Alan Burnett

L. Johnson wrote:
   9. Tie bundles of twigs to dry for kindling

Please acknowledge my craft in this spirit, a jig sized to my boot to put forest waste and waste sticks into, stomp down, and twine twice to create firewood kindling bundles. Made of 2x4s and screws, I should be able to fill with sticks, stomp down, twine up, and dry overyear to make wood stove fuel

Marco Zolow wrote:I moved into my home in suburban Cincinnati around three years ago. I usually like to convert a front lawn into a pollinator garden. Since we have great regional parks with many wonderful wildflowers, the first thing I did was collect seed in the fall for everything that I saw that had a seed head. At home, I started with all the cardboard boxes from the move and ordered up a bunch of mulch. Gradually, over the last three years, I have continued to mulch the areas where I don't want "lawn" and developed beds for native and purchased plants. It is a constant evolution. Here are some pics.

I love these photos so much! What a lush walk from the house to the road. And not a blade of grass in sight. I wish I had a vision like that back when I lived in a house with a similar walkway. I had a simple lawn path and planted some perennial shrubs and herbs, but I never converted the large swath of lawn and the result fell far short of what I really wanted. I would have been so happy with results like yours

How much maintenance is there around the stepping stones? I figure you must have to cut back at some point or else the path becomes hard to walk on

I love the photos Ulla, the shelves with grow lights recessed on the underside of each shelf is fantastic! When it's time to prepare annual crops I definitely want to copy that into my space

I've added onto my corner a bit, I've put reflective insulation on the walls, draped plastic sheeting as a makeshift door, and hung a simple grow light. I'm sure I'll have to do more if I really want it to keep an optimal temperature and humidity for growing during the winter, but I want to test out how it's going to work this winter as-is.

I'm planning to start swiss chard, anise hyssop, and kale in March, then maximillian sunflowers in April. I'm sure I'll come up with more seeds to start by then, and I will probably try to propagate some fall cuttings between all of that

The past few years, I've had a very simple grow 'room' of a large plastic bin with a grow light under a table. I'd order my seeds in February, plant them indoors in March/April, and plant them out to the garden once they fill their pots. I know I'm learning because I'm making a ton of mistakes.

This year I'm upgrading to a 3'x5' table in the corner of a concrete basement, plus enough space to work while inside. I still have to figure out exactly what to do for walls, I am thinking of fastening mylar sheets to the concrete walls, and hanging blankets + plastic sheeting for the new walls, which I'll need to pass through to work. The room has a window, and I'm not sure how it'll behave when the cold dry winter winds meet the relatively insulated basement where I'm watering plants regularly under a grow light.

I really want to propagate cuttings but it's been a bit discouraging how many cuttings have died under my care so far. I'm hoping this new grow room will work out well for this year's crop

Another year, new plantings, new growth, and new challenges! This spring brought another round of tree planting, this time focused on support trees rather than food production:

American Basswood x3

Black Locust x2

Juneberry x2

Basket Willow x2

Speckled alder (replacement)

I've planned out guilds for the Apple tree and the group of Blueberry bushes, and I've started planting toward those goals, but for now the existing grass and dandelions are still dominating.

My 3 pears and 3 plums from last year had quite a lot of grass intrusion on the mulch ring, so I re-mulched all of them with a cardboard layer underneath and a mulch/compost mix on top. Some have companion plants within the mulch ring that are doing well! One of the plums looks like it might put out fruit this year!

Some of the trees are not doing well.. one of the Pears seems to have some sort of disease, two of the original speckled alders have died (I've replaced one), I'm worried about just how late the Basswoods are putting out their leaves, and one of my black locusts seems completely dead, the other mostly dead.

Thank you for visiting!

Josh Hoffman wrote:
I think it is the modern city (for the most part) that is unsustainable, and not the population numbers. Not to mention the national and global economy, talk about exploitation.

I do not think cities are the problems. I think it is the suburbs that surround them. If you have 100 square miles of suburban sprawl, everyone gets their own house on a half acre, riding lawnmower, garage with a car, they drive for amenities and gatherings, they are massively dependent on food and goods being shipped in and garbage being shipped out. This population cannot manage themselves. They are highly dependent on outside support.

But take the same area, put 85% of the population in dense residential buildings (apartment buildings) in a walkable, livable city, and the other 15% of the population manages the farmland / wild land surrounding this area. This population can manage itself, nature gets to exist, and I bet quality of life even works out to be better. Most human space since ancient Egypt has followed this kind of model.

It's only with recent globalization that people have had the opportunity to convert the city's surrounding farmland into expensive suburban living area. Look 15 miles outside of any major metropolitan area in the US for examples of this. We have shipping vessels bringing goods across the ocean, and 18 wheelers bringing food from massive swaths of industrialized farmland to support this model.

I believe when you add up all the costs here, the water and sewage and other infrastructure to support the suburbs, the personal cost to live there and pay for all the shipping, people get a far worse deal in the suburbs than they do in the city/rural structure.

Thank you for the information...

I was gifted a gardening book that suggests different activities for each month, and February says to clean and maintain garden tools. So here we go!

Clean the dirt off, file any large dings, whetstone the blade, and give the whole blade a coat of oil. Handles sanded and rubbed with oil. This is my plan

Randy Bachman wrote:Last i put oil on the metal parts. Nothing fancy, even used motor oil.

This worries me. I'm using this shovel to transplant raspberry crowns and divide hostas and sunchokes which I will soon eat. Trace amounts of my tools and their oil coatings are going to wind up in my food and in my body. Maybe I'm worrying for nothing, but putting this used motor oil in my body does not bring joy.

I have a good supply of food grade mineral oil, so this is what I plan to use.

Walt Chase wrote:.  I've found a good way to keep shovels clean and oiled is a bucket of sand with some type oil in it.  When you finish using the shovel, hose it off and stick it in the bucket of sand a time or two.  The sand scours the blade and the oil protects the metal.

So this feels like a very silly question, but why do I want to scour the shovel head? Scouring is going to dig grooves in the metal, increase surface area. This shovel is going to be shoved into the dirt 10,000 times, I want it to act as close to a surgical blade as possible so it requires the least amount of force to split things in half.

Timothy Norton wrote:Blades get sharpened and everything gets touched up. I will take the time to go through my kitchen knives as well and inspect each one.

Could you share more about what you do? I have a lot of metal tools I'm bringing inside for the first time this winter to give them some maintenance, and I could use some practical advice