Northern Growhouses

Northern Growhouses

For growing out tree seedlings or annual crops, a greenhouse of some sort is pretty much a necessity in these parts where there is roughly 90 - 100 frost free growing days in a season.




In this post I will present a few designs that address the following considerations:

• Energy Efficiency
• Snow Loading

Energy efficiency can be broken down into two main areas. The first is reducing heat loss, while the other is harnessing "waste" heat n an effort to reduce energy inputs.

Reducing Heat Loss

The first thing that springs to mind when thinking of heat loss is insulation. But when it's -30°C outside, how do you provide sufficient insulation, while at the same time allowing as much natural light in as possible?

One way is to reduce the amount of surface area exposed to the cold to a minimum. Different shapes have different ratios of enclosed volume to surface area. It so happens that the largest volume enclosed by the smallest surface area is a bubble, or sphere. Translated into a practical structure, a dome shaped roof provides better heat loss characteristics than a traditional sloped roof.

One practical option for roofing insulation is to use bubbles within a double skinned structure. Here is a clip of one in action:

The idea behind this concept is that the south side of the greenhouse can be devoid of bubbles during the day, and then filled at night. Alternatively, a microprocessor system can monitor heat loss, and light levels, adding or removing bubbles in different parts of the greenhouse as necessary.

Soap bubbles trap air very effectively, and offer good temporary insulation while at the same time allowing more light to pass through than traditional insulating materials.

This concept is also beneficial when summer cooling is required but using a slightly different bubble configuration:

Another consideration is the thermal inertia of the earth itself. A greenhouse doesn't necessarily have to sit on the ground. If it sits in the ground then when it's -30 outside, the floor and some of the walls will still be around zero, or even warmer.

The resulting structure can have a very low profile indeed:

Harnessing "Waste" Heat

"Waste" heat is simply energy that is not traditionally harnessed and instead escapes into the environment. One potential source of heat is the compost heap. This concept was pioneered in the 1980's using the following design:

The full report with plans can be found here:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Sunspace/NewAlchemycompost.pdf

Another un-utilised source of heat comes from livestock.
The five months of permanent snow cover Thunder Bay enjoys translates to the necessity to keep livestock indoors for extended periods of time. Although I will address energy efficient designs for this in a later post, there exists the potential for cohabiting livestock and plants in the same structure.

Snow loading is a consideration that needs to be taken into account when construction green houses in Thunder Bay. I have noticed that commercial operations here get away with the standard hoop tunnels, however they tend to be rather weak and prone to collapse under the weight of wet, heavy snow.

An alternative (and more expensive) option is to incorporate a peaked roof like the one below:

The strongest structure of all however is the geodesic dome. As mentioned previously, it also has the advantage of having the least surface area as a ratio to enclosed volume. This also means less materials required to construct it based on the volume enclosed.

I have investigated many different geo-dome building techniques and plans, and in my opinion, the best one so far is this one:

The reason I like it so much is that it utilises a very basic construction technique that does not require specially engineered hubs.

The parts can be prefabricated and assembled on site:

 

Paul Roinson has a great YouTube channel demonstrating the various building techniques for his domes.

Plant of the Weekish - Black Locust

Black Locust

Thunder Bay winters are cold and long as we all know well enough. As a result, there are not a lot of tree species that do well in this climate compared to other parts of the world.

One valuable plant in the permaculture toolbox is Black Locust. In permaculture, every aspect of a design system is employed to perform multiple functions, and Black Locust offers many.

Firstly, this tree is a very fast growing legume. The jury is still out with regards to whether or not this tree fixes Nitrogen in the soil, but in the opinion of many leading permaculturists around the world, it does.

Not only is it a long term support species for a food forest - providing nitrogen rich mulch via chop n' drop, the wood is extremely hard and resistant to rot once it dries. This means that the wood is great for making tool handles and fence posts.

The tree also coppices well, which means that it can be cut back periodically and the wood used as firewood for efficient and sustainable heating solutions like a rocket mass heater. 

As a fire wood, this tree produces one of the highest BTU ratings and on a par with oak. It puts out significantly more heat than anything else capable of growing in our climate.

The foliage and seed pods of the black locust make great animal fodder (the seed pods are edible by humans), and the dried seeds can be used as chicken feed. 

Black locust produces abundant flowers that bloom in the spring are a favourite fodder for bees. The resulting honey is light, mild, and does not readily crystallize. In other words, it produces high quality honey.

Black locust puts on foliage late in the spring, which means that under-story plants get a good dose of spring sun.

Black locust is a rather thorny tree, which makes it difficult to handle, but on the positive side, it makes for effective animal barriers, and bird nesting habitat.

Considering all the benefits that black locust brings to a cold climate permaculture system, this tree is a very valuable asset.

On Bees and Camels

On Bees and Camels

A new report on the state of honey bee populations in Canada that survived the winter is rather alarming. I've noticed a distinct absence of bees this summer, but I did not expect  a 58% mortality rate in Ontario.

I have been following the growing anxiety over the plight of honey bees for the past few years with some interest, as scientists attempt to isolate the cause of this rapid decline.

To a permaculturist, this is a good example of reductionist science scrambling to identify the last straw that breaks the camels back, and figuring out a way to get rid of said straw.

The remaining 10,000 straws already heaped upon the camel seem to go completely unnoticed by our academics as they bicker amongst one another, and feverishly search for that one factor responsible for this entire unfortunate situation.

When some professor finally writes a paper stating the obvious fact that it is the cumulative weight of a multitude of environmental stresses that are the contributing cause for what ails the worlds bees, he'll probably be hailed as some sort of genius and given a medal.

Maybe humanity needs to wake up to the fact that bees are not pollinating robots you can simply ship all over the continent on the back of a truck and deploy them into great swaths of mono-cropped countryside.

They are not factories that exist for the sole purpose of converting sugar syrup to honey.

Bees are living creatures with a highly sophisticated social organisation. They require appropriate shelter and nutrition, just like we do.

Maybe this is the problem. We as a Western society seem to have forgotten these principles as they apply to ourselves. We've adulterated our own diets to the point where it make's us chronically ill.

We live in petro-chemical boxes, one atop the other, breathing the same air, living under the cold light of the fluorescent tube, and wonder why such a large portion of the population is medicated.

We seem to think this is normal, and so we treat the bees similarly.

Bees prefer to live high up in a tree. It's safe from predators, and away from mould and damp.

Bees swarm as part of their natural cycle. It is the only time a queen gets to experience the sun. Did you know swarming only happens on a sunny day? Did you know other animals (like us) experience seasonal affective disorder if they don't get enough?

Like us, if bees eat the nectar from only one type of flower all the time then they get sick.

Like us, if bees are in close proximity to other sick bees, then they get sick too.

Like us, if bees are exposed to low levels of chemicals developed to kill us then they get sick.

Like us, if bees are taken from their preferred home, and left out in the elements to fend for themselves then they get sick and tend to die.

Like us, if bees are artificially inseminated to produce genetically narrow populations, and disease breaks out, it doesn't end well.

When someone asks me what I think is killing the bees, is it pesticides and herbicides? Cell phones? Industrial bee keeping practices? Pests? Treated timber? Predators? Loss of bee habitat? I say yes. All of these things and more.

So what is the solution? I think it is to honour the bees and be good stewards of the land. Provide the bees with homes they need, not those which are convenient for us. Develop diverse polyculture habitats that provide a wide range of food sources, and environmental niches for all sorts of living things.

In highly connected systems, stability comes about through complexity. 

Check out what Jacqueline Freeman has to say about caring for bees:

If you think she's interesting, then check out an extended discussion she has with Paul Wheaton on the subject:

Reverence for Bees - Part 1

Reverence for Bees - Part 2

Reverence for Bees - Part 3

Reverence for Bees - Part 4

Design Factors - Wind

Design Factors - Wind

A major  factor to take into account when designing effective systems in Thunder bay is wind.

The effect of winter wind, and wind blown snow, can be observed everywhere from the amount of snow you have to clear from the driveway, to the power lines that get severed during a winter storm by falling trees.

As the air cools, it becomes denser. This means that a 20 Kph wind on a balmy 30°C August day contains considerably less energy than a 20 Kph wind on a freezing -30°C February one.

In this climate, there is an enhanced opportunity to create micro climates in the landscape because of the wide temperature variance between seasons.

A shelter belt of trees doesn't just slow the wind down, it actually generates heat because the wind is slowed down through friction.

A shelter belt in the winter will therefore enable the survival of plants and trees that are marginally hardy in this zone 3 environment. Couple shelter belts with berms, and you start to get into creating small pockets of zone 4 and 5 growing areas.

Looking at wind direction statistics for Welcome Island, it becomes clear that the predominant wind there is from the West to North West:

Local effects due to the topography of your area are important, and so wind directions need to be monitored and recorded for your individual site.

How about Summer?

 It's clear that we have a different seasonal effect in play, with Southerly winds predominating.

This means that a wind break installed to counteract the winter WNW wind, will not create a significant heating effect in the summer time for this specific location.

An East - West wind break would be useful for increasing summer temperatures for growing annual crops, while a North East - South West wind break would be useful for protecting perennials and fruit trees.

A wind break in Thunder Bay designed to counter the desiccating effects of the winter wind will also accumulate snow drift on the windward side. As wind carries other things (like dust), the windward side of the shelter will accumulate nutrients as well.

This would be an ideal location to place a swale, so that when the spring melt comes, all this water and nutrients are absorbed into the landscape where they can be put to good use.

Of course, wind breaks don't have to run in straight lines, nor should they.

Plant of the Weekish - Cattail

Cattail

Typha, or cattails as we commonly refer to them, seem to grow everywhere there is a ditch, pond, or piece of boggy ground. In other words, Cattails seem to grow all over the Thunder Bay region.

Commonly viewed of as a weed and more of a nuisance than anything else, the permaculturist sees the humble cattail as a valuable and hard working native plant.

The reason for this viewpoint is the multiple roles that Typha plays in the ecosystem. As a fast growing wetland plant, it provides shelter for many different birds, insects, and reptiles.

This plant produces one of the largest root masses of any known plant, and that root mass acts as a huge water filter in the wetland environment.

Typha produces copious amounts of easily collectable pollen that can be used in baking, as well as a protein source for honey bees.

In fact the entire plant is edible, although chomping down on those fluffy seed heads isn't exactly pleasant! That said, the fluffy seed heads provide good materials for stuffing and insulation (During WW II, several million pounds of them were used to stuff life jackets, mattresses, pillows and baseballs) .

The greatest potential for Typha in my opinion is in it's commercial application for feeding pigs.

That root mass I mentioned is very high in starch, and an acre of cattails will yield in the order of 140 tons of root mass. To put that in perspective, cattails are capable of producing ten times the amount of edible root as potatoes.

There is enough food in the root mass of 1 acre of cattail to raise approximately 100 pigs to maturity without any other external feed inputs.

But why pigs? If there are three things that pigs just love to do, they are:

1. Eat
2. Dig
3. Roll in mud

Since cattails thrive in swampy areas, this is as close to pig nirvana as I think one can find on this earth.

Applying pigs to a Typha choked land results in a nicely cleared and freshly fertilized area ready for planting, fat happy pigs, and a handy revenue stream for the permaculture farmer.

Northern Communities Food Security

Northern Communities Food Security

I saw in the media a few months back that the northern communities and the government had been meeting to discuss food security and all the aspects this involves.

There are many different facets as one can imagine. Social, cultural, logistical, climate, and economics.

Unlike almost any other scientific endeavour, permaculture is non reductionist. It was interesting to note that the investigative panel consisted of a number of academics who specialise in a particular field, but there were no system thinking people who understand the behaviour of highly interconnected systems.

Anyway, this is not the reason why I decided to write about this. I decided to write about this because it makes sense that in remote communities, food security requires:

• Being close to the food source.
• Having robust food production systems.
• Being as self sufficient as possible in terms of energy, water, and food.
• Having self sustainable systems for food production and processing.

It seems obvious to me that these are all aspects that are central to most, if not all permaculture designs, so let's pretend for a moment that the expert panel had some permaculturists...

Assume for this exercise that the people of Northern communities desire self sufficiency and place a value on dietary nutrition. Assume too that the commercial interests of those supplying these communities under the status quo are eliminated. How does one go about designing practical food production systems for this climate?

The northern communities are located in boreal forest, and tundra where it's too cold for trees to grow in abundance. We're talking USDA hardiness zone 1 and 2 which doesn't leave a lot of perennial edibles capable of surviving such extremely low temperatures.

In a situation like this it makes sense to look closely at micro-climates and the use of earth works to facilitate a more hospitable climate. When it comes to cold climate micro-climates, the worlds most experienced permaculture expert would be Sepp Holzer.

Lets take a look at what he's been up to recently and see if it might work in the far North...

Sepp has been busy developing what he calls "Crater Gardens" in Siberia. If there is a climate analogue to the Northern territories then Siberia makes sense. We can confirm this by consulting the Köppen Climate Classification System.

We can also confirm it by using the on line climate analogue tool, which identifies Russia, and the Scandinavian countries as being similar.

So what is a crater garden? 

A crater garden (kratergarten) is an artificially created micro-climate growing system built into the ground and resembles a crater.

Earthen berms are constructed around the perimeter to act as wind breaks and trap heat.

The inner walls of the crater are terraced so that there are flat areas that can be used to grow crops and provide easy access.

An option is to construct the terraces in a spiral formation so that access to the bottom of the crater is gradual, minimising erosion effects of water.

At the bottom of the crater, a pond is constructed. This performs a number of functions:

• Reflects solar energy up onto the terraces.
• Increases humidity within the crater.
• Acts as a thermal mass that releases heat during cold nights.
• Provides an environment for beneficial insects and other animals.
• Provides a growing environment for fish and aquatic plants.
• Acts as an accumulation and collection point for nutrients.

Here is a short video of people constructing a crater garden:

The resulting micro-climate can be 3 hardiness zones warmer, and the growing season extended. This effectively means that anything that grows in Thunder Bay would grow in a crater garden situated in Fort Severn.

Here is another series of videos that record the installation of a large crater garden in a Northern climate:

Now that a suitable micro-climate has been established using berms, terraces, ponds, and rocks, growing beds can be constructed. One very practical option is to use Hugelkultur. 

The great thing about hugel beds are that they last about 20 years and require no fertiliser or irrigation. This means the logistics of transporting these materials is eliminated, as is winterizing irrigation lines.

In regions where trees are not available, alternative material like grasses / hay / brush can be used in their place.

Now a crater garden takes a lot of effort, or heavy machinery to establish. However, it will be there for 1000 years or more which means that the energy required to establish and maintain it is greatly exceed by it's outputs over the lifetime of the system. This is truly sustainable. 

What can be grown in these Northern communities? Well as I've already pointed out, anything that can be grown in Thunder Bay should grow using crater gardens. Apples, pears, plums, berries, and annuals.

In later posts, I'll investigate some interesting food plants that have commercial potential for the Thunder Bay region. I also have a very interesting commercial tree crop in mind that will grown not only in Thunder Bay but the Northern communities as well. Stay tuned.

Plant of the Weekish - Dandelion

Dandelion

If Thunder Bay had an official flower, I would have to vote for the dandelion!

The first welcome colours of spring are dominated for a few weeks by a golden carpet of these yellow flowers that seemingly grow in successful defiance of every dedicated gardener and lawn tenderer in town.

Officially classified as a weed, permaculturists classify the dandelion as a valuable pioneer species that works hard within the landscape to amend various soil deficiencies, and make way for a more sophisticated and stable ecosystem.

Dandelions have a deep penetrating tap root that brings nutrients to the surface. When the plant dies back, these nutrients are released to other soil life.

The presence of this plant indicate specific soil conditions such as:

• Low PH
• Low Calcium
• High Potassium
• High Chlorine
• Compacted Soil

Coincidentally (not), the penetrating tap root of this plant acts to mechanically loosen the soil, and bring Calcium (which is an alkalising agent) to the surface.

Not only are dandelions important functionally in the landscape but they are an essential early food source for hungry bees as they come out of the long Northern winter.

Dandelions are also entirely edible, and have medicinal applications which are commercially valuable. For example, the U.S.A is known to import 45 tonnes of dandelion in a year for use in medication alone. People even grow it and sell it for its culinary / medicinal purposes, such as Michael Pilarski here in this video:

According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a hectare of dandelions yields at least 100 Kg of roots and 18,000 Kg of leaves. At $26.50 per Kg for roots, and $3.25 per Kg for fresh leaves, there seems to be a potential business opportunity just waiting for an enterprising soul. There is also a ready market for flower infused oils...

So the next time you look at the dandelion, remember what it’s telling you about your lawn. Let the bees feed off of it while it’s in flower, and then eat it yourself!

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/dandelion-greens-with-a-kick/