this is terrifying

Root system of field bindweed (can be up to 20 feet deep), Convolvulus arvensis.
Redrawn from B. F. Kiltz. 1930. J. Amer. Soc. Agron. 22:216-234.

We've been in an almost constant struggle with bindweed since planting our annual beds. It leaves me wondering: Is there some permaculture-based reasoning to embrace bindweed? Not that I know of. I read that it is possible to eliminate bindweed from cultivated areas after 3–5 years of dedicated removal.

Predictably, there is almost no bindweed in our sheet mulched beds. But most of the annual beds we planted were in the existing soil since it is relatively good soil that was already tilled and cultivated in past years. Plus, it takes a lot of effort to accumulate materials for sheet mulching, so we started small.

Well, we will continue to remove every root segment of bindweed that we find. That is, at least in the annual beds–the mallow, dandelion, etc. is fortunately keeping it away from the more wild part of the yard.

beating the heat

(another weatherspark screenshot)

Today was the hottest day yet this summer, with temperatures in the high 80s and 90s all day. I am quite pleased that our house only got up to a cool 76ºF by 6 pm.

And I baked bread today. Albeit, it was in a bread machine. I suppose reducing kitchen heat gain is another benefit of the bread machine! I could even plug it in outside, or better yet, bake bread in a solar oven!

I attribute our retention of coolth to:

1. The air sealing, attic, and wall insulation we had done this winter
2. Our heavy plaster walls and ceiling provide a lot of thermal mass
3. Opening windows and using the whole-house fan for night/morning sub-cooling of said thermal mass. Our climate's diurnal swings mean that we can use night ventilation to cool the house down as much as possible before sealing it up for the day. I ran the whole-house fan for an hour this morning. Another good reason to get up at 5 am!
4. While not perfect, we do get a good deal of shading from trees to the east and west northwest, as well as a large patio overhang on the west side of the house.
5. At lease one of our windows is low-E (west-facing). The rest are at least double-pane and I hope to do the lighter test soon.

I hope this performance continues–we usually get a stretch where night temperatures only drop into the 70s as opposed to the 60s. The ceiling fans, which we've yet to use, will definitely help in that situation.

dandelion coffee

Why feel guilty about the weeds in your backyard when you can harvest them??  As an apartment dweller not long ago, I urban foraged the weeds along the sidewalk edges of people's lawns.  Now I have plenty of weeds in my own backyard!  Though, of course, I might like to have a little more intentional growth as well someday...

We recently had a whole lot of bushy dandelions that were thriving.  I pulled them and harvested the roots for roasted dandelion coffee.  It makes for a neat variation on your standard cup of coffee - sort of like chicory coffee in New Orleans. 

I followed instructions from Prodigal Gardens.

sprinkler system sabotage?

I struggled for days trying to figure out why one of our drip irrigation zones could not be activated from the timer/control box. This is our first season with the system that came with the property, so I was assuming it was my own ignorance or worse, that we cut a wire during digging.

After reading the valve manual, playing with all the knobs, and poking around with a multimeter, I finally discovered that the green wire going to the solenoid valve was not connected to anything in the timer box. Conversely, the timer box's red wire for this zone was snipped clean and dangling free in the valve box. It wasn't stripped, so I don't think it fell out of a wire nut. A mystery, but it makes me wonder if the sprinkler technician who blew out the system for the winter snipped a wire to try to guarantee a spring service call. Well, it didn't work this time! It makes me want to figure out a way to avoid having to hire someone to blow out the system in the winter.

purslane chips

Faced with a large amount of volunteer purslane in the garden, I decided to make purslane chips using our kale chips recipe.

For me, the biggest barrier to using more wildcrafted weeds in my diet is that often they are more difficult to harvest.  Lambsquarter, for example, requires the leaves to be removed individually (at least in my experience).

With this batch of purslane, which I often leave in place as a living mulch around my annual vegetables, I just harvested with a scissors (like lettuce) leaving the roots in place. This is nice because if the roots are pulled, dirt comes with.

I'll definitely be making this again since the purslane is so abundant.

plant inventory

I decided to inventory the weeds and other existing plants in our yard. I hope this will help me discover potential uses for what is already growing and further understand niches and stuff.

WILD / KNOWN:

Common Mallow (edible and medicinal) - This is growing all over the back yard. I harvested a bunch to dry for mucilaginous tea for sore throats. I'd also like to try it in salads/wraps and using it as a rennet for making cheese (nicknamed cheeseweed).

MORE PLANTS CLICK CLICK

they can't say no to free biomass

I am pretty sure that Eric and Greg should start a blog devoted to their inability to say no to free biomass.  They picked up 4 truck loads worth of free straw from a guy on Craigslist who had been using the straw as a bottom bumper for a hillside slip 'n slide.  It was an excellent find since it costs us $10 per bale at the local feed store or $5 per bale at a farm a good drive north.  I do wonder though what kind of predicaments this inability to say no to free biomass could lead to... 

phased deep energy retrofit timeline

a slow and steady deep energy retrofit
making your home super energy-efficient doesn’t have to be super expensive

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I finally put together a graphical timeline of our home energy retrofit plans, or an energy descent action plan for the home, if you will. It is often most cost-effective to make an older home more efficient in phases, as equipment fails or money is scrounged for projects. However, order matters. For example, if replacing heating or cooling equipment, it is best to wait until after adding insulation to the enclosure so that smaller equipment, which costs less and typically runs more efficiently, can be installed. All these dependencies make it helpful to have a plan so you know what all you have to get done before your boiler fails and what you're going to do when it does.

Here is our plan (created using XMind):

(click to embiggen)

Some highlights:

1. Radon mitigation - Radon is the biggest health risk in homes, so this is an important health and safety consideration from Day 1. Our home inspection included a radon test which came back just over the recommended action level of 4 pCi/L. We had the seller pay for radon mitigation, which included sealing the crawlspace floor with a polyethylene vapor retarder and a fan that constantly draws from below the membrane. Sealing the crawlspace is Step 1 in converting it to a conditioned crawlspace, which perform better than vented crawlspaces in terms of "safety, health, comfort, durability and energy consumption."
2. Because of the incentives we got, we were required to make certain improvements within 90 days of closing. The improvements included air sealing, wall insulation, and attic insulation. Getting the attic insulated with 15+ inches of cellulose meant that we had to finish up any attic work before it became virtually inaccessible. So, replacing the whole-house fan and bath exhaust fan, as well as ducting the bath and kitchen exhausts to the outside, became a high priority.
3. Our asphalt roof is 15–20 years old, which is close to the end of it's expected lifetime. When it is time to replace, we hope to make it PV-ready with a metal roof. Our roof is currently eave-less, so we plan to extend the eaves in order to accommodate an extra 2–4 inches of insulated sheathing in the future (whenever we decide to replace the old steel siding).

I'll be continuing to write about these topics and our progress along the timeline in the coming weeks.

Click to see all posts in this series:
a slow and steady deep energy retrofit

finishing the top bar beehive

Our friend Greg made us a top bar beehive out of salvaged wood. We just have to put on the finishing touches: make a roof, attach the legs, and seal the wood to make it more weather resistant:
 


Build your own top bar hive with these instructions, a supplement to The Barefoot Beekeeper.

The instructions recommended sealing it with a 20:1 mix of raw linseed oil and beeswax. Make sure to get "raw linseed oil" instead of "boiled linseed oil" which contains heavy-metal solvents.

 
The "pure raw linseed oil" that we found at the hardware store said that it contains no additives, yet it still has the "causes cancer/birth defects in California" warning—really confusing! Next time I might opt to get food-grade flaxseed oil, which I believe is essentially the same thing.

Hopefully we can get this thing done in time to get bees when they start swarming!

first asparaguy

Just look at this tiny asparagus shoot coming out of the ground. I was starting to worry about the asparagus and rhubarb starts that we planted—whether they were getting too much water—so it made me really happy to see this.