On a third of an acre in a village, living alongside his wife and trusty hound, Tim works towards living life within nature instead of at odds with it. Chickens, gardening, mushrooms and much more occupies Tim's mind as new projects appear and old projects complete. Tim is currently working towards renovating his 1850's home while turning lawn into edible space.
I have been working on incorporating small swales into my landscape but there are some issues with doing it.
The biggest one is that the swales now present an ankle-twister if someone were to step into them by accident. After stumbling myself, I had to do something about it. Instead of trying to figure out fencing or signage, I used what I had on hand which is woodchips. I filled the swales up just below the top and let it settle over a few weeks. I had to top off a few areas here or there but it is sufficiently filled to the point that stepping on it won't cause a person to stumble. I have not had a rain event to test capacity but I have introduced water from some holding barrels and it seems to be doing its job sufficiently.
I'm thinking of adding some mycelium and perhaps turning these spots into harvestable organic trenches in the future.
My current thoughts involve making a grey water system that can be used for at least three seasons if you have an alternative place that the water can go in the winter. I view the idea of some progress is better than no progress. If you can utilize the water and divert it from a more conventional waste disposal system then that is a win.
If you however are reliant on the grey water system 24/7, it gets trickier and I have no ideas.
My char production is rather rudimentary. I light an open campfire, let it burn down to coals, then I quench with water until it stops boiling/steaming.
While I get a fair amount of char to turn into biochar, I also create a fair amount of ash.
My current process involves 'washing' out the ash from the char and then shoveling the char up into a container when it is fully cooled. The ash ends up accumulating in a low spot near the original area of the fire in the lawn.
While this works all right, it is rather water intensive and I'm unsure if there is a better way out there?
I am connected to a municipal water source at my house which is near my biochar production site. When it is time to put out the fire, I can turn on a garden hose and deluge the fire until it goes out. I realize that not everyone has such easy access to a volume of water and it got me thinking. How do you manage your quench water when water is not so easily sourced?
What does everyone do for quench water?
I could imagine that this might be a good place to reuse grey water, but one would have to accumulate that water and then be able to dump it where they would want it.
Has anyone figured out how much water it actually takes? I feel like I use a bunch of water every time, more than I think it would normally take at least.
A natural walking path has developed in one of my back gardens and I happened to have a large amount of freshly made char on hand. I have added the char into the pathway on top of woodchip to start delineating the path. The char already seems to be crushing readily so I am wondering how long it will in fact last before melding into the ground.
I'm hoping the raw char will help keep the bath 'clean' of weeds for the time being. I assume it will tie up some nutrients for now.
I enjoy having house plants throughout the year. I like learning how plants change and adapt as the seasons progress. The routine or 'groove' that I get into keeping up the plants maintenance has become a ritual that I look forward to completing.
