September 25, 2025
The lower wall is almost complete!
Thank you Joseph Haddad from Counterculture Labs' Open Insulin Project for your help digging and leveling the trench, and placing the blocks.
The lower wall must be strong because it holds back the most hillside. I am going to fill the cells in the blocks with soil and plant vetiver in them. The vetiver will root down through the blocks into the hillside and become stronger over time.
Next we will be raking the spoil heap back and digging the trenches for the long lower wall, and a short back wall, for which I will need another 40 or so blocks.
I am hopeful that the trenches will produce enough rocky clay to fill the pad to a suitable level without needing a large quantity of drain rock.
Meanwhile our 200 indoor cuttings are rooting, adding some urgency to get this finished.
Help me finance more blocks and get this greenhouse finished before the rains!
September 21, 2025
Thank you all for your continued support!
I finished clearing the site and surroundings of biomass, in the process accumulating now around 120 cubic feet. Main species removed in this last batch are pokeweed and ivy. I decided that, given the large volume, the conical kiln options I had researched do not have sufficient throughput and are not cost effective, so I will instead dig a conical burn pit and make terra preta the old school way.
In the process of cutting back a large tamarisk shrub (Tamarix ramosissima), I discovered it to be heavily infested with the tamarisk leaf hopper. This and the fact that much of the french broom I cut was being actively consumed by california tent maker caterpillars was a heartening observation.
After clearing the site, I found buried paving slabs forming a pathway, which I excavated up to the position of the door (marked by rake in the picture). I then continued to follow it and dug it out up to the upper retaining wall.
Partially buried in the tamarisk thicket were large cinderblock corner pieces on top of poured concrete foundation piers, from some prior structure on the site. These will be very useful as corner foundations so I dug them out and rolled them upslope to their approximate positions.
Next task is levelling, and to do that I need to build a retaining wall on the lower level. More updates on this soon!