Angela Aragon wrote:
I am asking because people seem to speak as if the circuit for the electric fence is closed by the ground wire. In other words, there will be no shock unless there is a functional ground.
I went through this learning curve last year, and yes, you are correct. The end of your polybraid can just end. It does not need to connect back to anything. The ground is what completes the circuit.
My fence is just three strands of poly rope that enclose three sides of a pasture since the forth side is secure enough without, and it took a lot of convincing for me to accept that I could run three wires that just end and rely on the ground to make it zap. It does zap indeed, just ask my poor dog who didn't know any better yet.
I have 6 foot tall poly deer fence around my quarter acre chicken pasture to keep them in, and 3 electric fence lines on the bottom to keep predators out. So far so good, except for hawks. For those I have a scarecrow but it has failed me before. I tend to forget to put it out in the fall, and move it regularly.
I killed off the grass/weeds growing on an impossible-to-mow roadside slope. I trimmed the dead vegetation but left enough duff to hold seeds from running downhill. I cast a custom low-growing native seed blend in the winter. But here we are in late May with little to show for it.
I surveyed up and down this weekend and only identified ONE coneflower and a couple more things from the seed blend list. Starting to feel like I only managed to open the soil for crap to grow (like mullein, thistle, dock, ragweed, bindweed, and a lot of narrowleaf plantain.)
Not sure what went wrong here. Fortunately I had 18 Purple Poppy Mallow that needed a home, so I started plugging those in to colonize the first 20 of 100 feet of slope length. But the remaining 80 feet are going to be no better than when I started and I’ll likely have to re-treat and try again this fall/winter. I seeded heavy. Maybe I’ll have to go heavier still. Am I just being impatient? I’ve done many seed blend plantings but this is my first exclusively native.
My huglekultur bed had a few inky cap mushrooms come up last year. But this year, wow! So many that the clumps are threatening to uproot vegetables and already claimed a young kale. I went through and essentially “chopped and dropped” them by breaking them off at the base and left them in the soil.
I know they’re technically edible, but I don’t like the part where they are poisonous if you consume alcohol within 3 days. I figure the fungus is still doing its job breaking down the wood, I’m just stopping the fruiting bodies from disrupting my annual veg. Would you do anything different?
Pods, good idea! Because they might be more visible than the thorns in a truck... and flag a REJECTION.
We got a load of free mulch when I was a kid and it was absolutely full of honey locust and the thorns would puncture right through your shoes. Not something I want anywhere near my food forest. I've been stabbed enough by them in this lifetime
A lot of us have had free/cheap wood chip mulch deliveries dropped off from tree trimming companies. I think we all know that it’s rolling the dice to do so, and we have all found certain “surprises.” So I wanted to start a fun and informative thread here by asking the question: What are the most fun (or not fun) things you have received in a woodchip drop?
My first drop brought a ton of cup-fungus to the property. No big deal
My second drop... a ton of ditch-weed seeds sprouting up all over now! Along with hog-peanut and wild yam.
If I get a load of honey locust thorns, I'll reject it and send them packing even if it burns a bridge with that company.
My wife asked me to grow hyssop. I didn't know there were two, so I ordered seeds and grew Hyssopus officinalis (the non native.) Then I found out this was the "wrong" hyssop. She wanted the native Agastache.
But here's the kicker... Out in the herb bed this weekend we found the native Agastache growing happily all on it's own right where we were going to plant it anyway!
I only did this for the initial planning. Mostly to see how many of the fruit trees could fit and how to space them. After that, it was just filling in the gaps without fussing over graphing it all out.
I don't consider white clover to be a ground cover in the context of a mulch bed. In mulch, your ground cover would be plants that pop up in one place and spread out laterally over the top of the mulch.
White clover is more like a turf replacer. Still a ground cover, but not compatible with mulch since clover is many many small plants reaching up, rather than one plant that reaches up from one spot below the mulch to spread out.
There are other bush-type clovers that would do the job better through mulch.
Here we are, ready to kick off year two! Middle tier ready to make berries.
In the first year there were more than enough runners to fill out the top tier and colonize the middle tier. Looking forward to colonizing the bottom tier and maybe even let them spread off into the food forest floor in future years.
Depending on where you are, I'd be afraid waiting until July to set the seeds loose into nature. One because they might not have enough time to establish before winter, and two because that's the hottest time of year and you'd need to keep on top of babying the little sprouts that evolved to germinate months earlier in the spring.
One comment on the blue false indigo: I also initially thought it needed a long cold stratification until someone reminded me that 10 days is enough per Prairie Moon. And indeed, I pulled them around that time and had a great germination rate (granted they also need a nick and 24 hr warm soak.)
You'd be amazed how quickly chickens heal from wounds like this. Sounds like you are on the right track with treatment. My only suggestion would be "the red headlamp trick" where you use a red headlamp to do treatment at night in the dark. Chickens are much more docile then and I do all my doctoring this way to keep everyone's stress down, including my own.
You'd be surprised how strong panels are when arched if you overlap them by at least one section. This trellis I built was strong enough to hold it's bow shape with me climbing on it! Overlapped and hog ringed.
I have 2 seaberry plants, Sunny and Lord, in a strip of chip bed between fruit trees. They are suckering like crazy within the chip bed. They've shot suckers out past the comfrey I planted as a root barrier and now I'm afraid they're going to disturb the asparagus crowns I planted beyond the comfrey, if not the fruit trees themselves (despite proper spacing.)
Mike or anyone else, have you had any luck with root barriers? At this point I'm considering pulling them entirely because if they're this bad in their 3rd year I feel like I'll be fighting them forever.
Jenn Lumpkin wrote:
Can I ask where you got the triple wall greenhouse panels and do you have to buy a particular kind of aluminum channel for them to fit into?
Thanks! One downside is that it won't work for raising transplants because it gets too hot. Supposedly anything over 90 is no good for things like tomato sprouts. But it does warm the house and the cats absolutely love it. One of them cries for the window to be opened, and we can't explain to him that it does not work when it is cloudy! Can't blame him, it's real nice to sunbathe in winter.
The triple wall came from Menards, and the aluminum channel is just stock 3/4 material from the metal section.
I grew birdhouse gourds on a chain-link fence last year and let them dry over the winter. You'll know they are done when you tap on them and they sound hard and hollow.
I picked them 2 weeks ago, lightly sanded any flakes off, then drilled the holes (top for string, big middle entry hole, and bottom for drainage.) I scraped out the seeds with 1 inch scraper, strung them up on a clothes line, and hit them with a coat of spray sealer. Then hung them up with the help of my extendable pole saw.
Some folks go farther and really primer and paint them, or even dip them in wood preservative. But I figured minimal effort was ok. I can just grow more later and I like the natural look. There are specific hole sizes for specific birds. I just put a smaller hole in the smaller guards and larger hole in the larger guards
One concern I have is how much they whip around in the wind! Even with not much string. I managed to screw one to my house and in hindsight, should probably get the extension ladder out to secure the ones in the trees a bit better.
No but I'm intrigued, especially if a fellow Missouri grower has success with them. There are so many bush cherry types!
Do you know if yours is a hybrid? I'm seeing Korean bush as Prunus japonica, which has hybrids called Meader Bush Cherries. Curious where you sourced yours.
I just have one Prunus cerasus x P. fruticosa "Carmine Jewel Bush Cherry" and couple Prunus cerasus "North Star Pie Cherry" that I'm waiting to mature.
Here's my latest trellis creation based on the principles of tensegrity. The 3 cattle panels are overlapped by a few inches and bound by hog rings. The bottom bars are cut off so that the sharp ends stick into the ground.
The pressure the bowed panels put against the wood frame is balanced by cables and turnbuckles attached to ground anchors. The wood frame is stuck into 4x4 sleeve anchors, which are basically a 3 foot spike pounded into the ground.
The panels stick to the frame by resting into scraps of channel aluminum (with a few fencing staples for good measure.)
Total length is 12 feet, depth is 8 feet, and the bowed cattle panels are 12 feet. 7 feet tall. I will be using this to showcase native vines as it's part of a growing native garden. I wanted more of a cave-like alcove than a tunnel so I can put a bench in there overlooking the yard.
Like you, I had moved and not started a garden from seed for too long and many of my seeds just didn't germinate last year, so I did a big purge that I forgot about and was surprised how few seeds I had this year.
I started some of the new pepper and tomato seeds I did buy last year and I'm just not going to grow the rest from seed... because I'm much more focused on native landscaping plants so I won't have any room on my shelf soon.
I do have a trade situation worked out with another grower who does a ton of both natives and garden annuals. So I'll get the rest that way. The natives are doing well. Just saw some sprouts in my containers that went through a 2 month cold/moist stratification. The hard part is culling, but you can't keep every sprout!
William Bronson wrote:I think a pallet to stack the cardboard on and another to hold a tarp down on top of the pile would be a decent minimal solution.
EXACTLY what I do. Surprisingly critter and moisture free, even after months and months outside.
The only people who need 3 ground rods are ranchers with a lot more fence than you're working with. I also have a 0.1 joule charger on 170 feet of chicken run with 3 hot strands and it works just fine with 1 ground rod. And it's only about 6 feet from the charger.
I did kind of a “cardboard snorkel” method in my fresh chip beds. Pulled chips away from the planting site, put a small bottomless cardboard box on the exposed ground, added soil amendments and made sure to mix them down into the subsoil a bit, then pulled the wood chips back around the cardboard box. Plant in the box, which is now a little island of soil that should get a plant by until the surrounding area has a chance to break down and become better soil.
Sounds like you're taking guineas with a grain of salt. Which is good, because you cannot underestimate just how dumb they can be. Even with a stationary coop, I'd always end up with one or two honking their heads off on the ROOF of the coop because they couldn't figure out how to get in the door. The same door they came out of in the morning. In the same place it's always been.
Wouldn't be so bad if not for the call and response to the ones that DID make it inside. "GET INSIDE!" "HOW DO I GET IN THERE!" "WHY ARE YOU NOT IN HERE!" "I'M HERE, I HEAR YOU, WHERE ARE YOU?!"
I had 6. Three died from predation in stupid ways. The remaining 3 were just too annoying so I gave them away. Lady that took them said they left her coop in the morning and were never seen or heard from again.
They always end up on the wrong side of a fence or building from each other and just honk about being separated until either blind luck or human intervention re-unites them. So I think they work best in wide open spaces with little to no fences or gates.
Not sure about everyone elses state resources, but our Missouri Conservation Department puts on a free training: "Prescribed burns for Missouri landowners."
I finished it a couple weeks ago. It was hybrid, online study and testing followed by an in-person field day burn. It was extraordinarily useful and informative. Much more strategy goes into it than one might think, regarding timing and strategies for desired outcomes and safety. I would highly suggest looking to see if your state offers anything like this. I will be doing controlled burns every 3 or so years to maintain and oak savanna.
Laura Trovillion wrote:
1) Does the volume of the warm air space matter? I am looking at my sun space only being about 2 feet wide (long story)
I don't think it matters. They make passive solar collectors and Trombe wall designs that are only inches deep. I only went so wide because that was the width of the porch/overhang.
Laura Trovillion wrote:
2)Would hanging something black, like fiberglass window screen within the space make a significant difference in the amount of heat generated?
It would likely make a positive difference. At the very least, less light reflected out means more heat to use.
Laura Trovillion wrote:
3) Could it work to pull cold air from the frigid 2nd story rooms thru a pipe down to the basement and thru the opening? Would it require something mechanical to move the cold air from the 2nd story?
Your cold air is going to happily sink down on its own as long as it has open stairways or floor grates to move through. We're getting too deep into design specifics to say exactly how it would work without knowing a lot more details. Generally speaking, as long as you are producing hot air it will rise up and cold air will be displaced down.
Laura Trovillion wrote:
Ok, one more question.... Do you plan to dismantle this for summer?
I definitely made it with that in mind, but might be lazy and just take the end panel off and leave the door open (or removed) in the summer.
Joyce Harris wrote:
RE: cool air being sucked upwards into the cavity as the air moves higher and into the open interior window.
What is the principle at play?
Thermo-convection I guess you'd say. The hot air wants to rise and expand, so it's happy to move into the high opening of the interior window.
Joyce Harris wrote:
In the case of no basement and no crawl room under my stumped house, I have pondered this concept before and now wonder the following....
Could I use a hole under the floor of the PASSIVE Solar heated room?
Or does there have to be a greater depth of the cold air draw?
Stumped, like up on legs? You could put a hole under the solar room, and it would still heat the incoming air from the floor. BUT this would only be practical for heating the outside air a few degrees. It would not effectively heat cold winter air and there would be no closed loop to promote flow and heat build.
Now if you ran a duct from the floor in the back of your house to the floor of the solar room, then you'd close the loop and generate heat and flow.
Joyce Harris wrote:
I have a two step drop /split level in my home.
The passive heated sun room is on the higher side of the split level lower room.
I wonder... is there any reason I could not successfully somehow make this happen, after navigating the no crawl room understory for the 5meters between the origins of the drawing cold in and the entry to the passive heated sun room?
The draw level difference would only be 1 ft or does that not matter?
I'm having trouble visualizing the details of this, but as long as you give cold air a path from a low spot in the house into the bottom of the solar room and out the top then you should get some flow.
Grandma Rosie: I want a basement
Grandpa Sparky: Then you dig it
Grandma Rosie: *digs entire basement by hand under their house* Low ceiling because she was short and didn't care.
So my advise to you is to hire a 5 foot tall, first generation Croatian immigrant grandmother to do the work if you can find one.
I followed a recipe for a DIY version of "Timbor" for a firewood rack. Essentially 65% water, 20% Borax, and 15% boric acid. It is less than a year old so I can't say if it's working for sure.
The real struggle was slowly dissolving the borax and boric acid in the water, which had to be heated (I used an outdoor burner.) Poured it in a pump sprayer and the sides were crystallizing badly by the time I was done. So I'm not sure how much stayed in suspension vs how much just crystallized and stuck to the side walls of the tank.
I feel like it was good enough for the wood rack, but when I do a more structural project (build a bridge in the woods), I'll probably just buy Timbor to apply. That way I know it's right and will hopefully guarantee along life to the wood.
Based on my positive experience last year, here's what I did.
1. Dug a circular trench
2. Spread dehydrated chicken manure and last years pumpkins
3. Chopped up the pumpkins (little ones got some extra flesh without seeds from the big ones for compost)
4. Raked the dirt back over
Yes, it's only March. But that's a good thing. Time for the flesh to break down and become compost. The seeds won't germinate until the soil is warm enough AND any that get frost killed don't matter. Pumpkins are smart enough to stagger their seed germination so more will come up later.
The circle will let me water, thin, and otherwise care for the pumpkins in one place while the plants grow out all around and occupy the lawn.
Scott Stiller wrote:I’ve been using tall cedar posts for years, this is just an improvement.
How do you prune? Do you establish a woody "trunk" for the first year or two and then prune all growth back to that in the winter (and let new growth do all the leaves and fruiting off of that each spring? )
I'm growing grapes for the first time this year and had only just started looking at alternative trellis methods. Nice to see one in action. I've heard of training grapes to act essentially like a fruit tree, but adding the ability to tilt the pole down is great.
Big fan of my Chicken Guard Premium. It handles a 2.2 lb door, but the next model up (Extreme) handles an 8 lb door.
Batteries last forever, easy to program with lots of options, and my door has never bound up in any way. I have a wooden door sliding up and down in channel aluminum, just had to protect it from ice. I feel like my coop is Fort Knox at night when it's closed.
Heather Sharpe wrote: I must admit though, the idea of having to discard the eggs they work so hard to lay during and after treatment is super tough for me. Does anyone know if it would be safe to feed the (cooked) eggs back to the chickens during that period, since they're already ingesting the drug anyway?
That is difficult. The manufacturers of these drugs, understandably, do not want to cross into human safety trials and whatnot so it's much easier to just say "no egg withdrawal tests have been done." I would not hesitate to consume the potassium palmoate treated chickens eggs as this is a human safe, human approved product. I see no danger at all in feeding these back to the birds, and indeed I have done that. But again, nobody is going to do a safety study because it's easier for the manufacturers to just say they don't know.
I'm trying cultivars Lee#8 and Northline. Didn't grow much at all in the first year. I wondered if it was heat. All you folks growing Service Berry in warmer climates than mine are encouraging me though!
Hopefully they do better than the Honeyberry I planted. Seems like my 5b zone is too hot for Honeyberry.
Ruben Masson wrote: My idea was to cut a circle out of the pipe just underneath the top part of the bench that's +- same cm² like the 150mm pipe. And then have a pipe around it(same diameter but cut on one side, the other side then the hole) so it can move up and down and like that open the bypass or close it. Then a metal rod welded to it coming out of the bench to move the bypass where desired.
I almost did as you described, but found it was difficult to cut a round hole in the side of a stove pipe, and even harder to rig up a sliding sleeve to cover it. Then I read that the bypass does not need to be system size, it can be much smaller and still accomplish the goal of pre-heating your chimney.
Here's the bypass design I came up with. Essentially, I cut a rectangular hole in the stove pipe that goes inside the bell (which would be inside the bench for you) and folded out a flange on both sides. Then made a little sliding cover that hooks on to the flanges and had some connection points for the rod. It is not sealed well around the rod , but doesn't need to be (in my shop) and doesn't seem to leak any smoke when running.
Glenn Herbert wrote:The 6" stovepipe exits the bell at floor level, rises 7', goes about 6' horizontally through the wall, and rises another 8' or so outside (insulated through the wall and from there up).
Wow, if all that (including a 6 foot horizontal run) is working for you then I should have no problem! Thanks for the details.
Thanks Glenn, that was just the kind of testimonial I needed to hear. You got away with a 6" exhaust on an 8" system?! How much horizontal run did you have?
I got to thinking about burrowing a hole through the wall and into a brick chimney, and then hooking up a stove pipe inside said chimney, and then adding support under the floor for the weight of the stove in an awkward basement spot. Yuck all around.
I already have most of a "through the wall" kit (which I got a fantastic deal on) so now I'm thinking of just going out through the north wall and around the eave. Sure, it means there would be about 24 inches of horizontal run, but this design allows for an easy bypass to compensate for the cold exterior chimney and only one 90 degree bend.
I figure the stove pipe can stick right into the back wall of the bell, eliminating any elbow there. Whatcha think?
