The Newest and Hottest

Winter often brings with it a desire to be somewhere warm, dry, and cozy. We live in a farm house that was built sometime in the second half of the 1800's and, though its 18" thick brick walls make it far from drafty, one needs a good way to heat it.

The house was built with one big chimney through which passed the exhaust from three fireplaces, one in the basement, one on the first floor, and one on the second floor - all directly in line vertically. When Mom bought the house the second floor fireplace had been removed, leaving the lower two. And we were soon surprised by the reality that when we lit a fire in the living room the basement would get smoky. Upon professional inspection it was found that the flues had been designed to join into each other. The chimney sweep had never seen anything like it before, and subsequent professionals we've had out think we're pulling their legs when we tell them about it.

But that problem has long since been fixed, and a few years back we had a liner put up the chimney and a fireplace insert installed in the living room fireplace, which is the one that gets regular use. Those familiar with wood heat, thermodynamics, and/or general trivia know that fireplaces are pretty, but absolutely impossible to heat a house with. Almost all of the heat generated goes straight up and out the chimney via hot air, creating low pressure in the house, which in turn pulls air (that would be cold air) from the outdoors through any crack available. The result is a beautiful visual feature warming those directly beside it, paired with a constant draft in other parts of the house

A fireplace insert is a like a woodstove that only has a nice-looking front, since the rest is nestled into the fireplace cavity. The advantage over a free-standing woodstove is that it takes up less space. Both are designed as chambers that burn wood more efficiently (and distribute heat much more efficiently) than a fireplace. We got one called the Clydesdale, made by Hearthstone.

In terms of wood-burning efficiency it worked fine, but in the heating department it came up way short. Inserts depend on a fan (see the electric cord off to the right of the stove) which blows air through channels that go behind, around, and back out the front of the exterior of the stove - that's how the heat radiated by the insert gets moved from the fireplace cavity to the room you're trying to heat. The problem with the Clydesdale was that the fan didn't work very well, and was very noisy. Then the thermostat element in it broke, then the function that lets you moderate the fan's speed broke.

This year we decided that the insert just wasn't doing it for us. For all the heat it produced it could not heat the house, and for it to even work as well as possible it needed this fan on that often made listening to conversation or music difficult. We wanted something that could radiate its heat without use of any fan, and that meant a free-standing wood stove. An added bonus was a surface we could conceivably cook on, heat water on, warm socks on, etc.

We consulted a great fireplace shop in the Richmond area, actually The Fireplace Shop, and settled on a soapstone stove (for soapstone's many wonderful characteristics). While waiting for delivery, we thought maybe we'd prepare the way by getting the Clydesdale ready to depart. Inserts, it turns out, are stuck in the cavity and surrounded by insulation, then a collar is put over what remains of the gap between the fireplace front and the insert. That's so you can't see the ugly back. Once we took the collar off and the insulation out, we found that the heat truly poured forth. It was pretty amazing. To make the thing really effective the fan still needed to be on, but even without it there was A LOT of heat. If we had only known that we might not have gotten a new stove, but since it was on its way already, and because of the new stove's attributes, we stayed the course.
Because it sticks out further than the insert we needed more insulative material, so we got a piece of limestone (set on two pieces of Mycor) to match the existing hearth. So here is our beautiful new stove, the Hearthstone Heritage (my, aren't we refined?). It is a hit with the cat, the laundry, and the rest of us, and we all look forward to figuring out how to maximize its performance and charm.

The Clydesdale will find a place in the workshop, and possibly eventually in another home. I have fantasies about using it in a cob-masonry stove kind of application in the future.

To the credit of Hearthstone, this was one of the earliest versions of the Clydesdale, one with a few design flaws. When we went in to look for a new stove the folks at the Fireplace Shop asked us what we had.
"What? You have a Clydesdale? Why would you want to replace that? Oh, it's the old one. Never mind."

2387

Emancipating the Potatoes

While we were having Thanksgiving in northern Indiana our garden received the biggest rainfall since we began recording it in mid-April of this year. It won't be a surprise to folks in this area to know that the season's record breaking amount was only 1.85", and that fell over two days. (The next greatest two days were the 9th and 10th of July, adding up to 1.3".)

But it was enough. Anyone who asked how the garden was doing in the past three months heard "It looks like our sorghum did really well. The last thing we have to harvest is the potatoes, but they are locked in our brick-like soil. It's going to take a good rain to be able to get them out." People quit asking about the garden after awhile.

Now I have been volunteering, triumphantly, that the potatoes have been freed. We got back Sunday, and Monday's first order of business was to dig as much of the remaining potato area as possible because of the rain scheduled for Tuesday. (At left are the seed potatoes cut, ashed, and ready to plant, back in April.) We had planted 245 square feet of potatoes, and between July 20 and September 23 I dug out 143 sq ft of them. Mostly coinciding with one of our measly .1" rains. And the most area I managed in a day was 55 sq ft, because the ground was so hard.

Heading out Monday afternoon I dug the remaining 103 sq ft in an hour and a half, which is a testament to the qualities of perfectly moist clay soil. Not too mucky, not too dry, and the fork pulls them 'taties out like a dream. Well, almost.

We planted these potatoes in April and May, and I think the May plantings had just gotten their tops all established when it quit raining. Our yields reflect that we're working heavy soil that has had its fertility pillaged.

Just a hint of what I'm talking about: the May planting, our worst yielding, was 65 sq ft of Kennebec potatoes, and we got a total of 4 lb from that (Margo and Alten weigh them on our itsy-bitsy scale at right). It works out to 6.2 lb per 100 sq ft. For all of you commercial potato farmers out there (and I know you're reading my blog) that works out to 1.34 tons/acre. For the rest of you, it works out to .13 lb of harvested potato for every pound planted. Which is what we call deficit spending.

It is easy, at this stage, to look at our potatoes and declare failure, commencing to plant petunias next year instead. But I maintain that failure is important, and I routinely tell folks that in classes. When someone wants to know the most important thing to master in gardening I answer "observation." Paying attention to the processes in your garden means the difference between learning from your mistakes and suffering from them time after time. Also important (when discussing failure) is perspective. This is our first year here, and we hope to be producing all of our food within a few years. Is it better to have crop failure in one of our most important foods when we are getting on our feet, or to experience it when we are depending on that crop?

So what went wrong with our potatoes? There were two obvious culprits, which I have already mentioned. First, our soil is heavy clay, and little organic matter remains from its previous 20 or more years of being gardened. Root crops don't like that. They aren't allowed to expand, so they grow small and in funny shapes. The second was the lack of water, which we were counting on as rain (the healthiest form of irrigation for crops and soil). Additionally, we planted them about a month later than we wanted. Earlier planting would have given them quite a jump on growth before the hot (and dry) weather of summer hit. Quality of seed potatoes may have played a role, but most of ours looked very good. The first three variables are so overwhelming that smaller ones, like varieties planted, pest damage, and availability of micronutrients wouldn't add up to much.What will we do differently to address these troubles next year? Well, we'll start by getting a bigger scale, cause weighing even a small potato harvest 1 lb at a time gets tedious. Seriously though, we plan to post production of compost as a top priority, and though adding compost will probably take years to make an impact on this soil we're committing now. We saw that most of our crops needed at least twice as much water as they got which, though that wouldn't really be much water in the big picture, it is way more that we can store currently. So we'll add some rainwater storage and water more than just the newly planted stuff (and, of course, hope for a different weather pattern next year). We'll be as on-schedule as any farmer ever is next year, since we'll be starting out with more than practically nothing. And, finally, we'll watch and see what happens in the completely different conditions that next year will undoubtedly bring.
Until then we will be a little short on the homegrown mashed potatoes...

2175

3DW, 11/10

Ecology Action holds its Three-Day Workshop (aka 3DW, as opposed to WD-40) twice a year, usually the first weekend of March and November. It is intended as an opportunity for folks who have read about, practiced, or heard of Grow Biointensive to learn more through lecture, discussion, and hands-on practice. Not only is is it an educational experience for the participants, but for those of us who attend many times as presenters or support staff it is an inspirational event.

This time over 50 people (some of them Ecology Action interns) came from California, Utah, New York, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Missouri, Manitoba and Alberta, Canada, and Ecuador to attend. Most of them had great gardening-related projects in the works, and all of them had fascinating work beyond gardening.
When we arrived the workshop presenters were John Jeavons (above and below, leading the participants down to EA's garden) and Ecology Action Garden Manager Carol Cox. Margo and I began doing some of the hands-on instruction after our first summer as apprentices, and began presenting during the lecture time in our third year. When Carol retired from EA last year we picked up the most of the classes she taught and created a couple of others. No comparison to the instruction she could give after 20 years of experience, but she was very encouraging to us, as was John. (At left, me workin' the overhead while teaching garden planning).
We decided that Alten was too young yet to hit the cross-country Amtrak circuit for this workshop, so I went alone this time and taught for both Margo and myself. And while the opportunity was a great one and I had a wonderful experience, I will be glad to have Margo back when we teach in March 2011.
So come and see us!
(By the way, one of the participants was Matt Harnack, a documentary filmmaker and co-coordinator of the Common Ground Demo Garden in Palo Alto, CA. All of the photos in this post were taken by him. Thanks, Matt!)

2063

The Garden Is Dead

Long Live the Garden! (Our Fall garden is pictured above)

Our first frost happened on October 16, and didn't mess around. The low was 28° F, effectively ending our main season. Basil was the only hot-loving crop we still had in the ground, and had long passed its productive leaf stage. And that was good, because it is not made for 28°. We did manage to get some seed from it, and will test its viability after we clean it.

The only crop we have to harvest yet is our remaining ~140 sq ft of potatoes. Our lack of rain keeps us from that harvest. We know they grew fairly successfully, but the nature of our soil means they are locked in the ground until we get a couple of good rains in a row. The last time that happened was the 9th and 10th of July.

Potatoes excluded, we have now entered the stage of the garden that a lot of folks around here skip: the late-Fall and Winter plan. Our original idea was to plant the currently double-dug beds into cover crops, and prepare previously un-dug beds for our wheat, rye, and garlic plantings. Again, we needed some more rain to pull that one off, so we now have planted 600+ square feet of a wheat/rye/canadian field pea mix (on the left), 200 sq ft of cereal rye, 150 sq ft of winter wheat, and about 40 sq ft of garlic. And that's where we'll likely finish for this year.

Compromise number one was planting our wheat, rye and garlic in previously dug beds. Compromise number two was the nature of that planting. Garlic is garlic, and that simply involves separating cloves, and planting the choicest (the first sprout is pictured on the right). But the wheat and rye, which we want to bring to full maturity next summer, would normally have been transplanted on 5" centers. A combination of travel and lack of rain made that difficult, so we decided to just bite the bullet and broadcast. The only thing desirable in that choice, though, is the ease of planting. Weeding will be much more difficult, coverage will not be as thorough, and yields will suffer. Our final compromise was not so much a decision we made as a matter of indecision. Because we were so far behind, we gnashed our teeth about planting and digging options, and whether or not it would rain for us. As a result everything has been planted a month or more late.

But farming is about learning from mistakes, right? And by all accounts it has been a doozy of a season for all the farmers and gardeners around.

Since the 16th of October we have had frosts of 28, 32, 27, 24, and 23°, and when I left from watering the garden at 7:00 last night the temperature had already fallen to 39°F. I think it's time to hibernate.

This week brings a trip to California to teach at Ecology Action's 3-Day Workshop on the 5th, 6th, and 7th. It is always inspiring to get to meet so many motivated gardeners, share knowledge with them, and learn what they have to offer. Plus maybe I can bring some of the copious amounts of rain they're getting back home with me...

1875

Alten in October

We have this great calendar that was given to us at a baby shower for Alten. It is a thirteen-month calendar where you can write down firsts, cute things done, weights and sizes, and paste current pictures. We've done an ok job of recording everything except the photos. To date, we haven't actually printed any of the pictures we've taken of him (though grandparents have). All our copies are stranded on this laptop in front of me, which is already been resurrected once.With this in mind (together with the many friends and family too far away to visit regularly), I'll post as many pictures as I can on the blog :) Because one computer may die, but the web is forever, right?

The top picture shows Alten's first interaction with a cat, specifically Grandpa and Grammy Royer's Sphynx. Our cat here at home will have nothing to do with him.

At left, Alten believes it is time to start solid foods. In this case a ceramic bowl. The scrambled eggs inside weren't apparently all that interesting.

And at right we have Margo and Alten decked out in cool rainy-day garb.

Above is Alten's first soccer ball, with which he is enamored. It was sent as a gift from good friends up north. At left Alten holds Sophie the Giraffe, which is natural latex with food based paints, and has lots of great things to chew on.

On the right is our currently 14 lb 12 ounce boy, no doubt watching the window or the ceiling fan (both of which provide endless fascination).















And last but not least, an action photo. Alten dearly loves chewing on anything that gets close enough, including my chin.










1650

It's Been Hot

And dry.

Ok, so it's not saying much to note that this is the hottest summer since we've been keeping track, but we have had some hot weeks. The area farmers we've talked to attest to the fact that, though the season started out very promising, this has been one of the driest mid and late seasons they've had. Since their corn loved the heat and was able to cope with the lack of rain it doesn't look too bad. But the soybeans committed to many pods full of peas, which then didn't have the resources to develop into an ideal size. So while they are worth being harvested, they're disappointingly small.

The man who farms the land surrounding our garden also grows for the local farmer's market. When he's by looking at the fields we chat by the garden in that uniquely farmer-ish way. He said it has been a terrible year for produce, and most of the other market-gardeners he's talked to say the same. We had been feeling disappointed by the lack of time we had to give our garden this Spring and Summer, but he made us feel a little better by laughing and saying "You sure picked a year to start out! Whew!"

But of of course, what is talk without numbers?
First the temperatures:

Our last hard frost was the 28th of April, and our last light frost came May 10. It didn't reach 80 ° F in the garden until May 23rd, but that may have been a fluke.

Before I go any further, I have to explain our thermometer placement. When we first set it up there were no fenceposts, so we used a huge ornamental pear tree directly north of the garden. I was a little paranoid, I admit, that someone would steal our precious min/max thermometer, so it was buried thick in the foliage. We realized by July that the placement was seriously affecting our high temperatures, so we moved it to a box on a prominent fencepost on the 26th of that month. So all I can talk about before that point are trends, that one week was hot and another one cool.

Which is, really, what happened to screw up a lot of the serious market gardeners. For instance, the week after Alten was born the highs were in the mid-70's. The week after they were in the the mid 90's. Ensuing weeks were in the 90's, then low 80's, then up to the high 90's, then low 80's or high 70's. And, of course, you don't remember the cool reprieves. The hottest it got for us was 100° F, on August 13. I wish we had a humidity gauge, because I think those numbers would really impress you all.

The daily low temperatures are as interesting as the highs, maybe more so. Back at Ecology Action we talked a lot (covetously, mostly) about the optimal growing range for plants in general, which is 60° F to 95° F. Below 60° F most plants slow down their processes, and above 95° F as well. At the research farm and at the Golden Rule garden summer days would not uncommonly top 95°, and summer nights would rarely stay above 60°. It's a pretty big handicap to have your plants shutting down twice in a 24 hour cycle. So we would keep track of the number of nights in a summer that stayed above 60°. The first summer we were there was very hot, and yielded 16 nights above 60°. The next summer there were none.

This place is a different story. Tomatoes seem to gain a foot and a half overnight, and if you sleep outside you can hear the corn growing. June through August gave us 74 nights above 60°, 13 of which were above 70°. Which is only good for plants, being a little warm for the farmers.

And since Alten is going to be working in that sun and heat with us, I made him a little sun-hat for his own...

Now rainfall:

Between April 16 (when we put up our rain gauge) and the end of June we received 12" of rain, on the dot. Then the tide turned. July totaled 2.45", and early August rains totaled .55". We haven't gotten more than a hundredth of an inch since then, and that is too little for our gauge (or our soil) to register. Luckily, our rain barrels are attached to a roof so large that a hundredth of an inch can fill them up. So we've made the 110 gallons of stored rainwater last the two weeks or so between brief spates of precipitation.

Rain would be good for the crops, but it is absolutely necessary for bed preparation. Our soil is quite clayey and severely lacking in organic matter. The best time to dig has been two days after a good rain of between .5" and 1.5". Earlier is too muddy, later is too dry and brick-like. What happens, then, when you haven't had any rain of note for a month and a half? Well, you water the soil heavily if you have water. If not, you hope it rains before you need to put in Fall crops.

The good news is that yesterday we acquired four new 55 gallon drums from our local soda pop distribution facility, which will triple our capacity for storage.

Of course, they won't do any good without some rain...

Composting 101

Today brought us our first batch of compost! While Margo and Alten built a new pile, I broke up the finished one and sifted the cured compost from the un-decomposed material. It looks great, smells great, and marks the beginning of our garden's trip toward soil rejuvenation. Hurrah!
In honor of the occasion I am reprinting here the first of three compost-related posts I wrote for the Golden Rule Garden blog in May of last year...

Here I sit, in the shade, sipping cold kombucha in the midst of our first 100° F days of the year. What topic could be hotter than compost? Or more appropriate, given that it is Spring and we have an abundance of weeds, cover crops (which we refer to instead as "compost crops"), and all the dry, stalk-y, crunchy mature material we saved from last year.

Michele, of the Rabbit Wrangler Ranch in Idaho, posted some questions after reading my admittedly vague reference to our composting in the Happy Spring Equinox post. Hopefully this will answer your questions and bring up a lot more.

I often feel like most of my experientially-oriented posts should start with a disclaimer, so here's this one: there are many ways to compost, many books written on the topic, and many, many products sold to help you compost. This is how we do it here, and how it is taught in Grow Biointensive agriculture through Ecology Action's courses.
The recipe is fairly simple: 4 parts mature material, 4 parts immature material, one part soil. Add water. Sounds easy, right? It is. And the details aren't even very devilish.
Mature material, popularly referred to as "dry matter", consists technically of any plant matter that has achieved full maturity. The easiest example is straw, which can come from rice, wheat, rye, barley, oats, and so forth. Also included are corn stalks, quinoa stalks, sunflower stalks, amaranth stalks... You get the picture. Essentially anything that is tough and crunchy. Tree leaves that fall of their own accord count. Burnt bacon doesn't.
Immature material, popularly referred to as "green matter", is basically anything that has not gone to maturity. Slug-eaten lettuce, grass clippings, most kitchen waste, weeds (which you hopefully got before they went to seed, because then they'd be mature material with a dark side), and anything else you pulled out before it completed its life cycle.
The reason for the revised terminology is that the common terms are deceptive. Grass clippings that have been sitting on the lawn for a week can certainly be dry and brown. But that does not change their composition, except that there is less water in them. And it's all about the composition.
I will oversimplify to illustrate my point: for our composting purposes, anything you put in your pile is made up of carbon and nitrogen in varying ratios, and the carbon involved varies in its density. The mature material we use is relatively higher in carbon than the immature, and the carbon is denser. Because of that fact the organic matter from composted mature material will last much longer in the soil, which is what we want. But if you build a pile only of mature material it will take years to break down completely.
The microbes that will decompose your pile want appreciable amounts of both carbon and nitrogen, which is where the immature material comes in. Though its carbon is less helpful to us in the long run, immature material is relatively higher than mature material in nitrogen, and its presence in the pile will help the microbes do their job and give you lots of nice, long lasting compost (human-encouraged organic matter), which in turn makes your soil system healthier which makes your plants more productive and pleasing to the eye, and eventually culminates in world peace.
Soil is the last ingredient, and we add it in small quantities for a couple of reasons. It's true that adding soil inoculates the pile with helpful microbes (which would have happened eventually anyway), but more importantly it helps the pile maintain moisture and moderate its temperature. This may be less necessary in a cooler, moister climate than ours, but is vital here.
Now you know the ingredients, so here's how it goes together: Choose a spot to build your pile, preferably in direct contact with soil, and possibly on a garden bed you can spare. The liquid that leaches out will do great things for the soil underneath, and direct contact will also aid microbes coming and going through your pile. It should be a minimum of 3x3', which will help maintain the core temperature and moisture of your pile. It can be bigger if you like, but not smaller.
Stick a fork in the soil to loosen it where the pile will go, then lay down a few inches of rough mature material. This is a different category of mature, things that won't break down easily. Like tree branches. The point is to allow air to enter the pile and excess moisture to leave. It also creates a definable bottom to the pile.
Now you start building, adding a layer of mature, a layer of immature, and a layer of soil. We use 5 gallon buckets (not sustainable, no, but plentiful, free in any quantity, and standard in size for measuring). One layer for us is two buckets of mature, two buckets of immature, one-half bucket of soil.
Oh- and we build them as square as possible. This makes the most efficient use of space and materials. Plus they are aesthetically pleasing...
At this point, having not answered more than one of Michele's questions, I am going to end this post. The next, Composting 102, covers a little bit of the what's, why's, do's and don'ts of the process, hopefully answering some of the questions that this post generated.