I see my dog Boudicca play with a critter that's jumping in the grass, I call her off and walk to that poor thing, it was a rat, still moving a little but dying.
And then I see these things attached inside its fut, others are crawling away, and under the skin still crawling so I burnt the horror.
But before that I took this photo, what are these? Did Boudicca save us from an alien invasion?
That's interesting.
Full tree is best.
Non tempered is more rugged.
Work will be done in two phases: improving soil will be done next year. Large scale. I think we'll mix that crazy soil with tons of compost.
The soil is clay, shallow hardpan, not the best. Huggel Kulture and swale was recommended, lots of top soil. All that is being planned.
I forgot a detail: winters average 32F but go down to -12F (-24C) with strong wind.
What do we need to do to increase survival chance of these fruit trees?
Are semi dwarf ok to live in such condition or full size is more resilient to cold?
Thank you!
Why are mature trees so sensitive to transplantation? I think the owner wants large trees because their leaves produce more organics, long term mending strategy. But maybe planting a mix of semi drwarves for immediate fruit production, alongside some variety of trees that produces a lot of leaves might be a good alternate solution?
Can you check if I get these right?
1- clay soil is naturally fertile but the compact structure and water impermeability prevents the roots from breathing.
2- mending clay soil requires a short term and long term strategy
2a- short term is done by mixing organics with the soil
2b- long term is done with cover crops (clover?)
3- preventing water logging is important and done by planting trees in burms above surface
4- A swale a trench where the burm part is mixed with organics, and that burm is where planting occurs.
5- A swale allows water to move, a huggel culture does not.
6- water moving is ok with roots, water stagnating causes root rot.
Equipment they have:
a default bobcat skid steer
A hand held 16" gas powered Auger, no backhoe.
The Auger is an absolute nightmare to use in this soil and nearly useless in my experience as digging with shovel ends up being faster even to install posts. The last time I worked on that land, I mixed water thinking that it would soften the soil, instead it turned it into glue.
Logistic:
The default bobcat might be good enough to dig trench for swale building, but mixing organics in so much burm (100 trees worth) will need a clever solution. The first thing that comes to mind is doing a hybrid huggel/swale by digging a trench 2x the width, place logs in one half and push the earth over that half. Any better idea?
I wonder if having them invest in one of these helps.
I will be planting fruit trees next year in a soil that is very hard with rocks, clay and where it is hard to grow anything.
The person who owns this parcel of land wants mature large trees, the kind you get for $350 at the nursery.
I'm afraid that such mature trees won't adapt well to the soil.
Ben Zumeta wrote:That is weird about the lack of mycelium and fungus. You live in one of the most fungally rich and diverse regions on earth in Western WA. How close to the Sound are you? Any woody debris you bring in for mulch (barring an insane use of fungicides on the material) will harbor inoculating fungus, especially alder and douglas fir, which are the early succession species in coastal WA. Doug fir hosts the widest variety of fungus of any North American tree and has many endemic symbionts. Alder based fungus is necessary for many of the other native climax trees to grow. Bring in biomass of diverse sources and life will know what to do with it.
What a course in tree biology! I had no idea that Alder were so important not only because of the soil they produce upon their rather short life.
I looked at the soil again later in the year when the soil was moist and colder and it was populated with very densely packed white fiber.
I think during the hot season the soil dries out and maybe that mycelium goes deeper or the surface one dies out.
Would planting Alder in a very poor soil help enrich it?
A few 100K record/second should be enough no? How fast are spikes from a relay closing and filling up a motor startup capacitor? My hunch that it's where we're having problem, both capacitor on both pumps burnt again!
Also where do I start in term of programming this? Are there sources that are no crazy badly programmed (like most open source are the link you gave look like a shop and I don't see anywhere a thing that stores electrical measurement at high frequency like that, seem more like consumption monitors...
We are trying to debug the pump house so I'd guess that the time accuracy of the curve matters more than the current accuracy. I don't know if a system exists that can measure such rapid chain of events: one circuit closes another circuit causing another switch to close the pump circuit. 1 second sampling rate is too low but I'm thinking in terms of discrete events and what might be happening is something else altogether.
I tried Arduino years ago and loved that it was programmed in pure C. I don't need a server as I'm a few hundred feet from the community pump and server would require installation of an internet line.
The graph is what I'm looking for, what's the max frequency of capture? How do you input this many points and what's the cost for the measuring tools? I was thinking of using induction coils because quite a bit of current spikes through.
Did you write your capture code yourself?
What I'm trying to measure is 3 phase 240V, maybe 60 Amp of current max when the pumps startup. my guess is 7-10 points of measurement, I'm kinda Jerry rigging a diagnostic tool here.
Hello everyone,
We'd like to monitor the fluctuations through time of an entire pump system, the electrical system is quite complex and needs a few amp/watt probes.
The idea is to have all the probes hook up to a recorder, which could be off the shelf or an arduino custom thingie, and keep recording on a memory chip. When a problem happens we pop out the chip and read it on the computer and read the graph.
Does anyone have experience with that?
Thank you.
But air would then precipitate inside the tank, and physical filters are ground for bacterial growth etc... basically moving the problem elsewhere and this place is expensive to fix when broken.
I've tried Oxygen peroxyde on myself without any ill effect. I don't know the chemistry with PVC pipes and the rest of the delivery system.
The tanks are closed
One has been in used for 20 years and the other since 1972
The water comes from 400 feet underground, below sea level
They climb from the top which is normally closed
I'm not sure on the external drainage valve, the usual procedure consist in shutting off well>reservoir valve, once the reservoir is empty, scrub, then spray with chlorine on the wall and finally restore well>reservoir. Done one tank at a time, one season spread.
I don't know about the amount of sediment but each time the pumps fail or a leak or a tank cleaning, there is brown deposit coming from everyone's faucet, this was determined to be oxidized Manganese
About 70 houses are on this system, only 30 are inhabited all year around.
The increase is very small, maybe 1 person a year, based on the graph, consumption has been mostly flat for the past 10 years and we are well below the groundwater max allowed extraction, off course it being water, nobody knows anything about where it comes from but the prevalent theory is that sea water gets filtered through the rock.
I believe chlorination is what the maintenance company does as an old habit.
We have strong winds here in Camano Island. Our piece of forest had a few Alder trees fall and get stuck against other trees, I noticed that the friction started abrading the bark of the straight trees so I felled the fallen trees, as the chainsaw was eating through the wood, I saw that some of the fallen trees were still alive despite the flush roots so I started wonder if what I am doing is good for the forest.
I am usually perceptive to what the forest wants and it didn't oppose, and the experience of felling those trees, which was quite a puzzle and dangerous, was smooth so that makes me think it is ok but it's easy to shut oneself down from the reality.
What is your experience and knowledge on the subject?
Yes there is access inside. Oxygen peroxyde is an interesting idea, it is used for contact lenses after all.
Do you know of any use at such scale, also that is aproved by some governmental agency? To err on the side of caution.
I'll take a photo of the tank, they're about 15 feet tall.
I'm in a community that's small enough to have their own well and water tank, I think it's total 70K gallons split in two, they were built in the 70s, very dependable.
But every once in a while they need maintenance and the people who take care of that empty the tank, do the fixing and then chlorine shock the water.
We don't put any chems in the water so nobody in the community likes that taste, and even someone is very allergic to it and starts getting sick each time they do that.
So, what is an alternative to chlorine shocking?
thanks y'all
I have transplanted boysenberries from a friend's land and the deers have not touched them!
Maybe interleaving these with more deer appetizing varieties would work? Or maybe there is another reason for them not like these such as how bitter they are.
Deers have nibbled the lower branches of our plum trees and rabbits have eaten out all the strawberries and we had a lot of them.
Time to enforce harmony
We bought a few ultrasonic deterrent: Yard Sentinel and eHouse pest deterrent. One thing they are good at is giving headache, these things are loud and I didn't know these humans were so sensitive to ultrasounds.
Trialing this for 15 days but it's hard to detect nibbling so does anyone have any experience with these?
We have a fairly temperate weather but the first day of summer surprised us with a 90F temperature and our garden now looks rather wilted.
I have been using el-cheapo sprinkler but it requires moving it around a few times so I tried an "orbit" tripod sprinkler and it was too low and the water stream got caught in the bushes so I was wondering what you folks recommended.
We have two kind: the tall kind and the flat ones called Bull Thistles.
They turn my bare feet into porcupines so it's time they go.
What's the best way?
Laurent Voulzy wrote:
Your soil looks very porous and also it looks consistent, maybe you don't have clay anywhere on your land
depends on where you get the soil. The mix in the pond is very random and what you see on the slopes is different from what I used to seal the botton. But as I "import" soil instead of just digging and compacting I am going to test the soil. The hill our house ist standing on was build from the basement excavation and that is clay. Maybe I am going to use some of that..
Cool, it's always a bonus to know your land On a side note I'd advise to dig 2x as deep as you intend because of the deposit that occurs with time.
the link you gave look like a shop and I don't see anywhere a thing that stores electrical measurement at high frequency like that, seem more like consumption monitors...
On a side note I'd advise to dig 2x as deep as you intend because of the deposit that occurs with time.