Here are some more pics of the mist bed and hardware for the #nursery. First off here is the bed in operation. It's about 24' long and 3' wide and made of old landscaping timbers and filled with concrete sand. Concrete sand is chosen because it drains well. Here are the wands. They have a pin that goes down into a hole in the head to create the mist. They haven't been cleaned in years. I cleaned them up in some citric acid: Here is the valve I use to control the mist wands. It's wired into a controller in the house, and connects to a piece of 3/4" PVC pipe with holes drilled in every 4' or so to accept the lines from the mist heads. The other end is fed by a 3/4" poly water line (not shown): Finally, the controller: A Galcon 8056 AC 6S. This will control 4 valves and can be programmed down to the second which is useful for the mist system since I'm on from 8-15 seconds every 10 minutes depending on wind, temperature, etc. #permaculture #plantstr #garden #grownostr #propagation

Here is how to take cuttings out of the mist bed in your #nursery. These are "Green Mountain" boxwood that I propagated from softwood cuttings last year. You can find out more details about how to do that in another recent post I made. Here are ~100 cuttings from 2 rows in the mist bed: First, pick out a small bunch and hold them at the level you'd like to plant: Next trim off the tops and roots. It looks harsh, but it is good for the plant: it encourages branching both above and below ground: Next plant them in some cell flats and put under intermittent mist for a few weeks: After they've acclimated under the mist, they can be placed under daily irrigation for a few months. Their next step is into "Trade 1" (3/4 gallon) pots. #permaculture #plantstr #grownostr #gardening #propagation

I wanted to share a little on the potting soil we use for the plants in our #nursery: What we are looking for is a medium that drains easily, yet retains moisture. The cost is also a factor. Since we pot mostly perennials, I also am looking for a fungally dominant potting mix vs. bacterially dominant as you'd have with fresh compost. Wood chips around here are easy to get by the truckload, and I use well rotted ones for the basis of my compost mix. And by "rotted" I mean "rotted": They look like soil and are completely broken down by fungus, it takes about 2-3 years. On top of the wood chips I add about 5% by volume charged biochar. About half of this is sifted to 1/4" + and the other half of the biochar is right out of the leaf vacuum I use to crush it up. The biochar is charged with azomite, sea minerals, worm casts, and effective microorganisms (EM-1). We make the biochar right here on the farm. It serves both to provide and retain nutrients and moisture as well as provide drainage: Then worm castings sifted to 1/8" and finer at around 5% by volume. I also raise the worms for the casts, the current system involves growing them in 4'x8' Waste Management Bagsters: Finally about 1 quart of activated EM-1. This is 1 oz Terraganix EM-1 mixed with 1 oz blackstrap molasses in 30 oz of water: This all gets mixed up by hand, and then we use it to pot our plants. I mix it in a gorilla cart which will provide enough for about 25-30 trade gallon pots. #grownostr #permaculture #fungi #plantstr #garden