This months "Countryside & Small Stock Journal" has some interesting articles along with lots of bad information. I find this combination of trash and quality a little unsettling but don't take my word for it, here are some samples to analyse. First the useful stuff Pruiksma and Holcomb did a side by side test of double digging and single digging a garden. They carefully recorded the results of growing corn with everything else equal. They found single digging produced more corn. This was a surprise and they concluded corn feeds near the surface and deep root growth hindered the double dug corn. Some web pages recommended were: http://www.makestuff.com <- lots of how to info. http://www.nsfc.wvu.edu <- septic technology Carla Emery (author of rural encyclopedia) has started a webcast. http://www.donandcarla.net Some not-so-useful stuff Mike Oehler (author of book on underground houses) wrote about the advantages of underground living and said one mistake people make is building a conventional underground house. These houses are always humid and dark. Groan, we live in a conventional underground house and it is not humid or dark. Bruce Thomson wrote an article about the coming oil crisis which was full of facts. Unfortunately, many of the facts were wrong. For example, he says one reason solar can't fill the gap is that PV collectors drop to 15 percent output after ten years. Fortunately, our ten year old panels know better. They have only dropped about ten percent in ten years. jeff
