Learn from Regine's latest improvements and additions to her rain collection system

Regine Maligne-Lynch, who has a background in engineering, has been experimenting and improving her rain collection system at her home over the course of several seasons.  Rather than doing trial and error on our own, follow Regine's progress through this and previous posts to create a system that works.  She has found ways to transport water from the collection site to various areas of her garden, facilitated clean out of debris from leaves and trash washed into the vats, and perfected the sequential filling and overflow of her series of water containers--all done with salvaged, re-purposed or inexpensive materials.   View latest improvments here.

More on Regine's Water Catchment Project in North Carolina

Hello world gardeners,

Here is what I got up to this summer in NC.

A few years ago, when we got up to NC some people had run out of water as they wells were dry. This year it seemed to rain very regularly... and I did not need to use the well water for the garden....but the drought of previous years reminds us not to take this precious resource for granted.

Hope you are well!

 Regine

 

Regine's water catchment project

Regine's Greenhouse Project from Salvaged Material

Regine is a creative and resourceful permaculture designer with an engineering background.  It is always fun and interesting to be inspired by her well-illustrated projects.  Get the lowdown on how she built a multi-purpose greenhouse on the site of a crumbling shed housing the pool pump and controls at her home.  Her design incorporated the pool equipment and made room for plant benches and storage.  She used mostly salvaged material and added items which made the greenhouse pretty much carefree, such as a temperature controlled venting mechanism.  Thanks to Regine for showing what can be done with a little ingenuity.   I'm sure a lot of other Permie folks are planning or carrying out projects--share them with us, so we can all be inspired.  Regine's Greenhouse

A Hugelkultur Raised Bed

If we all had half of Regine and Tim's energy, who knows what we could accomplish.  This is Regine's report on the Hugelkultur bed she and Tim built recently: 

I had lots of wood logs used as the garden beds' borders.  After a couple of years they were half rotten.

Rotting = lots of bugs including worms underneath  -  good for the soil eco system…

But on the down side, this attracted critters at night (armadillo?) that love digging around the wood.  It seems that in the garden there are new challenges every year - dealing with the world that discovers the garden (squirrels and others). I need a night camera to see what's going on when I sleep!

So I finally decided to change the borders of two backyard beds - using metal sheets (left over from the roofing project) and cement blocks. 

The visit of Dave's garden (a friend from permaculture class) inspired me to build a hugelkutur bed to use the rotting logs and the old pile of wood chips in the front yard, sitting there since last April (some had turned into very back soil).  Here is the result. I put some compost on top and could not resist putting a few plants straight away.  Will be fun to see how it works out in drought period!

Here is more of the theory on these types of bed! http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

Happy gardening

Regine

Catherine's Chicken Tractor

From Catherine--By popular request, I've attached a pic of my chicken tractor to give you ideas on building your own.  It is 4 x 8 and light enough to be moved by one person.   I designed this one after researching many many plans and it has proven to meet my needs completely.  Hope this inspires you.