equipment – Planet B Gardens

remote hive monitor

Now that the outdoor garden is done for the season, time for more indoor projects. I decided to try my hand at building a remote beehive monitoring system from (almost) scratch. My goal is to build a system that monitors hive weight, temperature and sound levels inside the hive, bee comings and goings (via external camera), ambient temperature, and motion (in case the hive gets knocked over or otherwise disturbed). If all goes as planned, that data will get fed wirelessly to an online dashboard that keeps track of trends over time. I can also set up email or text alerts to let me know if the hive gets tipped or if something else out of

November 17, 2016

scratch tortillas – 1st try

Grow your own. Buy in bulk. Make it from scratch. Those are the three guidelines I follow whenever possible, and in that order. My most recent DIY experiment is making tortillas the old fashioned way (here’s the whole grain corn tortilla recipe I used), starting from hard field corn and processing from there. I didn’t grow my own corn this year, so purchased a 25 lb. bag of organic field corn from Great River Milling. Ancient techniques for processing field corn call for simmering the hard kernels in an alkali solution first. From what I’ve read, processing the corn this way makes its niacin available to human body — in addition to other health benefits. I used food-grade

October 5, 2016

beehive bear fence

After a little trial and error, the electric fence to keep the bears away from the beehives seems to be working. It’s questionable whether what’s left of the second hive will survive, but the larger hive remains healthy and intact. Here’s to it making it through the winter! Installing the fence is relatively straightforward. For the way I set mine up, you need a 1-joule fence charger (I got one that would work plugged into an outlet, a solar charger, or a 12v battery), 4′ t-posts (however many to surround your hive spaced 3-4 feet apart), 14-gauge galvanized steel wire, 5″ offset insulators for t-posts, gate handles equal to the number of

September 25, 2016

diy fermentation setup

Fermenting vegetables are a great way to preserve extra harvest through the winter, with lots of healthy probiotics, vitamins, and minerals. I don’t have huge quantities of any one vegetable right now, so want to be able to preserve small amounts. From what I’ve read, fermenting in mason jars using an airlock is a great small-batch option. When I checked into buying airlock mason jar fermentation lids, though, they averaged $10 per lid — which would quickly add up given the number of batches I’d like to ferment. I figured I could make them myself much less expensively. I started with six lids to see how it would go. I bought 6

August 22, 2016

unboxing the brushmaster

Last fall I hauled three truckloads of maple prunings to the dump. They would have made excellent mulch. I see no such waste in the future with the arrival of the Brushmaster. With 10 acres of trees that need tending, and lots of twigs, branches, leaves, pine needles, and woody vegetable stems from the garden, a chipper/shredder is likely a wise investment. It was difficult to find enough info online to decide which would be the best chipper/shredder for what I need. All had major pros and cons. In the end, I decided to go with a light commercial grade so I’d have enough power to take care of most

October 4, 2015