The Green Room

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Cycling has recently taken a back seat so that my wife and I could prepare our city community vegetable plots to kick off the gardening season. It starts with pounding in 30, 7-foot T-posts and wrapping the entire perimeter with fabric mesh to keep the pesky deer out. Our two combined plots measure approx. 60’ L x 20’ W.
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So far, we’ve only sowed carrots, beets and corn but the remaining space will be taken up with other veg varieties including broccoli, 4 varieties of onions, Chinese veg, beans, cucumbers, peas, zucchini, Japanese squash, tomatoes, and basil. In addition, we also have our garden/greenhouse back home where we’ll grow peppers, garlic, more beans and Japanese strawberries.

Here’s a sample of what we have harvested in past years. We share the bounty with family, friends, neighbors as well as the local food bank.
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Prairie Dog said:
Cycling has recently taken a back seat so that my wife and I could prepare our city community vegetable plots to kick off the gardening season. It starts with pounding in 30, 7-foot T-posts and wrapping the entire perimeter with fabric mesh to keep the pesky deer out. Our two combined plots measure approx. 60’ L x 20’ W.
View attachment 87653
View attachment 87654

Here’s a sample of what we have harvested in past years. We share the bounty with family, friends, neighbors as well as the local food bank.

SNIP

We garden in 15 4 foot x 4 foot raised beds with a stool on wheels. A bit easier on the aging knees and back. We call it square yard gardening instead of square foot gardening.
One bed is a perennial (asparagus harvesting now), the rest annual . Just put in the tomatoes, peppers, and squash; all the root crops ( potatoes, carrots, onions, etc.) have been in a few weeks. Now waiting for stuff to grow.
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An update on water issues on the other side of the world.
abcnews.go.com

India's deepening water crisis at the heart of farm protests

At the heart of India’s farm protests and decades-old agrarian crisis is a policy conundrum: India has been subsidizing the cultivation of rice in the north, but these are thirsty crops that have dramatically lowered the groundwater table
abcnews.go.com abcnews.go.com
 
Art Deco said:
At least here in the East we still have all the water the garden can use. The west is looking very dry again.
wildfiretoday.com

New climate data shows summers in the Western states are warming - Wildfire Today

The number of acres burned in US wildfires in 2020 (not counting Alaska) was the highest ever recorded since reliable statistics have been available beginning in 1960
wildfiretoday.com wildfiretoday.com
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We try and do our best to conserve and collect as much rain water as possible. Five 200L rain barrels placed around our home provide enough water for our raised beds and greenhouse. We also have access to an additional 2000 L of rain water funneled down from a flat section of our roof to a cistern in the crawlspace of our basement. This water is used primarily for the community garden and my wife’s extensive collection of indoor plants, succulents and epiphytes. An on-demand pump placed inside the cistern pumps the water up to the main floor to an external spigot.
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In my former life I was a horticulturalist. I truly love seeing cisterns and rainwater catchments. Many municipalities here ban cisterns. Other countries require catchments. As a whole I find Americans not using least toxic and sustainable landscapes. Xeriscape concepts seem lacking.
 
Art Deco said:
That's pretty cool. Did you add the big cistern or did it come with the house?
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When we purchased the home 27 years ago it underwent a major renovations/addition. Being an avid gardener, my wife insisted on having the contractor install the water storage feature in the crawlspace. It wasn’t until a few years ago when we actually got around to getting the right type of pump installed. The submersible pump has an integrated control unit and is literally a matter of plug and pump. Simply turning on/off the spigot activates or shuts the pump off. We had the plumber tee off the joint in the crawlspace so rainwater can also be accessed inside the home.

We truck the same water out to our community vegetable plots in 4L milk jugs which get recycled at the end of the harvest season. The portability aspect of the jugs makes carrying them on site much easier.
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The metal grates on top are actually mesh panels for concrete but also make great trellis structures for cucumbers or scarlet runners.
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Our composting site is tucked away in the northeast corner of our property. We avoid placing any kitchen waste in the open bins and use tumbling composters instead thereby avoiding the attention of any foraging critters.
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A sample of my wife's collection of succulents some of which she has grown from seed.
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Art Deco said:
I still follow one or two writers ( Ugo Bardi mostly) from the oil drum days, although I never contributed there. Population and Consumption, Extraction and Pollution are all measures of one system. all one big "construct" as you say. And I still check my copy of "limits to growth" occasionally to see where we are in relation to the very first computer model of that system. That was a program that ran on a computer much more limited than a phone today, BTW, and still seems to be pretty accurate .
The link to eBikes is the immense saving of energy by not hauling two tons of metal ( an electric car) everywhere we go. Some times that is needed, but usually not.
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Whoa! Another veteran of TOD! Way cool, I thought that site was totally obscure.

I did post there occasionally, but it was exhausting, because I felt like I really had to be on top of my research, I could easily spend an hour or two preparing a two-paragraph post. Even so, I tried to limit my posts to health care, where at least I have some postgrad education... usually stuff like, "Yes, but you can't take that study too seriously because it really uses a kind of spontaneous reporting (of, say, deaths from cancer, or other health problems), it's a serious error to look at those numbers the same way you would at research in engineering." I was tolerated, like an annoying little terrier that occasionally kills a rat or frightens away a burglar.

I've read so much about LTG, but have not actually read it.
 
Catalyzt said:
Whoa! Another veteran of TOD! Way cool, I thought that site was totally obscure.

I did post there occasionally, but it was exhausting, because I felt like I really had to be on top of my research, I could easily spend an hour or two preparing a two-paragraph post. Even so, I tried to limit my posts to health care, where at least I have some postgrad education... usually stuff like, "Yes, but you can't take that study too seriously because it really uses a kind of spontaneous reporting (of, say, deaths from cancer, or other health problems), it's a serious error to look at those numbers the same way you would at research in engineering." I was tolerated, like an annoying little terrier that occasionally kills a rat or frightens away a burglar.

I've read so much about LTG, but have not actually read it.
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Local library might still have a copy if it's not online. It was based on a crude FORTRAN graphic program, IIRC. And has been as accurate as anything else.
 
tomjasz said:
A terrifying event! Sadly USA citizens seem only concerned if it's in their backyard. A NIMBY culture.
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I suspect that attitude comes from the American mobility tradition. If things aren't working where you live, just move somewhere else. Compared to Europe and Asia where families often reside in the same small area for generations, most people in the USA have families scattered over thousands of miles.
 
Art Deco said:
Drought map for western USA. Yeah, you'll need extra water bottles this year too.
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Already there:

SPA-MRT (1c).jpg


I started carrying 3 half liter bottles after the first hot dry ride of the season. The stem mounted cages make it easy to take a sip without stopping. I may carry a fourth in the pannier on some longer rides.

I guess it must be the weather since I'm consuming a lot more water this season than I did last year.
 
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