Last year at this time

Winter into Spring at the Nursery

It wasn't a cold winter, so I burned less firewood.  The greenhouse still spent all its winter nights with freezing temps barely in abeyance.

Leaves had been hauled

 and cracks had been filled with mud for sealant

 Sprouting and malting happened

Along with all the winter greenhouse greens

Using the horse manure from this pile I turned this cold frame into a hot frame

And in Early February I filled it with seeded flats

With a 110 degree bottom heat many of my seeds sprouted within a week.  Good news except that mice were eating the seedlings as fast they sprouted.  I lost all my early peppers and half my ginseng seed.  I had to move all the seed containers into the cold greenhouse and they went into "take forever to sprout mode"

Finally now in mid-April I am seeing good germination.  At least I do have an early crop of tomatoes.

Christmas Greenhouse 2016

For any new readers, or forgetful older ones, I’m going to describe my greenhouse and its operation anew.  It was built in sections between 2010 and 2014 and totals about 600 sq.ft.   It is glazed (covered) with used window glass and twinwall polycarbonate.  The structure is partially sunken and heated with a wood stove.  Here’s a picture of it taken from above December 2016.

Since I worked in horticulture  (and its industry) for 45 years I came to realize what a horrible pollutant and killer sheet plastic is and have not purchased any for years.  I’ve covered the sunken cold frame in the bottom left of the photo with a large piece given me by a friend.  My polycarbonate will also become toxic for Nature.

The greenhouse is oriented to the east and behind it is a fencerow which shades the western sun and screens the northwesterly winds.  Here's a summer picture.

 In the summer windows open and panels come off.  The greenhouse is operated all year is never shaded and there are no fans.   A small amount of propane is burned on the coldest nights to support the woodstove.  Winter temperatures inside are maintained just above freezing and no fuel is used on winter nights when ambient temperatures don’t threaten a freeze inside.  The greenhouse has outstanding ventilation,  completely passive and completely dependent upon and responsive to the operator. 

                                             I've got a lot of firewood this year.

Hogs

Hogs

I have long been interested in the use of pastures for domesticated livestock.  So, recently, on the way to visit a new friend, I drove by a field of pastured hogs.  On the way back, and a couple of times since, I observed the hogs and their pasture.  About fifteen hogs were lounging on ten acres of creek bottomland.  The fencing was heavier and presumably more expensive than cattle fencing.  The pasture was in grass which the hogs were not eating.  At the farmhouse end of the pasture the hogs had made a single circular depression of bare dirt about 30 ft. across and a couple of feet deep.  Is it called a wallow?  We’ve been dry and the bottom was only moist.

My thoughts are these.  Plow the field and sow legumes, wheat or barley in the fall.  Graze with cattle, plow under, or harvest the crop and then spring sow a substantial quantity and mix of root crops, mangels, daikons, turnips, rutabegas, radishes and carrots.  In fall let the hogs in.  Every few days, come behind them rake and sow more daikons or begin to sow for the development of a permanent pasture.

Once the hogs have worked the field over, pen them or sell them.  The field goes back to the rotation for cattle, horses, sheep whichever.  In the meantime you have a different field being prepared for the next hog pasture.  Perhaps your hog wire could be moved from field to field.

It seems to me that the kind of “cultivation” that hogs can achieve is unique and beneficial for the pasture and with minimal tillage over a loosened top soil this pasture can be re-established with the certainty of plant vigor.

As a footnote I would like to add that the grain required by your hogs can be barley instead of corn.  Both the hogs I raised many years ago were fed rolled barley soaked in nutrients.  Sprouting barley has been very easy for me to do and the hogs benefit even more from that. 

Barley appears not to be gmo, is not likely to be heavily poisoned and is half the price of organic feed.

A Letter to the USDA

I included this letter as part of my "mandatory" response to a USDA survey of my business.

Dear Department of Agriculture employee,

I am including this short letter per your request for comments on the U.S.D.A. survey.  This is only my opinion of course…but I consider you to be an employee of a criminal organization.  I believe that the leadership/management of the USDA functions, on behalf of a group of the world’s wealthiest people, to establish and maintain chemical rather than biological agriculture.  I believe this to have been the case since Henry Wallace, a knowledgeable supporter of biological agriculture, was removed as FDR’s vice president in 1944.  I was a two year old Texan in 1947 when an early shipment of ammonium nitrate blew up the town of Texas City.  All of the new synthetic fertilizers of that day came from ammunition factories owned by these same wealthy men and they all had to have this new market or shut down. The world was at peace.

Along with these destructive synthetic fertilizers of have come all the other toxic synthetic products of industrial agriculture. Their use has spread environmental poisoning and devastation for 70 years.  It’s like we fought WWII all over again on our own soil.  Those of us with cancer are the “wounded in battle”.  The profits of agriculture have been taken from the farm and moved to the owners of the factories.

Your employer has allowed, even encouraged, industry and ranchers to manufacture and use Grazon ™ in order to turn manure, a necessity for biological agriculture, into a toxic product.  USDA sponsored industrial agriculture has turned our country into an eroded poisoned swamp instead of the healthy rich land it should be.  Do not let me get started on the hideous fluoride pollution from big agriculture’s phosphorus production.  Over a 45 year career in agriculture I have come to know the exact truth of what’s going on.

In the meantime our farmland needs men in the pastures and forests doing erosion control, establishing  and clearing vegetation, protecting springs,  and managing co-operative grazing.  We need work in seed production and the legalization and establishment of hemp production.  Did you know that Russia is now establishing organic agriculture everywhere and that Putin says Russia will be the world’s center of eco-agriculture.  Good for them, they are showing you the way. 

Of course you know that you will not be promoted to higher levels in the USDA if you state that you prefer a return to biological agriculture.  It is past time for lower ranking employers who still have a conscience to demand control of the department from the current paid off members of management who are running it now.  The nation is waiting and hoping for this to happen.

A Unique Greenhouse

The Plants Alive Greenhouse is like no other.  Two structures are dovetailed into each other.  The original greenhouse is 22' by 15', of 2x4 construction with twinwall polycarbonate glazing.  The aisle has been excavated to a depth of about 18" and the removed topsoil plus additional compost used to create raised beds in the greenhouse which serve either for vegetable production or with the use of pallets for container plants.  It is a relatively tall structure with ventilation at top and bottom for convective cooling.  A woodstove set at the low point of the greenhouse with a long chimney provides almost all of the winter heating in our zone 7 location near Tahlequah, Oklahoma.  The structure faces east and is shielded on the west by a thick fencerow of cherry, sassafras, and privet.  Here's a photo as it was first built.

and a view during construction of the inside.

Later changes added a sunken cold frame across the front, an 8' x 12' back section and finally an 8' x 28' greenhouse made almost entirely of used window glass which dovetails into the back of the original structure.

Almost all the glazing of the walls can open for ventilation and the entire back side of the roof has casement windows which fold open to allow heat when unwanted to escape.

This photo shows the paired greenhouses puffing away in the cold depth of winter.

Since then I actually raised the glass house another foot higher. The heating costs for the 600 sq.ft. reached a maximum in the year pictured of about $600 for the heating season.  In this last year's milder winter heating costs were only $200.  Bear in mind that the greenhouse is only heated to keep the inside temperature above freezing and most winter nights reach below 40 degrees by morning.  This is quite a bit lower than anyone recommends, but the plants inside thrive and vegetable production is substantial.

On the coldest nights I have had to burn propane from a small tank. The greenhouse is NOT especially airtight though I seal it as best I can with foam, mud, or caulk.  On sunny winter days I always end up opening a vent in the roof.  After a 45 year career with greenhouses in horticulture I can categorically state that the ability to ventilate a greenhouse is more important than an airtight construction to keep heat. (P.S. heat escapes anyway because greenhouses by definition are not insulated structures.)

The greenhouses use NO electricity for ventilation, so there is zero expense for cooling.  Other greenhouses I have know of this size require a 1/4 hp electric motor operating a 24" fan all day long on warm days or else heavy shading.  Many greenhouses in this part of the country are not used at all in the summer because of the expense of ventilating.  My structure is only a degree or two hotter than ambient on the hottest summer day and the western shading means I can use the structure all year with no shade cloth and no fan.  Its just a really good design.  Even in winter ventilation is required to grow good plants.  The casement windows on the west side of the glass house roof are hinged.  Here's a view through an open roof window down into the greenhouse:

When heat builds in May I remove the front panels and open the glass windows.

Spring production from greenhouse and cold frames amounted to roughly 80 flats of bedding, about 4500 plants and roughly 200 one gallon overwintered perennials and bulbs.  In addition a large permanent collection of succulants, four large citrus trees and a substantial crop of winter vegetables and herbs were produced.  Here are a few pictures of those crops:

My potting soil is just as effective as my structure.  I minimize expensive non-sustainable products like peat moss and perlite by using my own compost and leaf mold. Our commercial nurseries and our universities apparently do not understand the proper way to use leaves so I seem to be almost unique in soil building with this simple time honored soil building procedure of making leaf mold.  fortunately nature does still remember also.  Perhaps that will be my next blog.  Hope you enjoyed. 

compost

                                      leaf mold

Plants Alive

Just Spring Pictures