Engineering Story/Problem

 Engineering Story/Problem

A backhoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading

east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas.  The extended shovel arm is

made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of

commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced

at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical

spacing.

Solve:  When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to

be going to slice the bridge in half?  (Assume no effect for headwind

and no braking by the driver...) Extra Credit: Solve for the time and

distance required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after

hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above.

Concerning Comfrey:

 

I grow comfrey for many reasons. It an extremely hardy, strong and drought tolerant plant that propagates well. It blooms for a significant portion of the growing season and with it's potential medicinal properties, it makes a great pollinator feed.  I've even heard comfrey referred to as "the miracle plant. This one shown in the picture is the largest comfrey plant I have and as usual, it's loaded with bees.

Comfrey has a deep taproot system that can bring minerals up from deep underground and grows many large mineral-rich leaves quickly.

I use comfrey mainly as to make a "tea" for fertilizer and I compost a lot of the leaves too. Some people have used comfrey as a poultice to help heal cuts, burns, sprains and even broken bones, but I have no idea how well it works. Some say that it makes a good mineral supplement for certain grazing animals as well. Certain compounds in the plant make it somewhat toxic to humans, so I don't eat it..... much! 😉

Some varieties of comfrey have been notorious for spreading all over the place and taking over, but if you get the variety I have, it is sterile and only propagates by root division. Bocking 14 is the name of the variety I have. 

Comfrey wasn't available at any garden stores I visited, but a friend reccomended a local garden nursery. When I went there the first time, an old woman came out of the house and told me she was closed. When I came back the next time, the same woman was outside working and I had to track her down and ask if she had comfrey. She said she had some and led me arond the barn with her shovel in hand. We came up to one large comfrey cluster and she dug out a few sprigs of it with a little bit of roots on the end of them. I wasn't sure if they would be strong enough to make it home, but she was certain that they would be fine.

Well, the plants survived to say the least. They're very easy to care for and grow like no other. I usually cut them 2 or 3 times a year to freshen them up and use the leaves.

What I love most about raised beds...

 I was recently asked "What do you love most about raised beds?" There are many great reasons to use raised beds, such as:

Containment of soil 

Control over soil mixture 

Definition of the garden space 

Facilitates square foot gardening 

Raised soil height improves accessibility 

Reduces the need to walk on the soil

Planning is simpler

I think my favorite thing about raised beds is the organized look of it all.

Here is a picture of my "three sisters" bed from a few years ago. As you can see,I was able to mow the grass right up to the bed and weed whack along the edge for very clean look. That year, I topped the beds with 2 inches of compost that I had bought and it payed huge dividends. "Just looked them beans... and look at that corn!" (as Johnny Cash sang about)

✌❤🙂

Me trying to explain to someone how their food is killing them.

🤣🤣🤣

7 Reasons why I love using my "Earth Machine" composters

Let me preface...

Earth Machine is a brand name of home sized compost bins. I remember seeing them for years before I got one and thinking it looked like an overturned trash can. Years ago, my coworker gave me this Earth Machine that he didn't use. I had just moved into my first home that had a yard I could work in and I immediately started gardening.  Over the years I acquired two more of these bins that were left at the roadside. I knew the value of what those people were getting rid of and I promptly turned the vehicle around to get them. 

7 Reasons why I love using my "Earth Machine" compost machines

1. It's easy

The Earth Machine has a venting lid on top where you load all your raw compost materials. The bulk of materials that I add in are leaves, grass clippings and any other garden waste. A lot of people get into composting to get rid of kitchen scraps, but I have found that kitchen scraps are not nearly enough material to fill one of these bins. They hold approximately one half of a cubic yard of material.

2. Structure

The black PVC construction is a strong, long-lasting material. It retains moisture and attracts solar energy to increase temperature. There are also vents on the side to let an appropriate amount of air into the bin to aid the composting process.

3. Access port

As you may see in the photo below, there is an access port at the bottom.  In theory, you can dig the finished compost from the bottom, but I have not had that experience.

4. Compact design 

The bin is only about 3 feet in diameter and about 3 feet tall, so it takes up very little space in the yard. The sides taper toward the top to make it easy to lift the bin off the pile.

5. Lightweight 

When it comes time to turn the pile, I can simply lift the bin up and off and move it to one side. Then I can turn the pile over, right into the bin again.

6. Efficiency 

If I keep these bins full, they can eat up a good portion of my grass clippings from a half acre of lawn. In the time between mowing, You can see how the pile sinks down from the top. 

7. Open bottom

Probably my favorite part of this bin is the open bottom. This feature allows the compost to touch the native soil and leaches compost tea into the surrounding area, turning your compost area into a metropolis of beneficial microorganisms. At my last home, the previous owner had used a lot of chemical lawn fertilizers and pesticides and I could not find a single worm for years on that property for years after I moved in. Then after about 5 years of gardening and composting, The earthworms became abundant.  

Final thoughts

One of the keys to composting is to keep the pile balanced. It needs a balance of green and brown materials, and a balance of moisture. Too much either way will slow down the process. 

I let someone use one of mine one time and they complained that it was full of flies and bugs. I looked inside and they weren't lying, but they didn't really have a compost pile in there, it was just a heap of watermelon rinds and corn husks mostly. If you know compost, you know that this is not a good way to do start building a pile.

How I planted Garlic: Autumn 2022

Here is what i started with: my summer garlic harvest from 2022 was approximately 100 bulbs.

This is my new garlic bed made with CMU (cinder) blocks. Interior dimensions of the bed are approximately 4'x8' (1.2m x2.4m). I poked the holes about 6" (15 cm) apart with a pointed stick. See the big peace sign in the background... my mom made that out of vines and sticks from the forest. Thanks Mom! ☮❤🙂

Break apart each bulb into individual cloves, but carefully leave skins fully attached. Each of my bulbs has 4 cloves on average. This past summer, I harvested about 100 bulbs

Push each clove down into the soil, about 4 inches (10 cm) deep.  I planted exactly 128 cloves in total. 

Space each clove about 6 inches (15 cm) apart side to side.

Cover with a deep organic, biodegradable mulch.  I used leaves and grass clippings, but wood chips or pine needles could also work. 

Three weeks later, I already see some sprouts coming through the leaves. Its going to be getting colder soon, so these should go dormant and come back with enthusiasm in spring! ✌❤🙂

Onion Harvest 2020

So, I harvested, cured and cleaned up my first batch of Egyptian walking onions. They aren't the biggest or the fastest growing onions in the world, but they are one of the easiest that I've grown so far.  

 

Fifteen years for one good carrot???

Yes, I have tried growing carrots many times over the past 15 years of growing my own garden. I've had gardens on six different properties and this year, I got what I think was my best carrot I've ever grown. 

In the past when I have attempted carrots, I either planted them too close, didn't have enough patience, let them get too weedy, didn't have the right fertility, who knows? They were always either very small, bitter or sometimes nothing but leafy tops.

This one was happy though and it lived a good life. I planted them in mid April with the radishes.  It was a danvers variety, known as a half size carrot; it was only 3 or 4 inches long, but the flavor was exceptional.

I actually didn't even mean to pick it, I was weeding and noticed something orange poking out from the pile.  That night I had it for dessert and it was sweet, tender and juicy. What a blessing! 

This definitely inspired me to try growing more.  Maybe I will try to plant a winter crop of them! ✌❤🙂

My first swale and berm system in action

This is a short clip of my first swale and berm system in action.  Please excuse the mess, I wasn't planning on taking a video, but I had to jump at this opportunity. I had just built it and hadn't even planted it yet. The video was taken during a heavy rainfall and it didn't overflow any of the berms, which let me know that my design was effective.

Since then, I have moved, but when I drive by, it looks like it is still functioning.

Simple Sheet Mulch aka "Back to Eden"

This is my simple sheet mulch project, to create my first garden on my new property.  This is similar to what is called the "back to eden method" or the "Ruth Stout method".

I started by marking out the area that I wanted to use. It is 4'x16'.  I weedwacked the area as low as I could. As seen above.

Next, I covered the areas with a layer of cardboard. I made sure to overlap the ends, to prevent any unwanted weeds from coming through.

Then, I dumped about 9 or 10 buckets of mulch material on top of the cardboard. I got this material from my local compost facility for free.  It is a nice blend of finished compost and wood chips.

To finish it off, I spread the mulch evenly over the area and watered it really well to soak the cardboard. That's it.  It took about an hour to create a nice little starter garden.  I've only used an 4'x8' area so far because I didn't have enough mulch, but I will do the rest the next time I can get into the compost facility.

✌❤🙂

Three-bin compost system.... and a surprise ending!

I wish I had taken a "before" photo.  The three-bin compost system at my community garden has been neglected and was overrun with all kinds of dead plant matter. With the help of my mulch fork, I did something about it today.  We could use some new pallets soon, but at least I got it cleaned up and added the mulch to make it safer to walk in the area.

If you're not familiar with the three-bin system, you basically add all your raw compostable materials in one side and when it starts breaking down, you move it to the second section,hen when the second section breaks down some more, you flip it to the third section to finish.

There are endless benefits of adding compost to your garden, so I won't go into it, but I heard an interesting quote about compost today:

"Compost is the currency of the garden."
     - Huw Richards
https://youtu.be/s7iu4xgSu1Y

Will you look at this....

Just as I thought I was finished writing this blog post on this cloudy, late-April afternoon, the sun decided to say hi from under the clouds for a magnificent sunset.

✌❤🙂

Planting potatoes for 2020

It's potato day 2020 and as usual, I'm trying something new.  I had purchased a few bags of potatoes back when the grocery shopping panic was happening a month and a half ago.  I had one bag that I didn't use fast enough and they all sprouted eyes, so I'm giving them a chance to work in the garden. 

I had a 4'x4' raised bed that was lying fallow, so that seemed like an ideal spot.  I raked away the mulch and dug some shallow trenches to plant in. Unlike the traditional method, I placed the potatoes in whole, rather than cutting them up.  I figured it would increase the strength of the plants as well as my chances of success. 

There was just enough soil to cover the potatoes back up, and then I covered the soil with an inch or two of the wood chips that I had right there.  I will add more wood chips soon, but this should give them a head start while we get some rain for the next few days.  I plan to hill them with wood chips until they stop growing or the chips overflow the area.

I'm hoping the wood chips work wonders for the potatoes like I have heard about from people like Paul Gautschi. I can visualize them growing through and setting potatoes on the vines, beneath the surface of the wood chips.  

With people talking about food shortages, increasing food prices and overall inflation, people's fears are on the rise.  God willing, this should give me a little bit of "food insurance" to help improve my odds of success throughout this unstable situation that we're all in right now. 

Good day everyone and may God bless you. 

✌❤🙂

The Story of my Community Garden Plot Part 1

It has been quite a while since I have written on here.  I'm on to a new garden location and I have been working on it for the last year and a half.

This garden is a 1000 square foot plot in a community garden.  When I first walked through, I loved the location because it was on the end of a row, it had great visibility and I knew there was a lot of room for improvement. It was so overgrown! The whole thing was overrun with weeds and some of them were taller than me.

First order of business was to clear it out so I could actually move in there. It was already September and I had to get the place prepped so I could move some perennials in there before the danger of frost. It took me three tanks of gas and lots of string in my weedwacker to get through it all, but it was immediately worth it.  Apparently the people who had this plot before me had planted it in the spring and there were tomatoes in the corner that were nice and ripe, so that made a nice treat to reward me for my efforts.

After only a day of weedwacking I had discovered a few surprises.  As I was going along, I quickly got a whiff of onions.  I looked down and found a plant that I had been curious about, but never bought: Egyptian walking onions.  They were everywhere! 

Soon thereafter I found a strawberry patch that I uncovered from the jungle of weeds, then an bed of yellow onions.  The last thing I noticed was as I was leaving, hanging from the arbor was a bunch of Scarlet runner beans. This was a plant that I had recently learned about. I heard that Bill Mollison had considered these the best bean you could grow.

How I built my raised bed greenhouse

I want to to explain how I built my simple miniature greenhouse in case anyone is curious. If I recall correctly, the total cost of material was under $100.

1.  I built my raised bed frame out of two 2x8s @ 12 feet long and two 2x8s @ 4 feet long. I simply screwed them together with 3-1/2" long exterior grade screws.  I use 3 screws per corner and make sure they are centered in the board you are going into the long way.  I drew red lines on the photo (below) to show where the screws are.

*As for the type of wood, I used cheap natural spruce boards but you could also used cedar or something.  Spruce is known to rotationally fairly quickly so I will have to replace boards as needed, but I would NEVER use pressure treated wood in the vegetable garden because of the chemicals they treat the wood with.

2.  Backfill with good soil.

3.  For the hoops, I used 3/4" galvanized conduit and bent it 180 degrees at approximately a 4 foot diameter. I placed them every 4 feet along the raised bed and used conduit mounts to fasten them in place with 1-1/4" screws as seen below:

4.  I covered it with 6mil clear plastic.  A 12'x25' piece was more than enough, but not enough to make two.  The corners can be a little tricky, so I took the slack at the corners I rolled it up tightly and clamped it in place. I used 2" spring clamps.

This is how I built mine and I would love to hear how you built yours.

Thanks for reading!

I have already begun!

Yesterday, was the official kickoff to my gardening season!  I mixed up some seed starting soil mix tried out my new soil block maker to start some seeds indoors.  I did kale, broccoli, arugula and Swiss Chard. I also direct sowed some mesculin mix in my new mini greenhouse that I built last month.

It has been so unseasonably warm this week, that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to attempt an early spring garden. If it doesn't work, who cares.  It was probably less than a dollar worth of seed and a dollar worth of soil.

The mini greenhouse is being put to the test.  I felt the air inside it yesterday and it was probably 15 degrees warmer than the air outside.  I built it on top of my new 12"x4' wood framed raised bed.  The greenhouse itself is made out of bent 3/4" conduit and 6mil clear plastic.

The soil block maker was my other investment for this year.  I'm not going to do a full product review, but so far it seems to be working.  If you want to see how they work, check out: http://www.johnnyseeds.com/tools-supplies/seed-starting-supplies/soil-block-makers/hand-held-20-soil-blocker-9528.html#q=Soil%2Bblock%2Bmaker%2B&lang=en_US&start=1

Christmas wishes

*singing*

I'm dreaming
Of a warm
Greenhouse.
So I can grow my food while it snows.

See the carrots glisten
And kale and spinach missin'
The sun
be-cause it is the sol-ol-stice.

I'm dreaming
Of a warm
Greenhouse
While snow gets deeper every week.

May your carrots
May your carrots
May your carrots
Grow sweet, straight and lo-o-o-ong
And may all your greenhouses stay warm!

My Dream Garden - Part 2

I've been dreaming of my ideal garden a lot lately.  A few Christmases ago, I was given a book called Mini-Farming- Self sufficiency on 1/4 acre by Brett Markham.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Mini_Farming.html?id=HvcsAgAAQBAJ&hl=en

By simply judging by its cover, I figured that all I needed was 1/4 acre and I would be all set; I could quit my job and just live off the land.  Haha.  Of course, it is not so simple.  What he meant was that if you use the square foot gardening method using intensive planting techniques, you could potentially become self sufficient with over 10,000 square feet of raised beds gardens.

I did the math and it works out to about 227 of my 4'x4' beds.  When you figure in the space between the beds and also adding in some space for pollinator attractions and some decorative features, you're talking about close to or even more than an acre of land.  Not that that's a bad thing.  I would do it in a heartbeat if I didn't have to work.

Then comes the idea that maybe I could plant enough to sell some vegetables and plants to make a little money to keep afloat.  Then the daydreams just keep rolling through my head and the only thing holding me back is that first step.  I do need more land, but I can probably work that out with some neighbors to get started.

When I did my first part of my dream garden post, I neglected to mention the importance of sorghum.  As Eugene on The Walking Dead says, "Now that is a criminally underrated crop that could change the game of our food situation from scary to honky-donky."  Haha.  My kind of dry humor.  If I had chickens and rabbits, I would grow some sorghum for them.  Apparently it's a very sustainable, drought tolerant crop that is very high in micro nutrients.

Speaking of micro nutrients, I recently was inspired to start cultivating mushrooms from listening to a podcast series on Permaculture Voices.  It is a subject that is very intriguing to me since mushrooms are not even in the plant classification of organisms.  Another thing was now fungial mycelium can be used to remediate contaminated soils to nearly 100% restoration.

Anyway, 227 raised beds!  That's a lot of space, but I can envision it though.  I would probably have to have a well drilled solely for the garden if I went that large.  Back a few weeks ago, when I had my great gardening day, getting ready for fall, I was beat by the end of the day, but I loved every minute of it.  I need to draw up some conceptual plans of this, and see what kind of property I can find to contain all of this.  Who knows?  Maybe I can even make it work with my neighbors, if I share the bounty.

Backyard Composting

Composting is probably my favorite chores in the garden after harvesting  (of course).  My only problem is that I don't get enough natural compostable material from my property because I don't have any large trees.

A lot people I speak with complain about how they have to rake leaves and put them in bags and all that nonsense.  I would gladly take these people's leaves and compost them.  My goal is to get on a larger piece of land and own a truck so that I can make this happen, but for the time being in have to make other arrangements.

In the past, when I owned a minivan I would sneak around on the nights before trash pickup and fill the back of the van (and sometimes the front as well) with paper bags full of leaves.  I always felt like a criminal or something while I was sneaking around like that, but then after listening to one of Mike Podlesney's podcast interviews with Nikki Jabbour, they both confessed to doing the same thing, so now I don't feel so weird about it.

Another means I started this year was offering to clean up the neighbors leaves.  That worked out even better because nobody had to buy any bags.  I bagged them with the lawn mower and made a bunch of runs back and forth across the street to my compost area.  The leaf pile got pretty tall, I covered it will some finished compost and I winter touch it until spring.  Actually, I will need to  add some more leaves next weekend, because it looks like a big pile right now, but it is very fluffy still and it will shrink down a lot.

When I mention compost to non-gardeners, I get some strange looks because people don't know the benefits.  My wife is always worried that it is going to stink or attract bugs, but I have not had any problems with a compost pile except for a sore back after turning it.  It's so worth it though, when I get to smell that fresh dark earthy scent of fertility and I love to stick my hands in it when it's nice and soft and wet.  The plants love it almost as much as I do.

Watering

I did nothing but watering today, but that simple act was nothing less than a great experience in gardening awe and appreciation for all that the garden was, is and will be.

In the office today, I watered the 5 plants that envelop the corner of my L-shaped cubicle workstation.  They were quite dry.  The science of how plants produce oxygen is not totally clear to me, but as soon as I sit back down after putting away the watering can, I could immediately smell a freshness in the air.  It may have simply been the smell of the soil, but like to think that it was the plants thanking me and releasing a burst of freshly produced oxygen.  If there are any biologists in my audience, please let me know in the comment section if I'm getting a little crazy.  Ha!

I got home as the sun was setting and realized that I hadn't watered my fall vegetables in a while.  It rained over the weekend, so it wasn't too bad.  As I watered, I washed off a leaf of spinach, mesculin and romaine.  It was like a spiritual experience as the sky was darkening and I was casting water upon the earth and tasting the produce of my love and care.  The smell of the wet, healthy soil on top of the crisp fall air in the moonlight was on the verge of overwhelming to me.   Those few leaves of green vitamin-rich vegetable landed heavily in my empty stomach and I could feel them in there like the lambas loaves in The Lord of the Rings.

 "One small bite can fill the stomach of a grown man."  - Legolas

Slowing Down for Fall

It was an outstanding summer, but the low light seasonal blues are coming early this year.  As they say, "The higher the high, the lower the low".  Everything is slowing down in the garden, gar chard are just kind of sitting there. They're not really growing very much.  I should have planted them earlier.

I should look at the bright side though.  I was given a whole bunch of houseplants that a friend of the family was getting rid of.  Some of them will stay home and some will go to the office. They will keep me somewhat occupied for the winter.

Also, some big news on the home front: I got preliminary approval from my local department of Parks and Recreation to start a community garden!  Woot Woot!  I very excited about this opportunity, and I want to do it right, so it's a little intimidating, but I just need to keep pushing forward on it.

Instead of blogging here, I should be getting my materials priced out and listed.  So, I'm going to cut this short and get going on that.  Maybe my next post I can upload some pictures of my designs for the raised beds.  I guess I'm not really slowing down for fall after all.

Happy Fall y'all, and compost your own leaves don't put them on the curb!