Subterranean Heating and Cooling System (SHCS)

So Ross wanted to know what’s going on in my garden/ sustainable living site as we near the end of summer. With this recent cold spell fall seems fast approaching. It’s tough at 4000 feet in the Sier- ras. The season is so short up here that you might not even have time to put a fall crop in where your summer crops have been growing all summer. I’ve learned over the years that if I want to get a fall crop in I’d better leave some room for them in the summer garden. Whether you live down by Angels Camp or Sonora or up by Dorrington or Strawberry, if you’re thinking of starting your own plants for a fall crop you’re at least a month too late. Transplants should be going in the ground now. Granted there are some crops that you might be able to plant still, lettuce, rad ishes, or some type of cress. If you want to build your soil, cover crops should be going in now so seeds can have a chance to sprout and grow before freezing temperatures show up. I’ve already heard accounts of frost on the Meadowmont Golf Course, fall and winter could come early this year. If you want to get a fall garden in and you don’t have any transplants yet, you should check with your local nursery.
In my garden, I’m about to plant Guatemalan purple Fava beans, Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli-kale), sylvetta arugula (perennial). I’m also going to do some container plantings of Egyptian walking onions, evergreen white bunching onion, He-Shi-Ko Japanese white bunching onion and the local Camalay red onion. Everything except the fava beans I’ve already started. I started the Broccoli-kale and arugula in July, and the onions I started in early August. I’m really exited about the perennials that I’ll be planting because come next year I won’t have to replant the arugula, bunching onions and walking onions. More perennials that I’ll be planting this fall include chocolate mint, orange mint, horseradish, perennial kale, feverfew, hollyhock, Nan King cherries, thorn less raspberries, thorn less blackberries, figs, asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes, cardoons and a few more that I’m forgetting. So if you have once again procrastinated to the point where it’s too late to get your fall garden in, I suggest you get off the annual treadmill. Plant perennials so we can create a more permanent agriculture.
To get out of the short season blues I use season extenders to help me not worry about cold frosty nights. Cold frames can work well to help cold tolerant plants thrive in freezing temperatures. A cold frame is basically a box with a window on top of it.
I also have row cover that offers 6 degrees Fahrenheit of frost protection. But the real prize for extending seasons is the Subterranean Heating and Cooling System (SHCS), or “climate battery” that I’m installing in my greenhouse. It’s definitely nice to plug into this battery on a sunny and cold winter day. It can feel like the tropics in January. I first learned about this when I took my Permaculture Design Course at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute (CRMPI). CRMPI is one of the pioneering sites for this technology.John Cruickshank (Going Concerns Unlimited) and Jerome Osentowski (CRMPI) have been working on refining this technology for decades now. The SHCS is fully explained on the website The Land of Hobbit House and Company. The basic premise of SHCS is that it takes the heat that is created during the summer and warm days and pumps it into the soil using a small fan and 4” perforated flex tubes. The heat and excess moisture is stored in the soil. Air comes out the other end of the tubes cooler and drier. The energy is stored in the soil for use when the air in the greenhouse is approaching freezing. When the greenhouse gets too cold another thermostat clicks on the fan and warm air from the soil is pumped into the greenhouse preventing frost damage to any plants. This system works very well as I’ve seen figs, rosemary, prickly pear, bananas, three year old pepper plants and a whole slew of tropical and Mediterranean plants thriving at 7000 feet in Colorado. The best thing about this system is that it runs a small fan on about the same amount of energy as a conventional 90 watt light bulb. It is a fraction of the cost of running a greenhouse conventionally, literally only pennies a day. So I’m building the first of its kind in the area and possibly the whole state. I’m looking forward to getting the first one finished to see what is possible around here. The possibilities are only limited by the size of your greenhouse. Should I start planting Avoca- dos and citrus in Arnold? I just might have to. Stay tuned for SHCS workshop in late September.