Bioassay for Bill's manure 2nd try

This time I'm following the document from North Carolina State University more closely.

 (HERBICIDE CARRYOVER IN HAY, MANURE, COMPOST, AND GRASS CLIPPINGS:

Caution to Hay Producers, Livestock Owners, Farmers, and Home Gardeners page 3) 

 P test number two

Mixed three pots of sample material with three parts of combined planting mix to fill six pots each.  Control pots got twice the amount of planting mix. Brands below.

Into each pot I sowed three peas at 1" depth, then tamped the soil down a little and added some water to get them going.  Though the mix was moist, the mix contained the water I sprinkled on top.

Six pots for each test material fit in a seed starting tray. Four trays of six pots fit on the old four-shelf plastic stand which I put in the heated family room to sprout, then on to the cooler greenhouse to grow out.

The test is over when three sets of true leaves have developed.  If all plants and the control look healthy, the material is good to go.

Materials:

Organics Vigorous organic garden soil

Dr. earth motherland all purpose planting mix

Cedar Grove potting soil

CFO cow manure

Mule stable sweepings top

Mule stable sweepings middle

Ferry-Morse Sugar snap peas- three envelopes, mixed together.

24 6-inch pots

4 seed starting trays

If the peas do well, I guess I'll keep them in the greenhouse for an early-spring treat when they ripen.

Peavey, log jack, and a log with wheels, still won't tow

Got the brand new peavey and log jack from Fedex today- required some assembly. (BTW what sadist decided to use a bolt with a 5/8" hex head with a locknut that is 11/16?  took me three trips to the tool bench to get it right!) Once assembled I tried them on the log that has been stranded at the side of the driveway since the first week in January. Now that is one big log, but I was able to use the two to roll the log, and using all my weight I got the thing onto the log jack.  Now I wanted to try out the invention I've been working on since then- wheels for the back end so that I could hitch the front to my trailer hitch and tow it "effortlessly" to  new location.

Top to Bottom: Peavy, Log Jack. Come-Along

Back wheels did make it- needed some longer 3/4" pipe for alignment bars, but proof of concept great so far.  But the front end didn't hitch up the way I thought it would.  My tow ball is so low that the log cannot hang on it without dragging on the ground. I did manage to rig up an a-frame ladder with a come-along to lift it above the hitch, but didn't have a way to mount it there.

Left: towed end of log, Right the trailer hitch.  Never the twain met today.



Brainstorm ideas:

1. Maybe I can get a tow hitch like they use with jacked-up pickups with a long drop, except turn it upside-down to get it higher.

2. Maybe I can use a hitch without a ball (just the hole) and put a lag bolt into the log end, then drop it onto the hole in the tow hitch to form a pivot joint. Remove the lag bolt at the log's destination. Problem with this one is I am incapable of turning the nut under the ball* to get the darn thing off, so it would have to be a new bar for the 2" socket.  *no kidding, the best wrench I have won't budge it.


3. Wait and see whether the arrangements in the garden tractor back end are conducive to another solution.

Since (1) and (2) require a trip into town I opted for (3) for the night.

In the long term (2) seems most elegant if I can rig it. First drill, then turn in lag screw.  Lift it and place in hitch, using a-frame ladder and come-along, then lift back end for wheel installation the same way, with the hitched end adding stability.

Snow Day up the creek

We thought we'd go to the firemen's pancake breakfast and then church. We ended up with some time on our hands, so we bought some hardware and went home to drop it off, then dash off to church. What we didn't plan on: going home to drop off some hardware the rain turned into a blizzard and the road's getting slick. Not a good idea to leave home again. For the record, it's not snowing in Cottage Grove, just at Folly Up The Creek. I think that by afternoon the snow will be gone, but who knows?

Yesterday the new weather station arrived, and a draw knife as well.  I was planning to put it up today, and that was what the hardware was to be for.  But there's too much weather out there just now.

Also ready for delivery are the lawn tractor and the gas-powered chipper-shredder from Jerry's. Just need to have them delivered, maybe tomorrow or Tuesday.

Since the pea test was inconclusive, I will have to do another test.  I picked up some pots yesterday, and some more seed, and I will try to get them started  today.  Also I have a plan B for fir sawdust and manure by the truckload from Boyce Brothers- and I will need to get a sample of their manure to run in this test as well.  

I'm looking into getting some large rocks to make the border for the blueberry patches. I plan to make a small retaining wall with the rocks and backfill it with dug up clay soil and sawdust, I already ordered 6 bare root blueberry bushes- and hope they will arrive this week.

Pea sprout test- first try

Abstract:

I might have waited a little too long in this test, or made the extracts too concentrated; but it does have some qualitative information which I can make use of.  Some seeds were rotting to the point of dissolving away- yet among these there were others which looked healthy enough. Sprouting discount store seed raises its own questions concerning baseline viability, though using the control did factor out some of the baseline morbidity due to materials and my methods.

The purpose of the test was to see whether the mule stable sweepings offered to me, and the CFO cow manure on the same property, were free enough of herbicide to grow a garden.  Since peas are said to be more sensitive, I thought I would try sprouting peas to see if some failed to sprout. (see article)

Method:

For the mule stable sweepings and the CFO cow manure I took a half-cup of material to be tested and soaked it in an equal amount of water for 48 hours, then decanted the water to soak the peas for two days.  Then I placed them between damp paper towels, each in their own container, and kept the towels moist by adding a few drips of tapster as necessary.  The "water" sample was straight tap water sourced in my well.  The broadleaf sample was taken inside the square area where grass doesn't seem to grow; and the "grass" was taken in a particularly grassy area in the meadow at large.  For these samples, I dug a hole and used the water that seeped into the hole- in this season the hole refilled itself with water within 8 inches of the top in the grassy area, and completely filled the hole in the broadleaf plot.

Results:

None of the samples had all seeds sprout.  The control had an 80% sprout rate; all samples were compared with this rate as a baseline.  So in the following data set the "water" batch is shown to be 100% when compared with itself.

(compared to control)
water	100%
mule top	69%
mule middle	81%
cow	63%
Grass	86%
Broadleaf	38%

Analysis:

Looking a the results it appears that sprouting may be inhibited in every sample.  Maybe it could be the concentration of the amendments in water was too high. The middle, older mule sweepings looked pretty good, comparatively.  It was surprising to me that the grassless area inhibited sprouting the most.

Conclusions:

 For the most part, this test was unsatisfactory and inconclusive. I'm faced with the desire to get some kind of results but a universal drop in viability points to a problem,  I'm tempted to, as one of my instructors put it, "torture the data until it confesses," but I can't say anything with confidence. Picking out the extremely low viability of the broadleaf sample I must reluctantly conclude that the broadleaf sample may have been treated with something that peas do not like. I must do another test more like that described in the linked article to learn anything more.

Looking up info for this article, I found this article from the North Carolina State College of Agriculture. https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/herbicide-carryover.  It seems to be the source of the info I've been hearing, or one of the sources; and according to the article I didn't do it right; and need to monitor growth until at least three sets of true leaves develop- far more than checking whether they would sprout or not.

2/23

Here on our homestead, which we're starting to call "Folly up the Creek", time passes differently.  Yesterday I spent some of the wee hours awake and active, then fell asleep until 9am, when I found MM making the morning fire instead of me- 

It was time to record the reading on the electric meter- we're monitoring our daily use- and the news was good.  We're well within our allowance of 50 KWH, averaging about 25, after our binge in early January that got us over 100 KWH a day until we figured out how much it was costing to keep the house warm day and night on electricity alone.  Now we have turned the thermostat pretty much off, use wood to keep the central room warm, and rely on blankets to get us through the night- and we're perfectly comfortable.

 We got our breakfast cooked and eaten and it was already late; I got dressed in my long johns and overalls and boots and ready to go out, but first there was some business we got caught up in; returning and reordering a weather station that will work with the Weather Underground to measure and track the weather.  By the time we got that taken care of, having gotten the cost of a system that would do what we wanted from $600 to $350, it was time to stoke the fire and make a late lunch.

After tuna and crackers with tomato, apples, and dilly beans, sitting together at the dining room table once more, there was the other backlog of tools and equipment I needed to get ordered, and our medical and dental insurance that is getting completely replaced thanks to our move, and garden planning.  

We were treated to a freakish hailstorm, in which the BB sized hail just fell straight down like sugar crystals without a trace of wind, making white patches in the grass like grey hairs at the temples of the lawn; we stoked the fire again, and then the hail was over and melted as though nothing had happened.  

Somewhere in there I finally got the tools for making mortise and tenons for roundwood furniture ordered, and a peavey, and bare root blueberry bushes, and soil block maker with some bagged soil to get me started on tomatoes.  I didn't get the lawn tractor I've been researching on order over some concerns with an attachment system called a sleeve mount; I will need to go to Eugene to see it for myself and confirm that the model we're ordering comes with such a feature, or start over.  

Somewhere in there MM made a Bundt cake in the fancy pan she bought at the thrift store.

I went to the garage and worked for a time replacing some lamps and mounting another array of lights to dispel the shadows in the workbench area, while the rice cooked, And then it was dinnertime, and I steamed pot stickers with rice and veggies.  

Over dinner and beyond we got caught up on our Facebook posts, MM did some washing up, and I spent an hour on the phone with Grace and Orah on speaker phone.  MM brought me a slice of cake to enjoy while we talked, and then it was bed time.  

I never got outside, except to get another load of firewood.

I peeled off my layers and layers and washed up, then we crawled under two comforters and two blankets and we were off to sleep, another day passed.

And that was our catch-up day at Folly-up-the-creek.  Tomorrow I'm going to Eugene I guess to check out the lawn tractor; another time-suck.  But better to be sure than to have attachments and so forth that don't fit.

And shopping for that used pickup truck I need: always put off.  I have to get on that.

My test of the viability of the mule stable sweepings- good to go. Muleskinner Bill has a team of mules that have a lot of sweepings piling up out back, basically sawdust with "enhancements".  He offered me as much as I wanted- I want about three dump trucks of it- and I have to arrange to get it picked up and delivered here.  Looks like that project is coming due- I'll be needing it soon for the next project I have in mind.

The hoop house- about a 10 by 16 foot frame needing a plastic covering and some soil to be built- I have already covered the weedy floor with two layers of the cardboard boxes we used to move here.  Next is six inches of stable sweepings and then I can cover it.  Later it will be where I have tomatoes and other plants that need some extra care and warmth in the summer.

Also a partial list:

- harvesting poles and downed trees from the forest as posts for deer proof garden fence and as firewood.

-seeding the meadows with wildflowers

-building acidic soil beds for blueberries and rhododendrons 

-building Spring and summer garden plots with deer fences

-mapping the site and analysis of soil pH, drainage, and fertility

-laying out contours and planning swales, ponds, and orchard trees

-cleaning up the yurt and making it habitable

-building a portable chicken house

-clearing out spaces for camping- 

-building a bridge near the yurt over the creek

-building small foot bridges over gullies in the meadow.

-building a skiddable compost toilets for yurt and "Peter Pan's village"

-bringing up/ chipping the huge antediluvian brush piles to build fertility in the meadows

-planting some fruit trees.

-laying out a labyrinth.

-clearing some paths through the forest, around the property line.

2/17/2017

Signs of the Seasons:
Yesterday, after a heavy rain, MM noticed frogs chirping from the back door, in the direction of the road.

Work in progress:
Found a virtual unlimited source of sawdust mule stable sweepings, aged 1-3 years, and cow manure, not aged, from Bill's ranch.  Running a test to see if snow peas will sprout in it.
What I believe is the former garden has distinct difference in vegetation. Little grass, much more broadleaf. I collected water from holes dug in the areas.  Water level was at the surface in the garden, and about 8" deep on hillside.

I have bought and built a walk-in greenhouse for starts- and a few different types of potting soil to test with soil blocker. Still too cold with occasional freezes for me to try starting anything.  Exposed some large worms in the grassy area digging the hole- a good sign.

I'm gathering materials to sheath the hoop house. I will reuse some of the polycarbonate siding from 921 for the lower area, and a 16 foot square of nursery film for the top. All I need are u-bolts for the 1x4's that make the transition and to frame in the door at one end, to get started.

Bought push-pull garden dump cart. Took me a day to assemble it. Hauled 3 loads of maple leaves to the compost bin out back.

Checked out caged trees in lower meadow. They're in bad shape; all overrun with weeds and many cages with no trees within.  Can't figure out species what any of the living trees are; plus the exposure of the  trees is not likely to get them much sun. Decided not to do anything until I can identify the trees, beyond a little weeding. Maybe they like shade.

Many fallen trees and saplings- need to get some forestry done.  For this to happen I need the generator working and also a winch to pull the logs out of the tangle, and somehow to drag the logs into a central location.  I have stalled in the winch installation over a few bolts I need, plus some grinding to make the fairlead work better.  The generator needs to have oil topped off before I can use it- and damned if I can find the fill or dipstick hole. I need the lawn tractor and the pickup truck for hauling materials even more now. Bonus: the new garden cart is towable.

Everywhere I dig, the soil is full of clay.  This is new to me.  Permaculture wisdom is to add organic material, which is definitely on my list.  Everywhere, the ground is saturated, with water puddling up in the plot where I wanted a vegetable garden off the back patio.  I think I will claim all the stable sweepings I can get, and use raised beds to plant in, if the sweepings pass the test.

I'm concerned that the water is not penetrating the ground deep enough on the hillside and the meadow- I suppose this is all the more reason to do deep trenched swales filled with woody debris.  Digging these swales will have to wait until the soil is not so saturated, I'm afraid.  Which begs the question: can I get some trees planted this year?