Progress has been steady and meticulous these past few weeks. We’ve finished some quality of life upgrades for the terrain. We’re also working on a couple of ingenious solutions to grow plants throughout the winter and devised a way to create compost from leftover plants and other greens.
But first, we have finished the roof of the Dome! The next phase is to semi-enclose it. We’ll keep you updated on its progress through photos of the build!
A big quality of life improvement we’ve created on the terrain are actual utilities. Up until now, we had to transport all of our water from a single point on the terrain. This ranged from watering all of the plants in the garden to getting water for the coffee machine! This problem no longer exists, because of several water conduits that run to the crucial areas of the terrain. The same goes for electricity, which makes all of our construction projects a whole lot easier in the future. This improves the electrical coverage, hereby reducing the need for generators to reach the more remote areas of the terrain.
Our garden is also seeing some improvements. We’re now working on creating perma-cultures, little bed-shaped gardens that will be filled with a wide variety of plants and flowers. The idea is to also plant African flowers called Tagetes. The smell of this particular flowers is so strong that insects stay away, which results in pesticides becoming irrelevant. Other beds (like the one for strawberries) are covered in sawdust, which reduces the chance for weeds to grow among the plants.
Another improvement are so called “cold bins”, which can be used in the winter to start sowing early. The idea is to create a layer of clay with compost and humus to cover the bottom of the bin. The whole thing gets covered by a glass top and enclosed on all sides with wood and foil to create a little greenhouse effect.
That’s it for now! Expect an update after our New Year’s Eve and Day event!
