Greetings I am new to posting to this site although I have referred to it from time to time when I had a gardening question. I find that when several people corroborate each other on a subject it's usually the right answer. Very interesting. As to Ruth Stout, I read about her quite a while ago through Rodale, and I thought she made perfect sense. When I built my house here in Sacramento (shout out Carla) I started gardening in earnest. I started out using the Bio-intensive method because my ground had been scraped and compacted down to hard clay. I constucted a few beds with this method, but I always added mulch because I couldn't stand to see the bare soil getting baked. In bio-intensive the ground is supposed to be mulched just by the foliage of the plants close together. Problem is when they are small. Then a friend loaned me "Gaia's Garden" by Toby Hemmenway. I experimented with one bed using what he called his bomb proof sheet mulch bed. I was really blown away. I now have committed my whole garden to this method with some exceptions. It is the Ruth Stout method with a giant kick start. This web site details the process. http://www.patternliteracy.com/ I have added to the knowledge of this method by putting it to work on my 1/4 acres under Sacramento conditions. I generally do not need to water during the winter rainy season, but because we normally get no rain between May and November I add drip irrigation between the top two layers at about five inches apart. If I keep my top mulch at about 6-8 inches I only need to run the drip system every few days when it is 100 degrees F or over. otherwise much less often. This method requires a lot of collecting of materials but i get most for free. Sacramento is a tree mecca. Every late fall I go around in my van with large plastic bags which I use over and over again to collect the leaves which have fallen and people have been so nice as to have placed in nice piles. I stockpile the leaves because when it's done it's done. I don't have to go far from home to find plenty, much more than I can use. I like oak, elm, and just about any deciduous type. Avoid magnolia types. I avoid wood chips for the most part because they do take a long time to break down. I am able to find straw from ads on craigslist for free, and I have my own secret source for free spoiled straw and hay. Because I live in an urban area I use coffee grounds for my nitrogen source and it again is readily available from coffee shops for free. In fact you are keeping it out of the landfill. I supplement sometimes with oyster shell and greensand just to be sure I have enough P&K, but probably with the tree leaves I don't need it. Also I chop up my plants like tomato and everything not harvested and add that as well. I think that because P is supposed to help grow strong stems and stalks P must be in those stemmy parts. Incidentally when you remove your plants with this method you simply cut the plant off at the base level and allow the roots to rot underground. I never dig! Ruth would be proud. I did run into problems planting small starts so I got a few hundred clear plastic pint containers and cut the bottoms off. I clear some mulch aside insert the container and plant inside. When the plants are big enough I pull out the containers. I just keep reusing those containers. When I plant seeds like carrots I reduce the mulch layer down a lot and add it to another bed. When the carrots get big enough i start to add mulch back again. Slugs are an issue especially in a newly formed bed with things like lettuce and chard. I just deal with it by using sluggo and some hand picking at night with a headlamp and a bucket of soapy water. We have a lot of slugs here anyway. Pill bugs are shredders and they seem to go after the areas that the slugs have munched on, otherwise they are valuable for breaking stuff down. I think Ruth would approve because this method really gets thing off to a dynamic start. Afterwards you just do as Ruth does and just keep adding more mulch. I do continue to sprinkle coffee grounds with the other mulch materials. Normally I have to pull my irrigation lines up about two inches a year because so much new compost has formed. I do this when I am planting a new crop. The exceptions to the sheet mulch method is for potatoes and sun-chokes because you would have to dig up your bed to find them all. So for those I use a high-rise method in a wire composter. It works great. I guess that's it except that I wish I could have met Ruth Stout. She sounds like a fabulous person. Come on gardening in the nude! How great! I couldn't get away with that here.

I've been using Al's (gritty) mix with pines, junipers, yews, and myriad other conifers for well over 20 years now, and though I do do a lot of experimenting with soils, have yet to find anything that works better. ;-) I'm not self-promoting, just saying that I experiment with soils a LOT, and have yet to improve on the basic gritty mic mix. It holds LOTS of air, virtually NO perched water, ample volumes of water, is structurally very sound & durable, and it's adjustable for water retention to suit plants individually. Those are all the most desirable qualities you can have in a soil. I wouldn't use wood chips other than conifer bark as a primary fraction of a container soil for several reasons. A pH spike during the composting process is inevitable. Wood chips break down much faster than conifer bark, so when using them, N immobilization should be expected. Also. because they break down so much faster, they generate a LOT of heat during the composting process, often raising sol temps an additional 10-15* higher than similar soils with bark as their primary fraction. Of course, N immobilization with the gritty mix is insignificant and heat build-up due to composting is never a problem because of how slowly the bark decomposes AND the excellent gas exchange of the highly aerated mix. A 50/50 mix of a peat-based soil (like ProMix) and wood chips will yield a soil with the same drainage characteristics and perched water table height as the ProMix. Only when the wood chips (which are not a good choice for container media) are a very large fraction of the soil (about 80%) can you expect drainage & aeration to improve significantly. To get a visual on this, ask yourself how much perlite you need to add to a quart of pudding to get it to drain & hold air. BTW - most commercial cactus mixes actually drain poorly & support way too much perched water to be healthy for cacti, succulents, or conifers. All of the pines, junipers, and most other conifers I've grown would instantly rebel at wet media and the presence of significant amounts of perched water as the mix of ProMix and wood chips would be/have. They prefer a soil that holds little or no perched water and remains damp after watering instead of wet. I have 320 lineal ft of bench space like you see in the picture below. Most of the space is much more crowded with potential bonsai than you see, and conifers make up at least half of the near 300 trees. All are in the gritty mix; and I have no trouble keeping them happy & healthy. Al

First a little basic science -- from online sources: "At pressures less than 0.00604 atm, therefore, ice does not melt to a liquid as the temperature increases; the solid sublimes directly to water vapor. Sublimation of water at low temperature and pressure can be used to “freeze-dry” foods and beverages. The food or beverage is first cooled to subzero temperatures and placed in a container in which the pressure is maintained below 0.00604 atm. Then, as the temperature is increased, the water sublimes, leaving the dehydrated food (such as that used by backpackers or astronauts) or the powdered beverage (as with freeze-dried coffee)." The partial pressure of water vapor in the atmosphere is about 4.3 mm Hg at the freezing point. To evaporate, it has to barely exceed the atmospheric pressure of 760mm Hg. To do this, either reduce the pressure, or increase the temperature....or add other substances that can evaporate and contribute the rest of the pressure needed. This is where dry ice comes in. It will sublimate (i.e. -- go from solid to gas without first becoming liquid) at -78.5 C. A stream of CO2 flowing over a fixed source of ice will allow the water to sublimate. The key is to have the CO2 "flow." This is where a vacuum with discharge to atmosphere comes in, or a "sink" for the water, such as a dessicant. Clearly, a small blower will not come anywhere close to procucing a suitable low-pressure: It needs to be a pretty good vacuum. Even then, if the source of the CO2 is dry ice, you will need an awful lot of it. You can see why. Divide 760 mm Hg (total pressure) by 4.3 mm Hg and get the ratio 177:1. So if you have 0.1 lb-mole of water in the food (1.8 lb), you need 17,7 lb-mole of dry ice (779 lb). Alternatively, if you have a frost-free refrigerator, you can freeze the food and let the refrigerator do the rest. It will sweep atmospheric air over the food, drawing moisture from it in equilibrium with what is in the air. After a few MONTHS the water in the food will likely all sublime. If you have ever put a tray of water in the freezer, and left it, you would come back to find the tray empty, or mostly so. You can spend your money on freeze-dried foods made by someone else, you can run the refrigerator for months and pay the electric bill, you can buy dry ice and a decent vacuum pump (with other equipment), or you can do air drying or home canning. For emergency foods with long shelf-life and break-resistant containers, commercial freeze-dried foods are the way to go. For everything else, home canning and air drying is cost-effective and pretty healthful. As to the vitamins lost in processig, take supplements separately. By the way, these home vacuum sealers? Yes, they remove oxygen in the air that can otherwise react with food causing flavor and nutrient changes. They don't appreciably change the amount of water so if there are spoilage organisms (there usually are!) that can survive low temperatures in the absence of oxygen (anarobic bacteria), they will continue to grow. One "trick" I've taught is to take steel wool -- maybe a cigarette-sized twist -- and wrap it in a coffee filter. Put it in with the mostly dry food to be preserved, in a very tightly sealed container. The steel wool will react with the water and oxygen inside the container forming rust. The filter paper contains the rust particles so it doesn't mix with the food. As the water and oxygen react, the inside pressure drops. You can see this in a flexible container as it appears "squished." CO2 will not be removed, nor will nitogen or other fixed gases. Since all organisms appear to need SOME water, and that has been converted to hydrated iron oxide, this shouldn't be a problem

. sczcasa; Yes, and no. Sounds like a car salesman answer, huh ? . . . The spectrum that the sun puts out is FAR wider than just visible light / photons. This is the part of the spectrum that we see. And, these photons do bounce around; some will hit something AND get absorbed; some will not and will be reflected back out the window. A solar collector is optimized to capture a WIDE portion of the spectrum of the sun's energy . . . visible ( that's why they're usually black/matte finish ), infrared, UV; whatever. Therefore they are good black body absorbers . . and hence collect from a wide portion of the sun's spectrum. They simply re-radiate whatever they collect across the entire spectrum; as heat for the most part. That's why the window material and type can make a big difference in their operation . . . . a high efficiency glass may indeed block some of the spectrum that could be used to generate heat. Stick black and white ( otherwise identical ) buckets full of water out in the sun some day . . . . see which one gets hotter . . . they're both subject to the same type and amount of solar insolation; but ABSORB differing amounts. So, yes; you're right . . . the very same energy that could generate heat with one of these heaters is present in a room without one . . . . but much of it randomly is reflected and therefore ununsed . . . And no; you're wrong . . . by choosing the makeup of a collector instead of relying on random things in a room; allows you to optimize the capture of a wider range of the spectrum to re-radiate as heat. I'm not saying these things are great and work wonderfully . . . I haven't used one. But the principle of their operation is indeed sound; and not a hoax. Bob