July 3rd 2008
Well I found something today that may be a very good step toward improving our environment! It is a fuel additive that helps with feuel emmissions. I am very glad to find it because right now I can't afford an alternative fuel vehicle but I can afford a fuel additive.
you can go to my website http://www.usave-gas.com/ and read more about it. My husband used it in his car and found that it helped the milegae and he said" My car ran better". I will recieve our first batch of the product on Wed after 4th of July. I will let you know how it goes. I want to measure my fuel emissions at Meiners Oaks Auto first and then of course I will track my lieage. Then I will add the additive and measure again. I will post here my findings. I hope for mother earth that it is the rea deal. I don't know how I could afford to help with emissions myself otherwise.. After I saw Gores' movie and he left it with the duty being on the individual I have been searching as to how I can help. I hope this is one way.
Here is a site with some more information where I will bog as I gather my own data. http://usave-gas.blogspot.com/
Sincerely,
Julia
July 1st 2008
Sheet mulching? (Please anyone...add comments and correct me)This is a permaculture technique using cardboard to cover "weeds" and allow you to start gardening right away. The idea is that you lay the cardboard over the weddy area and put your compost and good soil ontop. This allows you to plant right away. With time the weeds die, the cardboard decays and the roots of your plants work there way down into the deeper soil through the decayed cardboard.
Well I like the idea, A common one in Permaculture, to allow nature to take it's course and take the path of least resistance.
My suggestion, if you are dead set on using this technique, would be to break up the soil under the cardboard, be sure to use plenty of water to totally soak the cardboard and the soil underneath, make sure there are no breaks in the cardboard and that it covers the area completely. With the soil you put on top make sure that it is at least 12 inches deep and I would suggest a border to keep it from flowing away on the edges.
This is a good start on Sheet mulching. Please add your comments !
Until next time....
June 30th 2008 Hello, I am Julia Pfeifer and I have lived on Ojai for 14 years. This a great place to garden! I will be sharing with you my journey of becoming a gardener and a Permaculturist. I will help you to understand what it takes to garden in your yard and what the benefits are. And my hope is that others will join in this discussion and ad information for all to share. I hope this will become a forum for other Permaculturists, avid gardeners, and all those who would like to learn. Let us share our tips, our secrets and our prizes. This will be a place to share sources, resources, and trade potentials. We can benefit greatly from all the knowledge in the greater community of Gardeners. Please feel free to bring your tips and your skills to share. My journey may have started when my father Harry Weitzer retired. He is a very active man so when he no longer had to go to work he went to work on his dream home/property and began to garden. He and my mother also ventured into husbandry, the care taking of barn animals, which included sheep, ducks, chickens, turkey and cattle (I think only one). The sheep were the main focus with the lambing each spring and the gathering of the wool. The wool inspired my mother to learn to spin wool, make felt, and knit. Although she did a lot of the canning of fruit and pickles etc. my father helped and learned to do it all too. I think I have painted a picture here but this is just a small piece of what went on at there farm. Needless to say this was all an inspiration to me and rested deeply with my ideals and my core values. I have always admired grdeners, people who could garden. I thought it must be a "green thumb" because all my house plant died. ut one day I was sick of admiring other people who gardened, I decided i need to be what I admired. I new from watching my Dad that it was all about the compost so off I went. I built a wooden corral type bin and started throwing all our kitchen scraps in it. When it started to stink I figured out quick that it need to have some air. I got a bale of straw and layered the scraps with the hay to keep it light. Then I learned from my Pa that I should layer it with regular dirt too. this damped down the smell too :) In Ojai it is very dry so I quickly learned that I need to keep it covered with plastic to keep the moisture is. Now my compost is about the same as it was when I started but now after a bout with rats I have a wire mess insert with a cool door too keep the rats out and allows me to get all the way in to turn it and shovel out onto the beds. It only takes 2-3 weeks for my compost to mature in these warm and moist conditions! Yahoo! The compost si the key! I will post some pictures of my compost bin soon. next time I will share with you my discovery of sheet mulching and the wrong way to do it as well as double digging and organic weed irradiation.
