Philippe Elskens

This morning my garden got visited by pigeons. Result: almost all of my cabbage plants are severely damaged. They are covered up now by glass jars, but I'm not sure if the plants will recover. Should I immediately plant new ones instead so as not to lose any time, or should I wait and see if they will pull through?

Not sure if I understand what you mean by this:
'Having some planting space in the front door, and maybe the possibility for some temperature control pools are bonuses.'

These are great tips I hadn't thought about! I'll ruminate a bit on these, and I'm sure I'll have lots of (more specific) questions

Up until now I've only been considering building from scratch, which makes a passive design relatively easy. However, now we're seriously considering buying a house to renovate. How feasible is it to renovate a house so that it becomes passive? We don't have any particular house in mind yet, so I understand answering this question definitively is not really possible. I can sketch a probably scenario though: We buy a brick house in Belgium, don't change anything substantial to the bedrooms/bathroom. At the ground floor, we want 1 large space with a kitchen, living room and greenhouse. It might be easy to connect living room and kitchen, and extend the space with a greenhouse. It's reasonable to assume the house is pretty well insulated. Lots of windows around the greenhouse would bring in sun. But of course, this would probably not be enough to make it solar passive. Some uncertainties I have:
-can we introduce enough thermal mass for the entire house in just this 1 space?
-how to walk the line correctly between warm enough in winter, but not too hot in summer?
-what are the parameters that would make such a design (im)possible? How to properly vet a candidate house for this?

Transplanted this 1 year-old avocado tree last week (and then went on a 5-day vacation) and it's in a horrible condition. I suspect that the soil was too dry, so I watered plenty when I came back from my trip. I haven't seen any improvement in the last 2 days, so maybe I'm just too late, or something else is wrong. Any advice?

Connor Ireland wrote:For a time I heard a lot of talk about big manure waterproofing the bottom of a pond. Supposedly that bacterial activity creates an anaerobic slime that becomes impermiable. They were calling it 'gley' I think.

THREE SCENARIOS:

I fence in an enclosure and throw cracked corn and water into it. The pigs tread and root at their own pace and I toss in straw. Then I shovel it out and bring it to the site.

I fence in a circle with a steel post (rebar or rock bar) driven into the center. I use two lengths of straight fencing, attached to the post, to restrict the pigs to one half or quarter of the circular enclosure, while I shovel out the other side. This arrangement would work like the hands of a clock, I use cracked corn as the incentive in this model, just like the first.

I have also been thinking of using tethering collars, or a harness (http://www.pigs4ever.com/pot_bellied_pig_products/harnesses_and_leads.php) arrangement to get two pigs to pull a disc or harrow (http://brinly.com/DD_55BH.html). I would drive a stake into the ground in the center of a circle and hook one end of the disc to that stake, so now the harrow move like the hand of a clock. I will use corn as bait, or a stick, to get these pigs to walk forward in a circle, constantly walking with them, constantly tossing corn, constantly whacking their butts with a stick.

OBVIOUSLY these are in the order of their mud-mixing power, and keeping the blend even. They are in reverse order of realistic-ness, since I have never heard of pigs used as draft animals. My neighbiors say it can't be done, well I intend to get pigs in a month or two anyway. What do you think, Jim?

I was just thinking about this idea and came across this post. Did you ever try it? How did it work out? As in practicality, and quality of the cob?

thomas rubino wrote:Hi Philippe; Welcome to Permies!
To answer your question,  4" is the average layer of insulating cob under a mass.
Normally, to mix cob to be insulated, you would want to add cut pieces of straw / hay / horse poop to mix with your cob.  
Generally perlite is not used under the mass.   Straw is much cheaper than perlite.  No reason you can't though.

Using bricks and cement board to elevate your mass off of the floor is also a common practice.

Thanks for your reply, Thomas!
Hmm, so basically just cob, but with more straw? How much straw? I would assume that this doesn't insulate that well... am I wrong?

About to build a 19cm diameter Peterberg batchbox rocket mass heater with a large U-shaped cob bench in a tipi. Since a tipi has no insulation, I want to store the heat as efficiently as possible in the bench by insulating the bottom and back with a perlite-clay slip mix. How thick should I make this layer?

Joana Soares wrote:

Philippe Elskens wrote:Looks great!
We are starting a similar project (2 ha food forest) close to Lisbon soon.

Which cover crops would you recommend?

Where around Lisbon?
I just fell in love with trees and we are buying 5ha of land at Arruda dos Vinhos where I plan to plant a lot of them.
Still finding my way around all of this.

We are just a couple of minutes away then! I've sent you a PM

Dustin Rhodes wrote:Earthen floors are extremely low cost, can be kept from getting moist, and are not dirty(ie, not prone to have loose dirt particles detach and become free dirt), if they are made correctly.

I can't post a link right now, but searching this site for "Earthen Floor" will reveal multiple threads detail how-to, and why it's a good alternative.


That being said, I think wood floors are great, and my they would be my choice as well

Hadn't even thought of an earthen floor (although that is our plan in the permanent structures)!
So just install on top of a plastic barrier for moist?