William Bronson

M Ljin, you make a great point.
Just reflecting the light towards the plants or soil  could be an improvement.
Foil covered foam is common and cheap insulation used to block car windows.
If it were applied to the northside (or south, depending on where you live)of an east to west  greenhouse, it's liable to be a net gain in retained energy.

If we just put reflectors behind or to the right or left of a greenhouse, we could increase solar gain,but  outside the greenhouse these would be subject to wind and snow.

Picture a tall  A frame green house, 12' on the north side 10' on the other, 10' on the bottom.
The 10' side will be at about 73 degrees  facing south.
On the 10' sides we put clear glazing.
On the 12' side that we form a parabolic reflective trough, focused inward.

I think the focus point will be at around 54" up from grade, but we could make the parabola asymmetric, to focus it lower in the greenhouse, but 40 gallon water heaters are about 60" tall.
Plumb them together and run a loop through the planting beds.
Circulate your water with an inline pump.

Because the interior of the A frame is about 9 1/2' tall at its height, we can use clear plastic to make a smaller space inside of it, effectively giving us double glazing.
Normally the space high up in an A frame is hard to use/justify ,but in this design it would collect extra solar energy.

Theoretically, there will be no more energy collected with a solar concentrating collector than with greenhouse surface of the same size.
In practice I think heating a smaller mass to higher temperature could be very useful.

I immediately think of heating air in a tube and directing that air into a solid mass under the roots of the plants you are trying to grow.

Because water holds a lot of heat and we have lots of infrastructure for moving it, heating water and irrigating with it seems like good idea.
That could be very simple, down to leaving a big pot to boil and pouring into the irrigation reservoir.

Ok, so this guy was inspired by the Anila stove.
I don't like his loading/unloading mechanism, but I do like the blower separated from the burn chamber.
He reports that it takes 4 hours of burn time to pyrolize the feedstock, and described feeding the fire during that time.
That sounds terrible to me, but there is some differences in planned uses and designs between he and I.

I want an all in one fuel + charcoal feedstock cartridge that can be swapped in and out of an outdoor boiler.
The ease of loading and unloading is important to me, because I hope to be heating my house this way  in my old age.
If he filled the center cylinder I think it would hold less than a 1/2 gallons of fuel, compared to to the nearly 4.5 gallons of charcoal feedstock.
I think a ratio of fuel to feedstock of 1 to 3 would be reasonable, assuming the feedstock looses a third of its volume during pyrolosis.

For context, a roughly 6" diameter circle has about a 4th the area of a 12" diameter circle, so a reactive stove with a 6" dia inner cylinder and a 12" diameter outer cylinder would have that 1/3 ratio.

I'm putting some bits together to build a stove.
No holes cut yet, just messing about.

The plan to use to stainless steel bolts and nuts to affix the silverware holder in the middle of the stock pot.
Air admittance and control, yet to be decided.

The lid is a pizza pan, inverted over the bean can and affixed with self tapping screws.
With a hole saw, we punch a 2" hole through the pan and into the van.

In use, the outer ring is filled with  any old feedstock.
The lid goes on, the bean can slips directly into the silverware holder and is filled with pellets or charcoal.
The center is a tlud, the outer ring a retort.
Light it off and hopefully it makes more char than it uses.

John C Daley wrote:

 soilcrete walls

William what are these please?

Well Soilcrete uses onsite dirt for the aggregate in concrete.
I've not found many examples of 'soilcrete" in walls but cast earth, or cement enhanced adobe all  seem to be similar.

Here's a Permies thread about it:Soilcrete

Welcome to Permies Bobert!
The first think I think of for this is mosses effectively have tiny seeds, and are adapted to clinging to surfaces.
I don't know how big their seeds are, but
epiphytic orchids might do the trick.
I think adding a bit of clay to the mix might help a plant seed or moss spore get established.
Speaking of spores, I bet there are fungal spores available that would love  wheat paste!

But not unrelated!
I am trying a dry pour bond beam on top of a cinder block wall.
The wall cavities are filled with random bits of rebar, urbanite,tile,rocks,pipe and conduit.
The bond beam is there to make smooth level surface for sitting on.

If it works out, I see it as a way to make up for my poor masonry skills, but also a path towards slip form masonry.

With a cinder block  at either end of the slip form we have something simple to clamp the boards to.
I am using two old side rails from a bedframe for this job, but a pair of 2x8s should match the height of a cinder block pretty well.

I have pile of 8" tile that I was planning to adhere directly to the  top of the cinder blocks, but the top of the wall is not level enough for that to work.
I think the tiles could be used as the face of a Slip Form Wall, cast in place or added after.
For soilcrete walls they could off extra protection against  rain.

So the difference between the thing OP shared and the chop in drop I see in the link and video is intention.
Sowing a cover crop instead of just allowing things to grow.
Covering with wood chips instead of woody brush.
It will be more work, but woody debris in particular can become habitat for voles and other nibblers that ring the bark on fruit trees.

I think a leguminous cover crop planted into last year's wood chips makes s lot of sense.
I don't know how much foliage a ground nut makes, but if it's substantial, that would be my pick.
In warm regions, peanuts might be great.

I'm 55 this year!
I am now buying things that work instead of struggling to fix things.
The things we buy are still used, I still haul and install them myself, but I've stopped beating my brains out trying to fix a dryer when it only costs 100$ to replace.

I'm going back and forth on the forced air thing.
I don't think we can know for sure without trying for ourselves.

I used a mattress inflator for my forge build.
They are easy to come by and they run on DC.
It's easy to match pipe,hose or conduit to their round exhaust.

Many have used wood burning stoves to dry fuel for itself, but getting the fuel too close results in unwelcome combustion.
The Anila courts that combustion.
The refined fuel (pellets)that is in the center of the stove burns hot and clean,  and the process heat turns the random bits of brush into charcoal, a refined fuel.
I believe using charcoal as the fuel would work, allowing us to skip the use of pellets or other refined fuel.
The idea of using charcoal to make charcoal has been on this site before, but I think it revolved around heating a retort filled with feedstock.

The Anila stoves have only a few holes at the bottom of the central stack.
I think that might be necessary to keep the feedstock from burning to ash.