Livingsoil.se

Know thy enemy - how to identify couch grass (Elytrigia repens).

Här ska det odlas majs! 💗 Mina Glass Gem Corn ska få flytta hit. Två av fyra majsbäddar klara för testodling av fyra olika sorters majs - fingers crossed! 🍀

1: Glass Gem
2: Hopi Turquoise Blue
3: Painted Hill
4: japonica

broadfork

More propagation experiments in progress... With some luck I can look forward to lots of blueberries and fragrant olives 🍀

Experimenting growing Japanese painted fern, Athyrium japonicum, from spores and saw the first sporophytes (fronds) yesterday ❤️ They are tiny (1-2 mm) but doubled in size since yesterday. Looking forward to see how the colors will develop.

Naturens konstverk på Bornholm 💗

Compost update ❤️

Idag fann jag vad jag tror är en fjällig bläcksvamp i min kompost som håller på att svalna och mogna.

Compost update ❤️ Another pic of a mushroom growing on my compost :) It's a bit bigger here and think it might be a shaggy ink cap (Coprinus comatus), an edible variety. Was hoping and expecting to see some fungal growth using a microscope, but was not expecting to see fruiting bodies!

Picture of me when I am not covered in compost or soil. Here with my microscope, used to study soil microorganisms.

I'm currently taking a course in biologically complete aerobic composting with Dr Elaine's Soil Food Web School. It is intense but fun! It's my first compost and my recipe needs adjustment, but I have managed to build a pile with a bit of help and it did get HOT - it reached 77 °C/ 165 °F! Not ideal for promoting beneficial organisms, but practice makes perfect (I hope!).

There are various methods of composting and I hope to try out different methods to compare the end results, but for this course, I am doing thermophilic composting. That is a compost that gets hot. This is to kill w**d seeds and pathogens while promoting beneficial microorganisms. The idea is to learn to produce an end product that is teeming with beneficial bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes, which I will be checking for later.

Sharing portions of a video I made for the course in case you are interested in what it looks like when building a 50-bucket pile (1 bucket = 5 gallons or 19 liters) which adds up to 950 liters in 53s. Thinking about editing the material and explaining the process better, but thought it could be fun to share the video as is for the time being.

Compost Building - Growing Microbes: Part 1 Short video of building a thermophilic (hot) compost.

Shinrin yoku, även känt som att skogsbada, gör underverk för både kropp och själ! Bidrar till att minska stress och öka välbefinnande ❤️ Även om det finns mycket "skog" i Sverige är endast 0,3% urskog, dvs. skog som aldrig har utsatts för mänsklig beröring som jordbruk och skogsbruk. Längtar till våren och doften av skog!