Post-season Permaculture: Volunteer Asparagus and Hardy Greens from Saved Seed

There’s always something to do after the garden is mostly put to bed for the season. I love having a reason to go out and work in the garden long after those first hard frosts. If you have a hoop house, you can work in the ground almost all winter long.

In this video I set up my warren for more perennial production in the future by transplanting asparagus crowns from a nursery bed in my vegetable garden. I’m looking forward to being able to harvest much more asparagus from the nooks of my warren that are currently not producing anything. I also take a trip out to the hoop house to see how my beds of winter greens are doing. Everything I’m growing in the hoop house came from saved seed.

My New Tiny House Wood Stove: Breaking in the Jotul 602

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally got a new wood stove for my tiny house. The Jotul 602 isn’t exactly an unknown quantity. I’ve used it many times in other people’s houses and I love it. It’s pretty much the smallest wood stove on the market so it’s pretty popular for the small houses at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. And I’m pretty sure the Norwegians can be counted on for their expertise in heating a space with wood. If you are heating a small house or single room this is a reliable and attractive stove. You do have to break them in before you can use them to their full capacity, and that’s what I’m up to in this video.

How to Know When to Harvest ORGANIC Grapes for Wine

It was time to test the grapes and decide if I needed to start harvesting yet. I got out my trusty refractometer to see what the sugar levels were at.

There are a number of factors involved in deciding if it’s time to harvest grapes. It’s a balance between grape quality and suitability and readiness for winemaking. And it also all depends on the season–whether you got a lot of rain or very little. This was a great season for my grapes because we didn’t get any rain for the first three months of grape development, so the fruit got really sweet and the acid levels had the chance to lower somewhat.

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My Permaculture Vineyard Produced A LOT More Than Grapes This Year

In the last several years I’ve been experimenting with making use of the space between rows of grapes to grow produce. Nature abhors a monoculture, so if I can grow other crops in what would be normally be wasted space in the vineyard, without them negatively impacting the grapes, I can get a lot more food out of my space. It’s particularly important when you are establishing a vineyard and waiting for your grapes to produce. If you can grow a crop that can bring in money in year or two, you can use the harvest to pay for the cost of vineyard establishment.

When I was setting up my vineyard, I decided to space the rows 10′ apart instead of the standard 8′ so that I could improve the air flow between the vines, but also so that it would be easier to make use of the space for other crops. If you plant low growing crops, they won’t impede air flow and as long as they are out of the way by the time you harvest the grapes.