Niklas Fred

A great idea but this is a sub-urbanish location, I don't even know where to find a non-factory farmed pig here if I wanted (sad to say )

Hi

I'm from Vantaa (technically the same as Helsinki, southern Finland). I have been growing stuff for maybe 15 years now. I would need advice for an adventurous challenge I took on recently:

I rented this small allotment because it was very cheap and very near to my house. It's 100 sq. meters, and the soil is the heaviest and thickest clay you can imagine. The elderly lady who used to rent it hasn't done anything to the lot in two seasons so it's pretty much overgrown with weeds. There's no running water there (to add to the challenge), so all water conserving practices imaginable should be implemented.

I would like to use this opportunity to plan an approach on how to get this piece of land producing with the least amount of physical work. I have a bit of a bad back, and that's why I've been gravitating towards no-dig and related practices like heavy mulching on my own yard garden. I'm in no particular hurry with this one, but sooner is better than later as usual. My goal is to make this a place to grow bulk vegetables like potatoes, beets, cabbage, rutabaga (Finnish delicacy ),peas,onions... I intend to have a soil analysis made as soon as the ground thaws.

I really don't have enough manures available for the kind of heavy sheet mulching/composting that I see promoted in many permaculture books. What I have available: straw, kitchen waste compost from our 4-person family, cardboard & paper, store bought organic fertilizers. I can get small amounts (maybe max. 100 kg) of horse manure. And of course I can grow green manures.

My initial plans in my head include at least these several options:
1. I could just cover the ground with cardboard and newspaper and let it sit for the whole next season, to smother the weeds.
2. I could clean the weeds by hand at least from some of the area, and plant a green manure mixture, maybe oats, pea, clover, fava bean?
3. I could make a hugelkultur bed to get something edible growing right away.

I would appreciate any ideas, no matter how progressive. Especially the no water- part seems scary.

Thanks in advance!

Nice to see some one doing this kind of stuff so nearby; I'm from Finland.

Do you have any experiences yet with how it warms up and stays warm? How much does the whole thing weight? ; I've been wondering does it stay upright if you park it anywhere for a longer time (couple of years or so)?

Anyways, great stuff!

Thanks again for your replies.

Are there any books/ resources that would deal with foundations, or alternatives to them?

Thanks for your reply!

I haven't read about that underground- stuff before, I'll dig in to it.

Hi everybody

I'm from Finland. I've been dreaming for years about building a home of natural materials for me and my family. I just have a hard time making up my mind on which material/ method to settle on. Also, I'm hesitant about how these different methods fit my cold and damp climate? I have a somewhat of a bad back, too, so something like an earthship is way too physical for me to be realistic.

I live in southern Finland, where the winter lows (which have been getting warmer and warmer) are about -20 F, although I remember winters as cold as -35 F,even as I'm only 37-years old. The climate is also quite damp, and especially the autumns can be long and wet, so clay buildings have a hard time drying properly in time, after the short summer of maybe 10 weeks. That said, I live on a small property which has about down to a depth of 14 yards a really thick, bluish clay (it's an ancient river bottom), so clay would be a natural choice.

The local wisdom is, that you should dig your foundations to a depth of 4 feet, to get safely past the frost line. This, off course, is expensive. So the foundations are one of my concerns, as well.

Sorry if I'm not writing in a logical order, but I guess my basic question boils down to this: I dream of building a natural home, as cheaply as possible (a house built completely of second-hand materials would be the optimal goal), but I would love to get advice on how to adjust the techniques to my climate.

Thanks in advance!