Make your own rain barrel

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal & Boerne TX Hill Country Weekly - Mar 10, 2010


Back on the farm, there was nothing like water from the rain barrel for steam ironing clothes or watering plants. Sweet and soft, the pure water had no iron, calcium, or salt to clog pipes or strangle the geraniums.

It was juice fresh-squeezed from the sky.

Anne Brown, Certified Master Gardener and Rainwater Harvesting Specialist, wants to help modern day pioneers enjoy those benefits of rainwater. So she’ll be showing us how to build an inexpensive rain barrel using common materials.

“A rain barrel is just what our grandmas used to collect water,” she said. “It is really pure water. Plants like it because it is pH neutral, and grandma used it to wash her hair.”

Brown has streamlined the barrel building process to where the average person can assemble one in an hour for under $35 in materials cost.

She crafts the setup using plastic downspouts, a recycled plastic flowerpot, and a filter to keep debris and mosquitoes out. The item hardest to procure is the barrel itself. But Brown has connected with a dairy that sells used food grade plastic barrels in bulk.

Near the bottom of the barrel, she attaches a common hose bib so she can use a garden hose to fill buckets to water the houseplants. And while the water collected in this system is not suitable for human consumption, boy, do the plants drink it up.

“I have seen a visible difference in houseplants in just two months. It’s amazing. We have an African violet that doubled in size. Plants just like it better.”

The one dilemma is that people quickly discover one 55-gallon barrel of water is not enough to quench their collective thirst. Brown notes that you can fill a barrel of that size with just 1/4 inch of rain. Her system is easily expandable. She’ll show you how to daisy chain as many barrels as you want, connecting them with a 2-inch pipe.

The popularity of this low-tech collection system has become a torrent. The Master Gardeners showed them at Market Days and sold out all they had plus took orders to build 65 more.

How interesting that something our grandparents did 100 years ago may help save a resource 100 years from now.

“I am concerned not for me, but for our grandkids,” Brown said. “They are not going to have any water. The state of Texas projects a water shortage in the next century because of our population growth. It is important we start doing what we can do now.”

XXX

Anne Brown will conduct Make Your Own Rain Barrel on Wed, April 14 from 10 a.m. to 12 noon. Fee is $25, plus materials cost. For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com, or follow us on Twitter @clubedtx.

The beautiful cactus

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal & Boerne TX Hill Country Weekly - Mar 3, 2010

It’s prickly, pesky, pernicious, and a pain (literally) in the rear, but cactus is fascinating to Allen Duncan. The professional banker has been collecting the thorny plant for 58 years. There has to be a story there.

When Duncan was a lad growing up in west Texas, he was gung ho about the outdoors. Every summer he loaded up his army surplus backpack, BB gun, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and went exploring.

Once day as he was eating his sandwich, he looked over and saw a beautiful flower with thorns on it. He took out his machete, dug it up, popped it into his pack, and took it back to plant in his cactus garden. “That,” he said, “is how I got started collecting.”

Duncan remains “fascinated” with cactus.

“It was the beauty of the flowers that first caught my attention,” he said. Then he wanted to know the names of them. “I got to looking around and asking what kind of cactus that was. They said ‘strawberry cactus.’ I’d see a different kind and they called that a strawberry cactus too. So I had a problem: this can’t be a strawberry cactus and this big one, too. I didn’t like that, so I began learning the botanical names.”

That led him to the library, where a helpful person helped look up, then explain the Latin naming system.

For someone with a love for cactus, it was fortunate he grew up in Texas. While the prickly pear is the most common type, there are actually 49 varieties in Texas, 17 in the hill country alone. Cactus range in size and shape from 20-foot candelabras to a little one the size of a dime. Most people don’t see those, because they are hard to find and nobody is looking for them.

Duncan’s favorite is the Ferocactus pilosus.

“Feros is a derivation of fierce,” he said. “The cactus is fierce because of the spines.” It is one of many species of that “barrel” cactus. All look different, and are easily identified using the length and color of spines, and other traits. The Nevada Firebarrel, for example, turns bright red when it rains. “I like it because of the beauty.”

According to Duncan, cacti are also easy to care for, most obviously for not needing water for long periods of time, up to one year. Ironically, that aspect can keep hovering gardeners away.

“One girl looked at this cactus for one hour,” Duncan recalled. “She wouldn’t buy it though. She told me she loves them every time she sees them at a cactus show, but ‘I can’t buy it because I am an addict - I am addicted to watering, and I’ll kill them in a week!’”

But that hardiness is also a reason for the recent growth in popularity, as homeowners add them to their xeriscaped yards.

Duncan believes “anyone and everyone” will enjoy his class.

“What’s neat is that it is something most people don’t know anything about,” he said. “Every fencepost in Texas has a big clump of prickly pear on it. That’s what people think cacti are.”

XXX

Allen Duncan’s Cactus class starts April 6. For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com, or follow us on Twitter @clubedtx.

Take your garden to another level

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal Mar 4, 2009


I miss Iowa sweet corn.

Though I've lived in the hill country since 1980, I make no secret that I am an Iowa boy, born and fed on a farm in the breadbasket of the world. Back in the Midwest, the topsoil is measured in feet, not inches. The soil is so rich one observer claimed you could just eat the dirt without bothering to turn it into vegetables.

So when I arrived in Texas, I set out to grow a garden. I quickly discovered that the dirt in Texas was a little more unforgiving than Iowa loam. But I eventually uncovered an approach that worked - raised beds.

By piling up dirt into 4-foot square beds, supplementing the soil like crazy, watering and mulching, my kids were soon turning up their noses at mounds of broccoli, brussels sprouts, and zuchinni.

Dr. Tom Harris is a true expert at what is now called "square foot gardening." He teaches a series of gardening courses in Kerrville and Boerne, has written "how-to" books, and keeps lists of plants that are best suited for the local climate and conditions. He regularly helps immigrants from other states navigate the conditions of the Southwest so they can produce bumper crops in their own backyards.

The retired educator and Master Gardener will be in Kerrville on Wed, March 11 to lead a class in building some of these raised beds in the backyard of the Auld Center, home of Club Ed.

Dr. Harris digs this approach to gardening. "No weeds, no work, less water," he ticked off the reasons. "Raised beds are super handy, and very friendly with nature - you can recycle all your yard wastes by making mulch or compost."

That overcomes the biggest challenge for hill country gardeners - growing plants in rocks. "Mostly what we have around here is caliche," he said. "You can't hardly grow anything in that stuff. It is easier to start with a raised bed and make your own soil."

Building raised beds does not have to be elaborate or expensive.

Gardeners have used rocks, bricks, and timbers to raise the beds to at least 6 inches. Dr. Harris uses 8-inch cinder blocks. He fills them using a 50% mix of light garden mix, and recommends drip irrigation for efficient watering.

The best thing about raised bed gardening is that the concept applies anywhere in the world, and it works for growing vegetables, flowers, herbs, and trees - "whatever you want to grow."

So if you yearn to learn the secrets of building a square foot garden of your own, make tracks over to Club Ed. He figures the class can build three or four raised beds - it will just take you a couple of hours.

And you must promise to bring me a sample from your first crop of sweet corn.

XXX

The Square Foot Gardening Workshop meets on Wed, March 11. For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com.

Sharpen your tools

As published in the Community Journal, Kerrville TX Aug 13, 2008


Whether using your mind or your kitchen paring knife, dull tools are dangerous.

Welcome back to another season of Club Ed, where you can not only sharpen your mind; you can sharpen all of your working tools.

Dr. Tom Harris, revered as a wizard at gardening, has always been fascinated in the tools that help him keep that garden in shape. That is why he will teach a Tool Sharpening Workshop this fall.

"I took a course in tool maintenance when I was working on my Industrial Arts degree," Harris said. "We learned how to maintain all the machines and hand tools in shop. I found it fascinating, and loved all of it. Ever since I have had a fetish about sharp things being sharp."

Taking care of our tools has become an anachronism. Back on the farm, my dad carefully cleaned the dirt off the hoes after each use, sharpened the edges, then dipped them in a bucket of used oil before hanging them up in the barn.

These days, when our hoe becomes dull, we are more likely to toss it and buy a new one than we are to sharpen it (if we even use a hoe, come to think of it). You wouldn't do that with your brain; why do it with your tools?

Harris acknowledges that sharpening has become a lost art, but not for him. He still cleans his spades and hoes after each use, sharpens the blades, sprays the metal with WD-40 and applies linseed oil to the wood handles.

"I've got shovels, hoes and rakes that are 25 years old," he said. "Some of them look better than new ones. I'm a nut about it."

Still, Harris is not obsessive about how you sharpen your tools. He teaches students how to sharpen by hand and to "eyeball" it, mainly by matching the same angle as the original blade was ground. His other tip is to keep your knives sharp by not putting them in the dishwasher or silverware drawer, where they will bang against other utensils. He recommends simply rinsing them off after each use, drying, and placing back in the knife holder.

Oh, about the "dull is dangerous" comment?

"You have to work harder to make a dull tool work," he noted. "If the blade is sharp, it will do what it is supposed to do, easily. If it is dull, that's when you make a mistake."

Sharpening your spades, scissors, knives, and shears is a strange combination of practicality and Zen.

"It is just fascinating," Harris said, "when you can get something sharp enough to shave with, whether it is a shovel or a razor."

Or your mind.