Ian Thompson

Good morning. I have a back yard garden, the annual portion of the garden is 300 sq ft divided among 7 raised beds.  I have a bit of additional room in large containers.  Maintaining soil quality and fertility is a struggle. I would prefer to use as little exogenous, bona fide fertilizer as possible. Mulching is great, but leads to a lot of bugs and slugs. Composting is great but is mostly about soil texture and soil biology than truly maintaining fertility.  I love to use manure but being urban bound, it requires just as much time/fossil fuel/hassle or more so than "fertilizer".  I have tried a few other things such as doing a "fish rotation" where I bury invasive carp acquired through my bowfishing efforts, but that requires a significant break in the garden space usage and does no favors to the soil quality because it requires lots of digging.

As such, cover cropping is an obvious approach and there are multiple benefits (added nutrients, organic matter, enhanced soil microbiological activity, decreased off-site transport) all the stuff we know about).  It does require me to "lay fallow" a garden bed or two, at least for a period of time while the cover crop grows. This eats into my food growing space.  Also, it is known that highest modulation of the nitrogen fixers happens as the plants get larger and ready to flower.  This means I either keep the cover crop in place for a good portion of the season or do a quick rotation and not get nearly the nitrogen I could.  There seems to be a lot of "grow cover crops, they are good" info out there but a paucity of info about their most effective time:space:nutrient gain in a garden setting such as mine.  Thoughts? Suggestions? Resources?

As a side note, two things.  First, I am going to seriously take on a project of making fish hydrolysate from the aforementioned carps.  This approach might truly be the panacea I need to maintain fertility.  Good nutrient ratios and the hydrolysate is said to enhance soil microbiological activity.  Second, my municipality finally has allowed chickens to be raised in the backyard setting.  This means I can include a chickens as rotation through my garden beds to control insects under mulch and add some fertility.  How long would five chickens need to be on 40 square feet working through mulch and weeds to increase actual fertility through their self-application of manure?

Jay Angler wrote:Trying to create a chicken tractor that is secure and holds everything the chickens need in a 4'x10' space, and is still light weight and easy to move is a huge challenge. Moving it while chickens are in it, adds to the challenge.

Weight has been my primary concern. I had hoped to be able to coax the chicken back in with treats after the I move it to a new garden bed.

Cleaning and gleaning a garden bed is not primary goal. My primary goal is keep the chickens on a single garden bed in some sort of deep litter (not on bare soil) for a prolonged period, say, maybe a month. The goal would be to let them stay there long enough to break up the litter, and add a fair amount of nutrients to the soil. Then move them to another bed. Admittedly, I do not have a strong idea of how long they need to be on single bed to add a “meaningful” amount of nutrients (this info would be very helpful if you have it), but insect eating and weeding is, to me, bonus side benefit. The approach you mention with a permanently placed coop/yard and a movable run could possibly achieve the same goal, though it would create for me a storage issue when the movable run is not being used. Space is tight.

My municipality recently allowed backyard chickens,  we can now have up to 5 hens. I am an avid gardener. I garden on multiple 4x10 ft raised beds. I use cover crops and other standard methods for maintaining soil fertility but is is hard to beat manure. I am looking for some sort of system / coop-run combo structure that will allow me to use chickens as a rotation through my beds. I am thinking of some sort of A-frame type design that I can move from garden bed to garden bed over the winter with a deep litter type thing going on. During the warm season the same coop/run could live in a singular space (not on the garden beds), again with deep litter.  Feasible? Experiences? Other approaches?

Has any one tried or heard of others trying to inoculate their root pruning beds with ectomycorrhizal inoculum of one sort or another?

William Bronson wrote:

Ian Thompson wrote:

William Bronson wrote:I would favor the second iteration, for more more heat transfered to the inner oven.

I kinda doubt it will be an issue but it could lead to poor draw.
If it did, the solution is a bypass.

Thanks for your input. What do you mean by bypass?

Hmm, hard to put into words.
The second design will stratify the exhaust gasses, so only the gasses cooled by transferring their heat to the oven will sink low enough to exit the chimney flue.
This improves the efficient use of the heat , but thwarts the fastest flow of exhaust gasses.
This can be a problem that causes smoke back  and inefficient burning when first starting the fire,but as the chimney flue heats up, it is unlikely to be a problem.

If your flue pipe had a tee opening into the space just above the inner container, exhaust gasses could flow almost  directly into the the chimney flue.
Once the glue was hot,closing a damper located in the tee would force the gasses to satisfy.
This little added complexity l would give you the best of both designs.

This sounds interesting but I am having difficulty envisioning it. This would be part of the first proposed design?

Benjamin Dinkel wrote:Hey Ian. That is a big bunch of soon to be ovens!
I second the juice box straw layout. More time for the heat to transfer to the oven.
But if it doesn’t work or the oven gets too small than I also think that with the efficiency of a rocket burn you can allow some heat to escape. At least you don’t blow up tons of smoke into your neighborhood.

LOL.  I only acquired 4 from that bunch. It will take 2 tanks to make one oven because I will need some amount of material off a second oven to fully construct the oven. I plan making the remaining two into nice large boiling pots.  I would at least hope to get something the size of a baking dish inside the oven in the oven. It will definitely make personal sized pizzas in either size iteration.

What would be the minimum sized chimney you would use?  Should it be the same size as the riser on the rocket oven?

William Bronson wrote:I would favor the second iteration, for more more heat transfered to the inner oven.

I kinda doubt it will be an issue but it could lead to poor draw.
If it did, the solution is a bypass.

Thanks for your input. What do you mean by bypass?

So, I have embarked on a project to make a much smaller version of the rocket stove pizza oven.  The reason I am pursuing this is that the barrel oven as designed is simply too large for the space I inhabit. This smaller oven will fit on top of my Spitfire Rocket Stove which I use for camping and off-grid cooking.  This smaller version will be portable.  

I still have to work out some details of design and it will require welding, which I have access to. It will be constructed out of a modified stainless steel liquid oxygen storage container.  The total size / volume is probably 10 gallon. There is an inner and outer container with air space existing between the two containers which should allow heat to circulate around the inner container. I have included a photo of the partially deconstructed tanks with the smaller one nested.  I have also included a sketch of two possible ways I could position the inner "oven" inside the outer container?  I am seeking opinions on the best position for the inner oven. Any thoughts on this or anything else regarding the plans as laid out?

I would think that, while American hazel might be blight resistant they produce material of a much smaller diameter than the European vartiety. I mentioned before that are many blight resistant varieties to be found at Burnt Ridge Nursery. However as I understand it, most of those were developed via breeding efforts in Oregon and reportedly their resistant may not hold up under disease pressure in the east. You want stick with varsities developed closer to where developed to be resistant in the region you reside in. The Northern Fruit and Nut Growers and the Indiana Fruit and nut growers associations are a good source of info.

Anne Miller wrote:Maybe this will help:

https://permies.com/t/187579/Gal-Tinman-TLUD

Yes, quite helpful. Thank you.