I love to build. Building, designing, and working with my hands all give me a fulfilling sense of satisfaction when I’ve finished. Whether it be metal, wood, or plastic, drilling, grinding, welding, sanding, painting, nailing, bolting, casting, or for-the-luv-a-pete duct-taping, I am interested. Interested, invested, and itching to learn more. So when you take the combination of a mind eager and ready to learn and experiment, present it with tools available from the average farm shop, you get me. Nature friendly and willing to invent, Peter Gerritsen, at your service.
Now continuing on with the topic at hand, what can we build today? What type of water saving technique is this kid talking about? What’s going to make these vegetables so much better than the standard rock hard lumps they pass off as tomatoes at the grocery store today? Here is what I want to do, and how I believe I’ll hopefully be able to get those thick ripe Speckled Romans for sure. And hey, if you read through to the end I may even decide to share!
1. My interest starts with water.
Collection
o Where will I collect it from?
o What types of water will I be using?
o How will I store a supply of it?
o How can I use gravity to my advantage for collection and dispersion?
Filtering
o What methods will I have to use to make it safe for my garden to grow lush?
o What kind of filters should I use to clean the water for my purposes?
o What is the most common type of filter bought?
o What are the downsides to using a manufactured method of filtration?
o What are the steps in filtering water?
o What extra steps must you take to get it to the point of being clean enough to drink?
o Is there a type of filter I could make?
o What kinds of materials are in the filter that may be harmful to the environment once the filter is spent?
o How big a filtration unit can I go?
o How can I improve the efficiency of the filtering process?
Dispersion
o What is the most efficient way to get the water to the plants?
o Should I use a drip system?
o Or should I just spray a certain amount over the entire bed of dirt?
2. Now to get down into the dirty
Growing Medium
o How will I use the dirt the most efficiently?
o What type of bed should I build to suit my needs?
o What kind of additives do I dare use to help in the conservation of water?
o What type of raised bed design would suit me best?
o What materials are commonly used in raised bed construction?
The questions are fine, but the motivation graf reads more like background--what about flipping most of the last graf of the background with the first graf here?
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