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Daniel Kaplan

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since Jun 20, 2015
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Colorado Springs, Zone 6a, 1/8th acre city lot.
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Recent posts by Daniel Kaplan

Layering raspberries sounds like way to much work. Raspberries have a Napoleon complex and are out for world dominion. We've always just dug up the spreading shoots that came up in the yard and have them away to whoever would take them. It was the only way to keep them out of the yard. This year I'm experimenting with digging up the roots over the winter and planting them still dormant. It's definitely easier to do since my raspberries now are grown under a lot of wood chips.
Raspberries are definitely a wonderful, low maintenance fruit.
1 year ago
Has anyone else tried this successfully?
I saw links to the PTJ and a thread on Sepps spring but nothing in this project. Did y'all get water?
Daniel
Not having tried it, my thoughts are that you might get some benefit from running your graywater through wood chips first. If they were myceliated you could get some good filtration. But I don't know if they could handle being that wet.
Second, and I think you were headed that way, I wouldn't grow anything that had the food part of the plants in contact with the water.
1 year ago
Hi Steve,
Good to hear that it wasn't just a one-off year with no JBs. Now to figure out how to replicate it in Colorado. I wonder if all robber flies would eat them or just one specie? Colorado doesn't have cardinals, so attracting them is out. But at least I do know that mulch is prime habitat for them.
Daniel
2 years ago
Steve, How did your garden fare this year? Were you still infestation-free?

I looked up robber flies briefly. I Couldn't find any preferred plants but it does appear that their larvae hunt through decaying organic matter. Sounds like mulch to me. And it included rotten wood so hopefully my wood chip mulch works, too. Now I did discover that there are something like 1000 kinds of robber fly (also called assassin fly) in North America. So it could take a while to figure out which ones eat japanese beetles. But it sounded like they would eat most anything that flies. So that's promising.

Daniel
2 years ago
For me the biggest thing I could do with a small garden (mine's smaller than your 400m2) is affect my local climate. Like my yard. Shade trees will make a yard more comfortable. Trees or hedges between you and the road will reduce car pollution coming into your yard. I'm not worrying about sequestering carbon to combat global warming/cooling/change. I care about carbon because it makes my plants grow better. GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE. And a lot of it is available for free in the form of leaves, kitchen scraps, and such for the work of collecting it. If I can get food that didn't have to be transported from the next continent over or fertilized with petroleum products it's a win. If my food has better nutrition than the chemical soup food then I'll be more healthy and it's a win.
People follow successful examples. If they see you doing your garden successfully some will eventually follow. With enough of that you will probably eventually have a positive effect of the climate. As fewer people import food the pollution of burning it or producing it will go away. As you take care of the soil the groundwater will rebuild. As more trees fill your neighborhood it will be more comfortable to live there.
But for the immediate future, the climate you most affect is your own and I think that's worth the effort.
2 years ago
Results from my 15 hazels at the end of the second growing season.
As a lot of people seem to have found, it was a hard growing season. I think I for sure lost a second hazel. Most of the 10 (now 8) in back looked poorly. I had a lot of leaf edges crisping up and some leaf loss. One or two that looked like they died now have green buds, presumably ready for next year. I assume they grew taller but I don't know how much.

Of the 5 hazels in from, 3 have catkins ready for next spring. (1 of them had a catkin or two this spring). I'm hoping that means I might have a few nuts set on next year. One of the ones in front without catkins has bushed out a lot with new shoots.

I nearly put up shade cloth over the garden this year. Might have given a better harvest if I had. The hazels in front with afternoon shade did much better than those with only morning shade.  I'm reminded that hazels are an understory specie so I'm thinking that they'd like more shade, particularly in our semiarid and very sunny climate. I'm hoping to grow orache, sunflowers, and my going-to-seed carrots around the backyard hazels next year. In theory the apple trees should shade the hazels eventually but I need a few years of shade in the mean time.
DK
2 years ago
I feel like this will end up with a bunch of solar panels permanently tied up but only used for a few days or a week each year. I don't doubt that low voltage DC with enough solar panels would do the job. It seems like this should be integrated with solar panels on your house or something. Plug the splitter into a system that gives you benefit all year. Alternatively people keep talking about a solar charged golf cart with oversized batteries that serves as a mobile power supply with an inverter or something. Coupled with that you could tow the splitter where you needed it and have a power source but you're getting use out of the panels and batteries all year.
Oh, and if there are batteries involved in the system keep in mind that they need some degree of climate control and maintenance.
2 years ago
From the map it looks like the hill slopes towards your house from the east. If that's the case I'd think that extending the French drain along that side of the house would be a good first step. Of course there's plenty of other variables like grading around your house but a longer French drain where I would think to start based off the info I have.
Daniel
2 years ago