Last Monday, Tom Watson (center) a well known permaculture teacher and inventor of the Watson Wick, talking to Jay Tallmon (the Gaia Gardens host) and Andrea (from Khalsa Greenhouses). Tom described a design for a no-energy passive solar greenhouse using an insulated ground perimeter (2" foam 4 foot deep), a super insulated north wall + black barrels, an insulated north ceiling and a 60 degree angle south roof. In addition, pipes are buried into the ground and the hot air from the top of greenhouse is circulated into the pipes to warm up the soil. The USDA apparently provides grants for no-energy greenhouses.
Tom also talked to us about tree planting, soil erosion, no-till cultivation and more. I hope that he will be joining our team of advisors and teachers. His knowledge and enthusiasm are remarkable.
After Tom's visit to Gaia Gardens, I went back to Mountainair to continue harvesting material from a defunct greenhouse operation.
Strawbales, an Hawai'ian mermaid, lumber, a commercial sink, irrigation lines and barrels were part of the bounty
along with 8 blueberry bushes that desperately needed water.
Thank you Dominique for all your help with unloading!
Thank you Jennie (from One Earth Solutions) for the loan of your company van and trailer!
On Thursday, Anita, a new volunteer and neighbor, helped build another layer of the compost pile. The food waste that we get every Tuesday from the Food Depot needs to be sorted to remove plastic packaging.
We now have a staging area to do the sorting (thank you Adam for the tables!) and we will soon organize a compost crew to work on Tuesday afternoons.
Anita covering the food scarps with horse manure. Thank you Anita!
Next Farm Day
Sunday March 11
1:00-4:00pm
We need lots of hands to pick rocks off the field that we rototilled a couple weeks ago. Bring the hands, we provide gloves and buckets.
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