Blogs

I needed a seven foot or so trellis for my peas, and was first thinking about making something out of PVC pipe. But then, I remembered a neighbors bamboo tree that had crept under the fence… So I got all permaculturey and decided to give the bamboo trellis a shot. Getting to the bamboo roots has […]

White mold in your compost is something to be desired – it tells you that you compost is in the 100-140F range. I took a reading on the surface of the compost and was at about 110F. You need about 150F to kill seeds, and that will entail having the right mixture of greens and […]

Well, the storm gave me about 340 gallons of water and a mild fever, which kept me down for about a week. I’ve mellowed out my schedule a bit, adding a mid-week rest. Other than that, a heat-wave followed our storm, which I hear is another by-product of El-nino. My understanding is to expect about […]

Sometimes when you have a goal, you have to work with some characters you’d rather not deal with… The same is true with the garden, and in this case it’s Japanese beetles. Japanese beetles live underground come out for one month in June. They look like beautiful green scarab beetles. They fly around stupidly and […]

I’ve kind of learned the rhythm of the garden. In the winter time, when things aren’t growing you build stuff and start planning for the next season. At the same time, leaves are on the ground, so you pick those up for composting. Rain falls, so you collect that too as it will be needed […]

Anyone considering collecting rainwater with totes should probably consult with me first – I have gone through a major learning curve on how to make these things work, and I could save you a lot of exploration… I discovered that if you stack tanks, you have to tighten the top seal first – it leaks, […]

Some details about the 20’x3′ in-ground bed – before I had put the stones around it, it was three small plots next to the grass. It was nearly impossible to prevent grass from entering into it. Also, putting together irrigation was really complex and time-consuming. Not only was this area ugly, but it was also […]

So, today we find ourselves having just completed a major rainstorm. We have about 800 gallons of rainwater water stored in totes, and we have just completed work on a 20’x3′ in-ground bed, which is currently planted with about 40 linear feet of various kinds of trellising peas. The goal – to make money in […]

So, I’ve started putting in about six hours a week into my garden, and things are getting done. I started waking at 5:30 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and begin work around 6:30 am. This has turned out to be a great joy and one of the highlights of my week. I’ve discovered how to […]