preserve or freeze.
There are several food forest sites all over the property where we grow fruit trees along swale mounds and understory berry bushes and other edibles. I have designed 3 dams on the property as well to attempt to harness the water on the site so that I can pump some to the house and use the rest for irrigation and possibly even aquaculture (fish) one day. The stuff in the bottom of a fish pond is about the most amazing fertilizer you can find anywhere.
I think that about covers it. There is plenty more that I could say, but I'll just post the images and you'll get the point I think.
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| From Permaculture |
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| From Permaculture |
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| From Permaculture |
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| From Permaculture |
With any luck, I'll be doing this kind of thing for a living within the next year or so. The design aspect is only one of many in permaculture. I also get to go out into the field and survey and move earth to build dams and swales. There is home design and building. And, of course, I'll also be doing some blacksmithing and selling my products to people online and locally.
Permaculture Certification
Summer has pretty much passed me by. Between working on the rental house we bought in May and trying to keep up with life I barely had time to go out into the garden and look at the plants this year.
Some things grew marvelously without me. Other things really needed my attention and, therefore, were not as strong as they could have otherwise been. Here are a couple of pictures:
Pretty nice, right? And this is what it turned into:
Jungle...
Some things grew marvelously without me. Other things really needed my attention and, therefore, were not as strong as they could have otherwise been. Here are a couple of pictures:
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| From Garden |
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| From Garden |
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| From Garden |
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| From Garden |
I have learned a few things this season, which makes up for the lack of success I achieved in the beds. I think the first lesson I am drawing from this year's garden is that my tomato plants need a bed of their own in which they can just consume all the space.
The best thing to come from this summer was my completion of the first of my certifications in Permaculture Design. I was hesitant to take a course online due to the lack of hands on experience. But then in March, Geoff Lawton offered an online certification that promised to be incredibly comprehensive and worth the money. I have to say, it definitely was.
I submitted my final design on September 26 and I haven't heard anything to tell me there were issues so I'm hoping that means I have a certificate coming in the mail from Australia. I'll post the design elements in my next update.
So now I have to tear the garden apart and start several large batches of compost from the green materials in the garden and the dead leaves that will shower my yard in the coming weeks.
I almost forgot to mention that I also finished a Master Composter class through my local county this summer. So I know everything there is to know about municipal yard waste composting. Fun times!
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Garden Progress
It seems as though I can never get the garden started at the time I'd like to. This year, that worked out in my favor.
I've never been really keen on forcing my plants to survive events that they couldn't normally survive on their own. This includes covering for frost. Now, to be fair, I didn't plant any of my cole crops during the proper time in which they should have been planted. I also didn't get my tomato or cucumber seedlings transplanted until a few days into June. This all turned out to be a very good thing because we got one last frost here on the Sunday before memorial day. The community garden where I have a few things planted this year lost a lot of crops due to the very late frost. I got lucky because I was too busy to plant anything until June 3rd!
Here are a couple of updated pictures of the garden in my back yard. I still have one bed to cut and prep which will host my beans and corn and some root veggies. The largest bed in the photo is half sewn with buckwheat and amaranth and the rest is tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, basil, celery and peppers. The 5x5 that you see in the photos has been prepped and contains lettuces, spinach, herbs, garlic and onions.
I double dug the half of the garden which would have the food crop in it. Double digging is probably the hardest garden-related activity I've ever performed. The digging is relatively easy, but my beds were littered with roots and so moving one trench into the next was a chore. The roots held everything together except the top layer, which would landslide into the trench ahead or behind. The whole point of double digging it to loosen 24" deep while maintaining soil structure and I found that to be a very difficult thing to do well. Maybe I'll try again in a couple of seasons.
I found some info online about "trench planting" tomatoes. I had a couple that had grown a bit wonky so I tried the trenching method. Of the 8 plants I put in, I trenched 3 so we will see how well they do.
The final step was to layer about 1.5" thick of compost on top of the beds. This step is crucial, as compost has an amazing water retention factor and acts somewhat like mulch with water. The only hard part about using only compost is that it is amazingly suited to grow things, which means any kind of weed or grass seed that ends up in it grows amazingly well. Compost added every year also greatly helps the structure of your soil. Layer after layer builds up to be a lovely high structure of organic matter and nutrients.
I began building the beginnings of my new composter a while back. Here are some images of that. I still have 2 more frames that same size to build, as well as a door for each and a lid.
I ran out of leftover cedar for the side with one plank to go! I have some more on standby now until I have some time to cut it and install it. This container is about 3 cubic feet, the size required to successfully hot compost all compostable materials (including vegetable cellulose plastics). The next 2 units will attach to this one and will also be about 3 cubic feet. I also plan on building another unit near the chicken coop once that is completed to allow for the composting of manure for fertilizer.
I suppose that is enough for this post. I will be updated more and more as the summer progresses and my projects get more complicated. I am thinking I'll also highlight some of the tools I use from time to time for reference material.
I need to work on a new sign off. Stan Lee calls everyone "true believers" and most newscasters say something like "stay classy San Diego". I need a little quip to end with. I'm thinking something like "Until next time, keep growing!" but anything I come up with sounds stupid in my mind...so just check back here frequently this summer for more updates.
I've never been really keen on forcing my plants to survive events that they couldn't normally survive on their own. This includes covering for frost. Now, to be fair, I didn't plant any of my cole crops during the proper time in which they should have been planted. I also didn't get my tomato or cucumber seedlings transplanted until a few days into June. This all turned out to be a very good thing because we got one last frost here on the Sunday before memorial day. The community garden where I have a few things planted this year lost a lot of crops due to the very late frost. I got lucky because I was too busy to plant anything until June 3rd!
Here are a couple of updated pictures of the garden in my back yard. I still have one bed to cut and prep which will host my beans and corn and some root veggies. The largest bed in the photo is half sewn with buckwheat and amaranth and the rest is tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, basil, celery and peppers. The 5x5 that you see in the photos has been prepped and contains lettuces, spinach, herbs, garlic and onions.
 |
| From Garden |
I double dug the half of the garden which would have the food crop in it. Double digging is probably the hardest garden-related activity I've ever performed. The digging is relatively easy, but my beds were littered with roots and so moving one trench into the next was a chore. The roots held everything together except the top layer, which would landslide into the trench ahead or behind. The whole point of double digging it to loosen 24" deep while maintaining soil structure and I found that to be a very difficult thing to do well. Maybe I'll try again in a couple of seasons.
 |
| From Garden |
I found some info online about "trench planting" tomatoes. I had a couple that had grown a bit wonky so I tried the trenching method. Of the 8 plants I put in, I trenched 3 so we will see how well they do.
 |
| From Garden |
The final step was to layer about 1.5" thick of compost on top of the beds. This step is crucial, as compost has an amazing water retention factor and acts somewhat like mulch with water. The only hard part about using only compost is that it is amazingly suited to grow things, which means any kind of weed or grass seed that ends up in it grows amazingly well. Compost added every year also greatly helps the structure of your soil. Layer after layer builds up to be a lovely high structure of organic matter and nutrients.
I began building the beginnings of my new composter a while back. Here are some images of that. I still have 2 more frames that same size to build, as well as a door for each and a lid.
 |
| From Permaculture |
 |
| From Permaculture |
I ran out of leftover cedar for the side with one plank to go! I have some more on standby now until I have some time to cut it and install it. This container is about 3 cubic feet, the size required to successfully hot compost all compostable materials (including vegetable cellulose plastics). The next 2 units will attach to this one and will also be about 3 cubic feet. I also plan on building another unit near the chicken coop once that is completed to allow for the composting of manure for fertilizer.
I suppose that is enough for this post. I will be updated more and more as the summer progresses and my projects get more complicated. I am thinking I'll also highlight some of the tools I use from time to time for reference material.
I need to work on a new sign off. Stan Lee calls everyone "true believers" and most newscasters say something like "stay classy San Diego". I need a little quip to end with. I'm thinking something like "Until next time, keep growing!" but anything I come up with sounds stupid in my mind...so just check back here frequently this summer for more updates.
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