Angelika Maier

There are things like hypertufa and all sorts of amendments to concrete to make it lighter. I haven't done it so far but it would be a nice little project. I guess you could even use some sort of fabric and coat it with concrete. Other than that you can build out of timber but it won't last terribly long.

We used to put sand on the ice.

It took me a while to get back to the thread! With pesky birds I mean pesky. I have about 10 hazelnuts growing and don't get a single one. And I don't get a single apple if there is a net over the tree...
I am still designing the thing in my head... I think of chinese toona.

I have an area of our garden which I think to convert in a cool climate forest garden. I watched some videos and I know how well stuff grows under trees in more subtropical or warm temperate gardens but in cool climate? All they say is that you need to open the canopy more - then you are basically back to the "normal" garden. How productive are these gardens? On top of it I don't want fruit there because the birds eat it all if I don't net. In subtropical climates there are so many species which I could plant like cooking bananas or sweet potatoes. Does anyone have a really productive cool climate food garden (I don't mean tons of mint or firewood - something to eat!).

Doing that coil was way not as easy as thought. I did not have a gas flame (don't want to do that in the house) so I built a little fire. Conduit does not bend very easy and the first attempt failed as I burnt a hole. In the video at 4:10 you actually can see the snake very briefly. Also the material has memory and it wants back in the previous shape. Probably gas flames are hotter. You also will need leather gloves and I actually used welding gloves.

yes it's the bubble snake! I was madly busy and did not get to it until now...

There is this really cool video of a compost tea brewer, but he does not show how it looks from the inside.
webpage
He's making a spiral out of conduit and drills holes in the spiral, but how many rounds does the spiral have?  Can anyone show me a picture?

As you can see in my other posts our soils is built up on fill (it wasn't me.. concrete rubble, asphalt, old bricks). Most of it is tons of woodchips, compost spent potting mix. So I have a LOT of organic matter but no clay and very little sand. I did a jar test and it confirms my suspicion. I think I need to get two things:
1. rock dust (the only thing I came up with so far is crusher dust from the nearest basalt quarry which is not really dust, the particles are mostly bigger)
2. some clay - bentonite?? Something powdered is easy to work with. What other clays are there and is there an advantage of one over the ther?
What do you think? Which type of clay? Application rate? I'm in NSW Australia.
I am reading " the enlivened rock powders" very Steinery and not very practical for me.

Thank you! But what about the size of the particles? It is called dust but it's not really dust. We visited a quarry and the smallest they sell has a lot of 5mm particles in it. These days they use the dust in various of their products.

I got an analysis of our nearest quarry. What do you think? Is it suitable for the garden. I am geologically blind. Usually, they sell it as "crusher dust" which is no dust at all but a material that is used for paths.
The first image is the sizes of the crusher"dust":
and here is the analysis:
Sorry, I don't manage to get screenshots in here!