Jay Angler

She's beautiful. I'm sure it's love at first sight! I do hope she works.

I have never used a treadle machine. My oldest sister has one, but I'm not sure she's tried to use it.

If people went back to sewing and mending their own clothing, I think they would appreciate them more, and take better care of them!

Nathanael Szobody wrote: Nature puts wood on the surface so that's good enough for me.

Ecosystem is everything. In mine, dead trees leave a network of underground woody roots that the replacement trees, along with helpful mycorrhiza, mine for valuable nutrients and water that's soaked into them, so some underground wood is a good thing. Surface woody mulch can make it harder for some plants to benefit from the dew which makes up a big part of our water at certain times of the year.

You mentioned that in your ecosystem, rocks were a liability, as they held heat you don't want. In my ecosystem, I often will use dark, flat rocks to help hold the Sun's warmth against our cool, onshore, evening breezes.

This is why permaculture is all about observation! We have to consider the underlying principles, such as soil building, but then figure out how to do that in our specific circumstances. It's why we want to have so many tools in our tool-box, so we can try out different ones and see how they work! Your thoughtful reply, tells me you're doing that! Great job!

-itty bump...

Nathanael Szobody wrote:I'm skeptical. It's the whole "basket in the middle" thing. That stuff decomposes. How is this a permanent system? I do some keyhole-shaped beds, but i just put a standard "pile" in the middle.

What do you mean by a "standard pile"? Do you mean like Hugelkulture wood?

By "permanent" do you mean the permanent in "permaculture"? To quote an author my children loved, "Nothing man makes lasts forever, nothing the gods make, lasts eternity." (at least close to that - it was years ago)

To me the concept of permaculture is that far into the future, what we do on our land, will continue to thrive in a moderately self-sustaining way. Far into the future, unless future abuse to my land happens, the fertility we have built in areas, will continue to support plant growth. Tillage and growing annual food crops, without having ways to return fertility to that soil, will degrade the soil and often allows the top soil to blow or wash away.

There are many different versions of "keyhole" gardens, and as many different ecosystem. I tried building two high ones on my land. The soil fertility around the bed has improved considerably, but the beds were unproductive for several reasons in my ecosystem.
1. The first bed was too shaded, the wire basket was too wimpy and collapsed, I would need to be able to add grey water as well as compost to provide enough water for the plants I tried to grow, and I would have had to find a way to protect it from deer.
2. The second bed was a magnet for rats who repeatedly damaged the roots of the plants. It is currently planted with garlic. The crop will likely not be as large as crops planted elsewhere, but it it be yummy and sufficient for my needs.

If your concern is the amount of space foot paths take when designing any garden area, that's a very valid concern. It's a balance between being able to look after and harvest the plants, vs the reduced growing area due to those paths. A friend of mine swore by straight beds with a narrow path where essentially they took the dirt from the path, piled it on the bed and that made about a 6" height of bed compared to the path. Because this system didn't use any sorting of "containment wall", the bed edges slumped into the path and this might be quite fine for young, healthy gardeners, but as a senior, I found trying to walk in such a narrow space very hard on my gimpy knee, and overall unpleasant and borderline dangerous. I know from readings on this site, that effort has been made on the large Hügelkultur beds at Wheaten Labs to make safe foot paths so that they can access to harvest and manage the beds.

How to balance ideas and principles with the real-life situation of one's ecosystem, takes time and experimentation. Even if an experiment doesn't work out in the long term, if the quality of the soil improves, rather than deteriorates, I would consider that a win.

This sounds complicated, and in a sense it is:

It is common for inexpensive, mass-produced decorative sundials to have incorrectly aligned gnomons, shadow lengths, and hour-lines, which cannot be adjusted to tell the correct time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial

This is because you need a sundial that is correct for your geographical latitude. So R Ranson's idea of making her own, seems like a very good plan! You're going to need to determine your farm's latitude, the precise vertical direction (you can use a level or plumb-bob for this), and the direction of true north. I think this last one would be my struggle, as I'm used to using a compass which gives me magnetic north. I have a topo map around here somewhere, which might help with that.

Then one needs to decide if they're happy to use "solar time", or if they want to follow national clock time. I would be so happy to revert to solar time, but I suspect that would be a tough sell with the locals! Personally, I am sooooo... done with Daylight Saving Time, but Hubby would like it to be permanent, even though research suggests that permanent standard time isn't good for our health. However, if you're going to stay with national clock time, your gnomon will have to be easily adjustable so you can change your sundial just like you change every other clock twice a year.

Because of the weird shape of my province, we have people who follow Pacific Standard Time (PST), even though they are technically in the Mountain Standard Time zone, and we have a tiny bit of the province which is too far west to be in PST. That's a very wide range. Canada even has an Island (Newfoundland) that offsets it's clock by a half an hour. Time really gets complicated when standardization takes over from the sun! I'm sure that I heard somewhere that this all got started with the railways in England. Each little town used to determine their own time, based on whatever they chose to determine it, but the railways needed everyone to follow the same time in order for them to make up schedules easily.

What did Mrs. Claus say to Santa as she looked up at the sky?

“Looks like rain, dear.”


(Greg started it...)

source

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

Kyrt Ryder wrote:Just to confirm, you're talking about dried fava beans right? Not shelled fava beans?

Yup. Dried fava beans, just as they come out of my garden.

Please Joseph, a little info on how you cook them?
1. Do you soak them overnight?
2. Do you boil them in salted water?
3. About how long?

Nynke Muller wrote:

r ranson wrote:Does this mean i can take the seeds out of my dragon fruit sitting in the fridge and grow them?  Got to look this up.

Yes you can!
I did it multiple times, once for a red, once for a yellow and once for a white fleshed fruit. Germination rate is high!

Yes, but the seeds need to be quite fresh, and they want the germination temperature to be between 75F and 85F which is my concern... sigh...
Is the top of your hot water tank accessible?

Thank you everyone for your replies and ideas.

R Ranson wrote:

The top of the fridge, especially if there is a cupboard above it...

I did that 30 years ago with an older fridge, but our current one works differently, and there isn't enough of a gap between the fridge and cupboard to slide even a shallow tray in. However, I have put a thermometer on top of the fridge to see how it compares. It is possible that if I tent plastic from the cupboard doors to the front of the fridge, it might trap enough heat. Worth experimenting with - thanks!

And wrote:

... the top of the hot water tank are usually warm enough for most types of seeds.

This totally has potential. Hubby stores egg cartons on top of there for his egg business, so I would have to negotiate some space and make sure he doesn't knock the pot to the ground!  Again, thanks!

Les Frijos and Eric Hanson:

~A seedling heat mat is my obvious answer.

I know too many people who have had heat mats and they just didn't last, even if they were well cared for. They are sealed, so there's no way to try to repair them when some wire or other breaks. (We have the same problem with bed warmers - I had one that lasted over 25 years, but every one since, has more bells and whistles and limited lifespan.)

Short answer, I'm hoping not to have to go there. I don't mind a little electricity, as it will help heat the house when it escapes the plant area, but I do mind not knowing of a brand of heat mat that will last at least a couple of decades, considering it would get very limited use.

John Weiland wrote:

 The LED lamps emit more heat than I would have expected...

That is worth knowing and possibly testing. Unfortunately, the lights I have are in the front window, so any heat will tend to escape. I'd have to find a place against an inside wall and see what kind of warmth I can get.

In spring, I have a friend who puts fresh chicken shit in the bottom of a deep planter, and soil on top of that, and the chicken shit helps to keep things warm. That is another great technique, but I'm not sure I want to try it inside the house.

Please keep the ideas coming. I might need to combine a couple for example, I have a 2 ft LED bulb, so if a made a frame for on top of the fridge, we might get to the target temperature. A bit of insulation in some key spots might also do the trick.