I'll be interested to see how your experiment works out. We plan on having a gray water system for the washing machine and perhaps the shower. I'm not sure that we'll do the kitchen sink because of the bits and pieces of meat, particularly, and food, in general, that may be mixed in with the water. We'll probably allow that to go to the septic tank. But, if your system works well, it seems that small amounts of protein from food products would not be a problem. Keep us posted.

Dennis

Roland --- I've read about systems like that over here too, though they're usually set up as water treatment below parking lots. If our mycoremediation fails, I'll have to give some kind of wetland treatment a shot.

Dennis --- I'll definitely keep you posted! I suspect the meat scraps won't be a problem --- we scrape our dishes quite well since all food scraps go to the chickens. Mostly, the food that runs out the pipe is in liquid form, which I suspect the fungi will deal well with. But only time will tell...

Oops, thought both of those comments were on the same post. Going over to answer Roland on the post he actually commented on.

Sorry Anna. I thought that I had posted that comment to your posting on mycoremediation.

Dennis

In one program in a series on the BBC about three people living for a year on a victorian farm using period tools en techniques, I saw them actually weaving a hedge. The plants (not sure what they were; engineer, not botanist ) were laid flat and woven through each other to create a very dense hedge that sheep couldn't get through.

The hedge book I've ordered on interlibrary loan still hasn't come in, so I'm hungry for bits of info like this --- thanks! It probably would make sense to do some weaving during the first few years to make the hedge grow up impenetrable.

No worries --- you confused me, but that's pretty easy on these stunning days when I spend all day in the garden and come inside worn out.

Google "hedge laying techniques" or similar to see how the English do it. They actually cut part-way through tree trunks (leaving enough bark/cambium for the tree to survive) and then bend it down horizontal. They then use pruned branches and weaving techniques to peg/anchor the trunk in place while it grows back. The end result is a pretty solid wall of trunks and branches.

Will do! I suspect it'll vary a lot depending on which species you use in your hedge. Luckily, I won't have to do any pruning for months since I haven't even planted our hedge yet.

A shrub that is very common where I live (Alberta) is the Siberian Pea Shrub or Caragana. As its name implies, this baby can survive any freezing temperatures and in the spring makes a beautiful display of yellow flowers with the seeds setting as tiny pea-like pods. They self-seed readily (but usually just where the mother plants are) to make a really thick hedge. Their stems are rather spiny as well. A lot of people don't like them here (not sure why) but they are really effective for wind breaks and such and get to about 10' or more. They also can be grafted and pruned into a nice weeping type of tree. Farmers use them to fence off their fields. They grow really fast (faster where you are) and no doubt can easily be propagated either by seed or cutting. We just bought 1 year old sticks and planted them, pruned them down, and they went to town. Another popular hedge here is the lilac, though more so in the east. Can't beat the nice smell too.

I'm going to have to do some research on the Siberian Pea Shrub. Its name sounds so familiar --- I think they talk about it in several permaculture books I've read. Having a nitrogen fixer as a hedge could make a lot of sense...

Why would having a nitrogen fixer as a hedge make sense? Any nitrogen fixed would stay firmly in place under the hedge until you dug the hedge out.

That's a good question, and I don't really have enough data to back up my feeling.  But I have read that roots extend past the dripline of trees and shrubs, so the hedges should be fixing nitrogen out in the pasture itself.  Also, people have experimented quite sucessfully with alley cropping --- using nitrogen-fixing trees on the borders of fields to fertilize the plants growing in the sun in the fields themselves.  I'd think having a nitrogen-fixing hedge would work similarly to the alley cropping system.