Ah machines...
Got the Husqvarna weedeater back from Pat yesterday, and it ran okay for about an hour... then it died mysteriously... Sigh... this was the longest that it has run since I got here. When we first met it was in about ten different pieces. Apparently Eddie had put a blade on it, (not meant for a blade) and it vibrated everything loose, stripped bolts out of their threads, busted off fuel lines and generally fucked things up. I replaced the gear head and retapped threads but couldn't get the recoil starter figured. Pat thought it was missing a Pawl, and I went to get a replacement part. At the store the guy told me that it only needed one Pawl, but ours was broken. I bought a replacement, their last in stock. I left it at Pat's as he had the thing in many different pieces, he took the carb apart and cleaned it out etc...
But he wasn't around when I delivered the parts, so I couldn't explain to him that we only need the one. He tried to install it as per his original diagnosis, and broke the only one on the island... After a week or so he managed to fabricate a new one. He reassembled the thing, tuned it up and I got it yesterday.
Not sure why it is still dying, but it might be that the clutch was damaged 2 years ago... I don't know... Thing is, if it gets bogged down at all, it sort of stutters, and then quits as though it has siezed up. It also seems to get really hot, but then these things do get pretty hot...
Anyway, I think it will do okay for a path trimmer, if it is mollycoddled along. It isn't the high powered brushwhacking fiend that we had... SOoner or later we will want another big one, but I don't see us being able to afford one in the near future.
So, I whacked the tracks in the gulch, and felt a lot better to have fulfilled that responsibility for the first time in a while...
I had hoped to whack down the grasses that had come up in the cacao field area but over lunch we talked about how with it so dry we should really go after as much mulch as we can. So, I got the tractor out and put it through its paces... Slashed a big swathe above the buses and the dollhouse... Realised what a whole lot of work it will be to rake it all up, and got to thinking about fabricating some sort of rake.
I think I can use a bunch of recycled stuff from around the place, in conjunction with the armature from the mower. It will be an awesome labour saver if I can get it to work. Kind of a pain to dismantle the mower every time we want to use the rake, but better to spend an hour doing that than 8 hours pulling on a rake.
I took the red devil up to the top paddock and picked up another load of mulch for the barn garden. There is maybe one more small load left up there, which with the one Bach and I got the idea makes about 3 loads we have taken from there...
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Friday, December 30, 2005
feel free to answer these questions on the blog]
--if an acre is 4047 square meters, how many runs with your truck does it take to get enough cardboard to cover an acre? How long does each run last (hours)?
I guess it takes an hour and a half to drive to haiku recycling, climb into the newspaper bin and pull out a ford aerostar van load of newspapers... the vanload might cover something miniscule like a 20th of an acre? Of course, other elements required are mulch of some kind to hold down the newspaper and disguise its papier mache appearance. You also need fairly large volumes of water with which to soak the paper...
another option is large pieces of cardboard, and identifying reliable sources of large pieces of cardboard is something we would like to do. bicycle stores have large boxes, as do appliance stores etc... possibly even contacting the recyclers themselves might be an option... or having a big enough truck to provide a recycling service for a few business with the right kind of cellulose to dispose of...
-- how long does it take to sheet-mulch an acre? (or, a meter?) Aside from the cardboard, what materials do you need to sheet mulch? (i.e., what clippings? how many do you need?)
of course, it all depends on how motivated you and your workers are. it is pretty boring work, to be sure, and it is hard to motivate people to do it for long let alone in an aggressive sort of way...
the top dressing organic matter can be anything from straw to pond scum to woodchips. You probably want enough material to make at least a depth of one foot preferably two three...
you really get into economies of scale I suppose. I can sheet mulch so many square feet with a weedeater a rake and a wheelbarrow, so many more with a tractor, mower and giant mechanical rake and trailer, and maybe even more with a bunch of chainsaws and trucks and big diesel chippers. It is sort of a fantasy of mine to charge people money to prune and remove trees and haul away the mulch! Did I mention I am taking a course this semester that will prepare me to take the exam to become a Certified Arborist...
A problem that you will be familiar with is that a lot of the biomass we have here that can be converted into sheet mulch, has a tendency to keep growing and root down through the sheets of carboard or newspaper. So a combination of composting first and using the partially decomposed straw as a top mulch in the sheet mulch approach makes sense...
-- is sheet mulching something you would go with for all
the plantings from now on? what are the alternatives (i saw the alternative, i participated)
all things being equal, in terms of access to materials, sheet mulching is probably the best in terms of energy investment in the longterm. It is a lot of work at the start, and you do have to follow it up with some spot weeding, and make sure you defend the edges against running weeds, but it does seem to be the best way to institute a regime change. Tilling, sowing a combination of annual and perennial groundcovers is cool too, but often you will end up doing so much weeding that you end up doing some amount of sheet mulching anyway...
Of course, mulching is better for the soil than tilling, although initially tilling can give you good growth...
-- what about sheet mulching after digging swales? do these go together? yeah, they can, of course.
--what specification of earth mover did the swales recently? What was the cost per hour? How many hours per acre, roughly, for a total cost?
it was a small bulldozer. may a D5 or D6. He charged $80 an hour and made three swales totalling about 900 linear feet in about 2 or 3 hours... He made a mound that was about 4 feet across, and a cut of about the same size... So, not a huge swale, but a pretty good size I reckon! he wasn't all that accurate in terms of staying exactly on the contour... and his blade merely pushed big clods of soil downhill... I followed up with the little 5hp tiller and spent probably about 5 o 6 hours breaking up the clods into something like a tilth we might be able to sow a cover crop into... also several hours of shovelling the tilled soil back onto the "swale mound"...
It will be interesting to see, once it rains, or Malte runs his well and we flood the swales just how they shape up in terms of levelness... then later it will be interesting to see just how well they hold up to really heavy rainfall. obviously, they will hold better once we have some groundcover established and some roots to hold it all together...
It is hard to make generalisations though, as the best thing to do depends a lot on weather conditions, how much human labor, how much and what kind of machinery you have at your disposal...
hope that helps a bit?
--if an acre is 4047 square meters, how many runs with your truck does it take to get enough cardboard to cover an acre? How long does each run last (hours)?
I guess it takes an hour and a half to drive to haiku recycling, climb into the newspaper bin and pull out a ford aerostar van load of newspapers... the vanload might cover something miniscule like a 20th of an acre? Of course, other elements required are mulch of some kind to hold down the newspaper and disguise its papier mache appearance. You also need fairly large volumes of water with which to soak the paper...
another option is large pieces of cardboard, and identifying reliable sources of large pieces of cardboard is something we would like to do. bicycle stores have large boxes, as do appliance stores etc... possibly even contacting the recyclers themselves might be an option... or having a big enough truck to provide a recycling service for a few business with the right kind of cellulose to dispose of...
-- how long does it take to sheet-mulch an acre? (or, a meter?) Aside from the cardboard, what materials do you need to sheet mulch? (i.e., what clippings? how many do you need?)
of course, it all depends on how motivated you and your workers are. it is pretty boring work, to be sure, and it is hard to motivate people to do it for long let alone in an aggressive sort of way...
the top dressing organic matter can be anything from straw to pond scum to woodchips. You probably want enough material to make at least a depth of one foot preferably two three...
you really get into economies of scale I suppose. I can sheet mulch so many square feet with a weedeater a rake and a wheelbarrow, so many more with a tractor, mower and giant mechanical rake and trailer, and maybe even more with a bunch of chainsaws and trucks and big diesel chippers. It is sort of a fantasy of mine to charge people money to prune and remove trees and haul away the mulch! Did I mention I am taking a course this semester that will prepare me to take the exam to become a Certified Arborist...
A problem that you will be familiar with is that a lot of the biomass we have here that can be converted into sheet mulch, has a tendency to keep growing and root down through the sheets of carboard or newspaper. So a combination of composting first and using the partially decomposed straw as a top mulch in the sheet mulch approach makes sense...
-- is sheet mulching something you would go with for all
the plantings from now on? what are the alternatives (i saw the alternative, i participated)
all things being equal, in terms of access to materials, sheet mulching is probably the best in terms of energy investment in the longterm. It is a lot of work at the start, and you do have to follow it up with some spot weeding, and make sure you defend the edges against running weeds, but it does seem to be the best way to institute a regime change. Tilling, sowing a combination of annual and perennial groundcovers is cool too, but often you will end up doing so much weeding that you end up doing some amount of sheet mulching anyway...
Of course, mulching is better for the soil than tilling, although initially tilling can give you good growth...
-- what about sheet mulching after digging swales? do these go together? yeah, they can, of course.
--what specification of earth mover did the swales recently? What was the cost per hour? How many hours per acre, roughly, for a total cost?
it was a small bulldozer. may a D5 or D6. He charged $80 an hour and made three swales totalling about 900 linear feet in about 2 or 3 hours... He made a mound that was about 4 feet across, and a cut of about the same size... So, not a huge swale, but a pretty good size I reckon! he wasn't all that accurate in terms of staying exactly on the contour... and his blade merely pushed big clods of soil downhill... I followed up with the little 5hp tiller and spent probably about 5 o 6 hours breaking up the clods into something like a tilth we might be able to sow a cover crop into... also several hours of shovelling the tilled soil back onto the "swale mound"...
It will be interesting to see, once it rains, or Malte runs his well and we flood the swales just how they shape up in terms of levelness... then later it will be interesting to see just how well they hold up to really heavy rainfall. obviously, they will hold better once we have some groundcover established and some roots to hold it all together...
It is hard to make generalisations though, as the best thing to do depends a lot on weather conditions, how much human labor, how much and what kind of machinery you have at your disposal...
hope that helps a bit?
rainfall records 2005
rainfall
December 46.5 mm
November 216.0 mm
October 210.0 mm
September 493.5 mm
August 127.0 mm
July 284.0 mm
June 196.5 mm
May 113.0 mm
April 184.0 mm
March 380.0 mm
February 109.0 mm
January 147.0 mm
total for the year: 2506.5 mm
total rain days over .5 mm: 192
longest period with no rain at all: 19 days (and counting, and it will probably go to 20 for 2005)
biggest rain event in a 24 hour period: maxed out the gauge at 156 mm
December 46.5 mm
November 216.0 mm
October 210.0 mm
September 493.5 mm
August 127.0 mm
July 284.0 mm
June 196.5 mm
May 113.0 mm
April 184.0 mm
March 380.0 mm
February 109.0 mm
January 147.0 mm
total for the year: 2506.5 mm
total rain days over .5 mm: 192
longest period with no rain at all: 19 days (and counting, and it will probably go to 20 for 2005)
biggest rain event in a 24 hour period: maxed out the gauge at 156 mm
Monday, December 26, 2005
This morning after watering the nursery I took some time to mulch and water the Bambusa burmanica's on the driveway. They have been doing fine even in spite of the prolonged dry spell, but it was overdue that I give them a good mulching...
Finished processing the four feedsacks of peanut that Bach and I picked up in town. We made a lot of it long to put stright into the swale, but made a lot of cuttings to pot up in the nursery... Then I showed Bach my method for potting them up in the nursery and we moved a bunch out to harden up...
After lunch I set Bach to collecting pidgeon peas and worked on freeing up the chipper shredder. Also did a little work assembling a work bench for the new shed...
In the afternoon we did some shovelling and shaping on the swale... Realised that the dozer and our surveying didn't make a perfectly level ditch... Ah well, it is pretty good for the most part, and will trap a lot of runoff...
Oh, the new batteries are installed. We really need to get the generator tuned properly and running well if these ones are to last their duration properly...
Finished processing the four feedsacks of peanut that Bach and I picked up in town. We made a lot of it long to put stright into the swale, but made a lot of cuttings to pot up in the nursery... Then I showed Bach my method for potting them up in the nursery and we moved a bunch out to harden up...
After lunch I set Bach to collecting pidgeon peas and worked on freeing up the chipper shredder. Also did a little work assembling a work bench for the new shed...
In the afternoon we did some shovelling and shaping on the swale... Realised that the dozer and our surveying didn't make a perfectly level ditch... Ah well, it is pretty good for the most part, and will trap a lot of runoff...
Oh, the new batteries are installed. We really need to get the generator tuned properly and running well if these ones are to last their duration properly...
Thursday, December 22, 2005
In which the battery bank at the barn finally died... Actually only two cells out of 24 are totally kaput but that's enough...
I picked up $1250 worth of new batteries today. What a blow. Straight out of my pocket. So much for our new thing~! And Chris Cookman is gonna charge us a slug to recalibrate the inverter... mele kelike make!
the library wouldn't lend me any books on small engine repair becuase I owed them too much and the generator has been backfiring like a civil war veteran...
jeez.
still no rain, although it has gone cloudy on us. worse luck...
At least it has given me a slight chance to get the swales tilled over before they get soaked and unworkable.
We ordered $200 worth of cover crop seed, lana woolypod vetch and red cowpea, as an interim cover while the peanut gets established.
I should go before the power dies!
I picked up $1250 worth of new batteries today. What a blow. Straight out of my pocket. So much for our new thing~! And Chris Cookman is gonna charge us a slug to recalibrate the inverter... mele kelike make!
the library wouldn't lend me any books on small engine repair becuase I owed them too much and the generator has been backfiring like a civil war veteran...
jeez.
still no rain, although it has gone cloudy on us. worse luck...
At least it has given me a slight chance to get the swales tilled over before they get soaked and unworkable.
We ordered $200 worth of cover crop seed, lana woolypod vetch and red cowpea, as an interim cover while the peanut gets established.
I should go before the power dies!
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Would you believe I spent a lot of today potting on peanut cuttings? Yes, I did...
I also got the tractor running, and slashed a fairly large swathe up there on the ridge... I kind of got the hang of it to a degree... The trick is to cut in one direction with mower fairly high, and you have to keep the revs up all the while, then you have to go back in the other direction and pick up everything that you just knocked over, and this time you can generally drop the deck down to ground level. It isn't perfect, but it kind of works. It is nice to be able to get mulch on demand like this, it really is... Our cacao polyculture planting is going to consume quite a lot...
I also spent quite a bit of time pulling grasses out of the pinto beds we started this summer... They are getting pretty thick in places.
Delegated the property management related social interactions to Lorinda, thank god.
Did some moonlight mulch raking.
Sadly, Brooke has had to go to hospital tonight. She cut her hand pretty badly with a machete, trying to open a coconut, and it has become infected... They drew a line around the wound and said that if the swelling and redness moves past the line that she should go back and get an intravenous drip of antibiotics. Poor lass. I hope they can kill whatever is infecting her hand!
I also got the tractor running, and slashed a fairly large swathe up there on the ridge... I kind of got the hang of it to a degree... The trick is to cut in one direction with mower fairly high, and you have to keep the revs up all the while, then you have to go back in the other direction and pick up everything that you just knocked over, and this time you can generally drop the deck down to ground level. It isn't perfect, but it kind of works. It is nice to be able to get mulch on demand like this, it really is... Our cacao polyculture planting is going to consume quite a lot...
I also spent quite a bit of time pulling grasses out of the pinto beds we started this summer... They are getting pretty thick in places.
Delegated the property management related social interactions to Lorinda, thank god.
Did some moonlight mulch raking.
Sadly, Brooke has had to go to hospital tonight. She cut her hand pretty badly with a machete, trying to open a coconut, and it has become infected... They drew a line around the wound and said that if the swelling and redness moves past the line that she should go back and get an intravenous drip of antibiotics. Poor lass. I hope they can kill whatever is infecting her hand!
Monday, December 12, 2005
No new posts for a while, just on account of being pretty busy rather than anything else...
Have been propagating peanut like crazy, with a view to having enough to plant out the cacao patch in one fell swoop, or at least a lot of it... Had a bit of an epiphany, which is obvious in hindsight, which I will relate here. The fact is that I probably botched the first attempt, but nevermind...
Friday was a busy day, we went for bamboo (despite the fact that the Forestry people are trying to charge $2 per pole now) and we met Steve Cabrall (?) who was sad at us for gathering his cow shit from the Papao state lands where his cows are causing terrible compaction (lots of earth worms may be mitigating that somewhat)- so after Steve ran us off we decided to go up to Brooke & Susan's old digs where they though for sure we could get some cow shit. We did, and then as we were leaving I saw a pond and asked if we could check it out. It had peanut growing around the edges, and there were nice strands of it, sometimes 2 feet long with large roots coming from every node... We cut off the stuff growing into the water and took it home to propagate.
Earlier that day however, on a run to the dump, I had picked up several bags of cuttings from the county and so I set about processing that stuff and getting it in pots of water before it dried out anymore. I had entertained notions of going up to the nursery and doing an allnighter with the headlamp and potting on all the rooted stuff from the pond, but by the time I had processed the three bags from town, I was ready for bed, and so decided to soak the rooted stuff in the bathtub. Doh! I ran hot water on them, and probably killed a bunch. I don't know. As soon as I realised, I ran cold on 'em and overnight they seemed to come back to life... Spent half the day at least on Saturday potting them on. A little bundle yielded about 5 trays of pots. Enough to plant out several square metres...
So, the lessons learned are - probably don't pour hot water on plant cuttings that you are planning to grow, but more importantly, that you can grow a lot of perennial peanut quickly by using it as an edge plant around you ponds, and taking many cuttings from the stuff that grows aquatic.
In other news, Greg Jones has been doing some consultancy work for Jen & Malte re the bamboo plants he has to sell them, so I have been collaborating with him in terms of making some rough maps and telling him our plans so that they are complemented by whatever Jen & Malte decide to do. We also discussed doing some plant swaps. I'm going to give Greg a G amplexifolia for a latiflorus or something, and so on...
The shed paid off in terms of giving us a dry space to work on the vehicles this week.
I'm sure there are other things to talk up. Legume propagation in the nursery has been the general order for me though. Also, just trying to keep the weeds at bay in the plantings we have done in the last six months, and in the new sheet mulch areas for the cacao field.
Oh, yes, we scored a bunch of roofing from a house remodelling in Kahului. I strapped it to the top of the van. Brought two loads home yesterday, will go for more today. Probably be enough to make a roof for a 20 foot long cabin. It steel, in the shape of clay tiles! Kind of goofy, but I think actually better than the corrugated stuff.
Have been propagating peanut like crazy, with a view to having enough to plant out the cacao patch in one fell swoop, or at least a lot of it... Had a bit of an epiphany, which is obvious in hindsight, which I will relate here. The fact is that I probably botched the first attempt, but nevermind...
Friday was a busy day, we went for bamboo (despite the fact that the Forestry people are trying to charge $2 per pole now) and we met Steve Cabrall (?) who was sad at us for gathering his cow shit from the Papao state lands where his cows are causing terrible compaction (lots of earth worms may be mitigating that somewhat)- so after Steve ran us off we decided to go up to Brooke & Susan's old digs where they though for sure we could get some cow shit. We did, and then as we were leaving I saw a pond and asked if we could check it out. It had peanut growing around the edges, and there were nice strands of it, sometimes 2 feet long with large roots coming from every node... We cut off the stuff growing into the water and took it home to propagate.
Earlier that day however, on a run to the dump, I had picked up several bags of cuttings from the county and so I set about processing that stuff and getting it in pots of water before it dried out anymore. I had entertained notions of going up to the nursery and doing an allnighter with the headlamp and potting on all the rooted stuff from the pond, but by the time I had processed the three bags from town, I was ready for bed, and so decided to soak the rooted stuff in the bathtub. Doh! I ran hot water on them, and probably killed a bunch. I don't know. As soon as I realised, I ran cold on 'em and overnight they seemed to come back to life... Spent half the day at least on Saturday potting them on. A little bundle yielded about 5 trays of pots. Enough to plant out several square metres...
So, the lessons learned are - probably don't pour hot water on plant cuttings that you are planning to grow, but more importantly, that you can grow a lot of perennial peanut quickly by using it as an edge plant around you ponds, and taking many cuttings from the stuff that grows aquatic.
In other news, Greg Jones has been doing some consultancy work for Jen & Malte re the bamboo plants he has to sell them, so I have been collaborating with him in terms of making some rough maps and telling him our plans so that they are complemented by whatever Jen & Malte decide to do. We also discussed doing some plant swaps. I'm going to give Greg a G amplexifolia for a latiflorus or something, and so on...
The shed paid off in terms of giving us a dry space to work on the vehicles this week.
I'm sure there are other things to talk up. Legume propagation in the nursery has been the general order for me though. Also, just trying to keep the weeds at bay in the plantings we have done in the last six months, and in the new sheet mulch areas for the cacao field.
Oh, yes, we scored a bunch of roofing from a house remodelling in Kahului. I strapped it to the top of the van. Brought two loads home yesterday, will go for more today. Probably be enough to make a roof for a 20 foot long cabin. It steel, in the shape of clay tiles! Kind of goofy, but I think actually better than the corrugated stuff.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Added water to barn batteries. Did maintenance work on the biodiesel car - changed oil, changed fuel filter, rotated tyres... Realised the brake shoes need changing soon...
Went over to J & M's and picked up the pile of carpet they offered to us ages ago but it has been too wet to get. Brooke and Susan helped me lay it around the edges of the upper pond, and it went about half way and covered all the stuff that is lying out in the sun. The rest is either shaded by the big old gliricidia or has wedelia growing down to the waters edge...
In the morning I planted corn, but no pumpkin... also watered the nursery and planted a few more trays of pidgeon peas. Greg came over and talked story with Malte, who is going to pay him to draw up a design of where to plant the various bamboo's that he is going to sell them also, so I hung out with him for a while - he helped me plant some pidgeon peas and we talked about trading some species and we walked the area that straddles the property line with J & M, and I gave him my ideas of where to situate some windbreak species...
I'm sure I did something else of note, Oh yes! wandering around, shelling pidgeon peas out of my shirt, I saw that Roo's understudy was about to escape from the Chicken Tractor. Roo has been getting fed up with him lately and I guess he finally put his foot down. So, anyway, I see him perched there right on the edge of the two sheets of chicken wire. As I approach, he jumps down and starts to scurry off. I was a bit annoyed I guess, that I would have to chase down a bloody rooster, but as I had my hands and shirt/pouch full of seed I didn't chase him that second. Instead I wandered over to the tractor, and started throwing in the seed that was too young to plant or too mouldy or bug eaten or whatever. And of course the rooster came back trying to get in. I managed to pin him down with my foot (I was wearing slippers) and get a good grip on his ankles without losing a single good pidgeon pea! Ha! We'll be eating him tomorrow I suppose.
Oh for dinner tonight I made fried cassava chips, excellent with salt and a kind of Palak Paneer, (using costco goat cheese) but also a medley of spinaches from the garden, mostly katuk and brazilian spinach (both perennials) and some kale and chard too. Lorinda had the solar cookers going all day - a good sun day...
Went over to J & M's and picked up the pile of carpet they offered to us ages ago but it has been too wet to get. Brooke and Susan helped me lay it around the edges of the upper pond, and it went about half way and covered all the stuff that is lying out in the sun. The rest is either shaded by the big old gliricidia or has wedelia growing down to the waters edge...
In the morning I planted corn, but no pumpkin... also watered the nursery and planted a few more trays of pidgeon peas. Greg came over and talked story with Malte, who is going to pay him to draw up a design of where to plant the various bamboo's that he is going to sell them also, so I hung out with him for a while - he helped me plant some pidgeon peas and we talked about trading some species and we walked the area that straddles the property line with J & M, and I gave him my ideas of where to situate some windbreak species...
I'm sure I did something else of note, Oh yes! wandering around, shelling pidgeon peas out of my shirt, I saw that Roo's understudy was about to escape from the Chicken Tractor. Roo has been getting fed up with him lately and I guess he finally put his foot down. So, anyway, I see him perched there right on the edge of the two sheets of chicken wire. As I approach, he jumps down and starts to scurry off. I was a bit annoyed I guess, that I would have to chase down a bloody rooster, but as I had my hands and shirt/pouch full of seed I didn't chase him that second. Instead I wandered over to the tractor, and started throwing in the seed that was too young to plant or too mouldy or bug eaten or whatever. And of course the rooster came back trying to get in. I managed to pin him down with my foot (I was wearing slippers) and get a good grip on his ankles without losing a single good pidgeon pea! Ha! We'll be eating him tomorrow I suppose.
Oh for dinner tonight I made fried cassava chips, excellent with salt and a kind of Palak Paneer, (using costco goat cheese) but also a medley of spinaches from the garden, mostly katuk and brazilian spinach (both perennials) and some kale and chard too. Lorinda had the solar cookers going all day - a good sun day...
With no weedeater yet (the old HUsqvarna that was in 10 pieces when we arrived is now in one piece, but it still doesn't do anything - but Pat McGrath is looking at it for us now) I have been going "old school" with the machete and rice knife, to try to keep the grass at bay in the future cacao polyculture. Spent a an hour and a half cutting the tops off that big old clumping grass and clearing around the indpendent sesbanias and williams banana's we have already planted around... Later Brooke planted some extra cabbage seedlings into the areas already sheet mulched and planted with peanut...
I went to town and paid the rent midday, picked up more peanut cuttings from kamehameha blvd, and more cardboard from the recycling depot. I wonder how many trees would go into the amount of carboard it would take to sheet mulch the entire property? (we have learnt what is obvious really, that the peanut groundcover establishes much more succesfully and weed free where you sheet mulch! It will be interesting to learn what happens to the two different methods in time - will the sheet mulched beds end up harbouring just as many grasses once the cardboard/newspaper is eaten by the worms etc?) Also got oil and filter for the biodiesel car as it is due... will see if I can gtet under there today to drain the oil.
Lorinda, Lichen and Mikayla moved the chicken dome all by themselves, and Mikayla also helped gather goat fodder. Susan looked for coriander seeds but to no avail...
I had changed gates around in the stationary chicken tractor, and modified a fence, so that the system looks more like a chicken rotation than a general dogs breakfast, and in the evening I ran the tiller over the little patch that the chooks have been manuring and weeding for a few months. It was perhaps a little too wet down by the swale, but it general it was about the best moisture content one could hope for in the middle of the wet season, in terms of tilling... I think the plan is to tryt he 3 Sisters guild there to begin with, and we are right in the new moon now...
We have another batch of pidgeon peas coming out of the nursery, from seed I collected striaght off the bush, shelled and planted immediately. The remnants of last years saved seed has become weevil infested, and we got only about 20% germination from them. With the fresh seed we were back to about 80% with around 50 plants... Today I am going to aim at putting in about 250 or 300 seeds, with a view to using them in the cabinet timber forest over on the other side of the gulch, where we have already dropped in the Jacarandas and INges's.
Oh, I brought home heaps more hibiscus cuttings for rough mulch from Joans - made about 6 big piles that will make good weed suppressants themselves until we get around to chopping them down smaller with the chainsaw... Oh to have a giant mulcher!
Oh, and in the phenomenalogical calendar division - the california grass is flowering and the countryside is covered in a tapestry of yellow straw and soft red/purple... Very pretty. Sort of like a tropical savannah version of the Fall colours I suppose. Also, I saw the female pheasant for the first time, coming down ho'olawa road. Thought it was a chukar at first...
I went to town and paid the rent midday, picked up more peanut cuttings from kamehameha blvd, and more cardboard from the recycling depot. I wonder how many trees would go into the amount of carboard it would take to sheet mulch the entire property? (we have learnt what is obvious really, that the peanut groundcover establishes much more succesfully and weed free where you sheet mulch! It will be interesting to learn what happens to the two different methods in time - will the sheet mulched beds end up harbouring just as many grasses once the cardboard/newspaper is eaten by the worms etc?) Also got oil and filter for the biodiesel car as it is due... will see if I can gtet under there today to drain the oil.
Lorinda, Lichen and Mikayla moved the chicken dome all by themselves, and Mikayla also helped gather goat fodder. Susan looked for coriander seeds but to no avail...
I had changed gates around in the stationary chicken tractor, and modified a fence, so that the system looks more like a chicken rotation than a general dogs breakfast, and in the evening I ran the tiller over the little patch that the chooks have been manuring and weeding for a few months. It was perhaps a little too wet down by the swale, but it general it was about the best moisture content one could hope for in the middle of the wet season, in terms of tilling... I think the plan is to tryt he 3 Sisters guild there to begin with, and we are right in the new moon now...
We have another batch of pidgeon peas coming out of the nursery, from seed I collected striaght off the bush, shelled and planted immediately. The remnants of last years saved seed has become weevil infested, and we got only about 20% germination from them. With the fresh seed we were back to about 80% with around 50 plants... Today I am going to aim at putting in about 250 or 300 seeds, with a view to using them in the cabinet timber forest over on the other side of the gulch, where we have already dropped in the Jacarandas and INges's.
Oh, I brought home heaps more hibiscus cuttings for rough mulch from Joans - made about 6 big piles that will make good weed suppressants themselves until we get around to chopping them down smaller with the chainsaw... Oh to have a giant mulcher!
Oh, and in the phenomenalogical calendar division - the california grass is flowering and the countryside is covered in a tapestry of yellow straw and soft red/purple... Very pretty. Sort of like a tropical savannah version of the Fall colours I suppose. Also, I saw the female pheasant for the first time, coming down ho'olawa road. Thought it was a chukar at first...
With no weedeater yet (the old HUsqvarna that was in 10 pieces when we arrived is now in one piece, but it still doesn't do anything - but Pat McGrath is looking at it for us now) I have been going "old school" with the machete and rice knife, to try to keep the grass at bay in the future cacao polyculture. Spent a an hour and a half cutting the tops off that big old clumping grass and clearing around the indpendent sesbanias and williams banana's we have already planted around... Later Brooke planted some extra cabbage seedlings into the areas already sheet mulched and planted with peanut...
I went to town and paid the rent midday, picked up more peanut cuttings from kamehameha blvd, and more cardboard from the recycling depot. I wonder how many trees would go into the amount of carboard it would take to sheet mulch the entire property? (we have learnt what is obvious really, that the peanut groundcover establishes much more succesfully and weed free where you sheet mulch! It will be interesting to learn what happens to the two different methods in time - will the sheet mulched beds end up harbouring just as many grasses once the cardboard/newspaper is eaten by the worms etc?) Also got oil and filter for the biodiesel car as it is due... will see if I can gtet under there today to drain the oil.
Lorinda, Lichen and Mikayla moved the chicken dome all by themselves, and Mikayla also helped gather goat fodder. Susan looked for coriander seeds but to no avail...
I had changed gates around in the stationary chicken tractor, and modified a fence, so that the system looks more like a chicken rotation than a general dogs breakfast, and in the evening I ran the tiller over the little patch that the chooks have been manuring and weeding for a few months. It was perhaps a little too wet down by the swale, but it general it was about the best moisture content one could hope for in the middle of the wet season, in terms of tilling... I think the plan is to tryt he 3 Sisters guild there to begin with, and we are right in the new moon now...
We have another batch of pidgeon peas coming out of the nursery, from seed I collected striaght off the bush, shelled and planted immediately. The remnants of last years saved seed has become weevil infested, and we got only about 20% germination from them. With the fresh seed we were back to about 80% with around 50 plants... Today I am going to aim at putting in about 250 or 300 seeds, with a view to using them in the cabinet timber forest over on the other side of the gulch, where we have already dropped in the Jacarandas and INges's.
Oh, I brought home heaps more hibiscus cuttings for rough mulch from Joans - made about 6 big piles that will make good weed suppressants themselves until we get around to chopping them down smaller with the chainsaw... Oh to have a giant mulcher!
Oh, and in the phenomenalogical calendar division - the california grass is flowering and the countryside is covered in a tapestry of yellow straw and soft red/purple... Very pretty. Sort of like a tropical savannah version of the Fall colours I suppose. Also, I saw the female pheasant for the first time, coming down ho'olawa road. Thought it was a chukar at first...
I went to town and paid the rent midday, picked up more peanut cuttings from kamehameha blvd, and more cardboard from the recycling depot. I wonder how many trees would go into the amount of carboard it would take to sheet mulch the entire property? (we have learnt what is obvious really, that the peanut groundcover establishes much more succesfully and weed free where you sheet mulch! It will be interesting to learn what happens to the two different methods in time - will the sheet mulched beds end up harbouring just as many grasses once the cardboard/newspaper is eaten by the worms etc?) Also got oil and filter for the biodiesel car as it is due... will see if I can gtet under there today to drain the oil.
Lorinda, Lichen and Mikayla moved the chicken dome all by themselves, and Mikayla also helped gather goat fodder. Susan looked for coriander seeds but to no avail...
I had changed gates around in the stationary chicken tractor, and modified a fence, so that the system looks more like a chicken rotation than a general dogs breakfast, and in the evening I ran the tiller over the little patch that the chooks have been manuring and weeding for a few months. It was perhaps a little too wet down by the swale, but it general it was about the best moisture content one could hope for in the middle of the wet season, in terms of tilling... I think the plan is to tryt he 3 Sisters guild there to begin with, and we are right in the new moon now...
We have another batch of pidgeon peas coming out of the nursery, from seed I collected striaght off the bush, shelled and planted immediately. The remnants of last years saved seed has become weevil infested, and we got only about 20% germination from them. With the fresh seed we were back to about 80% with around 50 plants... Today I am going to aim at putting in about 250 or 300 seeds, with a view to using them in the cabinet timber forest over on the other side of the gulch, where we have already dropped in the Jacarandas and INges's.
Oh, I brought home heaps more hibiscus cuttings for rough mulch from Joans - made about 6 big piles that will make good weed suppressants themselves until we get around to chopping them down smaller with the chainsaw... Oh to have a giant mulcher!
Oh, and in the phenomenalogical calendar division - the california grass is flowering and the countryside is covered in a tapestry of yellow straw and soft red/purple... Very pretty. Sort of like a tropical savannah version of the Fall colours I suppose. Also, I saw the female pheasant for the first time, coming down ho'olawa road. Thought it was a chukar at first...
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