Digging fall carrots Nov 13

This is an update on my three winter gardening explorations:

Fall crop.This experiment was to plant carrots, beets and chard in late July for fall harvest. I had old seed, so I over-seeded and became challenged to thin and weed effectively. Nonetheless I got all three crops to produce. I gambled with the weather leaving the crop in the ground (unmulched) into November. Animals ate the beet leaves in October and the chard leaves after that. The ground froze before I got all the beets and carrots pulled, I assume the chard is lost, the beets and carrots are an open question.

Digging fall beets Nov 13

LESSONS: The usual challenge of other activities keeping me from weeding and thinning; mulching with leaves or straw and a light row cover would probably have extended the harvest and kept away animals; the harvest needs to be finished before the freeze (or better protection is needed).

Greenhouse crop. November 1, inspired by Square Foot Gardening, I planted a 2×4 foot bed to carrots, leaf and romaine lettuce, beets, chard and spinach.  Individual seeds were planted at recommended their spacing.

The bed is on a bench in my (poorly insulated) greenhouse, a 2×6 frame filled with amended soil sitting on a heating pad set for 70F.  Four full spectrum fluorescent lights were 6 inches above the soil on a timer from 5AM to 7PM. Carrots and leaf lettuce came up fine. The romaine and chard did not germinate, and the spinach only poorly. I replanted spinach mid-November (no more chard seed). One spinach from the first planting seemed to be doing OK and then about Thanksgiving got wilty.

December 1 I raised the lights to 18 inches, and wrapped a plastic curtain around the lights making a terrarium of the bed and lights. The spinach recovered, perhaps due to the increased air temp and humidity.  Three leaf lettuce plants were coming along slowly.  The carrots continued slowly.

Mid-December, after reading Coleman’s 4-season gardening, I replanted spinach, romaine and leaf lettuce at Coleman’s 1” row spacing. One of the original leaf lettuce failed after Christmas due to lack of water (its hard to water in the confines of the terrarium).

January 3 I harvested 3-4 spinach and 3-4 leaf lettuce leaves to start an experiment in regeneration. Lights and heating pad draw (on average) 0.110 KW, lights only draw 0.062 KW (measured by WattMeter). So, my energy cost Nov 1 – Jan 1 was   0.11KW * 24hrs/day * 61day * $0.07689/kwhr = $12.38 (An interesting experiment but spendy for a handful of lettuce leaves.)

I’ve now turned off the heater to see how things grow with the light (and its heat) only.

Dec 2 (31 days since planting)

Dec 14 (looking west)

Dec 31 (looking east)

LESSONS: Heated growing space is costly and plants need to be planted densely and then thinned for eating as they grow. Carrots at 3” spacings need to be interplanted with something faster growing. The goal is to cover every square inch of soil with edible leaves as quickly and completely as possible, then retreat the number of plants as the plant size increases.

Cold Greenhouse crop. Based on more Coleman reading, on January 1 I planted in my hoop house under a cloche and a wire frame covered with row covering. Spinach, leaf and romaine lettuce, and beets and carrots. The first question will be can I get germination.

I’ve been doing a bit of reading over the holidays, Bernstein’s Aquaponic Gardening, Coleman’s The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses and some of the blogsphere including Roberts’ Brutal Logic posts here  and here as well as some discussion about the “marketing” of climate change with scare tactics like Roberts vs. a gentler approach to reach the electorate, see two sides here and here.  I’ve also glanced into some alternate perspectives including Worstall at Forbes arguing that delay in addressing climate change can save money (I think his logic is faulty). Also supporting the go-slow path a friend recently wrote me “But considering that 50% of American’s make less then $26,000 a year [what with] buying food and paying rent…well there isn’t money for those high end [climate saving] purchases. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip.”

I’ve got my monthly utility bills from Avista for gas and electricity in 2010 and 2011 which gives me some baseline. Avista’s electricity comes from a mix of fuels, including coal, gas and nuclear. They give information that should let me adjust my KWH to the fraction that is carbon-based. I don’t have records of gallons of gasoline purchased. My house is heated with wood, which raises some different issues about pollution and I have no handle on the amount of wood I use or its carbon content. And then there is the issue of adjusting my use of heating energy to account for the weather in the 2011 and 2012 heating seasons. Avista gives degree days in its bills but with a wood stove, there are days when you just don’t heat because you are not around to stoke the stove.

So, I am going to make my Resolution more specific:

Regarding gasoline – I will track how many miles I drive and how much gas I use and return to this challenge in 2013.  I put log books in each vehicle to begin tracking miles and gallons purchased. I can use these logs to also record gas purchases for lawnmower, chain saw and the like.

I previously challenged myself to buy only one tank of gas a month, but that challenge is complicated by having multiple vehicles and by using the in-laws’ vehicles at times. To give me something I can assess for 2012, I will aim to buy no more that 150 gallons of gas for the white car and blue truck I drive and for my various gas powered tools. Bicycling around Moscow has shaved my waistline, this is a path to continue.

Regarding electricity and natural gas – Last January I was thinking about these issues in terms of “buy local” and how to shift my purchases from Avista to spending locally. I have experimented enough with a clothesline in the greenhouse that I can see some reduction in electricity use. I need to build on this effort to reduce our footprint with Avista.

Sharon Cousins has advocated solar ovens enough to get me to try one and to build one, but I’ve not lived with them enough to make any claims that I am substituting solar energy for Avista energy. This is a path to continue. I’ve played with a mud oven and retained heat cooking, again not enough to make any claims about substituting wood as my baking fuel. Recently I found a hybrid idea, retained heat solar oven. Something to explore designing into the shared use commercial kitchen I am building.

In the Peterson Barn Guesthouse, my next steps are probably to use solar to supplement space heating and in our house, I’m working on pre-heating our hot water with solar. Both projects are low budget, a fan and ducting to blow excess warm air from the greenhouse and a homebrew rooftop solar collector.

I believe two things: (1) Peak oil has been reached and (2) human caused climate change is happening. Which means, (1) 20th century ideas of how the world works (powered by petroleum) must be adapted to new ways of living, powered by new energy sources and (2) to prevent the worst impacts of climate change the world needs to act quickly to reduce CO2 production. In Muddling Toward Frugality (1982), Warren Johnson argues that American democracy is best able to make change by slowly “muddling” (with all its contradictions) and that the need for sudden changes threatens democracy. Johnson urges us to start the transition to a new energy and consumption future decades ago. I understand muddling to require taking the time to ask questions, examine assumptions, try experiments and move forward in the fits and starts that opportunity presents. Muddling comes with contradictions inherent in its imperfect process.

When we bought our current house in 1993 I didn’t know about peak oil and global climate change or the term “Smart Growth”. I was attracted to a 1914 farmhouse on a funny shaped parcel of land, part of it zoned “Residential Office,” a commercial designation, and part zoned R2.

The Peterson Barn Guesthouse is a cruck frame barn that I built on the RO zoned lot next to our house. In the 1500’s England was experiencing sufficient deforestation that building with crooked wood became common. I wanted to experiment with that response to resource scarcity, because I knew the modern response is to chip up small and crooked trees and glue them back together. I also planted a stand of cherry, oak and walnut so that my grandchildren would have beautiful timbers when it comes time to replace the Guesthouse.

At the time, I did not realize that by building the Guesthouse I was using Smart Growth principles of increasing the building density on our lot or creating a live-work situation in a B&B next to our house.

Back in the 90’s I discovered that my wife and I owned a lot equal in size to the world’s per capita allotment of arable land. That fact made me think that my lot should be able to raise all my food (at least on average) and I had a responsibility to make my share of land productive. That has been an elusive goal. We now have a large garden, I’m good at growing garlic and potatoes, and learning about tomatoes, grapes, cherries. Because our lot is hilly I planted apple and plum orchards (the peach didn’t work, the pears are fickle). But it turns out that managing the harvest and getting it stored for winter, is even harder than getting it grown. I’m still experimenting with how to organize and prioritize my life to preserve the harvest.

Around 2005 a friend made us a generous offer to partner on a Priest Lake cabin. She would provide the land, I would build a cabin, we’d own it 50-50. Around that time I read Kunsler’s The Long Emergency and concluded that it was a mistake to invest in that project — the deal was based on assumptions about oil and climate that I no longer believed.

Muddling is not a smooth process, situations and events shift its timing and direction. In my case, various plans to green our house and the barn were put on hold when WSU discontinued my position in December 2010. But that change gave me other opportunities to examine how I live and to try new experiments. I didn’t drive much when I was working, I took the bus to WSU, but I was never conscious of how or when I used the car. To become aware, I decided to ride my bicycle much more, and challenged myself to use only one tank of gas per month. I learned it is an easy challenge as long as I stay in town, but our week of family vacation to a friend’s cabin at Priest Lake blew my fuel budget for several months. We could live with less fuel, but as a family we are still muddling with the lifestyle change of not “getting away.”

Unemployment has given me the time to continue my experiments with low-tech cooking, building a new mud oven and a solar oven and tinkering forward toward a solar hot water system. Our Avista bills show that using a clothes line is saving energy, but in muddling fashion, its easier to hang a few barn sheets and towels than to switch my family over to hanging our clothes on the line.

A community’s muddling is not evenly practiced by all its members for many reasons, and I’ve come to believe that what is important is a good public discussion and even a healthy tension that leads to good questions about how we are moving forward. When Mayor Chaney appointed me to me to Moscow’s Planning and Zoning Commission I saw it as a chance to help that muddling process, moving the city toward future development that would be better suited to life without the petroleum and automobile use we’ve known. One of the opportunities for the City that I think is important is the abandoned railroad and industrial area located between downtown and the UI Campus. Around 1900 the City chose to use that land for railroads and grain industries, a choice that served it well for many years. But now that land is vacant and we get to make a choice for the next 100 years. I’ve explored how to create a mixed use development on that site, with higher density residential, live-work and commercial development but the economy and my lack of personal resources make it hard to see how to get started.

Shelley Bennett has argued that Eastside Marketplace is a neighborhood commercial center. I agree and spent time just after she bought the Mall helping her getting people to a community meeting to share visions for what is needed there. I never really thought about a food desert, but being able to walk to a grocery and several restaurants ensures I don’t live in one. Living close to Eastside is a demonstration of what I think are Smart Growth principles. Where Shelley and I disagree is I don’t think the neighborhood character of Eastside is enhanced by a regional shopping facility such as the Super Walmart proposed in 2005. The scale of that development seems to be to be poor planning in the context of what I believe about peak oil and climate change. Its not the way I think the City should commit its land for the next 100 years. It seems to me it would be wiser (as a UI student proposed at the time) to add mixed use residential to the SE of the Eastside and increase the number of people who can walk or bicycle to Eastside’s neighborhood shopping.

A conversation with Darin Saul at UI’s Sustainability Center got me thinking about the role of technology enabled communications. Historically, communication for collaboration in the marketplace was managed internal to large corporations. They set prices, decided when and what to buy and sell. What I realized from Darin is that the Internet and mobile technologies are keys to new forms of market collaboration. Perhaps these tools can lead to new means of market-making where small producers can meet the needs of a diverse array of consumers.

As we transition away from petroleum I don’t think we will go back to the horse and buggy used by the builders of my house — we will leave petroleum with science and technology and communications tools that we’ve developed for a future we are still inventing.

Back in June I wrote this summary of my thinking about what to do now about climate change. I think it is a description of my own muddling: grab the low hanging fruit, try to avoid locking in the wrong long-term choices, and resurrect old knowledge and methods to test how they might apply today. Inherent in that will be contradictions, things that ideally would be changed, but practically aren’t changeable now. I reconcile those contradictions by hoping we are always asking good questions and challenging old assumptions.

It was a project made of scraps. I had the plywood box from a WSU Auction. The 1/2 inch reflective insulation was left from building garage doors on Peterson Barn Guesthouse. It took a little practice to recover my (ca. High School) glass cutting skills, but they allowed me to re-use a piece of glass from a defunct cold frame.

The lid still needs a reflective treatment and a means to prop it at an angle to reflect into the box. As it was, I got 3 cups of beans and water to 135F from 11AM till 3PM. Needed another hour simmering on the stove to finish cooking them.

I needed to rotate the box to track the sun. To reduce that need, I want to think about wings that will bounce light from the side — ultimately having a bit of a light funnel.

But my family is less enamored of peppers and does not agree that heat in a pepper is a good thing. So I have been developing discipline and trying to focus trips to the pepper stand on specific goals.

First of course is peach salsa. A good Walla Walla sweet onion and a collection of the sweet and mild peppers. I bring up the heat in just my serving with Tabasco which ensures the widest audience of eaters.

Fire roasted peppers ready for cleaning, dicing and drying for pepper flakes

Then I learned to use the medium peppers, diced and dried, to make flakes to shake on pizza. Turns out, when you have a shaker of peppers on the dining room table there are lots more uses than pizza. I make a year’s supply of flakes (about a cup dried). I clean and dice the peppers then toss them into the food dryer. This year I got the peppers fire roasted at market first. I understand you don’t need to dice, just slice open and clean out but the drying takes longer – then you run the peppers in the food processor to flake.

Last year I tried making paprika. They sell the paprika pepper in a couple of heats, I go mild. I dice and dry like the pepper flakes above then toss into the blender until powdery. The bits come out in a range of sizes, I just pretend that I run a fancy restaurant and this is a feature.

This year I experimented with pepperochinos. I like them when I find them in salad bars. Krista was making refrigerator Dilly beans, and I guessed that the same technique would work. Cut peppers into bite-sizes and put in a canning jar with one cup white vinegar, one cup water, 1 tsp salt and 3 minced cloves of garlic and a tsp of last years pepper flakes. After a week this is pretty good, and not being heated by canning, the peppers are more crisp than commercial.

Nils,
I have been following your various postings for some time and have a few questions for you that I would appreciate if you answer in a public forum preferably by posting and replying to these questions on your website.
1.      You claim to be a proponent of “Smart Growth”  and yet you live in a large suburban house on a large lot with another smaller house next door. Also, from what I can tell you have a cabin up north. How do you reconcile this?
2.      You claim to be a proponent of various forms of social justice however you seem to support things that arguably would make life more difficult for your average person either in the Moscow Pullman area or in general.  For instance you oppose “big box” stores and “sprawl” but do not explain how smart growth or businesses such as the Coop will make life easier for people of modest means.  Also, along those lines do you have any real research to substantiate your claims? For instance by having restrictive zoning in Moscow and Pullman has that actually reduced environmental impact and housing affordability? Or do the upper middle class folks still own big suburban homes in town while the lower income people have to commute in from elsewhere because they cannot afford to live in the area?
3.      You make a number of commentaries about a variety of subjects ranging from education to environmental policy and economics. Do you have any specific expertise in these areas?
4.      On your Facebook page you mention that you are “gainfully unemployed” and that you are only willing to take a job that fits your desire to be “socially responsible”. I am curious first people who do not have jobs usually cannot afford to live, let alone in big suburban houses, if you are not employed where does your money come from? Second, how do you think that someone like for instance an unemployed mechanic or logger who cannot  find any work even if they are willing to travel and take a job they don’t necessarily like feels about you describing yourself as “gainfully unemployed”?
5.      Many of your positions such as your preference for organic food, or your dislike of cars and any other number of things you seem to support seem honestly to me to be more like fashion statements and icons of an upper middle class individual who has never really been uncomfortable in their life or has not really considered what the world would be like if all of their “preferences” came to complete and total fruition. You also, seem to ignore little hypocrisies of your own existence. As I questioned above you have no problem owning multiple houses or for that matter using highly environmentally intensive electronics  to do most of your work, while at the same time telling the rest of us that we should make do with less. How exactly is this not the same brand of elitism that you seem to accuse many conservatives and other people of?
As I said before I would appreciate you posting and replying to these questions. I believe in holding people accountable for what they say and how they live.
Best regards,
Real Hero

Author : Real Hero (IP: 64.126.173.121 , sa173121.dialup.fsr.net)
E-mail : t9876521@gmail.com
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I’ve given myself a learning task of answering:

1. What am I good at?
2. What do I like to do?
3. What do I want to do with my life?
4. Who should I be talking to about this?

I have been fumbling toward the answer to #3 this spring: Community sustainability in the face of the multiple challenges we face is my broad answer [see What now about climate change]. These interests are probably a circle that connects to or encompasses the focus of the University of Idaho Sustainability initiative. My application for GM at the Moscow Food Co-op job gave a vantage to work on a subset of the problem: community food sustainability. It was interesting because it had a variety of resources at its disposal to work on the issue. Developing South of Downtown Moscow is another subset of the problem — creating more urban land use and development. Moscow Ecovillage, the idea that Christie Beery is exploring is a different take that integrates land use and collaborative living. I connect My Own Home‘s focus on independent living for an aging population to the sustainability notion in terms of less dependence on institutional care. The Transition Town movement is another angle, an effort to build organizations to support community-wide transition to a new energy and climate future.

Who should I be talking to about these ideas?

The meeting used some “unconference” techniques. One activity, early on, was to work in pairs and create Post-it notes with a question, or statement, about badges, e.g., “allow badges to operate as reputation currency.” People were encouraged to generate as many stickies as they wanted. Each team had a different color stack of stickies.

Stickies were posted, randomly, on a wall (photo 1) and then during a break, the group read them and lumped them into groups and gave each of those groupings of post-its a title, e.g., “Badge Discoverablilty” (photo 2)

Later the first afternoon the conference organizers picked 3 of the groupings and invited the audience to divide itself among the 3 topics, nominating a facilitator for each.

On the second day, the organizers posted a grid (rooms and times) (photo 3) and posted a few events into the structure and invited others to post events (which were drawn from the groupings from the previous day). This formed the agenda of sessions for the 2nd day.