Amerindian Magic, Japanese Genius, and Mother Nature.

[MrFista]

Chicken tractors finished. Now I need chickens. the better half is going on holiday (with car) so might be a fortnight before I can venture off into more rural areas. If some bantams come up I might borrow a car though.

I have an IBC. For those who don't know this is an international bulk container. It comes in a steel cage and is a 1000 litre tank (approx 220 gallon). The IBC is clear, and will perish in the sun so it needed 'dressing up' to prolong it's life...

On top of the IBC I have corrugated iron and a gutter. Raised (sitting on the cage) so I can still access it with the hose if need be; the 'roof' has a large (yard square) worm bin, and the iron and gutter beneath it takes all the worm rum and puts it in a bucket. Constant supply of worm rum now. Around the sides of the IBC I put shade cloth, this will cut a lot of the suns strength out. The sun facing side then got some chicken mesh. This folds neatly over the cage bars on top and bottom of the IBC making a nice tidy shade cloth face with mesh overlay. At the base of this side I planted peas and beans. Something more permanent may/may not get this position in future.

Recapping - The space my IBC took is now the site of a water tank, a worm farm, and a bean trellis. The shading will greatly lengthen the life of the tank, the worm and legume production makes this a well stacked productive site. Looks tidy too.

 

[MrFista]

Homemade pasta sauce.

5 lb's tomatoes
1/2 lb onions
6 cloves garlic (not chinese, it's crap)
3 medium heat chillies (or 1 hot, one medium one mild like I did)
Couple of carrots
Few zuchinnis
Salt and pepper
Glass of dry white wine
Mushrooms
LOADS of greens and herbs, basil, rosemary, oregano, thyme, parsley...

Heat a couple tablespoons oil and cook onions and garlic, once done add chillies and let the mix sit hot for a 1/4 hour while you cut up tomatoes etc. Now transfer this to a crock pot. Add the wine, all the toms, salt and pepper, and vegetables. Grate the carrots and shave the zuchinnis into wee slices, cut the mushroms thin. Cook for a couple hours then add the greens and herbs.

Cook slow all day allowing water to be coked off (leave lid open a bit) till you got a thick sauce. This is amazing if it's all organic vegetables. Use on pasta, on toast with a chutney is freaking awesome, as a pizza sauce, etc.

Enjoy. I got about 10 meals of this frozen, fed my house, the neighbours, well worth the time to do.

 

[jaykush]

damn you and having fresh tomatoes right now.

 

[MrFista]

HA! The worm has turned! (or the planet or something).

Fresh tomatoes is one of the major events of my gardening year, I live for this shit. A friend sells a dish in his cafe that comes from this streets gardens, heirloom tomatoes something... This time of year it's a BEST SELLER - it's tomatoes on toast. Black ones, pink, yellow, green, and even a red variety.

Going to try growing some of the 1 lb'ers in the greenhouse for winter. TRY....

 

[jaykush]

yea we grow a ton of tomatoes, almost literally some years. my favorites are the black ones. such an in depth delicious flavor. they make the most amazing pasta sauce imo.

the 1 lbers+ are fun, the biggest ive had was 1.7 lb. but i prefer the baseball sized ones now because i get more of them. that year the plants got LOTS of nettle tea.

 

[MrFista]

I notice seemingly less cropping off my 1 lb'ers, but I put them on the scales and it was telling. It takes 6 'money maker' tomatoes to equal a 1 lb'er. On top of that the moneymaker is about 50% seed, the 1 lb'er 20%. For sauce tomatoes the 1 lb'ers kick ass with more pulpy flesh produced per garden area. You gotta be real selective only save the largest croppers (after taste test, the biggest tomato that tastes great gets it's seed saved).

Planted some cheeky beans yesterday - why cheeky. it's only 1 month summer left. I predict with the weather patterns we won't get a frost till very late if at all. Could be wrong, worth a gamble.

Lot of mildew after 3 cyclone tails in a row... Might lose the zuchinnis, the pumpkins grew well out of the affected area so their base is mildewy but the bulk of the plant is fine. Melons (heirloom) untouched by mildew, but still not setting fruit. No mildew on the weed, lets hear it for char soil and compost tea!

 

[jaykush]

You gotta be real selective only save the largest croppers (after taste test, the biggest tomato that tastes great gets it's seed saved).

you gotta be even more selective when you take into account environment performance. i think ill still take my heavy yielding plants that produce 8-10oz tomatoes. i dont know what a money maker is but a tomato that seedy and juicy wouldn't be worth using as a paste/sauce tomato. at least to me.

i always plant late beans as a chance, last year i lucked out good!

 

[MrFista]

Beans are all sprouting already. They are growing in a spot that used to be dominated by kikuyu grass and onion flowers - take that Dr Ingham! Onion flowers can be controlled if you are smart about it. Mulch with paper/card first to block light, then a buch of organic matter on top to keep everything fed and damp. The original onion flowers and kikuyu get pulled out, put aside to dry, and become a straw mulch. Even oxalis is a blessing if you do it right. Oxalis actually makes a fantastic green mulch cover underneath peppers and capsicums. Just let it grow and chop and drop if it starts to flower. Pepper plants with 100 plus chillies in one season. Capsicums throwing out dozens of fruit. HOW? Good full sun, compost, compost teas, and oxalis living mulch.

 

[jaykush]

i love oxalis, we used to eat the stems as kids on the way to school, has a sweet/sour taste.

what kind of capsicums? some of the smaller varieties i grow put on 2-300 peppers per plant.

 

[MrFista]

2-300! WOW! We don't know the names we just keep the favourite peppers and now there's a dozen strains between the two gardens (next door and here). The new neighbours gone permaculture too! We have 3 houses in a row all gardening organic - nearly an acre smack in the middle of auckland city YAY!

Got Black Soldier Fly larvae in my worm bin. Not a problem just trying to design an easy farm for them with escape/harvest pipe and all - chickens are gonna love this place. If you want to know how to ID the larvae - they are flattish, the only maggots that are flattish, that is why they climb better than the others. Get a you tube video of the larvae - you'll know it's them or not straight away.

 

[FreedomFarmer]

Hey there Fista, great read and i'm loving all your projects. Spent a few years doing permaculture work and this is really giving me the itch to get back on some land....

Anyways, I had a question about biochar and thought this might be a good spot to drop it.... So I was watching a video on youtube where they did some testing on biochar and found that the PH of it was in the mid 8's. Now my thinking is that if biochar was traditionally used in tropical settings with poor acidic soil, then the addition of alot of alkaline char wouldn't be a big deal. But when we adopt this to other locations with diferent soil types and higher PH's, could this become troublesome? Have any of you biochar users found any problems with the PH, especially in container applications? I guess that acidic soil amendements would effect the ph of the biochar, not sure though. Also, i would imagine that turning biochar into terraprata would probably effect the ph too with all the organic goodness being added.........

Oh yeah, heres that vid i was referring to, definitely slanted against biochar, but i take everything with a shaker full of salt......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX7vMAC2cSQ&feature=related


Keep the good stuff coming!

 

[jaykush]

im going to let fista answer your questions since its his thread. im going to comment on the video though.

that guy is pretty funny. hes got all the right ingredients but has the wrong recipe. he knows what compost is and does, knows what char does but cant get it to himself to put the two together. i bet anything that if he did another test plant of char + peat + compost + soil he would have gotten completely different results. and 25% is a bit high to start out with.

what he needs is to try adding char to his composting process from day one.

 

[mad librettist]

char is going to favor bacterial life and that will tend to raise pH -but- like Jay said it's not gonna be 25% of total media (think about it, that is crazy! 25% is a full quarter). In any case whether you are encouraging the pH up or down is really a question of relative ammonium (acidic, perennial) vs. nitrate (basic, annuals).

Much gets made of the "6.5" target with cannabis, but nitrifying bacteria can't produce below 7.0. As an annual, cannabis loves nitrate, unlike, say, asparagus. So here the microbiological perspective is really clashing with classic soil/plant science. And as far as I know, cannabis does not switch to ammonium preference in flower (which makes fungal compost in flower a bit of a time waster).

I will let Fista talk about the mulch, which is the secret to making these systems work (and if I have been reading properly, Fista has proposed and plans to marry mulch sometime next spring). I think something like char, in the right amounts, should be seen as increasing the total biomass a given plot can retain. It's not the only thing to look into. In my area, clay is hard to come by, but it can be very helpful in the mix.

 

[Floralfaction]

Have any of you biochar users found any problems with the PH, especially in container applications?

I use Biochar at somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of my container mix. I've never measured the pH, and I never ran controls without it or anything, but my plants are plenty happy with me. My other ingredients are composted hardwood fiber, bagged biodynamic compost, and lots of organic matter (mostly shredded canna remnants, also dandelion leaf and root).

blessings

 

[jaykush]

mostly shredded canna remnants, also dandelion leaf and root)

i hope you know dandelion root, roots with even the tiniest little piece. just like comfrey.

 

[Floralfaction]

yes, the crowns are the most likely to root, and I shred those pretty well. So far I haven't had any dandelions show up in my containers, if they did I'd probably just pull them and re shred them and mix them back in. As long as they don't rip holes in my homemade smartpots they're welcome in my soil.

peace

 

[jaykush]

i find its best to dry the dandelion roots and crush them in a mortar and pestle. makes for better FPE that way too.

pretty sure they will try and rip holes in your smartpots, dandelions are deep rooted.

 

[Floralfaction]

pretty sure they will try and rip holes in your smartpots, dandelions are deep rooted.

that's why I would pull them before they reached significant size

In what way is the FPE better from dried roots?

 

[mad librettist]

I bet you that FPE has lots of available calcium.

just guessing though, and lately my guesses suck.

 

[MrFista]

Hey there Fista, great read and i'm loving all your projects. Spent a few years doing permaculture work and this is really giving me the itch to get back on some land....

Anyways, I had a question about biochar and thought this might be a good spot to drop it.... So I was watching a video on youtube where they did some testing on biochar and found that the PH of it was in the mid 8's. Now my thinking is that if biochar was traditionally used in tropical settings with poor acidic soil, then the addition of alot of alkaline char wouldn't be a big deal. But when we adopt this to other locations with diferent soil types and higher PH's, could this become troublesome? Have any of you biochar users found any problems with the PH, especially in container applications? I guess that acidic soil amendements would effect the ph of the biochar, not sure though. Also, i would imagine that turning biochar into terraprata would probably effect the ph too with all the organic goodness being added.........

Oh yeah, heres that vid i was referring to, definitely slanted against biochar, but i take everything with a shaker full of salt......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX7vMAC2cSQ&feature=related


Keep the good stuff coming!

Briefly - the char pH changes according to the temperature it is charred at (Leihmann). To an extent this will change a bit when you use differing sources but for wood this 'rule' seems to apply across the board. To get more acidic functional groups at your char interface (which affects soil chemistry) you need to be charring at low temperatures.The lower the better, this means severe restriction of air, and using a seperate chamber for the char seems the best way to do this. Place char in internal chamber with a gap for gases to escape out of the bottom. Surround this chamber with a fire and the fire will burn off the gases from the char chamber as well making it relatively pollution free.

Innoculation of char saves a lot of grief. Jaykush does it best, adding char to the compost heap, letting it be there for a period, then using in the garden.

Enjoy. Char is amazing when it is done correctly.