Good morning!!!!

[sodamo]

Awesome bounty, Drew

 

[txdon]

With the keyhole garden I can reach anything I grow in the garden. I put a thick layer of cardboard at the bottom to kill all the weeds. On top of that is a layer of anything organic like leaves, sticks, wood chips etc.. Then I put a thick layer of composted cow manure then 8" of top soil on top. The soil at the center will be near the top of the compost barrel at the center of the key hole and sloped down to about 3 inch below the edge. The compost barrel has lots of holes so the gray water from the compost will water my garden. The method of planting was introduced to Africa and is now very popular there since it maximize the use of water and allow for continual composting and building up the soil. Turning over of the soil is only needed once every 5 years to replenish the organic material at the bottom. A keyhole garden the size of mine can give me all the veggies a small family needs except in my case where my lady would probably want me to just plant a lot of hot hot hot pepper! What I usually do is to cut off the bottom of celery, green onions, etc.. and simply stick them in the dirt and soon I'll have more than my lady and I can eat. The last time I did key hole garden, I put 2 slices of heirloom tomatoes in the ground and had so many tomatoes soon afterward.

Not seen in the picture is the door on the compost barrel. I can open the door and shovel out the compost near the bottom if the barrel gets too full.

I just looked up the price for keyhole garden Whooa! This one is $509 and is way smaller than mine.
Cedar Keyhole Garden | RaisedBeds.com

Cajun I have a good colony of black soldier fly larvae to help expedite the composting in the middle of our keyhole garden. We throw about a gallon of vegetable waste in the compost middle each day and it has not filled up in five years. It does not stink. The larvae are making plenty of "tea" for the organic garden. I'll go out and take a pic. Mine is much smaller than yours and I had to put a thatch roof on to protect the tomatoes from excessive heat in July.

I tried to post a pic from my iPhone but the connection is too slow today both from at&t and my wifi internet service. it keeps timing out.

 

[txdon]

Finally took settings off WiFi

 

[daugen]

Awesome bounty, Drew

thanks David. I'm worried about that island of yours.
I hope you have some good gas masks. (my research shows the Israeli military ones, also rated nuclear, are high rated on Amazon)
That "Laze" is bad news. Airborne diluted battery acid
with tiny glass shards inside. Not what the Chamber of Commerce wants to talk about...
The river four miles long of lava going to the sea is amazing.
Those folks who live that close are nuts.
But there always be those who do.

If you own the land, pretty hard to walk away from it.

A keyhole garden, learn something new every day. I like the use of cardboard underneath, natural compost long term.
Thanks Cajun. Your wife loves the hot peppers? Usually the guy.
I have some chocolate habaneros growing, and some other much milder poblano and jalapeno varieties. I tried to pick the mildest hot
peppers I could grow except for those habaneros, those are 400k Scoville. I have to be careful even handling that one.
ER visit for anyone with acid reflux like me.
Can't eat any of them, but everyone seems to like hot peppers around here. Most of mine are on the milder side.
Plus lots of sweet peppers, all of which I'm trying to get to grow vertically.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

66ｰF and another 1.92 inches rain last 24 hours, 1.23 of it since midnight.

Jay, overview of how our water catchment works:

Rain from roof collected by gutters.
First part of collection fills the self draining 1st flush pipes.
Remaining water passes thru my 3 phase prefilter consisting of a course plaster core, a nylon filter, panty hose, then a second like prefilter on way to 4 foodgrade poly tanks, 4K gal each.
Pumped from tanks to pressure tank then filtered
100 micron
20-5 micron
5 micron carbon
1 micron
UV sterilizer light

Pretty clean by time it gets to House.

Prayers for all in need

Be safe
Have a great day

Thanks for the added details, David. Any idea how much flow through the tanks it takes to avoid stagnation probmems? I'm asking because I want to add storage up on the hill above my house, mainly for fire fighting, and I'm trying to decide if I want to plumb it into the home's water system or just run a pipe down from it to a hydrant and keep it separate. I don't use much water outside the watering season, which is June-October, and worry about 10,000 gallons sitting fairly stagnant durning the non-irrigation times. Not a big fan of using chlorine in the storage tanks, and even though they'll be light tight and I'll use a UV filter on anything I drink, I sure don't want anything growing in there...

 

[sodamo]

Thanks Drew

We don’t have any masks. Likely not to get any. I suspect that should an air quality situation make it to us, there’ll be much carnage in its wake.
One thing I find annoying is the misinformation/sensationalism fostered by various news organizations. Got a txt today siting concern that the lava flow had encroached on the nuclear power plant. We don’t have a nuclear power plant, it is Geothermal.

The laze is definitely scary.

Many people live there due to affordability. Locals know and accept the risk. They live there at Pele’s grace. Their attitude is often minimized at the expense of the mainland welfare transplant here to take advantage of the low rent. One “poor” family even said they might be forced to return to Texas.
Local politicians are already posturing to use this event to raise taxes, both the general excise tax and property tax. No hint that fiscal responsibility might also include spending reductions or even restraint.
Cattle owners in the area are scrambling to find new pasture and relocate herds before tragedy.
Locally, the stories run the gamut, the good, the bad, the ugly. At this point, no one has died and apparently the only injury was someone sitting on his lanai and watching the spectacle until he got hit in leg by flying lava.

 

[mostly_gas]

Good evening all. 66F this morning partly cloudy calm wind for first half of day. Wind came up to moderate, Sky start building some "Q" and high temp of 85F. Went to POA meeting recap, voted in runoff election, lunch, Bike ride, then attempted to take pickup into town to get diags run, ABS light and brake light on before I left driveway, 1/2 mile later dash goes out, drive back home engine did not quit. will have wifey follow me into town tomorrow and drop car at dealer.
Prayers for all.

 

[sodamo]

Thanks for the added details, David. Any idea how much flow through the tanks it takes to avoid stagnation probmems? I'm asking because I want to add storage up on the hill above my house, mainly for fire fighting, and I'm trying to decide if I want to plumb it into the home's water system or just run a pipe down from it to a hydrant and keep it separate. I don't use much water outside the watering season, which is June-October, and worry about 10,000 gallons sitting fairly stagnant durning the non-irrigation times. Not a big fan of using chlorine in the storage tanks, and even though they'll be light tight and I'll use a UV filter on anything I drink, I sure don't want anything growing in there...

RNK, truthfully I don’t know. In our tanks, we fill from the top and draw from the bottom. The pump line connects to all the tanks so I imagine all are affected to some extent. Theoretically, we catch about 260k (3150 sf at .6 g/inch/sf X 140 inches/year) gallons per year to fill our 16k tanks, so a lot of overflow/self flushing.
Maybe in your case let the fill also agitate?

 

[lostcreekranch]

Went to vote this morning and, as usual, drove into Columbus to the Colorado County Court House Annex. Walked in and the office where we usually vote ...... was dark? Whuuuu?

Then I snapped to the fact that this was not early voting and I’d have to go to my precinct polling location, City Hall in a Weimar. Doh!

First time, in years that I’d not early voted. 40 mile round trip taught me a lesson. This election was a single vote one, primary runoff for our State Representative. Soooo .... 40 miles to fill in a single oval. Hope my preferred candidate appreciates my efforts?

 

[txdon]

Many people live there due to affordability. Locals know and accept the risk. They live there at Pele’s grace. Their attitude is often minimized at the expense of the mainland welfare transplant here to take advantage of the low rent. One “poor” family even said they might be forced to return to Texas.

How low is the rent? Are you talking about Government Assisted rent or private pay rent? I was always under the impression that it cost more to live in Hawaii.