Squibs: At the Community Garden

Sunday 14 April 2013 - Filed under Squibs

I love sitting in the shade of the supplants, over in the corner of the plots with a nice lawnchair set up on the firebreak stones. Some of the other gardeners won’t come over here, so it’s nice and peaceful, and the bees hum contentedly along with my iPod. I got the adapter, so I can just plug it into a stoma and not have to worry about the batteries. Plus a little sunhoney added to a beer tastes awesome.

During the hotter months others will actually join me, because the shade is pretty complete. There’s nothing getting through the blackleaf understory, they provide a nearly impenetrable barrier to the sun. It’s one of the reasons we set the flagstones up, as nothing will grow here. I’ve told Frank we should probably set up a mushroom patch where the shade is deepest. The breeze is cool, and the drips of sunolex from the converter interface adds a nice piney scent to the air.

The converter powers all of our grow lights, probably two full kilowatts all told, which makes me laugh. The Luddites at the other end of the community plots hate supplants for being “against nature”, and yet their yields are up because of the nightlights. The local Sungrid dealer takes the leftover sunolex and supplies us with genuine Sungrid fertilizer and micronutrients. Took all of twelve months for our grove to get to productive capacity; when they’re not being tapped for power, you can actually see supplants grow, they’re that efficient.

We came late to the game, so we didn’t have the learning curve other people had and knew to install the firebreaks and to keep sparks and open flame away from the saplings. And nobody’s turning down their monthly share of sunhoney, or complaining about the bees pollinating their vegetables. It’s really a very nice system. I’m definitely thinking of getting one for the home garden. My kids just love sunhoney.

2013-04-14  »  Edward Semblance