How To Construct A Drought Pod | Food Production and Preservation | Forums

A nice little inexpensive system

Experimentation and observation are key to my years of successful gardening. I want to list a few books and authors that are instrumental in my approach to gardening.;

I spent NO MONEY to build this Drought Pod and it is fueled by my food waste.    

I've read many books and perhaps my favorite author is Ruth Stout.  What I especially like about Ms. Stout is her observation of the forests around her home and the role that heavy mulch plays in nature and the fact that Mother Nature does not till the soil.  Secondly, she is funny and her approach to gardening is light and forgiving.  I highly recommend her books, even though they are difficult to find.  I think Barnes and Noble has reprinted her best seller.  Search the used sites first!

Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza is another great book.  Her approach to building a garden is forgiving and resourceful.  Starting with cardboard, layers of available, mostly free materials are used to build garden soil.  I used this method at my Ecohut to block out weeds, add layers of whatever organic materials I could drag home and created an awesome, rich garden soil up to 12" deep.  

No-Wrong-Answer Gardening

The great thing about building a garden is that most of the materials one needs to build an organic, rich, microbially diverse garden soil are free.  These materials are considered waste materials and would otherwise be taken to a land fill, but are free to you if you can haul it home.

How I Developed the Drought Pod

I started in 2006 at my Ecohut with a barrel in the ground that I briefly described in my first blog post.  I used horse manure in a bottomless barrel, submerged into the soil about 12" and created a simple form of horse manure compost tea, along with cardboard and heavy mulch to grow about a dozen awesome tomatoes.   The tomatoes were planted directly beside the barrel so that the roots could tap into the compost tea inside the barrel.  

By planting beside the barrel, and not directly into the barrel, the tomatoes never had 'wet feet' and could tap into the nutrient rich moisture as they so chose.  

Passive Moisture-Retention System Using Straw Bales

As I was moving hay bales one hot summer day, the only naturally wet spot in the garden was under bales of hay that had been stacked there for a while, waiting to be broken apart for mulch. The realization that the only wet spot in the garden is under a bale of hay led me to my next experimental project.  

I shallowed out the soil about 6" deep, the width of the bale, for the length of the row and then arranged my straw bales in a long row in that recession.  The bales are placed on their edge, with the wires NOT in the soil to keep them from coming apart.  As the bale very slowly breaks down, the wires continue to hold the bale together.  I have bales in my garden that are going on 5 years that are very slowly dissolving into the soil but still performing their intended purpose: moisture retention.  

A drip hose can be placed under the bales as the row is being installed, so that both rows can be water simultaneously.  

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