KW-24 I haven't forgotten the Tomato House!

I was just sowing the roots.

We’re nearly into the summer phase of the garden. In winter, we do what we can - mostly structural stuff, but there are always a few days where we can get a bit of a jump on the year as well. Actually, winter is mostly carrying firewood, reading books, and hiding. The crazy days of spring take hold soon enough and summer starts when all the ground has been turned over, forked, raked. When the compost has been spread, the edges rediscovered, the seeds are all sown and the plants all planted out.

You saw the Da Vinci Bridge on Instagram. Here we are building the thing. I’ve been wanting to make these for decades. I get frustrated with every hippy off grid effort being scattered with geodesic domes. Sure, they look great, but they are incredibly complicated things to make. I am going to re-write the off gridders, self sufficiency manual, deleting all references to Buckminster Fuller and replacing them with Leonardo da Vinci!

Summer is the time when we weed, water and mow. There is little else to do in the garden, which is handy because weeding, watering and mowing can take a surprisingly long time when you have a quite as much weeds, seeds and grass as we always seem to acquire around here.

But it is also the time when we can turn our hands to construction projects.

This year, the one major consideration is the hot showers. I know a lot more of you will come and visit when we have those installed, so there then, that’s the singular priority. The Barracks is all about the Collapse Laboratory, and that does mean attracting people to come here. I get it. It doesn’t matter how important the Lab is, if the Barracks is not a place where people want to be in the hot days of August, because of something as simple the lack of some fundamental human requirements, then I can’t gripe until I have provided those basics. So, hot showers we will have. Whatever else I intend to do this year, hot showers are assured.

I am planning on two sets. One in the basement which is the obvious and sensible place to put them. (I was considering all sorts of other places as well, but I have finally settled on the basement). There are extant shower rooms on each floor of the Big House and the one in the basement is by far the coolest, but it also seems to be the one which is most easily separable from the rest of the system.

In the first instance, I am planning on building a set of ridiculously large solar collectors and simply running cold water through them, and back into the shower heads. This can be extended later with hot water storage (maybe via heat exchangers), and fancy things to make it useable in the winter as well, but in the first incarnation, it can be pretty basic.

The second one is going to be a free standing communal shower thing in the Sportplatz because showering under blue skies in the summer is just awesome.

First though, the tomato house!

Pirate Gardening Tip of the Week

Pirate gardening is mostly old man gardening. It was old man gardening when I started with my first vegetable plot 30 years ago. So, mostly, it’s just old ways of doing things.

Marking your rows with radishes

I think that everyone still does this. I am sure they do. It’s a gardening hack as old as the hanging gardens of Babylon (*probably), but I don’t think I have seen or heard anyone talking about it on the influencer gardening space, so maybe not.

The last few rows of the roots going in. Just in time, some might say.

Some root vegetables can take a long old time to get going, and in the time that they are underground, thinking about the eternal question of to germinate or not to germinate, the weeds seeds dormant in the ground which we have been diligently watering will be taking full advantage of the near-perfect seed bed that we have created for them.

Now handweeding is a lot of fun, but if you can get the hoe out, things are going to go a lot more quickly. So, in with the seeds of your sluggish scorzoneras and your procrastinating parsnips, mix a few radishes. These will pop up faster than even the most keen of the great unwanteds, giving you some early crunchy salad adjuncts, but also guiding the hoe so as not to disturb the contemplations of your more tardy vegetables when you hoe between them, and not over them!

Four Years Ago

Who remembers the Corona Social Distancing Picnic Table? The first wooden art piece in the barracks. Sadly, destroyed by “100 year” storms two winters ago, for a good couple of years, this oversize wonder was the centerpiece talking point of the garden.

Which all brings us to the end of another newsletter. Let me know in the comments what you think of this new improved format. I’m pretty happy with it, all except for the bit where I end it. I don’t think I have worked out that transition quite properly just yet.

Take care of each other, and yourselves,

Much pirate love

Your Pirate Ben

xoxo