s. lowe

Nancy Reading wrote:Is it really as easy as this to make a straw bale garden? What are the possible downsides? Does it work for other crops than the squash family?

It's basically that easy. In my experience you have to feed a lot.

When I had a place with a big garden i would regularly go pick up straw and hay that had gotten wet and moldy to use for composting and mulch and I did a couple raised beds from those.

If you have basically free bales and no other use for them it's a way to use them while they start to compost

https://redefiningcompost.com/where-to-buy/

Seacoast is the best commercial compost that I've used. We used it to make tea at a commercial scale (like 500 gallons at a time) and were very happy with the results.

I will agree with Paul though that you likely have a lot of paths to your goal that don't require purchasing something, or that could lead you to feeling the need to purchase less than you're currently thinking

Just want to say that Tea Lab is a local business for me and the owner, Luke, is a great dude. They do very good work and have great customer service.

I wash and rinse white rice multiple times to get rid of excess starch because it makes a better (in my opinion) finished product. Usually takes about 3 rounds of vigorous hand scuffing in cold water until the rinse water is clear as opposed to milky and slick.

Just made a quick account to poke around, I still don't have my desktop unpacked at my new spot but once I do I plan to play with it a lot more and see what I can do with it but it seems like a very cool tool. I love the concept of having a digital tool to track relevant garden dates for your specific plot over time. Thanks for making this and sharing it. I'll try to offer useful feedback as I mess with it more this month.

It seems like a trust would be a good option for Otises. The big hurdle would be establishing trustees that would faithfully carry the purpose forward, but I think that might be easier than it seems as first.

If the trust was established with a clear purpose (something like maintaining the property as a working homestead for the benefit of the first PEPer as well as future PEPers) I'm fairly certain it could be set up so that PEPer #1 could inherit it as the beneficiary, without tax liabilities, and then transition in time to a/the trustee and identify then next person to take it over as the new beneficiary.

I think that there's value in looking at this phenomenon in the development of any kind of mixed planting. Anywhere you live there is a predominant wind. You can either be subjected to this force and it's power or you can match it. In the same way that on contour plantings can slow the spread of water, in the same way these strip plantings could slow and spread the force of wind.

Instead of letting the wind create the pattern pointed to in the OP, you can create the pattern to meet the form nature wants. Strips of annual crops with smaller strips of perennials that rise up vertically and disrupt the wind match the natural pattern while minimizing the negative impacts of wind erosion and trapping the mineral wealth it carries

Jen, the pictures look to  me like severe damage from fungus gnat larvae. They look like termites and munch tunnels into  the root crown and stem right at soil level.

The adults kind of look like little mosquitoes or gnats (they are gnats). They lay their eggs in moist soil. I have. Lost plants to them and it sounds very similar to what happened to you.

One thing you can do is leave the soil at the base of plants unmulched and try to keep it dry. You could also try to keep DE dusted around the base of plants. Another effective option is to water with a BT (bacillus thuriniensis (sp?)) product. That bacteria predates fungus gnat eggs. And lastly, you can get sticky traps for the adults that you just stake up in the garden.

One last thing, and it may  be too late this time, you should cover the area around a plant that dies and gets pulled from fungus gnats with cardboard to inhibit the new adults from getting out of the soil and laying more eggs. They're a pain but you can totally eliminate them without gnarly sprays, the garden that taught me all about them produced without damage for several years after the year the gnats wrought their havoc

I just rinse the gear well right after use and make sure to run a fair amount of fresh water through the sprayer. Seems to work well enough

Congratulations Joseph! It's an amazing book and I'll be putting in my order today.