We Can't Get No Dehydration...

One of the best forms of food preservation has remained elusive to us for the past week. Just as we were preparing to introduce an exciting and new form of food-drying, our tried and true method bit the dust. These would be the solar food dryer and the electric one, respectively.

Our electric dryer, which can be identified only by its manufacturer, "B & J Industries", and vague "Model # 7010", remains somewhat of an enigma to me. What has more miscellaneous information about everything than the internet? And yet the only two leads I could find on this dryer are an ad in a 1980 issue of Backpacker Magazine and a thread on an online forum called "Rapture Ready" in which the writer talks about hers suddenly ceasing to work. That's just what happened to ours, and in the absence of any information on the omnipotent and omniscient internet I was forced to take matters into my own hands.At this point I'd like to harp on the benefits of a well-rounded childhood. Last week our intern Tracy said her son asked "how does Dan know how to do so much stuff?" (keep in mind, this is through the eyes of a 5-year old). My answer: I took lots of stuff apart when I was a child. My family can attest to this. Apparently it is only much later that one learns how to put stuff back together again.
But back to the point. I'm not very electrically savvy, but I could figure the dehydrator out after taking the back off. It runs more or less in series from the power supply through motor, heating element, thermostat, and thermal cutoff, which is the safety fuse in case the whole thing overheats. Bypassing the thermal cutoff (which breaks at 98° C) I found the whole thing worked. To make a long story short, I found 98° C thermal cutoffs online and got one for a little under a dollar. Which is really a ripoff, because if I ordered 1,000 of them they would only cost 34 cents each...
I haven't installed it yet, because I have been too busy dancing with excitement around our new solar food dehydrator! For my birthday I received a book, The Solar Food Dryer, which discusses the concept of using solar energy and contains recipes for dehydrating. Which I skipped right over to get to the plans it gives for building your own "high-performance, low-cost solar food dryer". It took me much longer than it had to to build, because I'm not great at assembling all the materials before beginning. As far as I can tell at this point, it is certainly capable of high performance and was relatively low-cost, depending on what one has lying around.
For materials the plywood, pine and redwood were free, and the big pane of glass was donated from friends' renovation project. (I actually got two of those panes, so I am building one for us down here and one for the folks up at Ecology Action). For the first unit I also scrounged much of the hardware (or fabricated it) from found items. For the second I am using "nice" things that I bought. It is sort of hard to nail down a final cost for the hardware (screws, handles, hinges, screen kits, thermometer, misc. other) because I wasn't keeping great track, but my estimate is about $75 per unit. Maybe less.
Those with more discerning tastes for the final look might spend more, and those who have a keener eye for scrounging parts would spend much less. Probably the only somewhat mandatory costs are the thermometer (~$7), screen kits (~$30), weatherstrip ($5), and the high-temperature stove paint (~$12). The gathered ingredients look something like this.
I put it all together, and ended up with a very nice, very effective piece of equipment. How effective? I was hoping to get it finished when we would have full summer sun to use it, but only just got it all finished this past week. We put it out Wednesday afternoon when the temperature was about 70° F and the interior temperature hit around 140° F. One afternoon wasn't enough to finish the large screen of apples, so we put it out again Thursday morning and they were dry before noon, again hitting about 135° F on a day with a few drifting clouds. So with mid-October sun angle and cool temperatures it still did the trick wonderfully. I'm sold. Well, I was sold before, but now I would recommend it to others.What we have now is a contraption that, with no further cost, will dry two 42" x 30" screens at a time full of yummy fruits and veggies whenever the sun is out. Yay!

Greenhouse Re-Upholstery

I guess the fact that I am about to complain about our greenhouse speaks to the privileged life we lead here at the Golden Rule Garden, but those who have seen it will agree – it is almost worse than no greenhouse at all. See Exhibit A above: the original skin, fiberglass. No doubt wonderfully durable and transparent for the first couple of years, but you can see to what level it has sunk. Yes, technically it does let in light, but probably around 50%, and that is abysmal for a greenhouse. Does anyone know the word “leggy” as applied to plants? Here is Exhibit B: seedlings which, though given plenty of water and excellent flat soil, could still arguably be described as “languishing” in their relatively dark dungeon. Exhibit C, parts one and two, are full-grown amaranth plants inside and outside the greenhouse. As you can see by the little reddish blotches towards the top of the sea of green, the ones inside are reaching for the sun, putting all their energy into nearly eight-foot stalks with tiny seedheads. The ones outside are short in comparison, maybe 4.5 feet, but have great, full seedheads. I rest my case. The defense might add that the greenhouse does provide enough warmth for the lemon trees to survive and that swiss chard sure seems to thrive, but I, the prosecution, would interject that, yes, the chard does fine until the aphids get tired of their first love, the fava beans.

But let’s not bicker about it. The truth is that our greenhouse is not ideal, but we must make the best of it. And the best of it is the south end, where a few years ago a seedling room was created. Set against the southwest corner, interior walls and lowered ceiling were framed and covered in plastic to retain heat, and the floor was covered in hardware cloth to keep miscellaneous varmints out. It works great to collect and retain heat, even in January, but does a poor job in the sunlight department.
The point is that we want strong, correctly proportioned seedlings, not weak, leggy wastrels. That’s where a little motivation and all the wood, plastic, and screws one could wish for come in. We have been thinking about taking the roof off the whole dang structure and covering it in plastic, but that seems to be a long way off. The real urgency was the seedlings, and so I got permission to take drastic measures on the west side of the south end.
Step one was to, well, take a picture for posterity, of course! But then to remove all of the fiberglass. I’ll let you know, for those who haven’t experienced it yet, that deteriorating fiberglass leaves shiny little fibers all over your hands. I guess the resin breaks down and stops holding it together. Anyway, I got the gloves out after I realized that fact. This was the simple and fun part, first because it got a lot hotter after about 10 am (on the south side of a big structure), second because it’s always a lot more fun taking things apart than putting them back together. So the second photo in the series is the naked seed room.
The upper section of fiberglass didn’t need to be removed, but I wanted to tuck the plastic sheeting under it, so I climbed up above the seed room inside and screwed in scrap wood to prop the upper section out from the wall. You can see that in the third photo. Also subtly present in this photo is the absence of the sliding door rail, which, though heavy and unwieldy, was completely in the way and had to be removed temporarily. So did the windows.
The third photo also showcases the first layer of plastic. I stretched it as tightly as possible simply for the sake of being neat and tidy since it will not be subjected to the stresses of wind like the outside layer. While one layer would be enough to protect the seedlings from birds, heavy rain, and fierce winds, it would not insulate nearly as well as two. Kind of a primitive double-paned energy star window, but we’re short on caulking and argon, so we went with the easy way.

I put the first layer of plastic directly on the frame of the greenhouse, then screwed 1x2” boards over it as the spacers between plastic. Nails would have worked as well and been cheaper, but I don’t know how long this greenhouse is going to last. I don’t want folks to be cursing my contribution when it comes time to disassemble.

The last photo shows the final product. The second layer was stretched as tight as possible, and ¼” boards were nailed along the studs. This way any flapping in the breeze will be kept to a minimum, and the thing will last longer. All the finishing boards are redwood, which is kind of a treat. Too expensive in many areas to be practical, these specific boards are reused from a recently renovated building that is over sixty years old. Redwood is local to us, and can be farmed responsibly, though due to the age of these boards it is possible they are from old-growth trees. Redwood is known for its slow deterioration, to which these particular boards attest.
An important point here: this project does not express our walk of sustainability, just so nobody thinks I'm completely ignorant of this point. Plastic and fiberglass are not, as of this writing, supplies which can be created without a lot of toxic processes. And, clearly, they are not made to fill their purpose for more that five or ten years, after which time they will be junk. We will need to be much more insightful to devise sustainable tools for season extension.
I’m not a great finisher, so this project was a real trial for me. The bulk of it was simple to execute, but the final touches of trimming, tucking, filling gaps and fine-tuning were a bit much. Thus the homage to those, like my friend Bobbi, who have a flair for sharp re-upholstery.
In the end we have a seed room that will be worth the effort others have already put into it, because now the fortress lets in light!

Past Accomplishments

Margo has instructed me to write about planting potatoes, and I will, but later this week. I think an accounting of how the past couple of weeks went is in order first.

We have had visits from prospective members of the Golden Rule Garden gang, a visit from my brother, a trip to Hidden Villa Ranch to present to the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) orientation of new stewards, and a trip to go surfin' and campin' down around Santa Cruz (I'm the one in front of the blue board). Plus a whole lot of gardening, weeding, and things I'll tell you about momentarily.

Since last post, Spring Equinox, where I declared the trees were budding and asparagus sprouting prematurely, we have had at least five, maybe more like seven nights below freezing. Most of those well into hard-frost territory. The Asian pear and Plum trees go right on, as if they didn't notice. That means we'll be getting out the spun polyester soon to protect them.

We had, on the west end of the garden, a large blackberry/grape vine bramble. It stretched about twenty feet along the fence and stood around eight feet tall for most of that. Let me first stress this most important of all facts: it did not produce many berries, nor did it produce any grapes whatsoever. It shaded the bed next to the fence starting around 3:00pm, which could be good or bad depending on the crop. It leaned heavily on the fence, which is a plastic deer-barrier fence and not in any way structural. And it provided an excellent habitat for a number of birds. We thought this last part was great, until the Red Fife wheat we planted nearby began to be decimated. And then the sugar snap peas, then the kale, then the mustard. You have probably noticed that the bramble has been referred to here in the past tense, and that is what this paragraph is really about. Ellen has been talking for a while about getting the backhoe in to rip the bramble out, but last year it was shading the delicate crops so nicely that we asked her to put that off a bit. This year is different, and since my brother was visiting with his excellent trail-maintenance skills we did it last week. Now it acts as a nice, but mobile, habitat. I'm guessing it will ambulate (with persuasion from a golf cart) to a better location in the next few days. Besides, it isn't like there aren't blackberry brambles ALL OVER the place here anyway. That one taking over the greenhouse, for instance...
The final point I'll reference now is the reconstruction of old flats... Flats are great for using space wisely in the garden - seeds are planted in 3" deep flats and stay there until the seedlings are of a size to transplant. That way whatever is already growing in the beds can grow some more before being pulled out for the new crop. The downside of flats, as with most other things, is that they eventually break. This is the corner of our greenhouse where we store such flats. (They don't know that the wood burning stove around which they are stacked is out of service - it keeps them honest.)
Out of this pile, so far, have arisen fifteen solid and usable flats. Eight of these were cobbled together from pieces of broken flats, and the other seven incorporated some brand new material with the old pieces. Here are three of the flats, which constitute the two most popular flat dimensions at the Golden Rule Garden. The two on the left are referred to as "half flats," because they are approximately half the width of the full flats cited in How to Grow More Vegetables. Their interior dimensions are 15.5"X 10", and they are much easier to deal with when full of wet soil. The flat on the right is a "long flat," and is 2'X 9". It is heavier, but since it is long you can keep its center of gravity closer to you.
I'll end with a digital print of my flat-concocting diagrams. The medium is graphite on 1/8" redwood board. It is the first of its series...