Geodesic dome

There's been some nice feedback on the blog in response to the Earth Garden article. Jan asked about the design of the geodesic dome. Since this is something people often ask about, here's a link to the Hall Creek Farm site, which is where I found the instructions for building the dome (after putting 'geodesic chook dome' into Google!). The site gives instructions for many different sizes of dome, from 10 to 30 metres squared.

The instructions are very detailed, but it's a good idea to have a picture of what the completed dome should look like on hand when building it. This will help in visualing how the bits of polypipe should fit together. We failed to do this, and various members of the dome-building party nearly came to blows! Luckily, it all ended happily, and the geodesic dome has been fantastic, really strong and much easier to move.

One mistake I didn't mention in the Earth Garden article was my decision to plant mint in the edge guild of the first mandala. At the time I was trying to get rid of an annoying weed that kept appearing in that part of the garden - a weed that I later identified as comfrey, something I now treasure and am doing my best to encourage! Two of the three sorts of mint I planted in the edge guild really took off. They just about killed off the comfrey, and formed a huge mat of mint that was invading the asparagus patch and the adjacent circle. Today I attacked it with a large hoe and ripped the whole lot out (or at least all that I could see). I plan to keep an eye on it over the coming weeks, and get rid of any mint plant that appears, and hope that the few remaining bits of comfrey root bounce back.

Comments

[Oral Health]

Hey Great post. Really a very nice piece of information. Newbies like me get a good idea about this... I'm going to comment now... I think i did it. Thank you..

[Jen]

I have Mint in my vegie garden from a previous owner - drives me crazy and I wonder if it will ever be gone...