leangreen.org recycled renovation on a low-budget ration

To mine the backyard dirt for its valuable clay, we first sifted out the earthworms, rotting leaves, tiny rocks and other non-clay chunks.  We built three sifting frames with different metal mesh sizes:  1/2-inch, 1/4-inch and 1/8-inch grids.  We dug a pit in a spot where we'll need to remove soil for leveling the patio, and sifted the soil through the three different meshes (big to small) and deposited the sifted clay in a big plastic tub.  Once we had the tub half full, we added water and mixed with our drill-powered paddles.  It made a sloppy mess and our backs hurt a bit, but it was also sorta fun.  We reminisced about childhood mud pies and dirt bombs.  We have yet to immerse ourselves into the tub, but we imagine that a mud bath will be rejuvenating once we finish plastering all the walls and ceilings.

We could pay someone a few thousand dollars to mud the walls. But why start subcontracting out jobs now? Being broke helps motivate us to find alternative solutions that are leaner and greener. Our latest adventure: mud, real mud, free from the backyard mud. And it's going on our walls.

A gypsum wall finish is a standby for many reasons: it's white, smooth, easy to paint and a cheap, abundant natural resource. It dries quickly and therefore requires some skill to apply. The endless sanding creates dust. Silica is not something you want to breathe day after day (because it would take us weeks or months to do ourselves). Joint compound additives (i.e. vinyl, formaldehyde) are not as benign as gypsum's main ingredient, calcium sulfate. While it's not tremendously expensive to do it yourself, getting a quality job in a short time frame would take funds away from other projects. And then we'd have to paint, another expense and more time and more gallons of goo to manufacture and trash. As we learned from deconstructing the old house, anything painted gets sent to the landfill.

In the meantime, we know that the backyard needs to be re-leveled so that we can seamlessly walk out of those big barn doors onto a patio, an outdoor extension of our kitchen. We've seen the American Clay plasters in "green home" tours. The way the walls absorb and reflect light makes you want to avoid shiny plastic paint forever. But it's expensive, which seems odd if it's just clay. Isn't our own soil full of clay?

To see if it was even feasible, I visited Sasha at Villa Sobrante, a home retrofitted with strawbale and clay. Sasha teaches classes on clay plaster and shared on-the-wall evidence that clay plaster is doable and durable. She recommended an informative book full of recipes and inspiration: Using Natural Finishes by Weismann and Bryce. According to the book, the clay content of soils used for plaster should be at least 15 percent. Our soil showed promise. It formed easily into a ball or log and retained its shape when dropped from head height. We dug up several samples, added water, shook them up in glass jars and waited for the soil layers to settle. We waited days for the water to clear (a sure sign we had lots of clay). Here's how it finally shook out.

Time to process the clay for our walls.

In the wake of hurricanes Jako (Bri and Jake went snowboarding at Kirkwood) and Z (Bri and Matt went snowboarding in Tahoe), we are regrouping for some wall finishing upstairs. In the meantime, the fruits and veggies on the shed roof have been absorbing rain, growing tall and avoiding the slug slaughter that's been killing our veggies on the ground.

About a month ago, we planted sixteen strawberries on the shed roof in two neat rows that take up half the roof. The other half remains open for veggie starting trays. For the strawberries, we mounded up a light soil mix to 8" depth. First we used a 2x6 (not attached, lightly laid upright) to cordon off half the roof for the strawberries, leaving space for someone to walk down a center aisle between the strawberries and the trays. We had already waterproofed the roof with Metacrylics. Then we laid down a 1/2-inch thick sheet of coconut coir to contain the soil and help control drainage Our soil mix is about half coconut coir and half compost with some crushed lava rock and bark fines mixed in. We mounded up the soil in two rows and planted 8 "Chandler" June-bearing berries in one row, 4 "Seascape" everbearing berries and 4 "Sequoia" June-bearing berries in the other (source was Spiral Gardens in Berkeley). Look for an invite to our Strawberry Shortcake Party in June (assuming we get our oven fixed and installed....hey, Gary, wanna come back to Berkeley for a visit?).

Last fall, we planted a few cacti in trays on the roof, including a native Dudleya in a rocky, barky soil mix. This spring, a volunteer pioneer plant has shot up and it appears to be another native, the Cotton Batting Plant (Gnaphalium stramineum). We have lots of bees buzzing around the roof, hopefully we'll have flowers growing for them soon.

After harvesting about five pounds of tomatoes this week, Brian cooked up a killer sauce to top a hard-earned plate of spaghetti. The tomato harvest does not compare to the 50-plus pounds of fruit from our 5000 square foot Denver garden, but in the midst of all the construction, our raised beds make a modest contribution to our daily meals and a mean crock of ragu. Our ten tomato plants started life on our shed roof, as did most of our veggies. Although the summer sun was too powerful for continued shed-roof production without an improved irrigation system, we were able to rotate lots of veggies through the raised bed: kale, lettuce, carrots, beets, all kinds of onions and leeks, chinese greens, broccoli, zucchini and peppers. Our extended summer still promises us some eggplants and artichokes this year.

Our compost corner, beside the shed, keeps our plants well-fed. All the plant detritus from the garden works through the compost pile while the red wiggler worms [caution: links to graphic image] eat our garbage. In our makeshift kitchen, we fill a three gallon bag with strawberry tops and onion peels (among other scraps) about three times per week. The worm tower, a stack of six deep trays, consumes about 28 gallons of scrap per month. We rotate through a tray about once-a-month, which nets us about five gallons of worm castings from the bottom tray. Once we harvest a tray, we dry out the castings (the worms have usually migrated up to the fresh top trays) and feed 'em to the veggies as a top dressing. The tray system beats out any homemade worm bin because you can rotate the trays, harvest the castings without picking out worms, and drain the "worm tea" with a spigot for fertilizer. Not only do these nitrogen-rich amendments feed the plants, but the organic matter also feeds the soil by keeping it aerated, moisture-absorbent, and full of biotic activity....as in more worms!