Potato Box

In lieu of old tires or treated wood, I'm trying out old rotten firewood and twigs as building material for our potato box. The potatoes seem to be okay with their rustic accommodations. Every week as they grow, I add another level and a layer of compost. Hopefully it will reach three feet before harvest. We'll see if any potatoes roll out when we knock it over in a couple of months. I only used one potato cut in quarters, so it wouldn't take much to break even.

Beware the Eggs of March

After 20 years of fairly strict veganism, I have decided to include (local, small farm, humanely produced) eggs in my diet starting this Spring. The plan is to maintain 99-95% vegan, so it’s not a big deal to most people, I know. But after making many of you deal with 20 years that went from curiosity to militancy to self-righteous indignation to stoic smugness to reflection to stubbornness to reflection to humbleness to reflection… I thought I owed you this note. So in keeping with my lazy environmentalism, I’ve decided to become a lazy vegan, AKA a vegetarian.

If anyone is interested (or knows anyone who might be interested) in doing an exit interview/examination for research purposes on a long-term strict vegan, please get in touch before March 15, 2012.

Okay, you may now commence with the egg jokes. Please keep them brief and G-rated. Press conference adjourned.

AT Crawley

5712 Vegetable Garden

The vegetable garden this spring and summer wasn't much to look at (wasn't much at which to look?)... We did, however, get a whole mess of string beans from vines around 20 feet long. More chard than we could eat, a substantial haul of carrots, some tiny broccoli florets on thick, tall stalks, enough butternut squash to share from the compost heap (and some nice compost) and a lot of fennel, basil, oregano and parsley. We got one sweet potato, a few onions the width of my thumb, and a handful of spinach.



Check out the squash mould I made using one of our drinking glasses. I stuck some young squashes in bottles as well but they didn't make it, they got greenhoused to a crisp.

Dumpstered Acrylic Sheets + Deconstructed Photo Stand = Coldframe

Finally decided to put the old photo stand to good use and quickly built a makeshift coldframe (just barely) ahead of the cold weather.

FINAL DRAFT

Quantification Of Hillside Ground Cover Using Publicly Available Software Final

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Earth Sangha

http://www.earthsangha.org

We took a group of Youth Conservation Corps kids to Earth Sangha. A great place that puts their Buddhist principles into action by serving the community with programs that combine social programs and ecological restoration.

Wolf Trap National Park

For the last 6 months i have been working with a gardener named Phil Goetkin who focuses on native plants conservation. Here are some of his creations which I helped to install and or maintain. We often use hybridized cultivars in displays but are working towards establishing more strict native gardens.