Spring has sprung! Of course the seedlings have to stay under cover at night or they would die a horrible death but they sure look good.
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Nice starts David. Do you heat the greenhouse or use a heat mat or anything? I am experimenting with a little lean too greenhouse on the house this year for the first time. Trying to learn what I can before I go bigger. I been just leaving the laundry room door open to let some heat in at night. Still to cold for most seeds to start on there own. I am getting real antsy. working on about another 1000 sq/ft of new space. This is the year of the winter squash at my house. easy storage.
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I have heated wire in the grow box on top of 1" of foam covered in 1 inch of sand. A thermostat turns it on if needed. A second air conditioner thermostat turns on the vent fan if it overheats… uses about 500 watts per day in mid April usually at night. The seedlings seem to like heat from bellow.
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We planted our potatoes on Jan. 28th, and now they are ready for harvest. Onions are also about 4" in diameter, Garlic is huge, and the Greens are 3 feet high. For the next month or so, we can “harvest on Demand”, i.e. dig what we need for a meal. We love new red potatoes. Yesterday, Martin Payne brought over some little steel parts that needed TIG welding, and afterwards we dug some potatoes and got him a bag of greens. He brought us some of his Grass-Fed Beef Steakburgers, so this morning I was able to fire up my TLUD cookstove to boil some thermos water, and heat water for washing dishes, and then dump the glowing charcoal into my home-made grill and BBQ some of those burgers. After the grilling was done, I flooded the pan with water and was able to recovered the unused charcoal by washing it through an expanded metal mesh screen. I’ll pick out the lava rock and let it dry out before the next grilling session.
Our garden soil only gets compost that is very heavy in charcoal fines. We don’t need or use any chemicals or bug killers. There are lots of worms, too.
The grill is just a stainless bowl sitting in the cut-off top part of a water heater tank. The piece of handlebar has holes in the bottom part that is under the lave rock under the glowing char. The idea was that if I needed air underneath, I could inject it with the pipe. I didn’t use it this morning because there was a good breeze keeping the charcoal glowing. The bowl allows me to flood the lava rock and charcoal with water to recover the un-used charcoal.
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Hey Tom Wobig
Have you tried diamaceatious earth for your potatoes. I bought 2lbs for 15$s last yr. you mix with water in your garden sprayer and apply to your plants or sift it dry on the dirt ( don’t breath the dust can and will cause lung problems ( high silica content) its a prehistoric water critter that got calsified millions of yrs ago. buy food grade only. heres the link if your interested in tying it I had good luck with it
www.diamaceousearth.com I found it on google. I am all organic gardening no chems only nat.fert.( cow poop works the best. especially some that’s at least a yr. old. worked good on my potatoes and tomatoes do not spray the blossoms D E kills all insects including bees that pollinate our gardens. it even kills roaches & fleas& bedbugs, but you have to use lots of it. then the clean up is a lot of work if inside your house. Must wear a respirator if vacuuming DE after it dries. (carpet,furnature,etc.)
just a thought
Jesse
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Hi Ray,
I plan on filling 55 gallon steel drums with chicken manure and wood chips to make compost. I’m not sure of what ratio to use. Is the time to add the charcoal before or after it turns into compost? I have a lot of clay and rocky soil.
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Hi Bill,
Jesse here, when I was a kid at home on the farm we used to just compost all the wood ashes and char right along with everything else at the same time. lots of ashes and char=lots of foliage and better plants. we just piled it up till next yr. then till it in , in the spring. with you using the barrel system you should have a much faster composting rate. we never turned the pile over. just let it rot. always had a giant garden that fed 15-20 people. My grandfather said to make it twice as big as you think you need then it won’t matter what the critters eat. if you want to keep critters out I use Irish spring bath bar just whittle it into slivers all over your garden except maybe your potatoes and any other root veggie. ( we had soapy tasting yucon gold potatoes in’96) glad I only planted a few to try.
Jesse
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Asiatic Jasminn , has a great root system stops erosion heart shaped leaves and star shaped flowers
can be mowed ( better make those blades extra sharp) loves shade or sun . I used it thirty yrs. ago at my first house. it took a couple yrs. to get established but once it did it was unstoppable. we had 29 red oaks 120’ tall thirteen sweet maple three dogwood and some gooseberries along the back line all on three little lake access lots. now you want to talk about soil reclamation? we’d have to start a new topic. I know soil rerclamation. here is what I did in short a moving compost pile you want grass to mow compost in that spot for one season in the fall mow your little pile then seed it for next yr. more details ? message me.
Jesse
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Hello Bill,
I haul home truck loads of partially composted wood chips, and add all the cow manure and chicken litter I can find. (Never seem to have enough.) Charcoal fines can be layered into the pile when you form it, or they can be mixed in with the compost when it is sifted. My scheme uses conical piles as high as my front end loader will lift. (8 feet or so.) There are two piles working now, and one pile finished. These piles throw off lots of vapor that looks like steam, (CO2 and Methane?) so I climb up on top with buckets of water and punch a hole with a t-post, and pour rainwater down the center. I don’t use a sprinkler, because water here is sold by the gallon. My neighbor uses thermometers in his piles, but he has hundreds of fowl for fertilizer. Are you making a rotating tumbler with that steel drum? The compost is “alive”, so you don’t want to suffocate it in a closed drum. With clay and rocks a raised bed is best. North of Anoka, MN, there used to be peat bogs which the farmers drained and then planted vegetables on the black peat dirt. I remember my uncle, who smoked Camel cigarettes, somehow managed to set a peat garden on fire, and it burned for weeks. Must have been lots of carbon in that soil. Getting back on topic, perhaps you can find some peat on your property, and haul it up to the house area for your garden. Either plant lots of extra for the wild critters, or fence them out. BTW, I really like to read your adventure posts. Thanks.
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Love your efficiency Ray also digging that grill. Bill I don’t know if it is right or wrong but I start right from the beginning by putting the char right in the chicken coop. Just seems right to me. I am building all my raised beds on rotting wood. Just started that last year, the soil looks much better. I didn’t expect much the first year but the beds did very well and much of the wood is already gone. I have sandy soil and it really helps to hold the water.
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[quote=“JHart, post:99, topic:2377”]
Have you tried diatomaceous earth for your potatoes.[/quote]
Hi Jesse,
Yes , I have tried diatomaceous earth, darn that’s a tongue twister to spell out. Spell check to the rescue.lol. I read it is sharp and slices insects that crawl over it and the “bleed” to death. I went to rotenone because it was safer, quicker and cheaper. Uhh, cheaper was first.
Pepe
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Hi Bill,
What you have to watch in compost build is the carbon to nitrogen ratio. Here’s one site to try or google carbon to nitrogen ratio. You also should be able to mix or turn the compost for aeration for quickest results. Proper compost piles heat up considerably killing off some pathogens, etc.
http://www.klickitatcounty.org/solidwaste/fileshtml/organics/compostcalc.htm
Pepe
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Something to think about, you can heat water with a compost pile
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My MIG gas bottle actually had gas left in it from November so I got to glue some steel together.
Some “artsy” creative stuff, and some more functional stuff, like a mobile firepit. I also started working on a modified “Hookway” charcoal retort to hopefully allow me to make some decent charcoal in larger quantities, either for smithing or for a charcoal gasifier.
“Balancing Act”
“Safe”
Over-engineered brackets for my the handrail in on my stairs.
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You guys crack me up … Hope to see you in 3 weeks … My father in law is dying right now but is still busy living as he swells up. I had planned for the last year to be on my way to Arizona right now but I guess that is not happening till things settle down … I’ll be pulling my older time tested trailer to Argos … Mike
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BrianHWA
I have an original Hookway print book/manual I can loan to you want me to mail it on up to you.
Regards
Washington State Steve Unruh
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Don’t forget milk for a pesticide; http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/milk-natural-pesticide-zmaz82mazglo.aspx
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Went to the “valborgsmässobrasan” to night.
Every town and every village through out the country has at least one big bonfire on the last of april. There are some fireworks, drinking and singing.
It’s said that all the fires will help witches find their way home on their brooms from “Blåkulla” where they’ve been since easter making love to the devil himself. News even reported airspace was really crowded.
A tremendous amount of gasifier fuel from every garden in the village was wasted in the fire. Should have brought my chunker. No one ever even seem to care rescuing the leftover charcoal 
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By the time the Europeans got to this country they changed it from burning a fire to guide the witches to just plane burning the witch. I don’t know of any of us that wanted to make love to the devil or assist the witches — although through our lives a lot of people think they have.TomC
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Thank you, Steve, but I don’t know if it’d be worth the shipping cost as I’m not much of a book-learner.
I’m basically just looking at all the theories/ideas used by various retorts and figuring out how to cobble something useful together from them with what I have on hand. I’m mostly done already anyways. 