Videos – Apocalypse Gardens https://apocalypsegardens.com Mon, 30 Sep 2024 16:37:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 223768039 The apocalypse of my chaos https://apocalypsegardens.com/2024/09/26/the-apocalypse-of-my-chaos/ https://apocalypsegardens.com/2024/09/26/the-apocalypse-of-my-chaos/#respond Thu, 26 Sep 2024 14:50:21 +0000 https://apocalypsegardens.com/?p=469 This permaculture zoning project will either mark the end of the chaos or the end of the backyard garden. Seriously though, I have been shuffling my plans and my plants around now that I sat down to lay out the Fall 2024 Garden projects.

I’ve been relying on sites like this one and also this for my information rather than sending other gardeners on trips to Australia, New Zealand, and Jordan as of late. My wallet really has no patience for information being withheld for profit right now, and also this isn’t necessarily mission work in a backyard in Texas,

I will be adding videos for each zone as I finish them up. Hopefully they will be found valuable and create some dialogue. Zone 3 and 4 are about as mixed together as Zone 1 and 2 were. I am considering using some of the garden tour content in re-edits to show what was “wrong”. Wish me luck!

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Follow Up on The Fire Ant Problem https://apocalypsegardens.com/2024/04/03/follow-up-on-the-fire-ant-problem/ https://apocalypsegardens.com/2024/04/03/follow-up-on-the-fire-ant-problem/#respond Wed, 03 Apr 2024 02:33:00 +0000 https://apocalypsegardens.com/?p=240

The fire ants outnumber humans in my part of the country. It’s just a fact of life. I’m told it is a consequence of the burgeoning shipyards nearby. These ants are not from around here. I confess that sometimes I wonder if they are truly from our planet, possibly sneaking here by way of Johnson Space Center.

Recently, the constant battle with these creatures has carried over to compost production activities in Apocalypse Gardens. After leaving some sifted compost for a few days and noticing ants in my seedlings, I discovered tiny mounds being built in the contents of the wheelbarrow.

As mentioned in Episode 26, I needed to conduct some research this week. It seems the solution may be one I have used in the past for other pests: Diatomaceous Earth. I have a bag of this I can experiment with as a compost additive. The plan is to only use this for seedling soil to avoid spreading it all over the place. Although it isn’t a toxic substance, I have concerns about a dependency on outside inputs and also harming beneficials like the ladybugs. I actually saw a nymph of a ladybug today.

Anyway, updates will be arriving shortly. I’m going to begin some experiments with DE and see if I can prevent another incident like last year’s ant venom problem.

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Gardening As An Iterative Process https://apocalypsegardens.com/2024/02/28/gardening-as-a-iterative-process/ https://apocalypsegardens.com/2024/02/28/gardening-as-a-iterative-process/#respond Wed, 28 Feb 2024 19:54:51 +0000 https://apocalypsegardens.com/?p=232 I’ve been involved in a number of software and hardware development projects over the years and have started to realize their are many parallel techniques that can be applied to both, especially in the realm of the Agile methodology.

“Release early; release often” can be the strongest premise of both systems. In gardening, you have seasons that bring different focuses, different priorities, and different possibilities. With development, you have sprints. harboring different requirements, different levels of funding, and different focuses driven by needs.

These two extremely different processes simultaneously depend on root-cause analysis. “Why doesn’t this code produce the expected result?” “Why are my tomatoes getting yellow leaves?”

The situation that brought me to this “obviation” was the fact that I spent all day yesterday recording a build of a soil sifter, trying to keep it simple. I looked online this morning and decided I liked this one better.

I am going to continue to edit the video, but the 2.0 of this sifter is going to be amazing. 3.0 will be monumental. I will be the best darned soil sifter builder in the world by the time I am done and will enjoy every phase of the development process.

Welcome to agile gardening! Please join me in my quest for stuff to do. 🙂

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Results of Overwintering Potatoes https://apocalypsegardens.com/2024/02/15/results-of-overwintering-potatoes/ https://apocalypsegardens.com/2024/02/15/results-of-overwintering-potatoes/#respond Thu, 15 Feb 2024 15:37:20 +0000 https://apocalypsegardens.com/?p=190
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Update on the Bucket Filters https://apocalypsegardens.com/2023/10/21/update-on-the-bucket-filters/ https://apocalypsegardens.com/2023/10/21/update-on-the-bucket-filters/#respond Sat, 21 Oct 2023 03:05:47 +0000 https://apocalypsegardens.com/?p=139 We have unfortunately had a failure on one of the bucket filters I made off camera. I drilled the holes too small and managed to cause a leak between the two stages. I will be preparing a write-up in order to include all the details. The original one from the video is functioning fine. Just need some “official tuning” and documentation going forward.

Mike

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