Wicking Bed in the Hoophouse

In the past couple of years I have only grown in the middle of my hoop house because that was the easiest place to reach.  I am planning on digging it down 10 to 12 inches this year to allow for more head space and growing space for the tomatoes.  In addition I wanted to add some thermal mass to the edges to keep heat in and block out wind.


In building the retaining walls for the earth mound that was to be at the the edges I realized that I could put a raise bed in there.  So I dug it down and used this opportunity to try a wicking bed.

Caveboy in the 2014 hoop house in May. Except for this hydro bed, all the growing has been in the center.  

What is a wicking bed?
A wicking bed is a method of planting which allows for maximum water usage when growing in soil.  It is more efficient even than hydroponics, assuming one actually replaces the water in their hydro system as often as recommended.

How does it work?
One of the biggest problems with growing in soil is water loss.  Water is lost into the air when watering from the surface, and water is lost into the ground as well.  Mulch can help prevent water loss into the air, especially if you use a drip system.

Wicking beds address both of these issues by watering from below the bed from a reservoir.  The only way for the water to go is up, into the soil where the plants roots are.

A typical layout looks like this:

http://www.earthanedge.com/earthan-beds-how-they-go-together/
(I don't  have a fish pump.  I just fill it with water)

The reservoir underneath is usually filled with small gravel or sand which move water upward through capillary action.  Between the soil and the reservoir there is usually a barrier of some sort to keep soil and roots from getting down into the gravel, but it isn't always used.

As the soil above dries, the moisture is drawn up from the reservoir.  In this way the plant regulates soil moisture to whatever level it prefers.

You can't over-water these beds because there is a drain at the top of the reservoir.  Once it is full, it is full.

Instead of piling soil here, I decided to dig down several inches: maybe 3 or 4 to set the reservoir in ground a bit.  In order to use runoff from the hoophouse, and overspill from the wicking bed I dug a shallow ditch to direct excess water into one of the swales in my berry patch.

North edge of the hoop house

Digging in clay is fun. 

Reservoir Liner
After digging out and leveling the reservoir, I lined it with landscaping plastic.  I placed some old roofing tar paper I had in my shed below it to prevent puncture from rocks and roots below.

Tar Paper

Staple it up

Adding water to check level, and troubleshoot the drain.

Reservoir Medium
The next step was to add the gravel.  I used the pea gravel from last year's hydro set up.  I'll be using river rock this year for hydro because it is easier to clean.  The PVC tube sticking out is  for watering. It connects loosely to another 2" pipe and then a 1" pipe to disperse the water slowly into the gravel.

I will only grow on one edge, so I have indented there for more soil contact during initial watering. 

Happy berries

Dividing Soil From Reservoir
Then I laid the weed guard across the top and stapled it to the board that defines the inner edge of the bed.

Weed guard covering the bed and the watering hole

Peat Moss
For good transmission of moisture upwards, soil high in organics is best.  I have clay so I have amended the soil a little.  First to make sure moisture is transferred easily I added a layer of peat moss to the top of the division.

A thin layer of peat moss

Soil Mixture
As I mentioned, my soil isn't the greatest.  I won't be fertilizing this bed for a couple of years so I added some mulch and chicken coup mix (complete with feathers and mummified mice) and hoed them together with soil I dug up from the middle of the hoop house.

Poop. Dirt. Mice.

With each layer I added a little more peat moss to ensure good moisture transmission.

All full! 

Get it Wet!
The last two steps are to make sure the entire bed is wet to start the capillary action and to cover with mulch.  I plan on growing peppers in here. If I'd had this bed before, they'd already be growing.

 The next step is to actually plant some peppers.  I'll let you all know how that goes.


I'll write about the berry patch project soon, but I can tell that one of the swales is working nicely.  I've taken the other out to try to figure out why it wasn't holding water.

Water stored below the mulch in the swale between berries and rhubarb.  Like a wicking bed, this water will move into the planting mound as it dries.  

Death in the Meadows

This Wednesday we went for a hike with the Nature Tribe group at a natural area in the city.  Before we started out I found this dead vole with her still living babies suckling from her lifeless body.  

Caveboy wasn't interested in learning about it.  His favorite book these days is Who Pooped in the Park so I thought he would be excited to actually see an animal up close, but the tall grass was making it hard for him to walk and he just wanted to get back to the trail so he could run.

I didn't try to press the issue too much because I could see that he wasn't going to be able to pay attention.  We found plenty of tracks and scat later on the hike to talk about.  We saw some horses too.

He wasn't ready to focus on this little animal in the grass, but the older children were (ages 3-9 or so). They looked at the scene and discussed the meaning of it with each other.  One mentioned that he wished an owl would just take it.

That is part of the fun and the purpose of these hike: to build my children's village with people who take an interest in nature are willing to think about these things.

Kids: there are more interesting things in the ditch than on the trail

Later in the hike Caveboy did his best to keep up with the big kids.  Part of raising a conscious child is having the right big kids to try to keep up with.  Thank you to the NoCo Nature Tribe for letting us be part of the tribe.

Garden Season

Spring is here and I haven't posted anything in the past couple of week because I have been busy getting the garden ready.

Gardening in Colorado can be tricky business.  The first frost is usually in September, and the last in May.  The summer can be brutally hot and dry, or very cool. Nearly every year there is hail to contend with.

Glacial advance during hail storm of August, 2008

Additionally two of our neighbors have cottonwood trees near my fence line. Cottonwood roots make it nearly impossible to grow in the soil within the reach or their roots.

Over the past few years I have come up with a few ways to deal with many of these problems, which I will go over at some point.  For now here's what I've been up to.


Mulch

Free mulch from the City of Fort Collins

In the past I haven't been too good about mulching, except where I have used black plastic mulch.  With free mulch from the city, one would be foolish not to use it.  Here in the desert we must do everything we can to keep the moisture in the soil.

Irrigation 

I can not grow in the portion of my yard that used to be designated as the garden due to the neighbors cottonwoods, so a few years ago I built these raised beds and moved garden soil to them.  They have been great for a lot of reasons, but I have been watering them by hand.  After a few weeks I find I just don't have the patience to do it properly.  So this year I added irrigation to each planter.  

I realized after putting it in that this wouldn't work.  I needed a 90 degree bend. 

This should work better

Beauty.  That's much better. 

This year's Bok Choy, planted in March

It should be a lot happier under mulch and with its own irrigation

Berries

Avis' Permaculture Homestead

A friend posted this video on Facebook awhile back, and it inspired me to plant a berry patch.  Apparently Calgary has a similar climate to Fort Collins.

My first berries. I will add many more soon. 

The "Before" of the berry patch

My rhubarb will be happy that it will finally be getting some attention because of its proximity to the berry patch.  I will talk about the trenches, the "swale trails" in future posts about the berry patch.  Of course it involves a lot of mulch.

The Boys

Get 'em working young. 

 Of course what I am really trying to grow in my yard are my two young sons.

Danger baby

Hydroponics/Aquaponics

Last year's setup during the Mother's Day snow

I built the hoop house in the portion of my yard where the cottonwood trees are.  In order to continue to use it, I would have had to move it or figure out how to grow out of the ground.  I decided to try my hand at hydroponics, and with some trial and error, I had some awesome success.  It turned out to be a great year to do it as it was really cool, and many peoples tomatoes did not ripen until late September.  I had ripe fruit by early August, most of which was eaten by my older son.  

August tomatoes. Easy picking for a 2 year old. 

The day before Mother's Day, 2014

Mother's Day, 2014

Possible Aquaponics Experiment

 I grew peppers and basil in this tray last year on the same system as the tomatoes.  I will try an aquaponics, deep water culture, system with this small reservoir for greens.


Other things to talk about
This post is getting long, so I'll cut it off here.  I do want to talk about some things that Colorado gardeners might find interesting like:

How to over-winter spinach

Planted in September, 2014

Chicken Poop

Cleaning out the coup for fertilizer

Beer

Probably not, but here's the first hops of spring

That's all for now.  Enjoy and please let me know what you'd like to hear more about.

I Cooked a Frozen Pork Loin

If you buy meat like my family, you buy it when it's on extreme sale at the grocery store.  Then you have to freeze most of it.

People tend to waste a lot of time and sacrifice texture and flavor by defrosting meat before they cook it.  I learned about this from a Cook's Illustrated experiment a few years ago with regards to steak.

The Science of Cooking Frozen Steak

You can read why it works there.  I wanted to briefly share how I cooked frozen pork loin. 

Concerns:

1. Will the pork be done enough?

2. Will it get too dry?

3. What about spatter from all the ice that builds up when you freeze meat in a bag?

Answers:

1. If you cook it long enough, and it really doesn't take that much longer. 

2.  It shouldn't.  Especially if you coat it with oil first.  

3.  Don't freeze it in a bag!

A pork chop frozen in the bag, and a pork loin frozen on a tray, and then transferred. 

Frozen in bag on left. frozen on a tray on the right.  It looks fresh!

The first mistake people make when freezing meat is putting it in a bag.  If you  have done this, then you must defrost.  

Here are two different chops.  Both are stored in a bag, but one was initially frozen on a tray, and then placed in a bag.  

Step 1:

Heat the oven to 325 degrees.  This is a lower temperature than you would cook a fresh loin (350) because you will need to cook it a little longer.  

Pro-tip: Do a better job of wiping down your stove before taking a picture of it. 

Remove the pork from the freezer when you are ready to put it in the over.  Drizzle with olive oil (this helps to keep moisture in) and season with salt and your favorite spices.  

Step 2:

Place the loin in a high rimmed baking pan.  Roast for 40 to 60 minutes.

Step 3:

After 40 minutes check the temperature.  A thinner piece of meat could already be to 145.  This one was at 130 after 40 minutes.  

A 1" thick chop was 130 degrees after 40 minutes

Step 4:

When the center temperature reaches 145 degrees, remove it from the oven and let it rest 15 minutes before serving.  

I put this one in for another 20 minutes (1 hr total) and as you can see it got slightly over done at about 154 degrees.  

I over cooked it a touch (154 instead of 145), but it still turned out pretty nice.

Not looking crispy, despite going a bit past ideal temperature.

Evenly cooked all the way through, and no dry rind.

I have done this previously with steak and it works great as well.  Try it and let me know how it works for you. 

Eat up!

I could have just referred you to this article, but here you get pictures.

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A Nature Tribe: Hiking with a toddler

Earlier this week I was privileged to take the boys on a nature walk with a local group calling themselves a "Nature Tribe".  The group description reads: 

"Families passionate about getting their kiddos out into nature. Value the importance of reconnecting children with the natural world." 

Chasing the older boys of the Nature Tribe

It can be a tricky task introducing toddlers to nature.  Finding a group like this one, or perhaps founding one, can help provide a support system for ideas, a great culture of new friends for you and your children, and a little accountability to remind you that it's time to go outside this week.

I'd like to share a little about what I've learned in introducing my oldest son (2 and a half right now) to the idea of hiking and being in nature.

There is a goal, but it isn't really that important.

I can imagine my own father trying to take me hiking as a small child and not understanding why I didn't want try to keep up to get where we were going.  Having the destination as the primary reason for the hike is not going to make for a fun outing.  It has to be the kid's adventure, but you do get to set the parameters.

I remember on our first hike this January my son did not initially understand that we were out for a purpose: to go hiking.  What exactly hiking was would be determined but all of us collectively as we went. The day was a success because we were able to keep his body and his mind occupied the entire time.

It might take a bribe of a fruit snack to go twenty more feet down the trail, but food will only get you so far.  We made sure to point out all the poop we found along the way, and what kind it was.  It was winter so no bugs were out, but I made sure to point out the telltale gravel of the anthills and took a time out to pick some up and play with it.  Later this year we will see some real ants, and that will be exciting for him.

It was a slow start. Once fruit snacks, ants, and poop were involved it was go time.

Toys

Later the same week I took the boys out by myself for a hike that ended up being a mile and a half, which was a bit too long, but our goal was to find a tree with pine cones to eat an orange under.  Luckily I had agreed to let him take one of his wooden toy cars with him.

The added distraction was key to keeping him engaged in something the whole time without Cavemommy there.  Anytime he fell down, or just got bored he would play a little with the car in the dirt.  I didn't try to rush, because I knew that he'd get up in a bit and keep on moving.

One car with big wheels makes the hike more fun

Winter has returned a couple of times since that January summer, but we've still been able to get out quite a bit. And lucky for us we live in a place that nature, or some semblance thereof, is really easy to get to.  A hike doesn't have to be up in the mountains, or out in the country.  You can almost always find some nature right there in the city.  In fact every outing depicted on the post is technically in the City of Fort Collins.

Keeping it Fun

Walking isn't the only way to get the kids out.  The two year old Caveboy is really fond of his strider bike, and there are plenty of trails around that can accommodate. This park below is a mile or so from our house, still in the city.

A boy and his bike

A City Park with trails for biking or hiking

More nature in the city

This summer we hope to go backpacking a time or two, and to only carry the Tiny (6 months old right now). The plan is to work up to three miles with Caveboy walking the whole way.  Hopefully with the help of the Nature Tribe, and plenty of other small adventures between now and then it will be just another walk in the park.





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The "Science" of Caveman Parenting

While trying to decide on further content for this blog,  my wife came across this article from 2013:
The Science of Cavemom Parenting

I believe that this article does an excellent job at relating the issues with many current trends to "get back to our roots" in one way or another.  Which roots? From when? I would like to elaborate on the author's main points.  In addition I would like to clarify what I believe an evolutionary approach to a problem or, in this case, a broad guiding principal would look like.  

The primary concern with these movements is that they assume a period of stasis in human evolution. At the risk of using a direct quote: "there is no time in human history when we've been biologically ideal and perfectly adapted to our surroundings — evolution just doesn't work this way" (Turgeon, 2013), who was paraphrasing Marlene Zuc from her book, Paleofantasy.  

One evolutionary theme to the genus Homo and its predecessors is ever increasing adaptability.   Ever since our ancestors began experimenting with life outside the jungle and isolated themselves geographically from the ancestors of Chimpanzees, between 6 million and 7 million years ago, every recognizable step towards Homo sapiens has been characterized by increased adaptability.  

Adaptation, unlike evolution which occurs within populations, occurs within the individual.  Our ancestors slowly become mega omnivores, eating nearly anything we could digest.  They constantly developed new strategies to survive upon and subsist on the land. This was not because they were bent on some evolutionary trajectory towards the perfection we apparently achieved in 17th century Europe, it was because Africa was constantly trying to kill them.  

Good Times

Bad Times

Of course there were always lions, and hyenas and poisonous thing trying to kill them from the beginning, but it was Africa's geography that was always the biggest threat. Africa, it turns out, is particularly sensitive to climate change.  Dozens of times during pre-history, climate change brought about rapid and radical environmental changes to Africa.  Each time this occurred, those who did not adapt died, and those who did were dispersed to isolated populations to rebuild, often learning a new subsistence pattern in the process.  

I love living in the jungle!

"Crap, it's time to lean how to eat bugs again."

In fact having spent an extra 400,000 years in Africa may be what gave our ancestors the upper hand, whatever it was, in Europe over the Neanderthals.  Some recent papers dispute this traditional idea ( Villa P, 2014) stating that Neanderthals were not as dumb as previously thought.  Their tool industries and burial practices showed them to be every bit as advanced as our own sub-species.  Of course these are cultural adaptations, and the result of having nearly the exact same brain as our ancestors. What cannot be accounted for so easily is their ability, or inability, to rapidly adapt to subtle changes, whether it be in climate or the politics of sharing their land with ambitious and adaptable people from somewhere else.  

"Why are you idiots eating grass?"

This trend of evolving to be adaptable has continued since the demise of the Neanderthals, and perhaps has accelerated since the advent of agriculture. I myself am a data point in one instance demonstrating this.  During the early Holocene I would have been considered neurotypical, at least with regard to the way my brain manages its dopamine stores.  Now they call me ADD.  We all know that people "afflicted" with ADD do not adapt as well to the post-modern world and that as many as 3% of adults in the United States suffer from this "disorder."  

"Farming is hard.  Swimming is fun."

Imagine how powerful an evolutionary selector the ability to direct one's own attention to what the conscious mind decides is important has been if in 8,000 years or less the percent of people who have been able to do so has gone from a minority of the population to almost every one.   

Speaking of recent evolution toward adaptability: how about that wheat? I'll go ahead an pick on the Paleo Diet again because it is so easy.  The main reason advocates of the Paleo Diet give for abstaining from grains is they believe that our ancestors did not eat grains.  This is most likely true: if you go back at least 4 million years (Wynn et. al., 2013).  Stable isotope analysis of Australopithecus afarensis fossils show us that by the time these tiny, bipedal ape-people roamed the earth, a significant enough portion of the hominin diet consisted of grasses and grains to leave its mark on their bones.  

What does this juxtaposition of a recent evolutionary development and the evidence that we have indeed been eating grains far longer than we could be called human tell us? Nothing! Well, not much, and that's the point, I suppose. As an anthropologist I love the idea of attempting to make decisions that are informed by evolutionary biology.  A shorter way to say that is: I like science.  

The problem has been that many people, believing they are approaching a problem from an evolutionary perspective, forgo the examination of existing data, or the researching of new frontiers, and simply go on their own powers of reason.  One may be the best logician in the world, but will never be able to solve a real world problem without real world data.  

In lieu of the facts, the Paleo Diet makes total sense.  Who remembers "Eat Right for Your Blood Type?"  It was another great concept which was also pulled directly out of someone's rear.  Both of these ideas would have made great hypotheses for scientific study, and plenty could have been learned by the authors in the course of rejecting their hypotheses.  Of course it turns out that science doesn't pay and that sensationalism does. 

Lets get back to those hypotheses.  A good evolutionary approach would consist of hypotheses based on observations of prehistoric behavior or historic/modern analogs.  Of course we must then test these hypotheses using actual modern humans.

Lets go over some instances where this has indeed occurred, and have become mainstream. These will be brief as this is getting long, and I can go over them in  more detail in the future.  

Breastfeeding.  It turns out that despite the claims of formula makers in the 60's, mother's milk really is best.  Medical anthropologists like Katherine Dettwyler helped bring this to the world attention and modern science has demonstrated that many of the previously unknown benefits of mother's milk are really hard (currently impossible) to replicate. Of course, as I stressed above, humans are adaptable and if the results from the picture below were typical pretty much all of the boomer generation would be stunted physically, emotionally, and psychologically.  

 Five months old twins from Islamabad, Pakistan. The bottlefed twin, a girl, was malnourished and suffered from frequent bouts of diarrhea. (Courtesy of Dr. Mushtaq A. Khan, Pakistan Institute of Medical Science, Islamabad.

 Carrying your baby. Most people in the world don't have strollers, and there is a certain satisfaction to keeping your wee one close to you so it would seem that there would be some advantage to wearing your baby. And indeed there is some research to show that babies that are worn are happier, develop better communication with mother, and exhibit better development in some psychological areas. Again, your baby will be fine if you can't or don't want to wear it.  Especially when you are training for a marathon. 

No room for strollers in here.  

Co-sleeping. Cuddling with your babies is nice. It may also be safer. 


Here are a few ideas for future research.

Diaper Free. Pampers were invented the year my brother was born (1962), yet we millennial and gen x parents act like revolutionaries for using "cloth" diapers.  Still much of the children in the world will never see a diaper.  Not everybody can afford 50 cents every time baby pees, or can do a whole wash every day.  I don't know of any research that suggests any developmental benefits of forgoing diapers, but I do like to let my boys air out as much as possible.  I do not see this catching on in the West.  

My cave baby, temporarily diaper free

Freezing your baby. Icelanders' babies sleep outside in the winter, and they have low crime and an above average lifespan.  Is there a correlation?

I hadn't necessarily planned on tackling all of that in one post, but hopefully it will set the way for me to explore much of these topics in more depth in the future. That's ADD for you.  Sometimes when you get going, you really get going.  Someday I'll learn to read back through what I've read and do some editing.  Enjoy!

Villa P, Roebroeks W (2014) Neandertal Demise: An Archaeological Analysis of the Modern Human Superiority Complex. PLoS ONE 9(4): e96424. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0096424

1. Wynn JG, 
2. et al.

 (2013) Diet of Australopithecus afarensis from the Pliocene Hadar Formation, Ethiopia. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110:10495–10500.