The North Side Of My House

My house is small. Two bedroom, one bathroom, one story with brick veneer. Built in the 1920's it is a common house on a common size urban lot. My front yard faces East and the back of the house looks to the West . . . where the sun blasts it with radiation until it's fit to bake a turkey in. Since I had to start somewhere I thought I'd start on the North side of the house. It's easily my favorite place to be outside due to it being the most cool, moist and shaded spot of the yard. I identified this part of my property as a true micro climate long before I ever heard the word. It is also where the condenser part of the central AC is located so the house heat gets dumped right here in the hotter parts of the year.

[Hmmm . . . so there is heat being dumped right here. That's energy in motion and that HAS to useful for something right? I have no idea what I can use it for but I'll bet I can make use of that waste heat somehow but I digress.]

So, the picture above gives the overall view if the North side of the house. That tree is a good sized Pecan tree (Carya illinoinensis) and plunges this area into deep shade in the afternoon which is one of the reasons it isn't a microwave blasted wasteland. That said the ground here is a brick factory. In fact here is the Instagram of that spot just a couple of weeks ago:

https://instagram.com/p/76VZ5_QmQV/

And here is a video:

https://instagram.com/p/8lgo3-QmfM/

I have not been able to grow ANYTHING (even weeds) in this area for as long as I have lived in this house. I always thought it to be the shade but it's not. It's the soil. It's heavy, it's clay and it's dead. The soil life is dead, dead DEAD! That's why nothing grows there . . . except this stuff which is purpose built to rebuild soils.

That video above was the day I decided to unpack that soil long enough to get the cover-cropping seed in place and that took quite a bit of work as I had to:

1. Wet down the entire area that wasn't previously covered with sheet mulching or tarp mulching.
2. Let it sit for a day.
3. Run over the entire area with a Hound Dog aerator to break up the soil.
4. Run over the entire area with a Garden Weasel to un-crust the broken soil.
5. Broadcast the seed.
6. Run back over the same area with the Garden Weasel again to get the seed in good contact with the soil.
7. Water the crap out of the area.
8. Wait.

So looking at the same area now:

I'm really quite impressed with this stuff and very lucky as well: I have done 4 sections of my yard this way so far and every time I do one it rains either a couple of days later or starts raining right as I finish the section. That good, clean water really helps with the germination and general growth.

The only real problem I'm having is that my dog keeps beating a path to the water trough as you can see in this photo. That is not due to being shaded out.

Up close and personal this stuff is not only all over the place but it's thick as well and I love seeing this.

Okay, so a few days later I pulled the tarps off of the middle section and repeated the steps above with the Hound Dog and the Garden Weasel and this is what I have there now:

I have not seeded the area that has all the black on it yet as this was sheet mulching with a whole lotta composted chicken and cow manure (probably about 200 lbs total manure) and composted cotton burrs (probably 9 - 12 cubic yards). I'll hit this with seed after I'm satisfied the cardboard is degraded enough to let roots pass.

The small "bush" in the left picture above is a flowering Wisteria (Fabaceae) and the tub in the right-hand picture is the Black Soldier Fly Larvae bin. The BSFL bin eats all our kitchen waste and more. In fact, I am actively looking to intercept waste streams from supermarkets to feed this thing with. Here is a close up:

It's covered to keep the rain off and to provide spaces (in between those boards) for the female to lay eggs as they lay over the trash and not directly on the trash. On the right is the type of stuff we throw in there. I threw a brick of really bad tofu (not rotten just disgusting) in there and 2 hours later it was gone. Here is a video of the little buggars:

https://instagram.com/p/8llwpHwmaF/

BSFL hate light so understand that the 15 that you saw is not indicative of the 50,000 that are in there. I'll capture more video of that for a later post.

Here are a few more pics looking due West:

Last but not least, that Pecan in the back? Here are some pictures of that so you can gauge the size of canopy I am dealing with back there:

David