It always amazes me how otherwise sensible people can hyper-focus on yield as the only measure of success in farming. As if yield means anything if it's not cost-effective or sustainable.

I've had the same dilemna.

The problem with cellulose, i.e. old shredded newspaper treated with nasty fire retardant chemicals, is that it settles. It's great for attics as blow-in insulation, but in walls it will lose it's loft and thus most of its insulating power.

You can buy wool insulation in batts just like fiberglass but it's very pricey. I once used old packing material, mainly bubble wrap. It was a very temporary solution but it definitely did the job. I suppose if being to code is not a concern you could use that and old styrofoam. You need to mak sure the walls are sealed, though, as any air flow (it seems to me) will affect it even more than with fiberglass.

Not sure my experience is relevant, but what the heck.

We have a 2 story conventional house that's about 1800 sq ft. It's fairly recent construction and quite well insulated for the most part, but definitely has many obvious gaps which I make no attempt to fix because like you I want air. We heat exclusively with wood that I cut on our property. Most people around here go through 4-5 cords but we've never burned more than 2 a season, usually only 1.

First thing we did when we moved in was to replace the old woodstove with a Lopi. It was expensive but has paid for itself several times over now. A really good woodstove (cast iron instead of plate) will use a lot less wood and retain heat longer. The stove is situated behind a central stairwell and is backed with soap stone. The floor is slate on concrete. This gives us a lot of thermal mass to work with, such that things stay warm all night and we don't often keep a fire burning the whole night through, although we can in that stove quite easily.
Where the stove is doesn't necessarily make it easy for heat to get up the stairs but it's adequate -- honestly I prefer it this way since I like the bedroom colder at night.

The cool thing, and the reason I thought this might be of interest to you, is that we do have central heat and the intake for that is right above the wood stove. So when it's really cold we'll put the furnace on with just the fan. It really moves the heat around very well. We never actually turn the furnace itself on, just the fan.

Your climate is quite a bit colder, or at least for longer stretches. But we've had 15-20F for a week or two at a time and heating the house this way has always been great. Very low maintenance and since we have to deal with excess wood anyway, we're stacking functions.

Hard to imagine that at 32F it would freeze inside the high tunnels. Are you measuring temperature inside and outside? Do you know how low it got at the plants? Frost on the walls doesn't mean your plants are in danger.

At those temps I just cover with light-medium row covers. Where I am that gets me down to about 26-28F depending on the wind. And yes, this is for trellised tomatoes. I just kind of wrap it vertically on the sides. If I had a high tunnel I would not do even that.

I completely agree with Michael.

Even using the most biointensive methods it takes a fair amount of space to grow enough food for even one person. Things like winter squash are critical to feed you through the winter but take up a lot of space. And it's not just about total area, but how you use it -- successions being absolutely critical.

That's not to say it wouldn't be fun and interesting to try! If it were me I'd look at the most efficient crops space-wise, and explore keeping things as vertical as possible. In fact, I wonder if you could grow something like a Delicata or Butternut squash on a trellis, with greens under neath. Some people do this for cucumbers, so I don't see why not.

There are also some community gardens which pool everyone's effort into one big garden -- there are one or two in Seattle but I forget the name. This would be much more efficient as long as the area was appropriate for the size of the community.

Simone, I can never grow carrots without mulching them. My usual practice is to cover the whole row with a row cover. They simply will not germinate unless they are kept moist. Traditionally people would put down a board or even cardboard (which I've tried too). I'm guessing that your happy accident was just that the seeds where kept sufficiently moist -- this strikes me as wholly consistent with the general principle here. I also do that kind of intercropping, like radishes between tomatoes, and the weeds just became part of that thinking.

Aaron, if there is a number one rule in farming, particularly small scale organic farming, it is that the market has to come first. Assuming that you can develop that market after or while you are growing is a recipe for disaster. Also, the wholesale market is a real bear and only works if you are operating at scale. This is a lesson learned hard and repeatedly by organic farmers everywhere, and it really boils down to math: 1. You can never compete with Sysco -- ie. you will never be able to compete on price, only quality and if not enough people in your market care about the latter, yer hosed; 2. Your margin selling wholesale might be half of what it is retail while at the same time your savings in logistics are not what you'd think. E.g. salad greens I can sell out all day long at $12-14 / lb but get less than half that while still being expected to deliver for free. On top of that those damned chefs are amazingly fussy, so they demand only the best, cut a certain way, etc. It's not that I can't sell certain restaurants spinach at $10/lb compared with the $1-2 /lb they pay from Sysco, but what ends up happening is they buy a little from me and a lot from Sysco and then say it all is from my farm. They really do that and it is extremely damaging to my reputation.

I am wording this as a stern warning, but of course every market and situation is different. Only you can determine if that makes sense. Still, I have learned those hard lessons and it's not a fun experience. I think with the extra challenges and costs you will encounter with very wet land (purely aside from the regulatory aspect) you will find your costs are higher. Really, unless you are tractor farming selling at anything less than top dollar will mean you can't make a living.

On grants and loans from the USDA and other sources: Investigate this first if you can. There is so much help out there it's crazy. Everything from riparian restoration and conservation to money to pay for a whole, very fancy greenhouse. You have to jump through hoops, but it's basically free money.

Finally, as I said my main field floods seasonally. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be called a wetland but I've learned that if you have to ask the answer is usually not in your favor, so I ignore the problem and it's been fine for years. Looking at the property you mentioned I have to assume that's a whole different can of worms. I'm still skeptical of Travis' dire warnings though. I know many farmers who are in watersheds or on rivers and there are no problems...  hopefully it's not a case of all of us ignoring the reality and hoping for the best  Like I've said I've never asked and don't intend to.

So my observation is that any amount I've used has been ok, but then I've never have all that much relative to the scale I'm using it at.

Apparently though, it takes a lot of ash to raise pH. This extension bulletin suggests 1 point increase at 10-11 tons per acre: https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/2279e/  (see figure 3)

That's a lot more than I would have thought. I'd guess I'm using the equivalent of 1/2 a ton per acre at most. Theoretically that should only affect pH sensitive crops like spinach. But on the other hand, if your soil pH is already acidic you may want to use quite a bit.

Actually Anne, most of my point was that my practices weren't just about pest management and that this sort of thing should be thought of holistically. Yes, they are talking to commercial farmers. That may be why they tone down their recommendations. When I said up there that "I know what it's going to say" I knew it would be about pests but hoped it would go farther. I think home gardeners need to take this as a general principle and run with it. For a commercial farmer like me to adopt these practices, however, is pretty much unheard of.

Keeping weeds solved pretty much all of my pest problems and now that that balance has been restored I don't need to do much and never spray anything. But this is also an extension of my long-standing practice of using the weeds to help me solve other problems, such as as wind protection when it's cold and to keep soil moist and cool when it's hot. Another example: my english peas this year went about a month longer than usual because they were surrounded by weeds and they never got the powdery mildew that inevitably has happened once the weather starts getting hot and dry. In the past I've mulched with straw, but that has problems and does nothing for beneficials. On the pest side, this really is about providing ecosystems conducive to the natural balance, which is about 90% things that don't eat your crops and 10% things that are a real problem.

Two other general principles I've learned over the years about pests and restoring balance: 1. If you spray anything, even just soap, you kill everything. All that does is provide opportunistic pests a window to do their damage without much predation; 2. Where there are pests there are things that eat pests. I've learned to be patient because I know when I do see pest problems the predator insects are not far behind.

I do. It's obviously going to depend on your baseline pH -- you don't want to add to much if you are tending to alkaline already. Since my soil is neutral to slightly acidic I don't seem to have a problem. For many potassium-loving crops I'll work wood ash into the row at planting time. It's made a huge difference for my peppers, for example.

Ray, yes absolutely, but it's more complicated. For one, corn is not going to yield well enough to be profitable for most small-scale farmers anyway. I don't know a single diversified farmer who makes money on corn. We only grow it because it rounds out the offerings, is tasty and is expected. I stopped because I was losing too much money and couldn't justify the water in a drought.

Typically farmers will nuke everything in sight and cultivate between rows and never question this. Now that I've read the article yeah, it doesn't go nearly as far as I've gone in my thinking. As I said I don't weed beyond the immediate "competition zone" or sometimes at all for many plants. So in the case of corn that is about a 2"-3" swath on either side. The conventional thinking of "we must maximize yield always" is really quite silly. There are many efficiencies to be gained by sacrificing a tiny amount of yield (sometimes none at all) to save in other ways.

I have saved myself so much time and money by having lots of weeds in the fields. I wish I had pictures, but now it's winter. This has literally become my approach and I urge everyone to re-examine their thinking about "weeds". To give another example: this past spring I grew lettuce such that from a distance you could not see the lettuce for the weeds. I never had to irrigate and yet my yield was exactly the same. The lettuce tasted better to boot because the soil was kept cool.

When you say commercial farming, do you mean that you intend to make a living from it?

What you are suggesting actually sounds perfectly reasonable except that success in commercial organic farming is dictated by market -- both proximity too and the kinds of things you can sell. Living in Aberdeen, SD you will already run into problems there because you are many many miles from any major market, let alone one willing to pay a premium for organic anything. If you pick land where you can only grow certain crops, and may have additional challenges on top of that then it really doesn't matter how cheap the land is, you will never earn a living.

Now if that's not your major concern, ie you are just doing this as a hobby and for supplemental income, then I say go for it. Bottom land is awesome, and flooding is a great way to renew soil. A good part of my main field floods almost every year and it is by far the best soil. YMMV, but for me far from an obstacle it is quite useful. Mind you I can't use that part of the field until much later in the season, but that's not hard to work around.

Organic standards dictate three years after application of poisons. Those standards are incredibly conservative.

Permathrin, a common poision, supposedly has a half life of 40 days, with the max being 113 days (yes, I googled this  There are relatively few persistent pesticides in common use and when I looked up the ones for termite treatment, none of those popped up. For example, Fipronil has a half life of 4-12 hours and according to the excellent links RedHawk provided is not readily taken up by plants.

But here is my own take on it: Your exposure to those poisons simply by having your house sprayed is probably orders of magnitude larger than your exposure, four years after the fact and via plant uptake. Given the half life of most of these poisons, it has to be basically zero.

Edit: as I looked further, Imidacloprid apparently can persist for years, but is also readily broken down by water and sunlight.

It's not crazy at all. I haven't read the article yet, but I know what it's going to say.

Most organic farms are very very heavy on cultivation and the mentality that "all weeds are bad". This is incredibly stupid. Basically they are saying that bare ground is better, which anybody can tell you makes no sense.

The longer I farm, the less I weed. I do absolute minimum cultivation in the immediate vicinity of growing plants until they are able to out compete the "weeds". If there is no competition, I do not weed. For example, with carrots I let weeds sprout along with the carrots and then weed in the immediate vicinity only enough to let the carrots outgrow the weeds. It's a tricky balance because I want the weeds to help retain soil moisture and even shade the young carrots, but not directly compete so much. After a certain point the carrots are bigger than everything else and I need only weed the odd thing that gets out of control.

For other crops, which are sometimes very sensitive to weed pressure and competition (e.g. corn) I'll cultivate with a hoe but only within 1-2 inches of the plants I'm growing. I never weed at the sides of my field or in between rows. I use those weeds to provide shade where appropriate. The difference is very dramatic -- it keeps the soil cooler and reduces water loss very significantly. But the real kicker is this: pests. I don't have significant losses to pests any more. For example, flea beetles LOVE hot and dry, so with weeds around keeping the soil moister and cooler they go elsewhere. And with flowers and all kinds of native plants I have beneficial insects and pollinators like you would not believe. The result is partly that people think I'm not a very good farmer. They look at my fields and think I'm doing it wrong, when in fact I have reduced my labor very significantly and use NO pesticides of any kind, organic-approved or not. None.

I don't know how we got into this idea that we had to have a barren waste land to grow our food in. It makes no sense.

Let me a put a pragmatic spin on it. I'm a farmer.

I am always looking for ways to speed up and improve the starts in my greenhouse. If I can increase vigor or reduce the time to grow starts to the point of planting out, I can probably get to market faster. For me, a few days improvement can mean I'm coming to market with something that the other farms don't yet have, so of course I sell way more. In my case this would not result in a fuel savings since my GH is passive solar, but the difference between being first to market and second can be hundreds or even thousands of dollars. If the starts I'm putting in the ground are stronger and recover from transplanting faster, or are more vigorous and thus grow more, I am going to get more revenue from that planting. There are many ways I can optimize this -- more compost, more foliar feeding, row covers, even plastic "mulch" if I cared to go that route. All of these cost money, sometimes a lot, but they can increase yields by 25% or push the seasons by weeks. If I can get a 5% improvement for a fraction of the cost and by doing nothing but flipping a switch, it would be worth it.

David, you mention seeds. Seed cost is low but greenhouse space is always at a premium. If I can improve germination rates even 10%, I can save quite a bit of space and thus grow more or have a smaller greenhouse. If you are seeding 10,000 onions 10% is 1000 onions, or a final retail value of US$500 or more. The seed cost (I buy in bulk) there is only a few dollars at most.

The studies produced pretty clear results that indicate there is a measurable, verifiable and significantly positive effect in some cases. There is no mention of the energy requirements that I saw. You can bet that in any investigation of practical applications for commercial farmers, a cost-benefit analyses will be done. As I indicated before, most of us don't do woo woo, we do results. We have to.

I was looking for the book where I first read about deep litter. It was published in the 1940s and was excellent, but had a very generic name. I gave the actual book away some time ago.

But I found this, which does mention an article from the late 40s... not the same but close:

http://www.plamondon.com/wp/deep-litter-chicken-coops/

Including this: "It’s labor-saving. If you’re spending a significant amount of time messing with the litter, you’re doing it wrong."

To me that's pretty much the key of any permaculture practice. It's up to you to decide what constitutes a "significant amount of time" but for me that was limited to putting in new material. I've never turned it. Anaerobic decay produces a very different smell and it doesn't sound like that's what is happening here. Worth considering of course, but in theory that shouldn't happen in deep litter, even without turning.

Deer are a major problem around here and the only one-stop permanent solution is deer fencing or dogs. Obviously the right kind of dogs. I once reasoned that the fencing would be cheaper than the dogs, but I've found that over time that's likely not true.

Deer fencing has to be high -- 7', and secured on the bottom. It's expensive and you need lots of T-posts to put it up. It's going to be an effort and it will cost, but once it's up and done right it will exclude them 100%

A single 330' roll of heavy weight deer fence is $300. 10' T-posts are $7-8 each if you buy in bulk. This might be worth it to you, and if you fence a larger area you can fence a garden area as well. Around here people simply don't have gardens without it. I can give you lots of time and money saving advice about how to put up deer fencing but I would consider your costs before going that route.

Deer are browsers and they love young tender tree branches. My mature trees I've got so for the most part everything is above deer head height. They will still nibble occasionally but they won't stand up to reach higher branches when just browsing unless they are desperate. For the younger trees I have to use fence. They have done so much damage that it set that orchard back years and some trees will never be the same.

I would probably try getting poly deer fencing and making individual "cages" for each tree. Just cut a section long enough to create a circle big enough to enclose the tree. Because they are browsing it doesn't have to be that secure. They won't push under and can't jump over if the diameter is less than a body length or so. A circle of fence maybe 8' in diameter should serve you several years as the trees mature, depending of course on the tree. In this situation they will just see the fenced tree as an obstacle and ignore it.

To secure the circle of fence I'd think two 10' T-posts on opposite sides will be enough if you get the thicker fencing, which is relatively rigid and stands up on it's own. Of course poly fencing isn't the only option, especially if your trees are still very short. But this way you won't have to change anything for along time.

The poly deer fencing I recommend is Tenax C-flex or C-flex P but in this case you can go with the lighter weight stuff (and maybe only 6' ) because you aren't worried about a deer being able to break it. Once in a while if a deer is panicked it will try to get over my fencing but because I have the C-Flex P they usually just bounce off. You can get very cheap deer fencing just about anywhere and that may be appropriate in your case, but for me I find that the cheap stuff doesn't last. With Tenax you can get 15 years out of it and thus re-purpose it after the trees are grown.

I compost everything from dead chickens to ground squirrels to rotten eggs.

If you bury them in a compost pile even say a few inches the critters won't generally be able to get into them. I once had a fox steel rotten eggs from a pile, but I figure hey, if it's that motivated...

Employees.

Beyond the obvious ones you often put more time into developing and perfecting the automation than you save. In part because you still need to be in touch with what is happening -- even an automated process has to be checked.

Consider feeding chickens, for example. The bulk of your time is in just getting there, and since you have to pick up eggs anyway, you aren't saving so much time. Of course an automatic waterer is great. My own approach is to figure out where I'm losing huge amounts of time and try to optimize that. A really big one for me was location of tools -- orienting that around tasks and around where those tasks take place saves me over an hour a week. How I load the truck for market, how I weed, how I plant and harvest... all those were really big optimizations compared with 5 minutes here and there each day. I know it adds up but even when I did automate some of those things I found myself having to check my automation enough that, well, why bother.

Lots of thoughts, maybe not so organized

1. Second Mike Jay's suggestion of poly pipe (technically it's called poly tubing) . It is so much easier and cheaper than PVC. I use thousands of feet and rarely have a problem.
2. Sounds like a nightmare
3. See above
4. I leave my main line pressurized a lot. In several years it has never let go or blown out, even at the bottom of the hill where it is 90-100PSI. I use Direc-Loc fittings, and this is 1" line. They are totally bomber. Now there is a caveat here: some cheaper poly pipe of the smaller diameter is much thinner walled and I did for a while have some blow outs when the line was pressurized in high heat. So that may be a problem where you are. If you bury it though, I don't think you'll have an issue. Also, I get hard freezes here and one of the great virtues of poly tubing is that it is flexible enough to handle a freeze. Not that I tempt fate.

Timing: I use 1 1/2" solenoid valves that are 24v. They are about $50-60 but allow you to power timed valves in the field using just a car battery and a small solar panel (24w, 80Ah battery in my case). A real benefit is that you can put solenoid valves on your zones. For those I use 1" valves and they are very reasonable especially if you buy them in bulk. The 3/4" valves you see in the big box stores are worthless. Check out Irrigation Direct online. The valves I use the most of are something like this: https://www.irrigationdirect.com/product/electric-solenoid-valve-1-fpt-female-pipe-thread-24vac-dfv100- Note the quantity discounts.

I also did what you are thinking and put a timed valve on the main shutoff so that in the event of a blow out I wasn't losing water all day. It's not a great solution, one, and two even the big valves really restrict flow. My new solution is an Arduino that uses a pressure sensor and will kill power, send an alarm, or whatever is appropriate if there is an out-of-range pressure detected. I haven't implemented it yet, but the idea is quite sound. See https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12909. You can buy such things commercially for $100-150, I think.

As for flow rate, it's super easy to calculate for drip tape since they are very consistent at a given pressure. I saved myself quite a bit of money by figuring out that the way I water only requires me to have a 1" main line -- and of course if you are using timers for each zone you can space it out. What was important was to optimize the set up so that the main never restricted flow and all the valves were on the sub-lines, etc. On the one main there are 42-45 x 150-175ft rows. Each sub line has a gating PVC ball valve so the main can be at full pressure to make it up the hill to the last row. For me this arrangement has been absolutely superb. I suppose if could have found 1 1/4 or 1 1/2" poly locally I would have used it but it is REALLY nice to have standardized fittings.

Oh, and pressure tanks. Don't bother. If you are irrigating that much it won't make any difference. Mine did go through a PT until recently, but after about 30 seconds the well pump just runs, which means all you are doing is restricting flow. On the big storage tank, it's worth doing your calculations for GPM and total gallons so you can size it appropriately. In my situation even a 5000 gallon tank isn't enough, but I have a 100 GPM well so I don't need it.

Initially I mis-read the 150' drop from the tank as a 150' gain so I started talking about head loss. I have about a 75' drop and pick up a lot of pressure that way -- it's the same number as loss, so 150' x .433 means you will gain 65 psi, but minus the friction of the pipe... maybe a 55 PSI gain or so net. It's not a big deal if you either use a pressure regulator or gate it with a ball valve.

The first one in a greenhouse was a bit over 2' deep. Very fresh manure. It certainly did get hot the first few days, but I was expecting it would last longer. I don't recall exactly, but it was my sense that after less than a month it was only a few degrees over ambient air temps. This was in the dead of winter in the high desert, so temps got as low as 10F. I also used thermal mass to keep the greenhouse stable, so it's difficult to say exactly the effect of the raised bed. No cold frame, but I did use a row cover. In the winter it was greens and asian veggies then come spring I put in tomatoes, which really did brilliantly.

I think it's a really good idea and will some day experiment more because I know others who have used this method with great success. But at the end of the day, it is kind of a one-shot deal unless you want to dig out the raised bed every year. Oh, I can think of great ways to make that easy -- maybe open a hatch and spill the stuff in an area close by. Strikes me as work.

Thanks for starting the new thread.

Day length calculators are quite common, with some geared toward the solar industry and thus taking into account terrain. If indeed I am at least a little wrong and vegetative growth dependent on photoperiod, does terrain and thus shading matter? Is it a matter of light intensity and if so, what is the range?


Simple tables: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/Dur_OneYear.php

Calculates based on terrain as well: http://www.solartopo.com/daylength.htm

Very detailed: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/

Bob, part of the reason I posted that is because I'm very afraid that is the case. The emboldening has already begun in other areas...

If it were me I'd be seriously thinking of cutting a deal and moving on. Everything I said above was predicated on a different election outcome. That said, out of curiousity I did some quick research on how to approach the problem and if you haven't already, it's very informative to google this. Makes me think that while you may not be able to stop it, you have much more power than you realize. Eminent domain is not always imminent and pipelines have been stopped by landowners holding out for a better deal -- it just got too expensive. Or at least it stands to reason that the first offer is not going to be the best one.

This one for example: http://www.cantonrep.com/article/20141018/News/141019242

Also, aside from being compensated fairly (and I maintain that $40k isn't likely fair) I personally would consider it my duty to make that pipeline as expensive as possible


Edit: This: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Pipeline-companies-should-pay-for-full-value-of-5493007.php

And this: https://www.ewu.edu/Documents/CBPA/NWTTAP/ROW/Rights%20of%20Way%20-%20Landowner's%20Guide.pdf


Edit 2: http://thelandlawyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/FAQs-about-Atlantic-Coast-Pipeline.pdf

"Q: Can Dominion take my property?
A: Yes, if the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issues Dominion a Certificate of Public Necessity and all appeals
challenging the Certificate are exhausted. Even then, Dominion must follow the legal requirements to obtain title to
property, which first requires Dominion to attempt to obtain the property through a voluntary agreement. Dominion also
cannot take more land than is necessary for the pipeline. Dominion will not obtain title to the land until either an agreement
is reached, compensation is paid, and an easement is recorded, or a Court order confirms title.
Q: How much does Dominion have to pay for the easement?
A: Dominion must pay just compensation, which equals the fair market value of the property interests that are being
acquired plus damages to the property that remains."

In one case, for another pipeline the compensation after a court battle went from an initial offer of $80k to $1.6 MILLION (http://agrilife.org/texasaglaw/2014/08/11/compensation-considerations-when-pipeline-companies-cross-your-land/)


Edit 3, and I promise to shut up now:

A user on this forum received more than twice the original offer by negotiating:

https://permies.com/t/19313/pipeline-property-plant-trees-bushes

I gave my example as permaculture thinking where I am not trying to impose a pond on the land but use the natural development on a wetland to create a usable water feature in my usual pattern of mowing and mulching.

To me this is the essence of it. If you have to work so hard to re-shape things to get that pond, that in and of itself is "not" permaculture. OK OK! I'm not telling someone what is permaculture and what is not, and the "it depends" rule is always going to apply. But the principle of working with nature is so central and so important it at least begs the question.

As I've said elsewhere I measure my success in adhering to permaculture principles by physical effort and money spent. I don't mean to say this is about permaculture as a culture or industry or a particular website or book or person. Rather the essence of what permaculture thinking tries to do for us. If you are trying to jam a square peg into a round hole by trying to create a pond where nature doesn't want one, you are bumping up against the question of does this fit with the overall goals and principles of permaculture.

You alone can judge that for your particular situation but I think as we learn and help guide each other it's rather important to have these types of discussions and to help each other keep the fundamental reasons behind this thinking firmly in mind.

I'll second the natural selection suggestion. Actually I'll second everything Wes said, especially about easy meals.

We have large numbers of Red Tail hawks -- I see them every day. But I've never lost a chicken to one that I know of and I think it mainly has to do with the abundance of cover on the hillsides where the chickens typically are kept. Also, over time our flock has been winnowed down by us and by predators such that the remaining birds are the "smart" ones. The difference between the first generation of hatchery chicks vs. the ones we have now, just in terms of predator awareness, is very significant.

When the birds were in a more open area I made simple teepee-like shelters from branches. It was more a means of getting them onto the hillside where it's more sunny and warm (more eggs) -- like most breeds the Delawares hate open country. But providing cover in general is going to make a big difference.

Also... I think we all have different expectations about what losses are acceptable. In my area it's inevitable and it takes time to get the flock and one's practices adjusted so that's minimized.

Joy Oasis wrote:I wonder, if anyone tried hot beds, made with decomposing manure underneath the soil? There is a book published in UK about it by Jack First. He says, that it was used extensively in France before WW1 to grow lettuce and other crops commercially. I think those beds could be put in the ventilated green house for added warmth.

Yes, I have done this in a greenhouse and still do this more often than not when making raised beds outside. Typically raw horse manure and straw, covered by 6" or so of finished compost/soil. The sides of the raised beds I construct to provide some air. I never read a book about it, just did it after reasoning it made sense but my results, while worthwhile enough for me to keep doing it, don't provide the kind of warming action I hoped for. I will have to look for that book to see if I'm doing it wrong or if that's just the way it is.

I suppose the photoperiod thing should be a separate thread. So sorry for the thread drift, but it seems an important question to me.

Lynn Byczynski is certainly well respected in this field, but the article strikes me as a gross generalization. Perhaps there is some confusion about photoperiodism and it's impact on vegetative growth vs. flowering cycles. Clearly, the statement "Most plants do not grow when day length is less than 10 hours. " is neither precise or accurate. She discusses flowering and growth cycles as if they were both dictated by photoperiod when at the least that is very species specific.

I know this statement is not true because I grow in a greenhouse all winter long without supplemental light, as do many others. Even right now our day length is about 9:55 but because we are having a very warm November there is a ton of growth outside -- everything from grasses to brassicas to ornamentals. Obviously, growth increases as day length increases and vice-versa, but that is a question of how much light the plant receives and is entirely different from saying growth is dictated by photoperiod. If it were, then there would be a range where that growth would slow or stop and yet we cannot say that exactly.

So my take is this:
1. Vegetative growth is dictated by environmental factors such as temperature and by other periods in the life cycle of the plant. For example, many plants will switch from vegetative growth to flowering when certain conditions are met, and not have vegetative growth after that.
2. Flowering in all but day neutral plants is dictated by photoperiod.
3. Vegetative growth is not universally governed by photoperiod directly, although of course the amount of growth and degree to which it is possible is dependent on the amount of light the plant receives.
4. Dormancy is induced by temperature, but in some plants coming out of dormancy is dictated by photoperiod, which makes a lot of sense because you don't want a switch in cycle unless there is enough light.
5. Since temperature, especially in northern climates is most frequently dropping with shortening of photoperiod, it may seem that photoperiod dictates growth, when in fact it's temperature and/or the natural lifecycle and internal clocks of the plants.

In researching this to make sure I wasn't blowing smoke, I've seen many references in online articles to photoperiod controlling growth cycles but in the scientific literature distinctions are made, specifically that photoperiod will induce flowering which then stops vegetative growth. That sort of thing.

I have this book "How Plants Work" by Linda Chalker-Scott, she says "...true dormancy is controlled by the internal clock, rather than by some environmental factor like sunlight or water." One thing she notes in this book is that plants with small seeds (and thus less energy reserve) tend to have photodormancy, but that means they wake up from dormancy with a certain amount of light, not the other way around.

She also has this to say (talking about seeds though):
"For seasonally dependent photodormant plants, the presence or absence of useful sunlight is not the only trigger controlling germination. They also need a clue to what time of year it is. As gardeners know, rainfall and temperature can vary wildly throughout the year and even from day to day. Plants need a more reliable system of figuring out when it’s time to start growing."

I think it's going to depend very much on your soil. Corn is such a heavy feeder that two crops in a row might be too much, and even if you have a cover crop in between you still have to manage that and it won't replace all the fertility you lost. To me you would be much better off rotating as others here suggest. I agree that bush beans make a nice following crop.

Personally I stopped growing corn because of the water and fertility requirements. I love eating it, just not dealing with it. Plus I might gross $1 / row foot, a fraction of any other crop.

Unfortunately the outcome of the election does kind of change things or at least add a greater element of risk.

The 100 day action plan of our president elect includes:

"... lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward"

Wow Alia! That is amazing!  Your greenhouse is very impressive and everything looks really good. Have you been able to eat any of the veggies yet?

Thanks so much for posting the photos. It is so good to see!

I'm sorry if my post was frustrating for you. It's not my intention to criticize so much as steer the conversation toward looking at the problem in different terms. I'm not going to mince words because I think I have something very important I can help you learn, if you care to listen. If you do, it will make you a better gardener and will save you work and frustration.

It would appear you seek easy instant answers that will provide you a complete solution with minimal fuss. Nothing wrong with that -- many people seek to solve whole problems all in one go by adopting frameworks or guidelines or structures from which they cannot then see the trees for the forest -- the rampant misinterpretation of permaculture is the perfect example. But then is one understanding strategy and underlying principles, or just tactics? The obsession with ponds thread discusses this a little.

You look around you and see things that make no sense to you so you assume they must be wrong. Just like my neighbors here look at my practices and assume I'm an idiot -- they literally tell me this to my face. And yet, who is the one producing food? Who is the one with yields that blow the doors off non-organic yields? Everything I do on my farm is done for a reason. Sometimes those reasons are better than others and sometimes they are even accidents or failures, but if you look at them without knowing any of that and with no understanding of the context, you can of course interpret it any way you want. Usually existing prejudices or ideas about how things "should" be done are going to inform that interpretation, aren't they? Just look at that idiot, he can't even water his tomatoes properly! What an amateur!  Actual quote, btw. Since they didn't understand why I was doing it, they assumed it was wrong.

At the core of my recommendation is this: ask why the local gardeners and growers are doing these things rather than just assuming that you have the answer already. That pumpkin grower... how many more pumpkins has he grown than you? Did the person who threw out yellow cucumbers harvest any good ones? Was that more than you have grown and harvested? Why were they yellow? Did you ever talk to this person?

I could provide you any number of explanations for things you see. The corn? Kernels are a function of pollination. 2" spacing? Spacing is a function of fertility and what you want out of your plants. Baby corn are just immature corn, not a different variety. You didn't know that, did you? It's entirely possible that they wanted baby corn, thus the tight spacing, but as in many places in Asia are having serious pollinator problems.
Weed suppression in pumpkins? Doing what you suggest makes no sense and you need only think about how squash grows to figure that one out. Suppressing weeds among persimmons? Absolutely, and using carbon mulch is an ancient practice in Korea, China, and Japan. Black plastic is extremely common and is used as much to warm the soil as cut weed competition. You may think the plastic itself is wrong but thats the material used, not the tactic.  Piles of rocks? In one place I have visited farmers believed that rock piles would trap evil spirits that might otherwise cause their crops to fail. It might even be some of that. Or it was just less work to put them there.

It's really easy to criticize when one has not been successful or when ignorance prevents understanding the reasoning behind a practice. It's easy to not see good examples. Of course some practices are bad for the environment or would not make sense in a good organic garden, but is that because the tactic itself is bad or because that particular application is bad? Black plastic, for example. It's the plastic, not the tactic of mulching or in hilling/coloring soil to trap heat.

Look for that underlying reasoning and you will have all the successful tactics you need for a bountiful garden. And I beg you: Read Farmers of Forty Centuries by Franklin King. Those are my recommendations.

Lot's of great advice, particularly about kids copying parents.

My customers tell me that buying fresh veggies from me changed the way their kids eat. I can't tell you how many times people have come to me and said their kids now -like- vegetables. It's pretty basic: fresh veggies, by which I mean fresh out of the ground and not store bought, actually taste good. I know I know... it's not so simple, but it seems to work for a lot of people.

When I was a kid we ate canned green beans and crap like that. Honestly, it should be obvious why no one would find that appealing.

August 19! Ouch!

Ours was Sept 21, right on schedule. Of course now we've had a week of 70s, also as per usual. In three weeks it will probably be 20F.

I know many here already know this but I wanted to add: for season extension floating row covers are really great. You can get the heavy weight (Agribon AG50 for example) and they will give you at least 8F of protection, or 20F if you double up. In my climate it works extremely well because our temps bounce all over the place. The caveat is that they are polypropylene but you can get many seasons out of them if you are careful. I use 1/2" metal conduit bent into hoops and rocks or sand bags to hold down the row cover.

All my pee goes in buckets which I put on the compost, or I just pee near plants. It's like 10-1-2 (or so) and it seems a travesty to throw that away. Yay pee!

The wood chips in that compost were primarily pine, with some oak. Mostly from my land, but some came in the horse poo we get (bedding). I use wood chips in the longer term compost piles because the horse manure is usually too high in N and I'm chipping for fuel reduction anyway. Normally they are all long gone by the time I use the compost.

With those temperatures I think your limiting factor is going to be sunlight, not temperature.

Assuming you are not trying to grow tomatoes in January I'd think a single layer would be quite sufficient. Here in the US the double layer of plastic (not the bubble stuff) is common and is inflated to insulate. My winter temps are about the same as you or a bit colder and I only have a single layer of plastic. There's maybe 1500 litres of water as thermal mass.

Actually come to think of it I do start some tomatoes in January.

Yes, I am sure. With the caveat that I am not a biologist and could well have some of this wrong:

Photosynthesis is dependent on light, obviously, and temperature (plus water, CO2 and Chlorophyll). Temperature influences efficiency of photosynthesis, so even if you had a long period of sun but very cold temps, the plant will go into dormancy (or just stop growing) to protect from moisture loss, etc. But it's also not a binary thing in many plants -- cold temps simply slow down the chemical processes involved, which is of course why things grow more slowly when it's cold, but the chemical reactions in photosynthesis will occur any time there is sunlight. This is not universally true -- fruit trees (and trees in general) go dormant after a sufficient number of chill hours and don't wake up until temps rise.

Perhaps you are thinking of photoperiodism. Some plant's growth cycles, flowering in particular, are influenced by the length of darkness. Yes, the night length despite the name -- it used to be thought that it was length of day and thus you have long-day, short-day and day-neutral plants, but in fact it's night. The classic example in some parts of the world is cannabis, which are short day (long night) and so growers will cover them up to force flowering.

I do know it's more complicated in that photoperiod influences photosynthesis in some cases, but I believe that's mostly in lifecycles of trees. So it could be that dormancy is induced or influenced by photoperiod in some plants, but I don't know enough to know which.

The upshot is, if you provide sufficiently high temperature such that photosynthesis can occur (and this is plant dependent), it doesn't matter how much sunlight the plant gets, it will grow. Obviously more sunlight = more photosynthesis, although there is a limit. This is easy enough to prove: Look up farms in your area that use a greenhouse for winter production.

Greenhouses are very common for year-round production, especially of greens but also of things like tomatoes -- totally depends on your climate or how much you want to heat the GH. The plants aren't dormant... they are growing. Depends on what you are growing and where you are. I know plenty of farms doing year-round greens with average lows in the teens in Jan-Feb, as an example. At those temps you need heat, but you can find sustainable methods.

Obviously the nice thing about the desert is lots of sun, so even with very cold nights you can take advantage of that by banking heat with thermal mass. Many threads on here about passive solar greenhouse techniques.

This sounds really odd, maybe dangerous.

What is immediately behind the stove? Is the brick just a facade? How old is the house and what do you think is in the walls?

I heat only with wood and behind the stove rarely goes above 120, and that's right behind it, maybe 12-14" from the stove.

The potting mixes we used in the experiment were a low-grade commercial mix slightly augmented with our best compost and our own mix which contained small wood chips that were partially decomposed -- actually a compost pile that didn't quite have the right ratio and hadn't fully broken down. In both cases woody material content was significant, perhaps up to 25%.

The commercial mix was pretty much a bust. It was so cheap we had though it might make a cost-effective base, but the conclusion was the woody bits were tying up nutrients to the point where it would never work without adding lots of fertilizer components, thus negating the cost savings.

My experience, as you might expect, mirrors conventional wisdom:  well-rotted chips are ok but they need to be at the point of being mostly crumbly. The woody stuff in the commercial mix was the least well rotted, as in barely at all.

This doesn't mean you can't compensate by adding a fertilizer to the mix or (in our case) by increasing foliar feeding and or soil soaks with compost tea or fish emulsion.

What I meant about screening was that after that experiment I made a point of screening excess woody material for most starts. That kept my costs and effort to supplement the fertility to a minimum.

Part of the lesson for me was that with a good compost high in organic matter the need to add other materials to improve drainage or consistency isn't nearly what you'd think. Now I pretty much just use compost and if I feel it's too dense or doesn't retain moisture well I'll add some old used potting soil that contains vermiculite -- no more than 5-10%. Or I'll add some old woodchips that are so well rotted you wouldn't recognize them. I just go by consistency.

Whatever you do it really pays to test systematically.

Will you post pictures when you get to the point of trying this out? I'd really love to see how it all works out.

I had to look up BTE garden.

My advice is simply this: Go out and find out how the locals garden and what they use to build soil. This will have been adapted to local conditions for hundreds of years. Don't get hung up on methods, especially what someone says on the internet (including me!).  What I don't really understand is digging a 3' deep hole but not wanting to put the minimal effort into shepherding your garden around the weeds.

In other words, you seem to be making things considerably harder than they need to be. You can sheet mulch/compost your way to good soil and simply adjust what you plant to fit your soil condition. Start with shallow-rooted crops that don't require much fertility like greens and radishes and whatever, then work your way up to tomatoes.

But honestly, the answers you seek are likely right in front of you. Also: fish & seafood. If you can get some waste products from that it is a fantastic addition and with the mix you describe you will need more green, ie nitrogen, proteins, etc.