Lime. Oh lime. So versatile. So useful. But sometimes so difficult to know which kind you’re buying. You may remember my beginners' guide to different kinds of lime I penned last time. Sometimes though, all the CaOs and NHLs in the world won’t help you, because you live in a place that doesn’t regulate too carefully, and your lime turns up in mysterious dog-eared bags which inspire anything but confidence. In that case you can always do what Gautam Singh in Mumbai did. Cut out the middle man, and make it yourself. He shared his process in our members' only Facebook Group last week, and I think it's fabulous. “Unsure and concerned about of the quality of lime we were purchasing, especially for some tadelakt work, we made a small kiln to make our own lime,” says Gautam, who is still battling on with plaster work over there in Mumbai. I’ve got to hand it to him, he’s not a quitter:) “It's specifically for tadelakt,” he says, and “I’m happy to say it works, and wasn’t too complicated or time consuming either.” Oh...music to my ears! How did they create their own quick lime? First Gautam and his friends built the kiln out of cob (see above). Next, he collected a bunch of oyster and clam shells from seafood sellers. You don't crush the shells, they are left whole so they are easy to identify post burning, because the entire burned shell will be converted into Calcium Oxide or pure lime. “Research stated the shells needed to be fired between 800-1200℃. Any less and it wouldn't have the reaction that turns it into lime, and any more would melt the shells," he informed us. I asked him how he measured the temperature. "Figuring out the temperature was tricky at first, but luckily a professional potter friend came to the rescue and we used a thermocouple to measure the temperature for the first two trials. After that it became easier because then I knew it took between 40-60 mins to achieve that 800-1200 degrees required for my kiln." Initial Troubles In the beginning Gautam thought he'd failed. But in fact it's a good example of how things are sometimes not what they appear. "After our first firing attempt, we went through the burnt matter, extracted all the shells and put them in a pot. Then we tried adding water. But there was no reaction!” Our pioneer thought perhaps he hadn’t fired the shells at a high enough temperature. He prepared his kiln for a second attempt. It was then he chanced upon a golden nugget of online information advising the use of warm water (not cold) to slake the burnt shells. The Mumbai team decided to try it. “So we used the same shells, added warm water and voila! It started boiling and reacting violently,” he says. To test the lime, the team made a limecrete brick out of the slaked lime and crushed bricks. They allowed it to cure completely. “That brick has been lying completely submerged in a bucket of water for over two months now. It's hard as a rock, completely unaffected by the water,” says Gautam. Fantastic! The Mumbai crew have now kilned more batches seashells and are slaking them for a nice long time to create the optimum lime putty. They added jaggery and haritaki seeds (terminalia chebula) to the mix, because this lime will be used for a special type of Indian tadelakt known as araish. As Gautam explains, "Traditionally in India, sand was rarely used with lime...Crushed bricks (essentially burnt mud including a certain amount of clay) are used with lime for mortars, plasters, etc with no need of sand whatsoever. This includes the Taj Mahal and various other ancient structures still standing.” I also used crushed bricks in a limecrete in Turkey, and can attest that it creates a wonderful crete. This is because crushed bricks are a pozzolan (a burned material such as ash) that creates a reaction which hardens the lime. But I'll stop right there, because I’m delving deeper into the wonderful world of Indian lime plaster next time. For those wanting to contact Gautam and learn more about his project, MudWorks is just beginning. Making Lime from Scratch - An Overview 1. Build a kiln from cob, or some other material that can stand 1000 degrees heat. 2. Collect some oyster/clam shells, or limestone (see video below). 3. Light a fire in your kiln and add your limestone/shells. Get the temperature up to between 800 and 1200 degrees. 4. Extract the shells (if using) and put them in a vat. 5. Put on protective clothing (mask, goggles, gloves, onesie etc) 6. Add warm water to the burned shells and watch the mixture bubble and throth. Be careful. Lime is caustic and can burn. 7. The longer you leave that substance slaking (submerged in plenty of water), the better quality lime you get. Mr Primitive Survival has a video about doing all this with limestone, which is also rather funky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r39dvtQBs44 Do you enjoy The Mud Home?
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So I’ve shifted from a hot, dry climate to a cooler, wet one. And it’s a radically different ball game. Slugs replace aphids. Mould occludes drought issues. I’m once again swatted by the importance of climate-specific information. But where to find it? As you’ve probably worked out by now, I take most advice with a shedload of salt. If you can’t show me hard evidence of success, take cover. But, when it comes to a burgeoning garden in a wet climate, I know a woman who knows. Let me hand over to the eloquent Kristen Krash of Sueño de Vida in Ecuador for her hard-won tips. I Imagined Endless Crops - I Was Wrong When I first landed at my new home on seven acres of sub-tropical cloud forest, I was ecstatic. It was dry August and the sun shone in the bright blue sky, innocent of the ferocity to come. I blithely surveyed the lush verdant grasses, giant ferns, and vining leaves with satisfaction. I was an avid and accomplished gardener back in North America, with its short as and snowy winters. Now, here, in this Jurassic Park of eternal summer, I imagined the undulating green land heaving forth endless crops of fruits and vegetables. Ah, what did I know? Not much. Two months later I was despondent. It had started raining. A lot. Daily. Sub-tropical cloud forest rain, with drops big enough to fill a teacup, hammered the ground. My tender (wimpy) little salad crops that has sprouted up so eagerly, were battered to total ruin in a matter of days. The heavy soil, which I had laboriously scratched out the matted grass and dug and turned in the way that worked back in my good old wintry climes, turned a slippery, clay-ey sludge, more suitable to plastering the earthbag walls of the house we were building. Even worse, the fifty or so fruit trees we had planted under sunny summer skies now looked awful. Their roots waterlogged, rust spots pocked the leaves and monstrous slugs and snails descended on what was left. I felt like, and was, a complete failure. But nature abhors a vacuum, right? And what I had was not a "bad" climate, but a vacuum of knowledge of how to deal with it. Fast forward two years and those struggling trees are not only alive, but flowering and fruiting and communing. I'm harvesting fifteen-pound pumpkin squash from my garden, slicing and dicing mountains of cassava and plantain, hauling in bunches of a hundred or more bananas, roasting my own cacao beans, making teas and tinctures with herbs I've grown and getting my greens from from the Malabar spinach plants sprawling pretty much everywhere. So obviously I learned to thrive in, and love, my wet wonderful home. 6 Steps to Succeeding in a Wet Climate Wet climates pose special challenges to the gardener/grower: fungus, mildew, tight heavy soils leached of nutrients by heavy rains, and enough creeping, crawling, voracious critters to eat up your crops in a single sitting. But there are methods that work and don't involve mixing chemicals. My experience rising to these challenges is limited to the subtropical region of Ecuador, but I think much of what I learned here could be helpful in a temperate zone as well. 1. Give your plants time. Everything you plant out will at first look like it's dying. It might be, but probably not. Plants take awhile to "take hold" in wet soils. I think the roots get a little waterlogged and crushed and then some leaves might turn black or yellow or get rust spots and the plant will look generally awful. Give it time. It will either die or get stronger and healthy. 2. Don't get attached. Plant a LOT of small plants or seeds. They won't all make it, but that's okay. The weaker ones will serve as "bait" food for the slugs, snails, and other critters who attack the weaker plants first, giving the stronger ones more of a chance. You can even transplant some soft-leaf "weeds" close to your cultivars to "feed" the slugs so they leave your garden plants alone, or at least don't kill them entirely. 3. Be gentle. Don't turn the soil a whole lot trying to aerate it. I did that in the beginning and it's a waste of time and energy, and actually counterproductive. Wet soils have usually more clay and a fairly shallow topsoil (rain leaches it off). By turning it you're just pretty much making plaster. Good for houses, not so much for plants. The key is piling up organic matter on top of gently opened soil and planting in the looser pile, not digging down. You can use compost or cut grass or chopped up leaves and soft branches from weeds, trees you've pruned. It's less work to pile up organic material than digging heavy soil and it works better. 4. Use Compost! Rust and mildew thrive in wet, tight soil. Create drainage by opening the soil around the tree gently with a pitchfork and put the compost on top. Don't disturb the root system of the tree digging around too much. The compost will attract worms and burrowing insects to come up to the surface and eat the compost. This creates channels in the soil, improves drainage, and aerates it naturally. The bugs also poop, which is good fertiliser. 5. Don't be a clean freak. Look, I think Martha Stewart is the bees knees, but in a wet climate garden, you gotta live and let live. Leaving weeds around is fine for your plants, as long as they aren't choking them. The weeds also provide food for all the fungi and mildews in wet soil so that all those organisms have other targets than your plants. 6. Adapt. Grow what thrives in your climate. Don't kill yourself trying nursing a cactus garden under plastic in the rain forest. I have a nursery where I keep some temperate clime herbs in containers, but it's not my mainstay. Let go of perceived attachments to foods you think you need (because it's all you know) and learn to grow new ones. Nature adapts; you are part of nature. So you will too. Kristen Krash is the co-creator of Sueño de Vida, a nature conservation centre, permaculture farm, and natural building experiment in the cloud forest of Ecuador. To learn more about the mission, courses offered, work exchange opportunities, and land for sale at Sueño de Vida, see their website at http://www.suenodevida.org/our-dream/ Do you enjoy The Mud Home?
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