Matthew Nistico

Tom Bexley wrote:The insect question would make me a little more cautious about leaving the bales exposed. I don't know that straw itself would be especially attractive to carpenter ants, but gaps between bales are another story. Ants don't always need to excavate something to use it, sometimes an existing void is good enough. And if there is wood framing nearby that stays damp you've given them an even better place. I'd probably be more concerned with keeping the wall dry and eliminating easy entry points than trying to make the straw itself insect proof. A good plaster coat with the bottom and openings detailed well seems like cheap insurance.

Fire ants are a different animal of course, but I wouldnt assume “ants haven't bothered my bales yet” means insects never will.

I disagree: I don't see why insect infiltration would be a particular concern.  Not that it is completely unforseeable, of course.  But a conventional framed home has hollow walls and fiberglass insulation that would pose no obstacle to colonizing bees or ants, yet we don't generally see problems with insects making themselves at home inside the wall cavities.  I don't see why a SB wall on the same type of foundation would be inherently more problematic.  Despite persistant confusion in the general consciousness, STRAW IS NOT HAY; nothing is trying to eat the straw itself, unless it rots first.  People stubbornly resist that fact, but it's true.  So why would it be a particular magnet to little creepy crawlies?

To be clear, I do agree with Tom's general sentiment: my first instinct would NOT be to leave a SB wall exposed, either.  Hence, I gave my own a traditional 3-coat lime plaster finish.  But that doesn't mean the OP's desire to somehow frame and cover a SB wall with wood or similar finish is impossible to achieve, if you try hard enough to detail it correctly.  I just wouldn't go there myself.

My prolonged project, since it has taken my so long to finish construction, has afforded me many years to observe a SB wall finished with plaster on the outside yet bare on the inside.  My observations: so long as you keep moisture out, it seems to remain fairly inert more or less indefinitely.

I also note that, in addition to a well-executed exterior plaster finish - as I said above, nearly zero cracks - I installed extra detailing in order to prevent insect infiltration.  In my area, the concern is termites.  Termites aren't eating my straw, but that is irrelivant; if they eat my wooden framing members, the house still falls down.  This detailing included an exterior wrap of insecticidal foam insulation around the foundation covered in plaster, and soldered flashing completely overlapping the foundation under the full-width bale wall footprint.  The latter is intended to force any termites emerging upwards through cracks in the concrete either back into the exterior foam and to the outside of the wall or around the interior base of the wall where they would be visible from inside the house.  All wood in contact with the foundation is treated, as per code, but in addition all of my primary framing members are also treated, since they are all 4x4s.

Finally, I note Tom's comment: "...if there is wood framing nearby that stays damp you've given them an even better place."  If there is wood framing inside your wall that stays damp, then you have a fundamental problem with your design and/or execution of construction that is much more critical and beyond the scope of this discussion!

"I'd probably be more concerned with keeping the wall dry and eliminating easy entry points than trying to make the straw itself insect proof."  Hear, hear!

Perhaps not quite the long-term storage the OP had in mind, but here is a good mid-term solution that surely reduces the volume and extends the life of your summer squash.  This is a Hank Shaw recipe from honest-food.net; he's good.  Having said that, I have collected this recipe but not yet tried it myself:

Sicilian Dried Zucchini

PREP TIME: 4 hours
TOTAL TIME: 4 hours 5 min
SERVES: 6

Southern Italians are known to sun-dry their zucchini, and then either put them up in jars covered in olive oil, or sauté them as a side dish.  Both variations on this technique are presented below.

The initial salt cure should be limited to 30 minutes for quicker cooking.  Go a full hour if you are going to put them up in jars.  After an hour, the zucchini is borderline too salty to eat fresh, but works well as a preserved product.

How to dry them?  An electric dehydrator can dry zucchini rounds in anywhere from 2 to 8 hours.  But there’s a low-tech method, too.  After salting, arrange the zucchini disks on a metal or wooden skewer and hang dry them on a rack.  A perfect place to do so is a hot, dry garage, which could take 36-48 hours depending on conditions.  [Might be problematic during humid summers like my own…?]

In this state, zucchini are still pliable and soft, but feel more like soft leather than watery squash disks: chewy instead of crunchy.

INGREDIENTS & EQUIPMENT:
- 4 zucchini (about 3 lbs), sliced into ¼” disks
- salt
- dehydrator
- skewers, if you are not using a dehydrator

For cooking within days (up to a month)
- olive oil
- ½ tsp powdered cayenne
- 2 TBS fresh mint, chopped
- 1 large garlic clove, sliced very thin
- juice of half a lemon

For longer-term storage
- white wine vinegar
- olive oil
- glass jars

DIRECTIONS:
For cooking within days (up to a month)
1. Sprinkle salt on a large cookie sheet (or two), then lay the zucchini on them.  Sprinkle more salt on top.  Leave at room temperature for 30 minutes, then pat dry with a towel.
2. Dehydrate at 120°F until pliable but leathery, about 3 hours.  Alternately, skewer and hang in a hot dry place for 24 to 48 hours, depending on the temperature, humidity, and air circulation.  In either case, you want them to be dry, but not hard.  Think soft dried apricots.
3. Store in a Ziploc in the fridge.
4. When ready to cook, heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large sauté pan over high heat until almost smoking.  Add the zucchini rounds and garlic and toss to coat with oil.
5. Turn the heat down to medium and cook until browned, about 3 minutes.  (Note that dried zucchini lack the water that normally causes that pleasing sizzle in a hot pan, so you might think you’re not heating the squash enough at first.  Trust yourself, they will brown nicely.)
6. Add the cayenne and mint; toss to combine.  Turn off the heat.
7. Squeeze the lemon juice on the zucchini before serving.

For longer-term storage
1. Sprinkle salt on a large cookie sheet (or two), then lay the zucchini on them.  Sprinkle more salt on top.  Leave at room temperature for 1 hour, then press the zucchini gently with a cloth towel to remove as much moisture as possible.
2. Dredge in white wine vinegar.
3. Dehydrate at 120°F until quite leathery, about 4 hours.  Alternately, skewer and hang in a hot dry place for 36 to 72 hours, depending on the temperature, humidity, and air circulation.
4. Store in the refrigerator in a glass jar completely submerged in olive oil.

Congratulations!

I agree with several posters here that buying a simple welding rig - you can get gear made from Chinesium crazy cheap these days, online or at your local Harbor Freight - and studying on YouTube should be sufficient for most would-be garage welders, so long as your projects remain limited to plain steel.  Putting in some good, dedicated practice hours on throw-away metal will be more valuable than buying fancier equipment.

With one exception: a functional, auto-darkening face shield is essential.  I originally learnt without one and it was maddening.  Back in the day, they were expensive; now they are avaiable for a reasonable price anywhere you shop.  We were literally taught to line up your work with the naked eye, then jerk your head to flip your face shield down over your eyes, at witch point you can see nothing until the weld illuminates, hoping that somehow you haven't moved your hands even an inch in the process.  More often than not, commedy ensued.  Don't be absurd; join the 21st century and spring for this one piece of essential gear!

There are courses avaialble at specialized trade schools, if one happens to be close by, and likely at your local community college (here in the South, they call them "technical colleges").  If you feel like dedicating the time and money, then sure, taking an intro course would be great experience.  But be aware that it is probably overkill if your aspirations are limited.  Their program will be geared to starting you on the path to a professional license.  They will spend time familiarizing you with several different sets of equipment... of which you will likely only select one to outfit your garage.

Or, perhaps you will be inspired by the training to set out on a more ambitious trajectory than you had initially imagined.  Maybe you'll think "hey, if I could weld steel AND aluminum I could achieve so many more useful homestead projects."  Who knows?

Abe Coley wrote:As for building a fungal network, think of your mulch-tree sites as the nodes in a network. Both the mycelium and tree roots can reach out a certain distance from node to node. By placing regularly spaced sites at not too great a distance from one site to the next, the nodes can become interconnected and thereby the network can be traversed by wayward fungi.

Excellent way to think about it.  I heartily agree.  Don't think in terms of preparing acreage, even if starting with totally degraded land - and in this case, "degraded" need not mean the land is in particularly bad shape, only that it is open land, not recently forested, and so we will presume deficient in pre-existing mycorrhizal species, as the OP proposed.  One need only prepare small areas around each tree planting, and let the soil improvement naturally spread out as the trees and related plantings grow.

We've seen this same philosophy utilized successfully, I believe, in programs to regreen desert land: rather than blanket your agreage uniformly with plantings, conserve resources by planting individual copses instead, spaced a certain distance apart, and let them serve as anchor points from which soil improvement will spread until the nodes eventually interconnect and full coverage is achieved.

I feel this strategy should be equally successful regardless of which soil preparation methods you pursue, as have been discussed above: mulching the planting area in advance with woody debris, or a more carefully prepared KNF innoculation regime, or using commercial mycorrhizal innoculant.  Or better yet, a little of all three at once!

One thing I will note is that some posters here don't seem to be differentiating between saprotrophs - i.e. decomposing fungal species, including certain edible mushrooms we all know and love - and mycorrhizae, which aren't the same.  Perhaps it doesn't matter; perhaps where one type flourishes in your brush pile, the other type will naturally show up.  I don't know.   But I feel this is all the more reason to include a little commercial mycorrhizal innoculant in your plans.  As I've written previously, it can only speed things up, it's widely available, and it isn't particularly expensive.

Of course, the nodal strategy for planning soil improvement and tree planting is a trade-off: a longer timeframe for conserved resources.  If resources - money, man-hours, materials - are no obstacle, then sure, go ahead applying your soil improvement strategy broadly across the target acreage.  That will only speed things up even more.

Impossible to tell for sure from the picture, but probably a pigeon.  In any case, what we call Pigeons are just Eurasian Rock Doves by another name.  Pigeons, Mourning Doves, Collared Doves, little Ground Doves... they are all different species in the same genus.  It's similar to "pumpkins" vs "winter squash," a distinction without a difference.

Mint Hive Keeper wrote:I mean the shape of an old woven bee skep, the rounded basket-looking hive form.

Oh yes.  I know what you're talking about, though I didn't know the name for it.

Mint Hive Keeper wrote:The basic builder-skills point is useful too. I’ve been reading earthbag-specific stuff, but I probably need more general “how to think like a builder” before I get too attached to any one natural building method.

I have met more than a couple would-be natural builders, all excited about their plans for roundhouses, or earthbag houses, or cordwood houses, or strawbale houses, etc.  Many could not answer the basic question "why?".  Why did you choose that particular material or technique or design?  They have answers, of course, but all boil down to the same basic fact: "I saw a YouTube video of [insert your prefered building method here] and thought it was really cool!"  That's no basis on which to start a design process.

Keep going back to the basic questions you've been asking herein.  Back to what's practical.  I think you're already on track to a better start to your design process.

In addition to finding a few good books, if at all possible find an experienced builder who can assist you or, at the least, whom you can ply with the questions as you go through the process.  The trick is, you need to find someone who is both experienced AND who understands what you are trying to do.  I don't mean that they need be an expert in earthbag - though of course that would be excellent - but someone who understands why you are trying to build an unconventional design with natural materials.  Otherwise, you couldn't trust any advice they give.

In retrospect, I could have avoided some of the pitfalls in my own build by heeding the advice of experienced conventional builders.  But I had trained myself not to heed their advice.  Why?  Becuase if I hadn't, my build would have been over before it ever started.  90% of their advice came in the form of "that's impossible, it won't work, you can't do it, don't even try."  Well, I told them, I knew it could be done, because others have done it before me.  "Yeah but it's not to code."  This retort was applied even to a few aspects of my design that WERE to code.  That was when I realized that I had done what none of these licensed professionals had ever done: read the building code cover to cover.

So, you quickly develop a thick skin and a dismissive attitude.  Yet, in the process you will undoubtedly pass up good advice along with all of the naysaying.  How to know the difference, except for after the fact?  An experienced ally in your process is the only way I can imagine around this conundrum.

Mint Hive Keeper wrote:...and not building something dumb because I liked the shape.

For anyone who has built or lived with earthbag in a humid/freeze-thaw place, what would you want figured out before even drawing plans? Wall height, roof style, drainage, plaster, foundation, loft weight, something else?

I’m mostly trying to learn the order of operations before I spend money in the wrong order.

I don't have enough experience with earthbag construction to offer meaningful answers, but as an owner-builder I can say this: you are asking the right questions!

General good advice: consider carefully the lifestyle you imagine yourself living on your half-acre, including all of the limitations that might go with it, and ask yourself "how will the intrinsic properties of the materials and the design I've selected serve my intended lifestyle?  Are there any easier, cheaper, or more practical choices I could make that would serve that lifestyle better?  Or even serve it just as well?"

And get yourself some good books, not only on earthbag buildings or on roundhouses, but on basic building skills in general.  The best book I read during my design phase was a guide for contractors trying to break into the affordable home market.  It had nothing to do with the specific natural materials I chose, nor with passive solar architecture, which is the backbone of my design.  But it did orient me (who had never built a doghouse) to some of the ways I needed to think like a builder.

BTW, what do you mean by "skep-like"?

Generally speaking, trees will unexpectedly drop leaves like that under environmental stress.  In my experience, this usually means too hot and/or too little water.  I have planted many black locusts on my property, which is right at the edge of their native range.  I see a few around my area, but mostly they begin appearing 30-minutes by car further up the mountains.  Predictably, on my land they drop leaves by the end of summer, only to regain them as cooler autumn weather sets in, only to loose them again over winter.

While this is clearly a stress response, it is not enough to seriously hurt the trees - they still grow like black locusts, which is to say like weeds.  Were I in an even warmer zone, doutbless I'd have trouble growing them at all.  But by the same logic, the stress response is specific to these trees based on their growing preferences.  I have seen a similar pattern in currants and gooseberries I've planted, similarly at the very edge of their tolerance for hot conditions, but not with countless other species more well adapted to my zone.  That doesn't mean there is anything "weird" about the weather, only that certain species can handle it while others struggle.  Whereas the black locusts are clearly winners for me, despite their challenges (and their thorns!), I've yet to decide if I shall give up on the gooseberries or keep trying to nurse them along at the edge of their ability to thrive.

BTW, I have noticed that now, in mid-August 2026, my black locusts have yet to loose their leaves.  This has been a fairly cool and notably wet summer for me.  Surely, that is no coincidence.

Of course, the pattern described above assumes that your plants suddenly dropping leaves out of season will in fact bounce back at a later date.  If they drop leaves suddenly and then die, it may well have nothing to do with their climate tolerance; they probably contracted some virus.  Of course, having said that, if they exist in a stressed state due to extreme heat relative to their preferences, they were likely more susceptible to disease in the first place by virtue of being stressed.

Dave Bross wrote:Agreed on the sun factor being important.  I planted citrus up close to my oaks because that supposedly prevents the HLB disease ravaging Florida citrus.  End result was very slow growing citrus and long overdue to fruit...which I think is lack of sun.

Yes, that was my first thought.  I am no expert in this area, but I'd think that the prime competition to watch out for between the OP's oaks and intended apples would be sun exposure.  Certainly on my small property I have observed that this has been my chief limiting factor: some of my plantings just didn't get enough sun.  So long as my new apple trees did get plenty sun, and so long as I had enough room around them for convenient harvest access, I'd not worry overly much about the root zones.

As someone wrote above, roots grow out very far, so to avoid root competition entilrey you'd have to really, really space your trees out.  I think when guilding plants together, you assume that a certain amount of root competition will occur and just decide to be okay with it, confident that you will get adequate growth and productivity out of the guild in the long run, if not necessarily optimum growth and productivity from each individual element in the guild.  Trees in a forest naturally grow at a far denser concentration than any good orchard planner would space them.  Doubtless, each orchard tree grows faster and fruits earlier, but the forest as a whole supports more biomass/area.

Dave Bross wrote:Oaks are surprisingly shallow roots. When we get a lot of rain here even big old oaks can be uprooted and tipped over sideways by the wind, roots and all.  Don't know about apples.

Hmmm, I read that you describe your location as "sand hills," and I suspect that the nature of your soil might have something to do with that.  Just a guess.