Sources of information . . .
Start with thermal mass:
http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/construction/solardesign/thermal.html
We use barrels filled with water:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6563706&l=0baccfc37d&id=588082483
Add a compost pile for some supplemental heat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI5bDP4q8F4 He is talking about keeping the temperature above freezing most of the time. However, I grow many winter crops in temperatures down into the low teens. If you adjust what you expect to grow in the green house, you don’t need to keep it very warm.
Add animals for even more free supplemental heat:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/1986-07-01/Bioshelter-Greenhouse.aspx
These folks are using some high tech options—but I have read about this being done in a much simpler fashion. Your animals will need ample water, and a way to freely leave the green house during the day—because the solar gain can be enough to cook them. When it is 50 degrees outside on a sunny day, our greenhouse here can be over 120 degrees.
Not only can you heat your green house for free—you can use the heat the greenhouse collects to heat your home. On sunny days that works for the main farm house here, without any major retrofitting at all. The green house is simply bolted to the main house.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6563707&l=85a3b9f5f4&id=588082483
But if you want to get fancy, check out what these people have done:
http://www.livescience.com/environment/060421_green_house.html
Hot Beds are also useful ways to heat green houses and hoop houses. They utilize manure, usually horse or cow, in deep trenches over which you plant your crops. They provide heat to the soil and roots, with some escaping into the air:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46012
You are also going to need vents and vent openers--unless you are going to monitor your green house all day every day. On 50 degree days here, our green house can be over 120 degrees! Here is a company that offers some solar powered automatic vent openers: http://www.greenhouses-etc.net/equipment/solar_vents.htm I am not recommending this company, I am just recommending that you design your green house with vents and have some sort of vent openers. Since we are talking no energy use here--solar ones seem like the way to go.
Here are some book recommendations for those who would like to know even more . . .
Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest: Cool-Season Crops for the Year-Round Gardener
http://www.amazon.com/Winter-Gardening-Maritime-Northwest-Cool-Season/dp/1570611629
(This one is pricey, check with your library or local used book seller. And if anyone knows of a great book, which is still in print, that gives details of how wind breaks and microclimates work for the winter garden let me know.)
Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Season-Harvest-Organic-Vegetables-Garden/dp/1890132276
Be sure to check with your local library—and if they don’t have copies they may be able to request a copy from another library system for you to read.
Don’t forget to do some searches on the Internet—there is lots of information available.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Eight Reasons to Think Twice Before Pulling Your Weeds
Copyright 2010, Harvest McCampbell
1. The weed roots form beneficial relationships with the microorganisms in the soil, and in relationship with these roots they flourish and propagate--as the plants you are intentionally growing get larger and you reduce the weed population, the microorganisms will partner with your crop plants and increase their ability to uptake nutrients.
2. Weeds scavenge water soluble nutrients and prevent them from leaching from the soil and polluting our ground water and streams, rivers, and lakes. As the plants you are intentionally growing get larger and you clip or pull the weeds and add them to the compost or your mulch, you have saved those nutrients in a slow release organic from that increases soil life and nutrient cycling.
3. Nutrient cycling microorganisms need protection from sunlight, weed leaves are great parasols.
4. Healthy soil life does not thrive on compaction. Weed leaves soften the blows of rain and irrigation, and the weed roots, when pulled gently - a very few at a time-- lift and aerate the soil. The roots that remain in the soil; will either grow new weeds prolonging their benefits, or they will decay, leaving behind humus and space for oxygen and for soil microorganisms to flourish.
5. Most weeds are edible and far more nutritious than anything we are trying to grow on purpose.
6. Many weeds provide habitat and food for beneficial creatures that will help control pests in the garden.
7. Weeds produce oxygen, which is currently in decline in our atmosphere--primarily because of human activity. See my article on Carbon Production = Oxygen Consumption (PS Oxygen Supplies are Limited): http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/06/24/18651816.php
8. Denuding the soil leads to erosion, nutrient loss, heat gain, water runoff, and much more. This is true on both micro and macro levels. To change how we think in the world, we must first change how we think in the garden. On the macro level denuding the soil of plant life (or even reducing plant life) leads to dust and sand storms, desertification, deforestation, massive top soil loss, and flooding. This in turn leads to destruction of the life in water ways and our oceans. Laying bare the soil may be our undoing.
Weeds are not the enemy. They are nature’s way of healing a damaged micro and macro environments. We can learn to work with them to the betterment of our gardens and our nutrient cycles.
For a little more information on my work, please see my info on facebook http://www.facebook.com/harvest.mccampbell?sk=info, and my website: http://www.BioDiverseGardens.com
1. The weed roots form beneficial relationships with the microorganisms in the soil, and in relationship with these roots they flourish and propagate--as the plants you are intentionally growing get larger and you reduce the weed population, the microorganisms will partner with your crop plants and increase their ability to uptake nutrients.
2. Weeds scavenge water soluble nutrients and prevent them from leaching from the soil and polluting our ground water and streams, rivers, and lakes. As the plants you are intentionally growing get larger and you clip or pull the weeds and add them to the compost or your mulch, you have saved those nutrients in a slow release organic from that increases soil life and nutrient cycling.
3. Nutrient cycling microorganisms need protection from sunlight, weed leaves are great parasols.
4. Healthy soil life does not thrive on compaction. Weed leaves soften the blows of rain and irrigation, and the weed roots, when pulled gently - a very few at a time-- lift and aerate the soil. The roots that remain in the soil; will either grow new weeds prolonging their benefits, or they will decay, leaving behind humus and space for oxygen and for soil microorganisms to flourish.
5. Most weeds are edible and far more nutritious than anything we are trying to grow on purpose.
6. Many weeds provide habitat and food for beneficial creatures that will help control pests in the garden.
7. Weeds produce oxygen, which is currently in decline in our atmosphere--primarily because of human activity. See my article on Carbon Production = Oxygen Consumption (PS Oxygen Supplies are Limited): http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/06/24/18651816.php
8. Denuding the soil leads to erosion, nutrient loss, heat gain, water runoff, and much more. This is true on both micro and macro levels. To change how we think in the world, we must first change how we think in the garden. On the macro level denuding the soil of plant life (or even reducing plant life) leads to dust and sand storms, desertification, deforestation, massive top soil loss, and flooding. This in turn leads to destruction of the life in water ways and our oceans. Laying bare the soil may be our undoing.
Weeds are not the enemy. They are nature’s way of healing a damaged micro and macro environments. We can learn to work with them to the betterment of our gardens and our nutrient cycles.
For a little more information on my work, please see my info on facebook http://www.facebook.com/harvest.mccampbell?sk=info, and my website: http://www.BioDiverseGardens.com
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Wood Ashes for Garden Minerals
This article was previously published in my column "Digging the Dirt" by the Hoopa People News, unfortunately, I am not sure what the date was . . .
Those of us who heat with wood have a free source of fertilizer for our gardens, lawns, and landscapes. As long as you don’t burn anything other than wood and newspaper, what you clean out of your stove is a near perfect plant food. Ashes contain potassium, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorous in adequate amounts to support plant growth!
I first learned that ashes were good for plants, at least in small amounts, in much the same way that some of you may have. Grandmother had an outdoor wood burning cook stove set up in her backyard. When she would clean out the fire box the ashes first went into a galvanized tin bucket to completely cool. Next, if she wasn’t ready to spread them on the garden she would store them in a plastic bucket in the shed. Spring and fall she would sprinkle her garden beds with a fine dusting of ashes. When I helped she always admonished me to keep the ashes off the plants leaves and away from the base of any seedlings. She felt the ashes could burn the plants. Any ashes that drifted onto the plants leaves were hosed off right away. She also kept the ashes out of her shrub borders, because she felt it would burn the skin of her abundant and hard working frogs and toads.
Many years later when I was following one of my mentors, Jim Kaneko, around on his family’s homestead, I would see ashes piled up around the bases of certain trees. These trees had been planted 50 – 60 years earlier by his parents who had emigrated from Japan. At first I was very curious and also concerned. I felt the ashes would burn the trees. He just looked at me funny and said “No, ashes are good for the trees.” Over the few years I was able to help him in his orchards and gardens I frequently saw him pile ashes up around ailing plants. The plants would almost always improve and I never saw any sign of burning. He considered ashes to be the best plant medicine available. Like my grandmother, he would store the ashes in buckets in his shed. However, he saved them for ailing plants instead of sprinkling them sparingly throughout his grounds. (His house had a gas furnace for heat, but in one of his outbuildings there was a traditional wood fired Japanese bath. If he had more ashes available he might have also sprinkled them around.)
In many of our local homes ashes are far from a precious commodity. We shovel them out of our woodstoves in quantities that Gram and Mr. Kaneko would envy. I have been liberally applying them to my garden beds for several years. I really like the granular texture they impart to the soil as they age in the presence of organic matter. Granular soil particles resist compaction and provide spaces for air, water, and roots. Granular, loose soils are also the best for earthworms and soil micro-organisms who help break down organic matter, fix nitrogen, and form symbiotic relationships with plant roots. At first I was worried that the worms might be burned by the alkaline nature of the ashes, but they really don’t seem to be affected. That would probably be a problem in a desert area, but during our wet winters (in the Pacific North West) the alkalinity is quickly leached by the rain.
The nutrients in ashes are considered water soluble. In low rainfall areas it is important to use water soluble nutrients sparingly because they can lead to a toxic build up of mineral salts in the soil. This can be detrimental to earthworms, soil micro-organisms, and plants. Where mineral salts have built up you find a white or pale blue crust forming on the soil’s surface and sometimes on the lower parts of plants. Where we are most likely to see this is in our potted plants that live indoors or on covered porches or patios. The solution when this happens to garden soils is to leach the area with plenty of water, repeatedly, and to add organic matter. The water dissolves the salts and disperses them into deeper soil layers. Organic matter fosters soil micro-organisms who take up the salts and turn them into organic compounds that are slowly released in a more plant and soil friendly form. However, if ashes are only used liberally during the rainy season, and sparingly or not at all during the dry season this is not likely to be a problem in high rainfall areas.
Wood ashes contain almost all the macro and micro nutrients plants need to grow and produce abundant crops, except for two. Wood ashes lack nitrogen and sulfur. Nitrogen can be supplied to our soils by the actions of earthworms and micro-organisms; through the breakdown of green manures such as alfalfa, legumes, cover crops, and grass clippings; from composted animal manure, or from sparing side dressing with chicken manure or bat guano. Be extra careful with manure and guano. They contain soluble nitrogen that can leach into our ground water and end up in our rivers causing dangerous algae blooms.
Sulfur is provided to soils and plants primarily by organic matter. Mixing compost or purchased organic amendments into the soil at planting time and then using water conserving mulch during the heat of summer will supply your plants with all the sulfur they are likely to need. Plants can also extract a certain amount of sulfur from the air. Sulfur is released to the air by burning. Our wood stoves, cars, generators, and other fuel driven engines, as well as local forest fires all increase the amount of sulfur in the air. Rain washes some of this sulfur into our soils making it available to micro-organisms and plant roots. Too much sulfur in the air can cause toxic conditions and devastate natural and man-made landscapes. It is better for the environment, our gardens, and our health to avoid burning trash. Brush, paper, and cardboard can all be shredded and used for compost and mulch; improving our soils and supplying sulfur to our plants while keeping it out of the air.
Because of the alkalinity of ashes they definitely need to be kept away from acid loving plants. Azaleas, camellias, blueberries, and rhododendrons are the most commonly planted acid loving plants in our area. Most acid loving plants originally started out growing wild in conifer forests or peat bogs. Soils with high amounts of organic matter and plenty of rain or standing water are often acidic by nature. Here is a web site with a fairly complete list of acid loving plants found in people’s gardens: http://www.algoflash.com/AcidList.htm Hydrangeas, which aren’t really classified as acid loving, bloom in different colors depending on the pH of the soil. If you have several hydrangeas it might be fun to side dress one of them with ashes and the other with acidifying coffee grounds and/or pine needles and see how the flowers turn out. It might even make an interesting experiment to document for next year’s science fair!
Here’s where we usually talk about sources, but this time you will just have to make your own! Next week we will be talking about Hon tsai tai and some other yummy early greens. Until then, if it is raining, I might be inside starting seeds and only dreaming of Digging the Dirt.
Those of us who heat with wood have a free source of fertilizer for our gardens, lawns, and landscapes. As long as you don’t burn anything other than wood and newspaper, what you clean out of your stove is a near perfect plant food. Ashes contain potassium, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorous in adequate amounts to support plant growth!
I first learned that ashes were good for plants, at least in small amounts, in much the same way that some of you may have. Grandmother had an outdoor wood burning cook stove set up in her backyard. When she would clean out the fire box the ashes first went into a galvanized tin bucket to completely cool. Next, if she wasn’t ready to spread them on the garden she would store them in a plastic bucket in the shed. Spring and fall she would sprinkle her garden beds with a fine dusting of ashes. When I helped she always admonished me to keep the ashes off the plants leaves and away from the base of any seedlings. She felt the ashes could burn the plants. Any ashes that drifted onto the plants leaves were hosed off right away. She also kept the ashes out of her shrub borders, because she felt it would burn the skin of her abundant and hard working frogs and toads.
Many years later when I was following one of my mentors, Jim Kaneko, around on his family’s homestead, I would see ashes piled up around the bases of certain trees. These trees had been planted 50 – 60 years earlier by his parents who had emigrated from Japan. At first I was very curious and also concerned. I felt the ashes would burn the trees. He just looked at me funny and said “No, ashes are good for the trees.” Over the few years I was able to help him in his orchards and gardens I frequently saw him pile ashes up around ailing plants. The plants would almost always improve and I never saw any sign of burning. He considered ashes to be the best plant medicine available. Like my grandmother, he would store the ashes in buckets in his shed. However, he saved them for ailing plants instead of sprinkling them sparingly throughout his grounds. (His house had a gas furnace for heat, but in one of his outbuildings there was a traditional wood fired Japanese bath. If he had more ashes available he might have also sprinkled them around.)
In many of our local homes ashes are far from a precious commodity. We shovel them out of our woodstoves in quantities that Gram and Mr. Kaneko would envy. I have been liberally applying them to my garden beds for several years. I really like the granular texture they impart to the soil as they age in the presence of organic matter. Granular soil particles resist compaction and provide spaces for air, water, and roots. Granular, loose soils are also the best for earthworms and soil micro-organisms who help break down organic matter, fix nitrogen, and form symbiotic relationships with plant roots. At first I was worried that the worms might be burned by the alkaline nature of the ashes, but they really don’t seem to be affected. That would probably be a problem in a desert area, but during our wet winters (in the Pacific North West) the alkalinity is quickly leached by the rain.
The nutrients in ashes are considered water soluble. In low rainfall areas it is important to use water soluble nutrients sparingly because they can lead to a toxic build up of mineral salts in the soil. This can be detrimental to earthworms, soil micro-organisms, and plants. Where mineral salts have built up you find a white or pale blue crust forming on the soil’s surface and sometimes on the lower parts of plants. Where we are most likely to see this is in our potted plants that live indoors or on covered porches or patios. The solution when this happens to garden soils is to leach the area with plenty of water, repeatedly, and to add organic matter. The water dissolves the salts and disperses them into deeper soil layers. Organic matter fosters soil micro-organisms who take up the salts and turn them into organic compounds that are slowly released in a more plant and soil friendly form. However, if ashes are only used liberally during the rainy season, and sparingly or not at all during the dry season this is not likely to be a problem in high rainfall areas.
Wood ashes contain almost all the macro and micro nutrients plants need to grow and produce abundant crops, except for two. Wood ashes lack nitrogen and sulfur. Nitrogen can be supplied to our soils by the actions of earthworms and micro-organisms; through the breakdown of green manures such as alfalfa, legumes, cover crops, and grass clippings; from composted animal manure, or from sparing side dressing with chicken manure or bat guano. Be extra careful with manure and guano. They contain soluble nitrogen that can leach into our ground water and end up in our rivers causing dangerous algae blooms.
Sulfur is provided to soils and plants primarily by organic matter. Mixing compost or purchased organic amendments into the soil at planting time and then using water conserving mulch during the heat of summer will supply your plants with all the sulfur they are likely to need. Plants can also extract a certain amount of sulfur from the air. Sulfur is released to the air by burning. Our wood stoves, cars, generators, and other fuel driven engines, as well as local forest fires all increase the amount of sulfur in the air. Rain washes some of this sulfur into our soils making it available to micro-organisms and plant roots. Too much sulfur in the air can cause toxic conditions and devastate natural and man-made landscapes. It is better for the environment, our gardens, and our health to avoid burning trash. Brush, paper, and cardboard can all be shredded and used for compost and mulch; improving our soils and supplying sulfur to our plants while keeping it out of the air.
Because of the alkalinity of ashes they definitely need to be kept away from acid loving plants. Azaleas, camellias, blueberries, and rhododendrons are the most commonly planted acid loving plants in our area. Most acid loving plants originally started out growing wild in conifer forests or peat bogs. Soils with high amounts of organic matter and plenty of rain or standing water are often acidic by nature. Here is a web site with a fairly complete list of acid loving plants found in people’s gardens: http://www.algoflash.com/AcidList.htm Hydrangeas, which aren’t really classified as acid loving, bloom in different colors depending on the pH of the soil. If you have several hydrangeas it might be fun to side dress one of them with ashes and the other with acidifying coffee grounds and/or pine needles and see how the flowers turn out. It might even make an interesting experiment to document for next year’s science fair!
Here’s where we usually talk about sources, but this time you will just have to make your own! Next week we will be talking about Hon tsai tai and some other yummy early greens. Until then, if it is raining, I might be inside starting seeds and only dreaming of Digging the Dirt.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)