John Fritz

I have no experience with this http://www.swst.org/wp/meetings/AM10/pdfs/WS-59%20Peng%20Yucheng%20Paper.pdf but I thought I would post it to see what others think about it's potential to preserve wood, underground.

There is a lively debate at Lawrence London's permaculture forum about Aquaponics. Toby is arguing that Aquaponics can be a legitimate part of Permaculture if it is appropriate to the context of the design. I would like to know if anyone here has utilized Aquaponics in their designs and if so, how close to self-sufficient you have become at providing feed for the fish from the property without off-property inputs. How did you achieve this? Or if you know of anyone who has approached achievement of this goal.

New to rmh but have not found any reference to life span of the steel barrel. They get pretty hot. Do they eventually warp or otherwise wear out and need replacement. If so, that would seem to be a fairly involved renovation, seeing how some designs have them embedded in the the mass.

The extension office info on irrigating blueberries says something to the effect of 'an inch of water every ten days' but also 'six gallons per day (?!!)'. I am sure that six gallons per day is more than 'an inch every ten days'. So I don't know what to make of it. Elsewhere I've heard that blueberries need a constant moisture but good drainage, so if that inch of water all came in say, one day, then going another nine days without water would seem to be overly stressful for the plant, especially when in the heat of summer. Also, calculating water in gallons is easier than calculating in inches. How many gallons in an inch of water? It is indefinite. What amount of water are the blueberry growers on this forum using? Currently I have been drip irrigating for 10 minutes three times per day for a total of about a quart to half-gallon per plant, per day. Irrigating from a water source fifty or so miles away does not sit well with me and is certainly not sustainable, so I am open to any ideas on how to provide the blueberries' evolutionary water niche without artificial irrigation.

Very interesting! I'm going to do 2 blueberries in pots in my city lot

What size pots are you using and do you anticipate that they will have to be transplanted to bigger pots at some point?

I've been pulling some of the stolons or rhizomes from the rows of berries I have. Sometimes it seems like a good idea. The 'string' is right near the surface of my deep mulch, comes right out with no obvious bits left in the soil, and it's kinda' fun. But I have read that such pulling is just propagating more starts for the invasive species as there are ALWAYS bits and pieces of the stolon/rhizome left in the soil, and that the best practice is to just pull the green tops of these plants and they will eventually starve without such tops. What is the experience/consensus of those who have had to deal with this, sans chemicals, which I will not use?

I was incredulous when a county extension office functionary told me that the ph of the mulch applied to a soil has NO effect on the ph of the soil. I inquired about pine needles, hard wood mulch etc. and he said such amendments will not change the ph of the soil, that I need to add sulfur. Has anyone else ever heard of this? It just doesn't make sense to m.

Also, no matter what you choose to use, it is good practice to use several inches of washed gravel, with no fines, as a base for drainage and also to use a vapor barrier (plastic sheeting at least 6 mil, the thicker the better) to keep your floor dry.  This is very important if you are going to use Portland Cement concrete.  It needs to be kept dry as possible once it has cured.

Oh, I forgot to mention that, yes, my shop/garage will have a 4" depth concrete floor with rebar reinforcement.  The edges will be thickened to 6" and the piers that the I beams will sit on will be a full yard of concrete: three feet deep, and three feet square, from the plan view.

Some type of reinforcement will be necessary to minimize cracking.  All concrete contractors I've talked to openly admit that all concrete cracks, to some degree.  Wire mesh and/or rebar help reduce this, as does proper curing.  One of the things that help concrete cure properly is to slow the process down. Keeping it moist does this.  Tarps and daily misting with water works though it is time consuming and work...but worth it if one wishes to have a quality floor.  Also, I have come across some information about wire mesh and rebar rusting and eventually weakening a concrete slab or foundation.  The alternative to metal reinforcement that I am aware of is fiberglass rebar.  It is claimed to actually be stronger than steel.  I don't know enough about it but you may want to do a google search.  I do know that it cannot be bent, in the field, the way that steel can.  Each application has to be pre-engineered to the specific requirements of a given job.  I have also read that the fiberglass rods have to be roughened up a bit before the pour in order to facilitate adhesion by the concrete.  I am about to (in the next month or so) have a concrete floor poured for a shop/garage.  For my living quarters though I am leaning heavily toward an earthern floor, or at least not a poured concrete floor.  I would like to have footings form the retention wall needed to contain a packed, washed gravel type subfloor and then use Magnesium Oxide or Mangesium Phosphate board placed over that.  Detractors would probably argue that this will be prone to shifiting and buckling of the Mag boards and they are probably correct.  There would probably be some shifting or buckling.  But I would rather deal with this than a cracking, rusting, Portland Cement floor that is prone to mold, and would have to be jackhammered if any of the plumbing encased in it failed.  At least with the model that I mentioned above, if any problems did develop I could pry individual Mag boards up and dig up the gravel without a jack hammer.