If it isn't in the computer system now It has to be inspected by DOT before it can be licensed. They may have them banned and therefor you could still be out of luck. I saw a 2 cylinder engine that would develop 300hp. they had plans to put in small pickups. It was expected to get 100mpg. I guess now their plan is to try use it on generators. it is called the
OPOC It is of the box engine design. If I could get hold of one I would adapt it to my pickup myself. It has a very weird connecting rod setup.
The OPOC Engine, 100 mpg? | Fuel-Efficient-Vehicles.org
http://fuel-efficient-vehicles.org/energy-news/?p=1048
Edit to say the 300 hp may have been when they bolted two of the engines together. which would be a 4 cylinder 8piston engine.
This message was edited Mar 12, 2013 4:14 PM
Strawbale Gardening: General Discussions - 2012 - Chapter 39
Good greif , Russ , trying to understand that is like learning a new language . I'll show it to Johnny .
Sally; another vehicle that is supposed to come out this year Is a very little Volkswagon called the UP, with just two cylinders. It is also considered a mettro car. they are also working on a 4 cyl that shuts down to 2 when running free, like on the flat or down hill.
Can you find one that flies about 20 feet above the road, goes 100 mph, has pontoons so I can land on a lake and do some fishing, and has stealth technology?
LOL, anything else Solace?
Scary; your mind works like mine. especially landing on a lake to go fishing, or get to a secluded area that could only be accessed by foot over miles of rough terrain. Gimme five!!!!!
Five!!!
It will be sky high , Russ , but I'll look at the Volk. I had one and loved it , years ago . I have an '83 Ford that has 130,000 miles . Six cyl . Just put a set of tires on it . I should just be happy with it . Still has orig . paint and looks pretty good . The dash cover has cracked but otherwise , is nice inside .
I like the pontoon idea Maybe a couple on the side of a pickup with a rudder and a couple of proppellers attached to the 4 wheel drive transmission .Placed under the bed.. Super Motor Trucks !!!LOL
Might be able to carry the pontoons like a ladder drop down thing !!lol
We're really letting our imagination loose. but it makes me smile a bit.
How about an areo dynamic small blimp with pontoons. chuckle chuckle
juhur, why not put a fifth wheel on that and tow a camper/houseboat on the back. 'Course you'd have to disconnect the hitch if you wanted to take off that lake in flight. That would be a redneck yacht, for sure. But an expensive ultra-uber 007-like one.
You mean like a pontoon boat Pickup truck , put the cab on the front of the boat , drive wheels or prop fins ,",a haulin by day and a boatin by night"" lol ^_^
Where does the outhouse go ?
OH No !!! I knew I forgot something !!LOL^_^ ( HEY Jen !!!!!)
LOL juhur. Guess will just have to settle for a porta potty. Without the moon cutout. ;)
WOW!!! ROFL !!!! Over the top ,, !!! or should that be over the side ... oh oh oh ........
Thanks for remembering the outhouse, Sally. That could have become a problem. LOL
LOL, Leave it to JU. Better stop while you're ahead. ahead. Get it? LOL
Waiting untill we get to swirlee time ... hee ,hee , lol ( ahead ,,,, hmmmm is that anything like a Naval gas ""can"" ?
Science latrino " and trenches that later make good gardens ,, can ya ""dig it"" get it he he ,, ^_^ yeah well , dig it anyway ..
This message was edited Mar 21, 2013 8:54 PM
This is real cabin fever, Right????? heh heh heh
Biding the time until we can plant I guess.
Our last frost date was March 15th, so I'm pretty much planted up and growing. This is my first year trying the SBG method in addition to my Square Foot Garden raised beds. I'll see if I can post some pictures to show where i am right now.
Audrey; Sure is good to see some garden plants growing. Our ground is still frozen and I see a lot of brown lawn. Some of the last snow drifts still remain but another three weeks should be good for all the tender plants.
We usually plant our potatoes as close to good friday as possible. Not sure the frost will be gone by then. Sure can hope though.
Thanks for the pics
Russ
Audrey, looking good. BUT, what are the plants growing in the first picture? I recognize the others, but not those.
Jeanette
Jnette; those are potatoes. They were planted about 12" down and have already come up all the way through the bale. Potatoes are supposed to be the easiest thing to grow in straw bales and very labor saving. The bales next to them are planted with purple bush beans in the front and Kentucky wonder pole beans in the back. The pole beans will be able to run across the top of the potatoes as well. They just popped their heads this morning.
Really!! I did not know that potatoes would grow in the bales. I know they would in straw, loose. But, bales are so tight unless they are decomposed. Is that the case?
This is what I was told by the Author of Straw Bale Gardens - Joel Karsten. He said that you plant them about 12" deep to 14" deep in the bales. Mine were really tight so I simple tore out straw to be able to get down as deep as possible. Then I placed some compost and manure mix into the hole, tucked my potatoes in and covered the rest with the compost/manure mixture and put the loose straw on top of the opening.
What he said would happen is that the shoots would work their way up to the surface and that without any hilling, the potatoes will grow off of the stems in the bales. When you're done, you just kick over the bales, cut the strings and the potatoes fall out. My bales are really nice ones that could give me another year of use, so I'm going to try and figure out if I can get at them without destroying the bale. If I could harvest them from the bottom or the sides and the potatoes could stay in the bale, I wonder if they would stay fresh longer? We don't get any hard frosts until late November usually.
They're supposed to come out really clean and if you cure them for 2 weeks then wrap them in brown paper they're supposed to keep a long time.
Audreyjeanne,
I will be interested in hearing how this turns out. I have grown potatoes in 2nd year bales. After this first year your bales should be about half the size of a new one due to internal breaking down and composting. Next year you should have a nice consistency to grow another batch of potatoes in. I always cut the strings in the 2nd year bales so I can spread it around better or pile it on another 2nd year bale. It will be interesting to see which potatoes do better for you. I usually have to put two old bales together to get the equivalent of one new one the next year. But they break down into the most wonderful compost which is great to grow things in again or spread around the garden for compost-mulch. Good luck with your experiment and keep us posted on how it goes!!
Years ago my daughter dug a trench, laid her potato starts in it and covered it with straw. Took care of it, watering, etc. just like a regular garden, and then when the potatoes were ready, she would just go out and pull the straw back and pick out as many as we needed for dinner. They were nice and clean, didn't need any digging, no dirt on them etc. Seems like a much easier way to go to me.
Leaving the rest and just getting what we needed at the time, we always had fresh potatoes.
Well my dears. it's been a couple of years, and now we've bought a house in old San Jose, CA! We have five bales set up since last September, and have been eating greens out of our new straw bale garden since Thanksgiving already. What passes for Winter here is time to grow greens, and so we do. Just plunked our first tomato starts in, and lan to get a few more bales started for potatoes & cucurbitae. We had great success with potatoes in bales in Redwood City.
I've missed you, and look forward to reading what folks are growing in their bales!
Well....I am new here and have been slowly reading all the parts/chapters. I am only up to Part 15 but thought I'd speak up.
I have 45 strawbales curing in my garden. They are about about 50/50 wheat and oat. I am using lawn fertilizer because I am having a dickens of a time getting urea, amomium nitrate, etc. All the lawn fertilizers have a percentage of slow release nitrogen so I selected the lowest percentage slow release with the highest amount of free nitrogen I could find. I figure it will work just fine. Any thoughts??
I am going to be planting potatoes and corn in some of the bales. The corn is Glass Gem which is not a super tall corn. I am going to start it in newspaper pots then transplant into the bales. I figure I have a month before I will be putting them out so the bales should be well composted. When I do plant the corn, I am planninng on digging a fairly deep 'hole' in the straw so the green tops barely shoot out of the top of the bale. Hopefully this will help to anchor them in the bales. My plan is to use wire and string strung longwise and deep from the corner posts to create smaller squares to lend support to the corn stalks in my 8 bale square. Has anyone tried this before? How many plants per bale should I be shooting for?
I have yet to find much on potatoes in straw bales. Any quick suggestions?
Most importantly, I want to thank everyone on the forum for being so generous with their information. It has been wonderful to be able to start out with such excellent advise. Hopefully I can add my 2 cents once I have the experience.
Pat in PA
amomium sulfate seems to be the subsitute . I just look for 30-0-0 .
As far as the corn goes, I would think 3 to a bale would be pretty good since they do pollinate each other. I never would have thought of planting potatoes, but Ru knows what she is doing. What do you do then, pull the bale apart to harvest? Would be cool.
I have heard others say the problem they had with the corn in the bales was wind blowing them over. Think they ended up putting a stake thru the bale and into the ground. Don't quite remember.
Connie, have you gotten your buckets together? Connie and I decided last year that besides the stawbales, we were going to try some earth-buckets. Will let you know how we do.
Pat, haven't had any experience with that particular corn but it being shorter the wind may not be too much of a problem. but we will all be interested. I had good luck with squash, peppers and tomatoes in bales. but have not tried corn.
Russ
Digger, I already have the cursed pellitized stuff but today while I was out watering bales, it struck me, I am going to the thrift store ASAP to get a blender and pulverize those pellets! That ought to take care of those slow release blue pellets real quick!
Jnette and randbponder, the corn is from nativeseeds.org and they are absolute beauties. The seeds look like stained glass and are heirloom. Native seeds may still have a few packets. This year, I will have no corn within several miles so really want to get these seeds in. My itty bitty corn plot is 8 bales, 6 of which are setup in a square. The other 2 bales are going to be wired to the fence. The little white stakes are just thrown over rebar so no one runs into them. I can just pull the white posts out and put some old aluminum tent poles on the rebar in order to put up high panels.
I think I've downloaded picts of my straw bales, which are heating up!
I'm only up to part 16 in my strawbale reading and have to say, you guys are my idols! WOW! You guys have really done wonders!
Pat
Pat, you are doing good. Keep the pictures coming. Anxious to see stuff growing. Jeanette
Thank you Jnette! In all honesty, I have to attribute what I am doing to you and everyone else here.
Has anyone used worm castings in their bales? This weekend DH and I shoveled and sifted about 50 gallons of worm poo. I only sift with a 1/4" screen so technically it is called worm compost. Worm castings are sifted much finer. I like the 1/4" sift much better because it still contains little bits of leaves and partially digested stuff in it and that keeps the good bacteria very active and alive for quite sometime. The worm castings you see in stores have all that stuff sifted out and makes it easier to package but it isn't as biologically active. I am planning on using it in worm tea to feed my garden. It is high on P and K but very limited in N so I will be adding a bit of bloodmeal for the tea in order to get the N up where it should be. But I won't mix it in until I am ready to put it in the tea. I will also be adding a little bit of ag lime to help with BER. Enough of what I plan on doing because who really knows if it is going to work! As always, I have worm poo coming out my ears! Does anyone want to try any? You would think I could sell this stuff but since I don't sift it fine, people just don't know what to do with it!
Pat
Sure wish you lived closer . Where do you get all the poo ?
Gosh yes Pat. I bought 10 bags from the local feed store last year for $1.89 each. Not very big ones either. She said she gets them from a local fellow who has worm beds. Have you checked that? Selling to someone like that? I think it would be better to have the stuff you have than the castings.
I don't know how much is in these bags because they are pretty damp so paying for water too. I have never used them before, just dumping them on certain plants. What would be the best way you would suggest for me to use them?
Well, I'm officially amazed. I planted some Kentucky Wonder beans in soil/compost mixture (because I was out of vermiculite/perlite at the time) and kept giving it just drips of water over a week's time. Mold began and covered each cups soil surface. I almost threw them out, but then I remembered an article that ran on DG about cinnamon's damping off prevention ability. I had nothing to lose at that point, with all that mold growing, so I sprinkled cinnamon heavily on the tops of each cup of soil and continued to water normally. After a few days, I gently stirred the very top of the soil, to break any hardened area the cinnamon might have formed (since I had used a lot of it). The mold disappeared after a few days as sprouts began to emerge, and I now have 27 happy healthy Kentucky Wonder bean plants!