It can get too hot now, I am hoping to correct this soon. One issue is that I can get a solar powered fan for inside the solar oven, but it has to have a long shaft so the motor is outside the oven. I haven't found one yet.Benjamin Dinkel wrote:Cool idea.
Does the food get very hot while being dehydrated?
Maieshe Ljin wrote:This is very interesting.
I was especially surprised when you mentioned the mushrooms growing in one batch! But we do steam mushroom media usually before adding spores or spawn.
My theory as to why it seems to work so well, despite what we know about soil microbes helping plants, is that the seed contains epiphyte and endophyte microbes that are able to colonise the soil more easily without competition. However, it might be beneficial to try adding a little soil in from the wherever the plant is growing very well unsterilized so that there are more of these beneficial microbes.
There is a similar system that used to be used in Europe. I forget what it is called but they burnt sod, mixed it with manure to compost, and then spread it on the fields. Apparently this built up an extremely rich soil that is still in existence to this day. However it was not highly sustainable because it stole the topsoil from heath-land.
Hi Rebecca, are you still in the high desert? My parabolic "Sun Scoop" works a little similar to the Scheffler, it's just a lot simpler to adjust and you can DIY it. I cut mine from an 8 by 4 sheet of abs plastic, and I made it to have an almost exactly 1.5 sq meter reflector. There was some material left over from the ABS sheet, but I still can use that to make a smaller parabolic dish, roughly of 1 sq meter collector size. I hope you look at my "waterwheel winch" method for rotating the dish, you could probably use it to work your Scheffler too. I would hate to turn my dish by hand! My seasonal adjustment is pretty easy. Also, different from Scheffler, the amount of light collected is the same in Winter as in Summer. (Scheffler dishes collect a larger area of light in Winter than in Summer). There is a huge need for a simple "timer", ideally one that doesn't break down easily or a photodiode arrangement to tell my waterwheel winch when to stop and start. Something like that could be made for under $20, and enables DIY tracking on equatorial mount everywhere in the world. Thank you, BrianRebecca Norman wrote:I've used a couple different kinds of solar cookers at our school in Ladakh, which is high desert, so it's ideal for solar power.
The reflector box cookers are great for the gee-whiz factor, but we never used them regularly. They can bake a small volume of items, and do better with sweet things than not, because I guess the sugar browns nicer. Baking is not a tradition here, and the box ovens we have had were too small to really produce much. I have met people who claim to cook other things in a box cooker, such as rice, but when we tried it, it fogged up the glass and the whole thing cooled down. We have two sitting around impressing people but not being used.
Parabolic reflector cookers that concentrate the sun's rays with a roughly parabolic disk of shiny material have been much more effective for us. The small ones, about 4 feet diameter, work pretty well, but you have to go outside and turn them every 15 minutes or so. They are too small for the numbers of people at our school, but they would be great for cooking for 2 or 3 people, I think. These are more like stovetop cooking and you can cook all kinds of pots of food on them. I've seen two models, one with the dish low to the ground and the pot raised, and one with the dish and the pot at about waist height. They are pretty affordable to put together from shiny aluminum or steel if you can make the frame. In your first week of having one, it is a rite of passage to burn holes in some clothing that you think will dry quickly by draping it on the solar cooker.
At our school we use a big Scheffler reflector type cooker, with a parabolic dish about 8 or 10 feet in diameter, focused on a hole in the (non-flammable) wall and a secondary reflector shining up to the pot. This works very well, and we can cook big pots for 50 people on it. Ours have gone through two models of self-regulating mechanisms, where you'd weight the thing down with a stone, pull it over towards the east in the morning so the stone goes up, and a tick-tock pendulum mechanism would control its speed turning back to the west as the stone pulled down. Both mechanisms failed, and now we just turn it by hand every 15 minutes or so. Either way, you have to make a seasonal adjustment every few weeks. It's a bigger investment, and rather complex engineering to get the angles right, I think. I don't even know where the designs are; I hope they are online as Scheffler cooker. Ours was installed by a Swiss guy in the 1990s who came around and trained lots of local people in how to fabricate and install these, and we've been using both ever since. The others that were installed in our region are no longer used. User motivation is essential.
Ben Zumeta wrote:
Brian White wrote:
Hi, Ben. My argument is correct, there is more biological energy (carbohydrates, etc.), in the weed soup than in compost tea, if you boil chopped up weeds, juice is extracted from the weeds, (just as spider mites, and aphids extract plant juice to live) and also some complex organic compounds get broken down and become part of the weed soup. If you dilute weed soup and use it when you water your plants, you are feeding the bacteria that are already there in the soil. No new bacteria needed. They will use the carbohydrate to multiply. Protozoa already in the soil will eat the bacteria, worms will eat the bacteria, die, decompose and nutrients will be released in forms available to the plants. I think that fungi will especially benefit from weed soup carbohydrates, especially because they are already broken down somewhat. So, yeah, garden soil already contains a vast number and variety of bacteria and fungi. It is easier to feed the ones that are there than to add more. I don't know how things work with foliar applications of compost tea. People seem to be hyper critical of new stuff, I did a compost tea brewery, (actually have one going now), so not sure why people think I am so against compost tea.Anne Miller wrote:Hands down the compost tea is better.
I like your idea for using a solar cooker, but this is a straw man argument about compost teas. I could give a long, redundant explanation of soil biology that has already been provided abundantly on this forum, including in the thread provided. It also appears that information is not welcomed by the OP though, so it would be a waste of time to repeat it here.
Anyone who has made really good compost, extract or teas would not say “it has no energy in it” .Especially if looking at it under a microscope, or its effect on plant growth. It has billions of living micro organisms cycling nutrients and energy, which the plants get looped into with application. These microbes live on and in the plants, greatly improving their ability to access and cycle nutrients, water and energy.