[geeks] Greenery and brambles...

[Mike Hebel]

I actually enjoy talking about this stuff quite a bit but have done very 
little of it.  Drop me a note off-list as I do have some questions - 
particularly about growth rates.

Mike Hebel

Chris Hedemark wrote:
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> On Sunday, October 27, 2002, at 09:54 PM, Mike Hebel wrote:
> 
>> I'm actually thinking hydroponics when we finally get an apartment.  
>> not as simple as a garden but far more flexible.  I actually like 
>> tending plants.
> 
> 
> Have you ever heard of aquaponics?  It takes the hydroponics idea to the 
> next level, using a second crop (fish, usually) to create waste products 
> to feed your hydroponic crop.  It's a bit more self sufficient than 
> hydroponics or aquaculture alone, and increases your diversity in the 
> process.  I haven't done it myself yet, but it seems merit further 
> investigation.  Having until recently been a major aquarium wonk, I know 
> all too well the benefits of fish poop on the veggie garden.
> 
>> Count me green-eyed. ;-)  You realize that if the property is that 
>> diverse you could probably make some side money by selling freshly 
>> dried herbs on the 'net.
> 
> 
> Never really thought of that.  Hmm.   Are you familiar with square foot 
> gardening?  It's basically high-density raised bed gardening, usually 
> using 4'x4' plots that are a foot deep.  Plant very densely, where the 
> individual plants are actually in competition with one another for 
> space.  With tomatoes you will get smaller fruits (but more of them) per 
> square foot of garden space.  I suspect herbs will not suffer nearly as 
> much in such confinement, especially the mints.
> 
> I've got enough space here, certainly, to make a go of it.  Whatever the 
> case, I'm sure it would pay me better right now than IT work has for the 
> last 16 months (which is how long ago I was laid off from a sinking 
> dot-bomb, and still today looking for gainful employment).
> 
>> Actually we have mulberries in the back yard.  The raspberry bush in 
>> the back had to be removed due to it's overgrowth of the telco pole 
>> that happens to be in the corner of our yard.
> 
> 
> Which brings us full circle, to the original suggestion of using it as a 
> sort of natural fence at the edge of your property.
> 
>> I just remembered a time when I lived in Chicago as a kid.  Myself an 
>> a few friends were eating the mulberries off of a large and old tree 
>> when some lady came by and yelled at us trying to convince us that 
>> they were poisonous.  She went so far as to call the police on us who 
>> stopped by, looked at what we were eating, and told the lady to leave 
>> us alone. lol!
> 
> 
> Too funny.  I'm convinced the average American would have starved to 
> death if the predictions of Y2K had really come to pass.  While I'm sure 
> I would have lost a lot of weight (which is a good thing), I'd get by 
> okay.  That is, unless I had to eat octopus.  Yeck.  Tried it for the 
> first time just the other night, and while the flavor wasn't disturbing 
> to me, the texture of it going down my throat triggered a gag reflex and 
> the bugger wouldn't go down.  How the Japanese do it, I'll never know.
> 
>> Suburbia west of Chicago.  It's starting to get too built up for my 
>> tastes.  If I can get us out of this house I'll set something up.  
>> Right now I don't have enough space.  I'm still hoping to find a 
>> remote industrial building (with some property) that I can renovate 
>> but that's a long time down the road.
> 
> 
> How much space is "not enough space"?  I think my house is pretty modest 
> (only 1500 s.f.) and I manage to keep the whole Yonder Way Museum of 
> Obsolete Technology, a couple of dozen chameleons (and from time to time 
> their offspring), as well as a number of potted plants (all edible) 
> inside the house.  I also have a deck off the back of the house, not too 
> large but it is a good ten feet above the ground since I'm on a slightly 
> sloped lot, and any of the herbs that will benefit from having lots of 
> vertical space to hang their long branches and runners will go in boxes 
> on the edge of the deck.
> 
> A parcel of yard space the size of a child's sandbox, four foot by four 
> foot square, will yield you 32 ears of corn.  Using intensive planting 
> methods, imagine what a small amount of space could provide you with in 
> terms of, say, zuchini or tomato (especially if provided with cages for 
> climbing & support).  The typical gardening method of planting crops in 
> widely separated rows doesn't make sense.  Why can the plants within a 
> row tolerate close proximity, but the plants in two different rows have 
> to be so far apart?  For a small gardener, it is *not* necessary to 
> apply large scale agribusiness logic to 16 square feet of land.
> 
>> Either that of build Dr. Quest's cabin complex somewhere. ;-)
> 
> 
> Oh yeah.
> 
> I already got a sort-a "Bandit".  See 
> http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/bulldogphotos8.htm first dog, top of the page.
> 
>> Frankly I can learn to live anywhere but I prefer lots of space 
>> between myself and my neighbors.
> 
> 
> That's precisely why I picked up that 36 acre woodlot.  When I bought it 
> five years ago, it was on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.  Today, 
> the roads are all paved, the neighbors have big brick homes with paved 
> driveways (very unusual to have paved driveways in the rural southeast), 
> shopping megaplexes are going up nearby, and yet I still have my 36 
> nearly undeveloped acres as a buffer.  The stuff I'm doing here on an 
> acre and a half is an experiment. I'll make my mistakes here so that 
> when I get to the big lot, I'll have a better idea of what works and 
> what doesn't work.
> 
> If you enjoy talking about this stuff, I've been writing about it for 
> years on my web site but I bailed out when the Y2K nuts came out.  I 
> just recently started back up again and need to repopulate from all of 
> my old articles and lots of new ones as well (I backed up the old 
> articles before I took it down).  I dunno how long this sort of topic 
> can be tolerated on a computer geeks list.  ;-)
> 
> Chris Hedemark
> Hillsborough, NC
> http://yonderway.com
> 
> 
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