The Garden
Summer 2007
I
have built a new lean-to mini-greenhouse from some bits and bats I had lying
around. The frame is made from some old copper pipe I had left over from my
wood stove installation, fixed to the wall with plumbing fittings. Then I
added a timber frame made from some old bits of timber left over from a makeshift
cupboard I ripped out of a corner in the bedroom. Four sheets of cheap corrugated
plastic sheet from the hardware store, some fixings, and lo! A greenhouse.
Should come in handy for starting stuff off early in the year from now on,
although it's a bit late for this year. I have a few blackcurrant cuttings
on the go on there, nonetheless.
I
had a few old mirror tiles lying around so I have made a 'concentrating solar
power' arrangement on the side of the small shed facing the greenhouse. As
the greenhouse faces South-East, it misses out on some of the afternoon and
evening sun, so these mirrors will reflect a bit of sunlight back into the
greenhouse at those times.
This summer has been so wet so far that I lost a lot of young food plants to slugs and snails. Then . . . I discovered "Slug Rings"! These copper rings keep the slugs and snails off young plants, they can't stand the copper apparently as it gives them some kind of electric shock.
The ancient Peruvians discovered that by burying charcoal in their agricultural soils, they could improve the fertility of those soils as the charcoal reduced leaching of nutrients from the soil and generally improved it. They called this technique "Terra Preta". In the 21st Century, the addition of "Agri-Char" to soil achieves the same kind of improvements, but could also potentially be a good way to permanently sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide should it be introduced on a sufficiently large scale.
I bought a few bags of 'local charcoal' from my local hardware store - sustainably produced charcoal from local forestry resources - and added them to my raised beds as a soil improver and carbon sequestration. I then threw a layer of sawdust (from log cutting) on top to compost down and finally a layer of general-purpose compost for this year's veg to be planted into.
It will be interesting to see how my own "Terra Preta" performs!
Plenty of frogs in the three-pond system this year too!
