Hey there everybody

For folks who are unfamiliar with us, we’re a small scale plant nursery that follows permaculture and regenerative agriculture principles. We’ve used tons of wood chips over the years and we’re getting ready to receive more over today and tomorrow. What would you like to know?

    • It gets monitored and turned regularly. We don’t see it dry out much since any turning brings the ducks running from their pond to pick it over for worms and the region has relatively consistent rainfall throughout the year.

    • We’re in Maine, in the New England region of the US.

      Hands down favorite plant is Ceanothus americanus, New Jersey Tea but it’s a tea plant and not food. I’m also a fan of the Amelanchier family, which may be called serviceberry or saskatoon. We grow and use a whole bunch of Monarda fistulosa, which is called by a number of common names but is an amazing US native plant that supports vast numbers of pollinators. We harvest leaves to dry as an oregano substitute and harvest flowers for tea.

    • We haven’t yet - currently we just have a small hoophouse for season extension. We have a friend who is planning on replacing some of their steel fence and we’re hoping to get their top rails so we can use another friend’s jig to form the structure of one we’re planning. Once we have a covered space that can accommodate the pile(s) necessary to buffer temps it’s definitely something we plan to use.

        • Ideally I’d set up a few bioreactors and possibly some tubing and low wattage fans on solar to move the air around and warm the root zone. Polycarbonate would be a longer lasting shell but our connections with some other local nursery affords us the chance to receive offcuts from when they rewrap theirs.

          I actually talked a friend into doing a walipini but his site has conditions to really maximize its usefulness. Our slope is west-facing and not as great from a structural point of view. Also my wife saw a picture from his project and is not enthusiastic about the idea of replicating it. If I can convince the town planning board to give us a variance I’ll likely build a greenhouse backed against the thermal mass of the house’s west face.