Erika House

I finally got my "retort adjacent" method set up.

My school has been busy replacing their old metal trash cans with plastic ones. Which means that I get as many of the old ones as I want instead of them being thrown in the dumpster! Once I pull off the rubber lined feet pieces it leaves four small holes in the bottom (top once I put it in the burn barrel upside down) for gasses to escape and burn off.

I already have a burn barrel that has LOTS of holes around the sides, I thought there might be too many, but it turned out to be exactly what works for me.

I stuffed the metal garbage can full of pieces of wood a little longer than 2 feet, flipped it upside down in the center of the burn barrel, and then filled the spaces around it with weeds and some junk wood, everything burned for about 3 hours and when it was done the garbage can was filled with perfect biochar!

S.J. Vallier wrote:
Yes. I live in the sierra nevada mountains between Sacramento and Tahoe.  We get 100+ degrees for a couple days a week in each summer.

I work full time so I can only water on my days off.  I assumed this was at least part of the problem, but wondered if there was something more to it.

Nice to have another permie from the area!

I mix crushed eggshells into my loose birdseed before I put it out for the backyard birds.

DISHES! I could handle any other chore better if I didn't have dishes hanging over my head.

I can completely understand why the permies community might hate my answer but...I have never found longer lasting or more versatile gardening shoes than my Crocs.

I wonder if that could be used instead of the sand portion in earthbags. That would be very helpful in my area where coarse sand is practically a myth. haha.

If so, I definitely need to figure out how to get one of those crushers.

Thanks Ben, I thought that might be the case.

Nicola Bludau wrote:It depends on how well your soil holds water, but  I would dig a bit more to make the whole thing worthwhile. Sepp Holzer has some videos on how to seal ponds. A packet of bentonite would help to seal it but watch these videos (I hope there's something in English)

Any and all digging at this point is less  digging and more breaking up the rock into small removable pieces. And the edges of those pieces (and any rock remaining in the hole) are very sharp.  I doubt I'd need outside clay to seal it since pretty much my entire yard is pottery worthy clay.  I've watched most of the Sepp videos, as well as the ones here on permies, about sealing ponds, but they seem to be in mostly sandy soil and not the rock that I have.

When I moved onto this property one of the first things I did after observing where the water pooled when the snow melted was dig out that area and fill it with wood chips. This is where the overflow from my rain barrels, and water from our rare rainstorms, ends up.

I recently dug out the nicely decomposed wood chips and was going to refill it with fresh ones, but I wonder if I could turn it into a small pond for the frogs and birds to enjoy instead?

The problem is the rock that is at the bottom. It's layered in with very sticky clay and when dug into it breaks into lots of sharp pieces. The water drains in about 12 hours, and dries out completely in 2 days if there's no fresh influx of water.

I could use permies' help to figure out if and how it could be turned into a small pond, or if I should just go back to the wood chip fill.

paul wheaton wrote:


If you are good, then when you die, you get seasons 2 through 10 of firefly!

THAT is a reward I will join a cult for!