William Bronson

If I ever break even on what I spend growing food , I'll be delighted and surprised, but it's not why I do it

I leave my paying job exhausted, having done something close to nothing for 10 hours strait.

I spend  10 hours doing labor in a garden, not even my garden mind you, it could be just about any garden, and I am bone tired but absolutely invigorated.

It's like making pizza with kids.
I spent about 80 bucks making pizzas with kids at church.
It was a chaotic mess, and a lot of work.
I could have bought plenty of pizza for that much money, but eating pizza was only a fraction of what we accomplished that day.

I guess I assumed you used a tile cutting wet saw.

Lovely tree!
I've also has one for years but no blooms, untill this year,after a hard pruning.

That sounds like an excellent solution.
I'm very into reducing the amount of drilling, grinding , sawing, etc, that any given job requires.
Some times the material you chose makes the difference.

'Round here, T posts don't generally come with holes, and the metal is very tough, so when I do use them it's usually with tie wire, hose clamps or even zip ties to securing them to the rest of the structure.
When I have even a short piece of 1.5" PVC pipe, I keep it, because it with readily taken a screw and it slips right over a t-post without much fuss.


I will sometimes use what is called a U post.
They do have holes already punched in them.
They are are strong in one direction, but prone to folding in half  in the other.
As the posts on sides of a raised bed, they are excellent, but as a fence post, not so much.
Two of them, one on either side of of a wooden post, would work as well as one stake made of angle iron, but with less work.
Way more obvious/ugly than we are looking for but it is a strong option.

Connecting aboveground wooden posts to metal stakes is a great method.
I do it to avoid digging through rocky soil.
T posts are not the best shape for connecting to anything, plus they cost money.


I collect the angle iron from bed frames, usually for free.
With an angle grinder I remove excess bits, and cut notches into the edges.
After driving the angle iron into the ground, I set a stone at the base, then clamp a two by four to the angle iron and run screws through the notches into the wooden post.
This is usually plenty support for a given fence post, but if not, it's easy to drive a second bedrail on the opposite corner of the post.
The stone is there to keep the wood off the ground, out of the wetness.

I have a hardy orange tree that would make hell of a hedge, but they grow pretty slowly.
How about sea buckthorn?

I have one mulberry that I'm keeping in check through aggressive pollarding.
I've taken to tying flexible young the branches down out of my way.
Often they break, yet remain half attached and heal in that position.
This puts the newest growth down at ankle height, which could be useful in a fodder system.

What if you cut a branch the same way you would for air layering, but did not wrap it in growth medium?
If it drys out, you have just made tree hay, with minimal infrastructure.
If it gets greener, good, it's probably gonna make for richer hay when you come back and harvest it.
I'm gonna try this.

 So I'm learning about elderberry and most sources seems to agree that they occasionally need to be cut flush to the ground.
How often  this needs to happen isn't agreed upon, but some growers seem to do it yearly.
How often do y'all cut back your elderberry plants?

However often the flush cut needs to happen the requirement actually seems like a great opportunity for a permie!

I use a lot of raised beds, and I plant comfrey around the bases, as a way to catch and recycle nutrition.
I am wondering if I could do the same with elderberry plants.


I'm am growing a strip of trees along one fence line, as a defense against that neighbor.
Because I suspect him of spraying my trees in the past, I don't risk anything very valuable there.
It's been planted with transplanted volunteers  like catalpa, willow and black locust, to create biomass for the rest of the garden.
Elderberry could be another  source of easily propagated fast growing plants.
I haven't found anyone turning it into biochar, but it seems like it would work.
It also seems like it could be used in light construction.
I'm imagining a junkpole fence built with elder poles that could actually sprout roots and grow!

Since you are using plastic glazing , I suggest layering plastic and borax sprayed cardboard on the floor of the greenhouse, and building your raised beds on top of that.

Snake a length of corrugated spotted drainpipe through the base of each bed, and use a fan to move air through them during the warmth of the day.
This would make each bed a small Ground Air Heat Transfer battery.

You can plant directly in the raised bed, or in containers nestled into the raised bed medium, or just put containers on top of the raised bed.
Because there won't be any snow, wind or rain inside the lean to, another layer of plastic can go over the raised bed, with minimal support needed.
Each layer of glazing is supposed to change the environment inside it to match one USDA  Zone warmer than the actual location.
So inside a low tunnel located in a  greenhouse on a zone 6 property the environment could be like a zone 8.

As for being a heat battery for the house,  I think the lean to will be more like a buffer against low temperatures and wind.
You mentioned the house is on piles, how high up are the piles?
Does the house have insulation in the walls, ceiling and floors?

I was just listening to a no till market gardener podcast where a sugar water spritz was suggested as a remedy for damping off.
Apparently it works by feeding benign microorganisms and they overwhelm the fungus that causes damping off.