Monthly Archives: July 2009

An Experiment in Back Yard Sustainability

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Here’s an interesting video from YouTube about back yard sustainability. Janaia Donaldson is interviewing Scott McGuire from Oregon about the project he’s running in the backyard of his rented property. The picture is lagging but that’s worst in the first 10 minutes when they talk face to face. After that they take a tour in Scott’s garden and the lagging becomes tolerable.

In the video you’ll find:

and some other small but interesting things:

Why Do Earthworms Come Out in the Rain?

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Photo by Squeezyboy.

Birds normally take cover during rain but not the blackbird. It’s running around out there in the garden getting wet, but it pays. A lot of earthworms are crawling to the surface as fast as they can, just to get eaten. Sad story. For the earthworm at least. But why on earth would they do that? It seems stupid.

Well is an earthworm stupid? At least it’s trying to survive. Earthworms have a problem with hard rain, which translates to water soaked soil. They have a soft moist skin through which they breathe oxygen from small air pockets in the surrounding soil. During rain these air pockets are filled with water and it gets hard for the worms to breathe. Therefore they are forced to take their chances and crawl to the surface in order to breathe.

Good news for the birds anyway.

Tomato and Cucumber Plant Spacing

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Planting three tomato plants in one grow bag creates a mess, although the self-watering boxes are prepared for three plants having three internal tubes reaching down into the water.

When you’re dealing with cucumber plants it’s even too much with two plants in each grow bag:

One cucumber plant in each grow bag is a better solution.

Last year I did in fact only plant two tomato plants in each grow bag, with a good result. Here’s a picture from last year:

I’m building up my courage to try and grow tomatoes without the self-watering boxes and just grow them directly in the ground. I guess the boxes are not old school enough for me after all ;-)