I live in a canyon in the Foothills on about an acre, mostly flat. I'm retired on a limited budget with a compulsion to grow WAY more food than I can eat. I experiment with all kinds of stuff but my follow through hasn't always been the greatest. I've got lots of fruit trees, rain gutter garden, raised beds, sub irrigated barrels, and 30 low chill apple trees from Kuffle orchard arriving in February. I plan to espalier the apples in horizontal cordons. I've also converted my 20 x 40 in ground swimming pool into a pond with lots of plants, mosquitofish, bluegill, catfish, koi, and goldfish longer than my hand. It's been one year since the last dose of chlorine went in and it's been a major learning experience. AND I wish I'd done it ten years ago. I raise sheep and rabbits for meat. I used to do all my own butchering but now only do the rabbits unless my daughter's in town to help. I have two dogs and two cats, one daughter, and two grandsons. The house has solar electric. Now I'm trying to figure out how to retro fit some kind of earth tube set up for summer cooling. Would also like it to help keep a greenhouse warn enough for avocado, papaya. mango, moringa, tomatoes, peppers,and melons.
hi and welcome, you surely have ambition and have accomplished much already! great use of the pool! the kids must love it there. Pak is north of you in Oregon.
Hi Sandy, That's quite a set of accomplishments! You're doing great work ... would love to see some pics of your pool-turned-pond. I just put in some earth tubes this past summer and they are doing a good job of pre-heating the icy air input to the greenhouse. I'm also finding out that thermal mass really minimizes the daily temperature swings. https://permaculturenews.org/forums/index.php?threads/caliche-and-the-greenhouse.14504/#post-119296
Thanks Bill. I notice you are using plain PVC? pipe for your tubes. Since I mostly see black ag pipe I 'm curious.. I've spent a lot of hours online researching what is the best pipe and backfill material and am still totally in the dark. It seems there must be some university somewhere that has done studies of this but I haven't found it yet. Anybody out there have any suggestions? As for pics of my pond it's on Facebook. I want to do a Youtube of it and have taken lots of pics but that's a little (lot) above my computer skills right now.
Hi Sandy, The pipe is actually polyethylene triple wall (https://www.ads-pipe.com/en/product.asp?page=ads_triple_wall____smoothwall) .... main reason: it was the cheapest suitable thing I could find that wasn't PVC. Although I'm not sure it's always the case, when I see black pipe I assume it's ABS. If you post a link to your facebook page, I'd love to check it out!