Alternative Thinking, Natural Gardening, Vegetable Trials
Do you find that when you plant your vegetables from seed directly into the garden, you get too many plants come up and you have to cull them? Isn’t it difficult to throw those young seedlings away? I find that I am always looking for a spot to transplant them to.
Those little seedlings are just getting started when you are supposed to euthenise them. What started as a small job ends up taking a couple of hours.
The solution to the problem.
The Permaculture Home Garden Book by Linda Woodrow
The solution comes from a book titled “The Permaculture Home Garden”. Ordinarily I don’t read books about Permaculture because the ones I have looked at are mostly about design. I am more interested in what to do. I know design is important, but I just want to grow stuff.
Well this book is brilliant and what’s more it is written by a woman. Now don’t take that sentence the wrong way. I have tried reading numerous books by female authors and for the life of me I usually can’t get interested in them. There have been a few exceptions and this is one of them. It is full of down to earth information from building chook domes to making a seed raising mix.
Seed raising mix recipe
Materials for the seed raising mix
The simple recipe is a 50/50 mix of compost and coarse river sand. If you have read my posts on Calcium, you will know that I am a big fan of getting calcium into the soil. I also like to put it into my seed raising mix.
My formula is 3 cups of sieved compost, 3 cups of coarse river sand and 1 cup of lime. The seeds sprout a treat in this mix.
Part 2 of the equation
The second trick is to grow your seedlings in a bottomless container so that you can direct plant the advanced seedlings and pull the container up for protection for the seedling as it settles in.
Pots to raise advanced seedlings in.
It settles in much quicker than if you grow a seedling in a punnet and have to remove it to transplant. The seedling suffers from transplant shock and takes a minimum of two to four weeks to recover.
The cheapest and easiest way to create bottomless containers is to cut the tops and bottoms off two litre milk containers.
By raising your seedlings this way, you don’t grow too many and you have an inexpensive supply of pots so you can be raising your advanced seedlings when your existing crop is half finished.
It also solves the other problem of having too much of the same vegetable at once and then not having any. Your planning is much easier
Alternative Thinking
My Idea Of The Perfect Job
I am an avid reader of science fiction. Anything from Aasimove to Vinge will get my attention and keep me entertained for hours. All I need is a good sf read and a garden to work in while contemplating the author’s ideas.
At the moment I am reading David Brin’s “Existence” and seeing his ideas of what Google glasses will be like in years to come. His re-arrangement of the English language is a delight.
Early on in the book we a getting to know a celebrity news broadcaster named Tor who is walking through Sandego before boarding a flight to Washington. She has her VR spectacles on but the translation earpiece dangling.
Brin uses words like enterview (a combination of entertainment and interview) celebrighties and enovators.
Tor can access views through her VR glasses from the myriad of cameras that are placed throughout the city by anyone who wants to add a feed that can be accessed.
“Tor couldn’t help doing a quick self-checkout, murmuring, “tsootsu.” Sub-vocal sensors in her collar translated-To See Ourselves as Others See Us– and the inner surface of her specs lit with glimpse-views of her, from several angles, crowding the periphery of her percept, without blocking the center view. Tor needed to walk safely.
One image – from a pennycamera someone stuck high on a lamppost – looked down at a leggy brunette walking by, her long dark hair streaked with tendrils of ever-changing colour: the active-strand detectors and aiware that Tor could deploy if something newsworthy happened.”
aiware – artificial intelligence ware, really smart software.
David Brin opens up a new world of words and ideas. But he is not the only one. Peter Hamilton writes about datavises, implants that put a HUD (heads up display) in your vision of anything that you need to see from the price of an interplanetary trip to the range of beers in the local pub.
How about this passage, again from “Existence” –
“A ripple of e-lerts flowed just ahead of Tor – like fluttering glow-moths -”
And you thought you were bombarded with advertising now. You aint seen nothing yet.
So to maintain your sanity, go and dig in the garden and ponder what the future has to bring. Got to admit, it’s exciting.
Alternative Thinking, Natural Gardening
New Rule For Blog Posts The new rule is that if I start a blog post I have to finish it. That means I can’t save it as a draft and come back to it later. It has to be published at the first sitting. It’s 1:40 pm, let’s see how long it takes. (more…)
Alternative Thinking, Natural Gardening
Not the Doctor Phil on TV but Dr. Philip S Callahan.
I first heard about Phil Callahan in 2003. I sort of only half listened because the bloke talking with me about him was waxing on about (more…)