That is a great ideaGris, many times I have leaned against our metal garage doors and nigh on burned myself. I know one guy who has tried heating water by filling a DG unit with water on his greenhouse roff with a dark pannel behind and it does warm the water enough to have a shower with, same as our 100 foot garden hose which holds enough water to take a quick bath in.

Those revelving pannels are still in use in Jordan and similar countries today, the material is the local dirt that surrounds the houses mixed with a little cement to bond things together.

The inuit sometimes use an ice lens to enhance the suns rays in order of raising.the temp inside to just above freezing and sleep naked together underneath a layer of skins nice and toasty.

Thing is Gris we have simply gone too soft and reliant on stolen energy for our well being, the great big wake up call is coming into sight Burrrrrrr.


Griswald wrote:

Sorry to go off on a tangent from what is already being discussed - I found a recipe recently for 'all natural' pesticide and was wondering if peeps had any more information on the ingredient 'neem oil' - and whether or not it would be effective in any way.

The Apprentice wrote:
Yep lots of heat goes to waste on a hot day for sure. . I notice when I leave buckets of rainwater in the tunnel for a few hours before watering. The water is warm, and thats better than shocking the bejaysus out of young seedlings with ice cold water from the tap. Any copper tools in the tunnel as wellis a great conductor of heat as well, and its surprising how hot they do get. I grow all my tunnel plants in large 8'x4'x2' polystyrene blocks that have been hollowed out to hold the compost or growing material, and in the winter times its agreat asset for holding heat, and insulating against the cold. One of theose blocks with a few coils of copper pipe within, and incorporated withyour panel, would give me an insulated hot water supply from the tunnel.

griswald

The antibacterial proporties of Neem is used in several products today like tooth paste and some of my freinds use the sticks of the tree to chew on which releases the natural oils.

Another great pesicide is tobbaco, a few full leaves placed into a bucket will break down like comphrey to produce a pungent aroma, mix this ten to one and spray it on your plants to detter aphids.
thoreau wrote:

thanks app

The Apprentice wrote:
And you can also enjoy a free smoke while you are watching them buggers die

The thought of each leaf being worth about a tenner gives one the best satifaction and no duties to the men without hats lol.
Griswald wrote:

The Apprentice wrote:
Along with the fact that tobacco will probably be the most lucrative crop across the board to sell or barter with. And as you said, no excise to any one............yet.. And pure stuff too, so its a win win all around. I,m pretty sure the tobacco seed will keep for a long time, and the cured leaves to, in the right conditions of course, but I,ll have to check that one out. Might be fit for making fuel out of too, as its foliage is of an aggressive nature in growth, it would provide a lot of matter for distillation into a fuel source. As in the old poteen, app.

griswald

oioioi wrote:
When you are in the preparation of your garden, there are a couple of very important things to remember, that I dont think has been mentioned yet.
DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT, be tempted to go the quick root to garden clearance, by using Roundup. If you do you will be sorry for decades about that choice. Its pure poison on the land, and will leave it severely depletd in its ability to provide a crop for you. I foolishly took a local farmers advice, 30 years ago, in my youth, and used round up in a small patch on my plot. This piece of ground now grows nothing of any use on it at all, anything that grows there is stunted in size, and produces nowt, even after all this time. And dont be tempted by the hype of roundup ready seeds either. these are seeds that are immune to roundup weedkiller products due to genetic modification. These seeds have been shown to be less of a producer than normal organic seeds. And some also contain terminator genes through the same modification, that prevent you from collecting seeds at the end of each year for next years crop.

Just thought I,d mention that,

For evidence of this death mall for nature and the mad men in charge of the momoculture look at what agent orange did to the jungles of Vietnam, these crazy fuckers could in one day destroy the entire crops in the Uk from the skies and what many think they have been seeing how much area they could cover in an experiment.

Roundup destroys the vitality of the soil its entire germination and enzyme proporties and as Gris has found out to his mistake the poison acts like strictnene and never dissapates but attracts all the other nasties in soil to turn it into a sterile state, devoid of true life as nature intended.

The one man one cow one planet film says it all many.farmers in India have killed themselves by drinking this stuff.

Great film



cheers for reminding me gris.



Griswald wrote:

Griswald wrote:
You mentioned it. I bumped and enlarged it. In case anyone missed it

EDIT: And the text went all wierd.

The Apprentice wrote:
Agent orange nasty shit too. If I,m not mistaken that was Monsanto as well was it not app. I,m lucky that I only did a 10'x10' patch at the time, as money was tight, and thats all I could afford. But thank god for that. And if you go into farmer markets here for your fresh veg, think again. Potatoes here in many farmers fields are sprayed with roundup, in the first couple of weeks after planting the spuds. Its a normal practice to suppress weeds before the spuds get up and going. Not many people are aware of this. I,d say its common practice in the uk and europe too. And what with a former Monsanto head being in charge of Agriculture, I,d say its common practice there to, as well as roundup ready seeds. nasty fekkin science associated with monsanto.

gris...

It was monsanto who made the orange death in vietnam, I would feed these monsters to hungry pigs one for each Indian farmer that drunk that shit.




Griswald wrote:

oi, have you managed to check out your soil yet or have you been on the bottle all weekend?


BTW: vaguely interesting piece of trivial info. I found some very very out of season magic mushrooms on our plot today

What the heck is up with that?

dubmeup wrote:
Bit of both. I got started clearing it yesterday (using nowt but bare hands and sweat) in the hope of shaking off a hangover. It didn't work. However I can now see better what I've got to work with. And I discovered a composter at the bottom of the garden I knew nothing about!

Anyway, the soil is dry, crumbly and falls apart but it hasn't seen any rain for months

How many mushies...enough?

oioioi wrote:
The composter is a good sign It implies that someone has put some effort and organic material in already
You are gonna need to do at least an initial deep dig to get on top of the perrenial weeds. Get as much root out as you can. Have a look at some of the previous posts in this thread with that regard.

With the soil being so dry, it's difficult to give a definite reply but it does sound as though you have a sandy soil, which is good. Maybe get a bit wet and when the soil has drunk up the water, do that squeeze test. That will help us to further ascertain your soil type. Which will help us advise on what may be wise to add. Organic matter will be on the list whatever though. Can you source any locally? Muck? Spent mushroom compost or the ilk? It would be wise to get some of that in to at least a spit's depth when you are clearing the ground.

There is a little patch of about 20 shrooms. Weird as hell. Never seen them in June before! As for "enough", well I suppose I could chuck them on the pile . I think I'll let these spore though

Not such good news on the composter, it means mrs oioioi's dad had a great idea that went no further than putting a composter at the bottom of the garden, such was his manner!

This afternoons job is digging out a few stubborn buggers/small trees that weren't for shifting by hand. I'm trying to source some local 'muck', donkeys and goats aren't as abundant in Athens as in the rest of Greece though! Have I read it right? It's best if I start putting some down now as I start to dig it over?

Shame that the composter has never been used

I'm not going to urge you to 'double dig' because that would be cruel but really it would be your best bet on a new plot.
You can probably get away with a 'single dig' tbh. Work in rows and dig a spade's depth along each row, breaking the soil up a bit as you do. At the end of each row, go through the piles you've just dug and get every last root and stone you can out of them and further break up any big clods. You'll see some roots going off from the trench you've just dug too no doubt. Try to get those out too. The more you can get out the better.
After that, put a good spadeful of whatever organic matter you can get into the trench. (Asking the locals what they use would be a good idea).
Then step back and start a new row. This time you turn the soil into the trench you just dug. Again taking out as much root as you can and breaking up any clods. Keep going back like that till you've dug over the lot, added matter to each trench and got every last bit of root you can out. The last trench is filled with the soil you dug out of the first one. This is the basic 'single dig'

You WILL get weeds come back, it's pretty much inevitable but effort put in at this stage will make life easier down the line.
What you do after this is up to you. I'd recommend a clearing crop and green manure crop like I've said earlier but you could just go straight for growing some food. Be aware though that root vegetables don't like growing in freshly mucked soil. They hate it in fact. The bean family, most salads, capsicums etc will do well in newly mucked ground though.

I'm not adverse to putting the extra effort in at the beginning if it makes life easier later. I'm assuming a double dig is doing it all twice to make sure everything is cleared out.

How wide is 'a row', as wide as the spade and then the same gap between? Am I preparing the whole plot or just rows?

I'll get back to yous at a later point regarding my crops! One baby step at a time.

Yes your spade is kind of like your ruler too. A row is a spade wide and a spade deep. The trenches all butt up against eachother. As in you dig the next trench right up against the one you just filled in. A spade's width back so to speak.

With double digging you go down two spade depths (spits) deep. Dig out the first spit and make a pile. Then dig out a spit deeper into the subsoil and make a separate pile (you may find it easier to dig the first spit from trench two as well before you take the second spit from trench one) These shouldn't be mixed. (As in you should keep subsoil and top soil separate and always put them back at the right level). Then you start your next row. The first spit (topsoil) of this row goes in another pile. This time you put the second spit (subsoil) in the base of your first trench. You keep working back and if you were to look at it in cross section you'd see it look like steps as you go. Topsoil from the third trench gets chucked on the subsoil you put back in trench one. Of course doing all the same rooting/stoning/breaking up and adding of material as you go that you'd do with a single dig. Then again at the end, the subsoil and top soil from your first trench are used to fill your last trench. Not sure I explained that very well
Double digging is not for the faint hearted. It will nigh on kill a hardened grower let alone a newcomer but, it does give you a lovely deep, enriched and loose bed which veg will adore. They will be able to root down into it easily and things like root veg will love you for it. You'll also be able to get even more weed root out. It's common for things like docks to go much deeper than a single spit for example

All that said, it isn't possible everywhere. In many places you don't really get much subsoil. On the side of a mountain for example there may only be a thin layer of topsoil before you hit rock.