Back at the Ranch...

Discussion in 'Growing Organic Marijuana' started by ElRanchoDeluxe, Sep 6, 2016.

  1. Somehow I manage to f*** this all up. My comment is inside of your quote box. LOL
     
    • Like Like x 2
  2. Your homestead is coming along, nice work, rancho!

    Karl Hammer is the guy behind Vermont Compost, and he is a pretty interesting fellow for sure. I think his method for large scale composting with chickens could be implemented just about anywhere. If you get some free time, you should check out this podcast interview with him:

    035: Karl Hammer on Microbes, Carbon, and the Compost Connection

    +1 for Gaia's Garden too. I haven't gotten around to reading Holzer or Mollison yet, but Hemenway's book is an awesome intro to permaculture.
     
    • Like Like x 2
  3. Man...there are just so many options! Try to stay positive and look at it as a great learning experience...sounds like it will be. Let's have fun with it. Fill up a mason jar about 1/3 of the way with your soil and fill it with water and give it a good shake. The next morning take a look. The top layer of soil is clay, then silt, then sand at the bottom.

    Raising worms is a great idea. I would try to raise as many as you can. If it were me I'd probably cover the entire hugelkulture bed in a good 4-6'' of horseshit and then cover that with 6'' of straw and introduce worms as soon as possible.
    I plan on overwintering my worm population in the first hugel bed I made. I'm going to surround it w/ straw bales. I'll probably just put straw over the top of the bed too. It would be possible to keep an active compost pile going inside it but would take a lot of work. Straw would also be great if you go with a soil heating cable. A common sheet mulching method is to plant potatoes in it the first year to bust up the soil...might be helpful. Don't really want to plant them near fresh manure though. It can cause some sort of blight, I can't remember the specifics.

    Haha. Wonder if there is a free pdf of that book floating around?

    Thanks dude! Yep, that's the guy. I thought it was kinda weird that I didn't find much on feeding chickens that way. I'll probably have two piles going for them next spring. They get to free range quite a bit too. Should be laying eggs in just a few weeks now. Holzer is an excellent source for hugelkulture information.
     
    • Like Like x 3
  4. I'm starting to wonder if hugelkulture is even the right term for what I'm doing? (or attempting too...lol.)
    Anyways here's a couple pics
    photo (7).JPG photo (6).JPG Im on my way to building a couple more of these things. Here's the first one. I added a compost pile that was about a yard or so of material chock full of worms too! I'm thinking I'll surround this one with straw bales and use it to hold the worms over for the winter. Hopefully I'll add a half a dozen fish or so per bed maybe more to each bed as well to get things moving along. I'd like to stay away from the fish market but it's a possibility.
     
    • Like Like x 3
  5. Woke up way too early...let's talk about weed! Here are a few old pics of my no-till. This lil guy is approaching the 3yr mark and still going strong. It holds about 150 gallons of soil. I feel like I've added more vermicompost back to it than it even holds! Typically 10 gallons or more after every run.
    DSC01319.JPG DSC01352.JPG DSC01354.JPG
    So...I'll be honest. A big part of starting this thread was to keep motivated and continuing working on my outdoor veggie garden and system. You guys have already helped keep me going! The other reason for starting this thread is to really show that you don't need to spend all kinds of money to grow a high-quality crop. I'll post some pics of the larger beds soon with a better camera and reveal some of the things I've done that go against the grain. I'll let the results speak for themselves. I think some of you will be surprised.
     
    • Like Like x 8
  6. Awesome setup you have growing, loving the mushrooms!
    I just finished Gaias garden and am in the middle of Sepp Holzer's book. I watched a permaculture video with a guy named Rick Austin and will read his book next, The Secret Garden of Survival.


    Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum mobile app
     
    • Like Like x 4
  7. Nice man! I'm big on anything having to do with survival. Especially after growing weed in NorCal for a summer! It offered a small glimpse of what society is like without the rule of law. It wasn't all that pretty and this was with the grocery stores still open!

    I really do like growing oyster mushrooms! It's a shame that I became allergic to the spores. It's nice to have the outdoor bed though. My chickens should start laying soon and I really enjoy oyster mushrooms and eggs for breakfast. Any of the mushrooms that aren't ideal for me to eat...are really enjoyed by the chickens! Seems like a win-win! It really is easy to grow them and cheap too. Those 'Exhale' CO2 bags you'll see growers use sometimes are nothing more than oyster mushroom spawn on sawdust. Hilarious if you ask me!
     
    • Like Like x 5

Share This Page