Gardening With Raised Beds to Promote Drainage

Welcome to new readers who found Soil to Sustenance via my guest post on Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution.  As I indicated in that post, I am a big fan of raised beds for backyard gardening AND for growing vegetables in a larger farm-scale operation.  

Even though they are a pain to create, raised beds have many advantages to simply planting in rows.  Given the 2+ inches of rain we received in the past 24 hours, I thought I would show how raised beds can help with drainage.  Notice how the standing water has settled in the pathways between beds.  This water no longer poses a threat to the roots of the potato plants in these beds, but will still be absorbed into the surrounding soil.

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Honey Bee Trivia

While I was never a huge fan of the TV show Cheers, I did have a certain fondness for the character Cliff Clavin.  Cliff had the ability to spew out useless trivia like no one else (well, except for me).  Like Cliff, when I stumble upon information I find interesting, I assume that everyone else will find it equally interesting. 

So with my best Cliff Clavin voice, here are a few facts you may not (but should) know about honey bees.

Deep Mulching Garlic with Free Leaves

Ruth Stout, an early advocate of no-till gardening, had a view of weeds that pretty well matches mine.   In her books How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back and Gardening Without Work, she advocated that it is much easier to prevent weeds than to struggle to remove them later.  Over the past few years, I have followed her advice by deep mulching with massive amounts of organic matter.

Not only does mulching prevent many unnecessary weeds, it also assists in the following ways:

• Moderates the soil temperature around plants.
• Helps retain moisture.
• Protects the soil from forming a hard, crusty layer.
• Improves the organic matter content of the soil.

Courtesy of the Town of Chapel Hill and folks that do not see leaves as valuable, I received seven dump truck loads of partially composted leaves to use as I see fit. 

Favorite Posts from the Past Three Months

I want to take the opportunity to say thanks to all of the readers of Soil to Sustenance who have visited during its first three months.  Your comments, encouragement, and suggestions have been fantastic. 

Also I want to say a special welcome to first-time readers who found the site via Real Food Wednesday.  You can subscribe to the blog by clicking on the RSS feed button or email button in the upper right hand corner and if you read a post you particularly like, please take advantage of the “Share” button.

Generally, I write about experiences here on the farm, as well as my ideas about food and nutrition.  Below are a few highlights since the blog began in December. 

1)      My So Called Healthy Diet – Part One, Part Two, and Part Three provide an overview of my journey to improve diet and health.

2)      A couple of widely-read farm posts are Keeping a Family Cow and Fashioning a Farm.

3)      Experiments in Blood Glucose Control – Part One and Part Two explain how I was able to improve my blood glucose levels through diet and exercise.

4)      Finally, Do You Have a Healthy Heart is an introduction to heart rate variability and how it can be used as a predictor of disease and stress.

Even if you don’t have a specific comment, feel free to say hello and introduce yourself.

Heart Rate Variability Baseline Measurements

As I indicated in my recent post, Do You Have a Healthy Heart?, I am interested in determining if exercise can improve heart rate variability (HRV).  Over the past month, I have made daily measurements in order to establish a baseline for future comparisons.  Below are the details of what I am measuring.

Methods

Each morning after I wake up, I measure my resting heart rate using a Suunto t6d heart rate monitor.  I first measure my resting heart rate in a seated position for three minutes followed by a three minute measurement in a standing position.  From each three minute window, I isolate a one minute segment to analyze and record.

Does Vitamin D Supplementation Work? You Tell Me.

Near the end of the 2008/2009 school year, Jenny and I began giving Neil and Evan a daily dose of Green Pasture Fermented Cod Liver Oil, and in late 2009, we added an additional 1000 IU of vitamin D in the form of a chewable gummy. 

Their quarterly attendance report is pretty compelling evidence that the stuff works.

Quarterly Absenteeism

		Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Total
Kindergarten	Evan	2	7	4	4	17
2008/2009	Neil	1	3	3	5	12
First Grade	Evan	1	0	2	0	3
2009/2010	Neil	1	0	2	1	4
Second Grade	Evan	0	0	0		0
2010/2011	Neil	0	3	0		3

 Comments are appreciated and welcome.

Do You Have a Healthy Heart?

photo credit: ekgtrainingonline.com

Most everyone knows that a low resting heart rate is a positive indicator of a healthy heart, one that is capable of moving blood around the body in an efficient manner [1].  In fact, some world-class athletes, Lance Armstrong for example, have resting heart rates as low as 32-34 beats per minute where the average person is more likely in the 60s or 70s.

However, resting heart rate is only a small part of the story (as I have recently discovered).

“When you lose flexibility and responsiveness, you die.  Perhaps the most spectacular example of this is heart-rate variability, i.e. the amount by which the heart rate alters from beat to beat.  This is, possibly, the single most sensitive indicator of a healthy heart, and a loss of beat-to-beat variability is one of the most powerful single indicators of the risk of dying of heart disease.”  From The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick

Rainwater Catchment: Harvesting Water from the Roof of My Barn

During the construction of our home in 2001, we hoped to find water for our well at a shallow depth.  Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.  Our well is a staggering 660 feet deep and refreshes at a paltry 4 gallons per minute.

Rather than rely on that water source for gardening and animal needs, I installed a system on our barn to catch rainwater.  The barn is 25’x40’ which means the roof has a surface are of 1000 square feet.  For every inch of rainfall that hits that roof, approximately 600 gallons of water can be captured.