Sebastien Duclert

Hello Permies,

I am full in Loquat season here and I have been thinking some people might be interested in getting loquat seeds. I only discovered this great fruit when I came to live here in southern Spain. It's a sturdy tree, quite fast growing, keeps its leaves all year, yields a good crop of delicious sweet fruits in April/May and doesn't seem to mind alkaline soil. It likes mild winters but I have seen it produce fruits in higher latitudes and is quite tolerant of mild frosts once established.

I am happy to send seeds to anyone at the cost of shipping.

Dear permies,

My carob trees have produced several hundreds of kilos of pods this year and since I don't have animals to feed them to I was wondering if anyone has ever tried to turn them into some kind of fertilizer. After several failed (very labour intensive!) attempts at processing them for human consumption I usually use them as mulch but I am wondering if I could not turn them in some kind of liquid /slurry plant feed through fermentaion or other. Any idea welcome.

Thanks
Sebastien

Peter van den Berg wrote:

Sebastien Duclert wrote:Thanks for your advice. The batch can burn larger pieces of wood than the J tube? Is that correct. Do you know if the builder's guide book also includes a design for a batch heater?

Given the same system size a batchrocket can burn larger pieces of fuel, yes.
There's no design as such in the builder's guide book, but all information is concentrated on batchrocket.eu. In seven languages including Spanish.

Hi Peter,

Two questions for you: I would like to build a stove in the corner of my first floor which appears to be built with inverted concrete T beams and those hollow blocks resting on top like in the attached picture. It then probably have a thin layer of concrete and terracotta tiles. Do you think that this type of construction would be sturdy enough, in principle, to hold the weight of a batch rocket stove?



Do you know anyone in Spain that I could hire to help me build such a stove?

Thanks,

Sebastien

Peter van den Berg wrote:

Sebastien Duclert wrote:Thanks for your advice. The batch can burn larger pieces of wood than the J tube? Is that correct. Do you know if the builder's guide book also includes a design for a batch heater?

Given the same system size a batchrocket can burn larger pieces of fuel, yes.
There's no design as such in the builder's guide book, but all information is concentrated on batchrocket.eu. In seven languages including Spanish.

Thanks Peter for pointing me to your website. Great that you share all this detailed info on batch heaters with the world!

Benen Huntley wrote:I'll give a strong recommendation for a batch rocket. I'm biased, having never built a j tube. While I agree that the j tube is simpler to build, I can't say I found the batch rocket particularly difficult to construct. I was offered plenty of excellent and prompt advice here at permies and took my time and I'm very pleased with both of mine.

Thanks for your advice. The batch can burn larger pieces of wood than the J tube? Is that correct. Do you know if the builder's guide book also includes a design for a batch heater?

Thanks

Hello permies,

I am considering building a rocket mass heater to replace my fireplace insert (image attached). Before I launch myself in buying the whole DVD set I have a few basic questions on the technology:
- What type of rocket heater/mass heater would be the most appropriate to heat up a 400 sqft living room economically knowing that I live in a mild climate with occasional rare frosts but not in a particularly well insulated house?
- Do rocket heaters only burn small diameter branches?
- Does the updraft make a lot of noise?


Thanks for your insight,

Sebastien

Seif Fathi wrote:Hi all,

I'm in the Denia area also looking for people interested in creating a local Permaculture community maybe to start a community garden in and around Denia. If anyone needs an extra pair of hands let me know. Currently I've got a small urban garden on the terrace of my flat growing lots of greens and strawberries, even a little peach tree I'm relatively new to these forums.

Seif

Hi Seif,

Sorry.For some reason I never saw your reply. Are you still permaculturig in Denia? If so let+s meet one day.

Cheers,

Sebastien

Hi Jedd,

Thanks for the detailed reply and the species advice. I did think that the channel would be a bit shallow. I'll look at clumpers again and see if I can find the species you mention. I guess I can put smaller plants in the channel or maybe just get rid of it but that would be a piece of work.
Would you be able to recommend some of these online matrix you were talking about?

Thanks,

Sebastien

Hi Lucy,

Good idea with the compost tea. I have made some once and I am trying again now. not sure about the quality of my compost but hopefully it can only be beneficial to the plants and tree I will apply it to. I am still looking for an old bathtub to try worm composting but they are hard to come by (people use them to feed animals).

A root cellar is an exciting idea. I am thinking about making one Sepp Holzer style with tree trunks burried in the side of one of the terraces. At the moment I am making a shelter in strawbale with earth plaster for growing mushroom on logs. For the rain water capture, as my land is terraced, I can't really build a dam. I have setup some of these 1000L cubes to capture water from the roof and the driveway but they fill up way too quickly when it rains. I'd like to make a large vaulted aljibe like in the Almeria region in order to capture and store much more of these rare rainstorms. I also tried a ground raintrap the other day, where the dry stone wall had collapsed: I just shaped the ground as a shallow funnel lined it with black plastic and rocks on top. In the middle at the bottom a PVC tube collects water to a barrel. It works well but again I need a much bigger semi buried masonry storage tank to make the most of the concept. I am aslo thinking to cover it completely with large stones so that it doubles up as a condensation dew trap. Not sure it is worth it as we don't have much dew most of the year.

You can see a picture of it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3tProok3GiGcUdrNU5CZGRWdU9Fc0tvd3BONWpIVVBlRjBJ

Will you be building a house on the land at some point?

Thanks for the offer of help on WordPress. There isn't really a problem. I am just procrastinating setting it up really...

I have added your number to my phone but it doesn't seem that you use WhatsApp. I'll send you a text so that you can have my number (prefer not to leave my number on public forums).

Cheers,

Sebastien

Lucy Gabzdyl wrote:Hi Sebastien

I'm a couple of hundred kilometres north of you in Canet lo Roig a small village in Castellon (just on the border with Catalunia). woud love to know more about your project - I have a very good friend in Albir so if I visit her I would love to pop in to see your set up. Have you got a website or FB page? My partner and I have been on our property of 1.8 hectares just over a year, it hadn't been worked for over 30 years and all the almond trees had died. But there are still a number of olilve trees but they will need some serious rehabilitation. Focusing on setting up our zone 1 veg patch (I have just completed Geoff Lawton's online PDC but feeling rather overwhelmed). Progress is slow and we hit a layer of caliche about a foot down, luckily only about 5 mm but as we aren't using power tools and don't have a car it's tough going. But sometimes the delays can be a real blessing. We didn't manage to plant any trees last year, a stroke of good luck as with the terrible drought we would have lost them all!

Look forward to hearing from you
Lucy and David

Hi Lucy and David,

Great to hear from you. We are in a place called Polop, not far at all from Albir so you're very welcome to come over when you visit your friend. I live here with my wife and daughters (9 and 6 y.o.). For the moment I don't really have a project website. I am struggling a bit with Wordpress . Our land is also a 1 ha neglected plantation but of mostly lemons and a few other citrus and others. I have planted a few trees, killed a few and had very limited success with my veggie gardening efforts. I am also starting more in earnest this year after having spent more time on improving the house last year. I also just got access to irrigation water and completed a few rainwater capture projects. I did my PDC in 2016 but I must say that so far my design is very much ad hoc. I am starting to look more into setting up a forest garden. I have a few almond trees too that produce well and are very decorative but unfortunately the evil Xylella Fastidiosa has been detected in one of the neighbours' trees and, according to EU rules, all my almond trees will soon be made into woodchips and my land entirely fumigated with nasty stuff that will kill all insects. It´s really very sad, especially because I won't be allowed to plant almond trees again or any of the very long list of potential list of hosts to Xylella. I hope for you this plague won´t reach your area!

Anyway. Do get in touch when you plan to come to this area.

Cheers,

Sebastien