Today I made / bought / learnt (for a post oil world) 4

[americandream]

Brilliant!

I made a solar charger for my mp3 player out of broken garden lights:

Just needs a bit of duct tape for that slick professional look.

[rangerone314]

I installed more fencing and bird netting and increased the chicken run area from 288 sqFt along the western woods to 600 sqFt. I will expand the chicken run area until I figure out how much grass 18 chickens can handle without destroying to the ground.

I did a lot of weeding in the fruit tree bed and moved wide logs to serve as boundaries between the mulched fruit tree & perennial bed and the grassy area. I emptied the buckets of weeds and put that in the chicken coop as fresh material for the open bottom.

Moved the last 3 kiwi vines to my new vine area behind the shed above the stream... the west vine area has 6 kiwi vines and 3 grape vines, and the east vine area has has grape vines.

[frankthetank]

Hope i made the right decision in refinancing our mortgage. Drop about 1.5% off the interest rate (15yr)... I figure we could be rid of it in 7 years if we pay a little extra each month... Kind of a rip off that its costs $1000+ to refinance...

[PeakOiler]

Hope i made the right decision in refinancing our mortgage. Drop about 1.5% off the interest rate (15yr)... I figure we could be rid of it in 7 years if we pay a little extra each month... Kind of a rip off that its costs $1000+ to refinance...

Yes, you made the right decision. Yeah, refinancing fees are too high. But keep making those extra payments and eliminate that mortgage asap.

[PeakOiler]

Today I bought 20 pounds of sugar for the peach wine and to prepare more peach jam.

Too bad I can't grow sugar cane here...

[Ludi]

Working on another hugelkultur, this one a bit larger.



It took 3 wheelbarrows of old logs, sticks, and bark to fill this hole.



Tomorrow I will fill in the gaps with sheep and chicken bedding.

[Ludi]

Hope i made the right decision in refinancing our mortgage. Drop about 1.5% off the interest rate (15yr)... I figure we could be rid of it in 7 years if we pay a little extra each month... Kind of a rip off that its costs $1000+ to refinance...

We saved about $100,000 by refinancing our mortgage at a lower rate and shorter term. The new payment is significantly lower, enabling us to generally make two payments a month. I doubt you will regret the decision to refinance!

[Ludi]

Here's the bed with two wheelbarrows of poop and old hay:



I'm giving it a long soak with the sprinkler, then in the next couple days I'll top it with soil and plant something, probably melons.

[PrestonSturges]

Air layering of fig trees seems to be working well. I stuck low hanging branches into holes cut in the sides of flimsy 6 inch plastic pots full of dirt back in late May. After a couple months, the branches seem to be anchored in the pots, and some of the pots have sent roots down into the soil. So that's a half dozen new fig plants of several varieties, and success rate seems to be near 100%.

I'll probably put them into 5 gallon buckets after Labor Day.

[rangerone314]

This weekend I moved the sage & western mugwort to one side of the pool deck area (after removing the weeds). The underside of the pool deck will be used as a sweat lodge...

After discovering the sage in its old location in the herb bed was located next to a yellow jackets nest, I dedicated myself to riping out the bush that was there (using rope with a noose) and managed to pull out the trunks and roots out of the bush until the paper nest was exposed and used up the last of the bugspray on the nest, then later on used a plastic baseball bat to crush the stragglers.

Then I planted a butterfly plant and a yellow echinacea in my fruit tree bed, 3 more strawberries into the blueberry bed, and moved some common mugwort and common wormwood into the other side of the pool deck area. (Mugwort & wormwood can be rather rangy which is one reason why I moved them from the herb bed by the house)

I bought 2 large sweet woodruff plants to use as a shady perennial ground cover on the berm that protects the southside of the house from waterflow after a heavy rain.

[argyle]

Some updates..

Bathroom finished.. (Have some electrical work still to do, but should be completed this evening)
Mini-kiwi's are going great (they grow really well, and even had to prune some back already, and of those "branches" i was able to start 3 new plants :D ) Hope to gaine some fruit in 2-3 years..
Hatched 4 & 8 chicks of Bantham Wyandottes (4 are 6weeks old, the other 3 weeks).
Mowed the meadown (an acre) for the first time and now have hay for the future (maybe in autumn) goats..
On a side note, manager put in my promotion-request (more income to spend on the homestead) and it's looking good.. (will be reviewed in Oct).
Also got me a bunch of hardwarestore goods from brankrupties (plywood, boards of pinewood (furinture making), and all kinds of small plumbing, electrical tools/supplies, woodworking tools/supplies).

Still need to fence the meadown (planned for Aug-Nov) with a chainlink fence, build a chicken coop for this year.. If time allows I will buy some geese also this year.. Going to provide them with a small concrete pond (fresh water from a well pump), and I'm not sure I can get it done before winter (frost) sets in.. Will also try to put in a trees/bushes in a sort of hedge/thicket around the meadown in autumn. (to provide me with some firewood when needed in the future, and to keep out prying eyes)
Next year I'll try build the greenhouse (recuperated windows), and start up the orchard..

[PeakOiler]

Today I bought a ladybug house and 1,500 ladybugs. I'll use the house as a template to make more of them myself. I hope the 1,500 ladybugs survive the shipping experience because they have a lot of aphids to eat on my citrus trees.

In the meantime, I've been spraying the aphids off the trees with pressurized city water which helps, but the aphids will return in a week.

The next thing I need to buy is some boric acid to control some ants "farming" the aphids on the citrus.

[IslandCrow]

Yesterday we had a hand-pump installed on an old (almost un-used) well. This will mainly be for the garden at this stage. We are at risk of mini-droughts and this summer emptied the rain water collection systems (including a pond) and still could have used more water.

The side use will be for emergency water supplies if the village system goes down (like every time there is an extended power cut). However, as the well has not been used for a while any water for our use will have to be first filtered and boiled.

Of course, once the pump was installed we had a good amount of rain

Financially this seems a waste of money...the cost would equal about 40 000 buckets of water from the village system, at the current prices! That is one hugh lot of watering-can loads, so to cover costs I will break my back! In a few years I will legally be required to put in a new waste water system or hook up to the village system which will more than double the cost of water (processing waste water costs more than getting fresh water...our village system fresh water comes from a natural spring so doesn't need heavy chemical input). However, the cost was not too high when one considers the security of having a water supply in the case of power failure (or other causes of the village system being cut).

[vtsnowedin]

After discovering the sage in its old location in the herb bed was located next to a yellow jackets nest, I dedicated myself to riping out the bush that was there (using rope with a noose) and managed to pull out the trunks and roots out of the bush until the paper nest was exposed and used up the last of the bugspray on the nest, then later on used a plastic baseball bat to crush the stragglers.

.

After sundown yellow jackets are all in the nest and a cup of gasoline works wonders. Just pour over the top of the paper nest ,let soak a minute and throw on a match. If the nest is in a place where there is danger from fire like hanging under your deck you can slip a plastic bag over it and twist it off then move out into the open, add gas and light.
On topic... Today I bought a new chainsaw to replace my ten year old one that couldn't take the ethanol in the gas anymore. With accessories and spare chain it came to just under $500. Cuts like a whirlwind which is good as a thunder/hail/ micro burst storm tipped over twenty five mature maple and ash trees here last week. My loss was minor compared to some others. A neighbor has a two foot thick maple tree sitting across the roof of his new sugarhouse where the cupolo used to be and a house down in the village lost its roof and has over $100K of water damage.

[rangerone314]

Pyro that I am, and as amusing as it would have been to incinerate those little yellow demons, the nest was only 2-3 feet from the house, and surrounded by small twigs, dry mulch & dried leaves... the yellow jackets might have not been the only residents removed by that method...

[PrestonSturges]

Pine oil just crushes insects. I used to get big jugs of 10% pine oil at costco, dilute it to 1%, and it was sudden death to bees and hornets. In a spray bottle, it knocks them right out of the air. I think it goes straight into their waterproof breathing pores and drowns them in terpenes. 5 gallons of 1% pine poured down the hole should end your problems. I never tried it in a pressure washer, but that would be a hoot.

[efarmer]

Very cool to know. Does it work on ants? I have some gallons of 100% citrus terpenes and I will make a spray bottle to try it out.

[PrestonSturges]

Very cool to know. Does it work on ants? I have some gallons of 100% citrus terpenes and I will make a spray bottle to try it out.

The only time I was tempted to try it on ants was ants in the porch, and someone said that they might flee into the house. But I think it would work on ants.

In my experiments with organic insecticides, I doused an ant in vodka. It seemed to kill the ant immediately. But after about 15 minutes it stood up, groomed itself shakily, and went staggering off to ask its buds "Duuude, who did I go home with last night?"

[careinke]

I bought a 40 foot used shipping container. It has a one year leak guarantee and doors at either end. It will allow me to stop paying for offsite storage for a savings of $240.00 per month. So it pays for itself in 17 months. Not a bad return on my investment.

I am going to paint it white, and attach my (Hoop) greenhouse to it. So I'll get a lot of nice reflection in the green house and the green house will be larger. Now i'm thinking of that 320 square feet of flat roof collecting rain water at the top of my garden, I could also put my solar panels up on the roof......

Seems every time I do something, I get a couple more projects.

[PeakOiler]

I mounted a ladybug house under a step on the front deck near the strawberries, grape vines, and potted citrus:



Today I picked up the package of 1500 ladybugs at the post office.

Release the hounds!

When I opened the plastic container of ladybugs right at the citrus branches, they started crawling out onto the branches and also up my hand and arm! I gently blew them off of me onto the citrus and grape vines.

I was humming the theme song to the movie "Jaws" while I did this.


I read that a ladybug can eat up to 100 aphids per day.

I've been watching the battle all morning and it appears that some of the ladybugs are gorged. (Many are now idle.)