I received my first confirmation today that I am not a failure as a gardener. To date I have confirmed sprouts of radish, turnips, and kohlrabi. Lets just say I relieved that they finally sprouted. I was getting concerned that the cold snap we had in my area combined with the rain/snow mix it dropped would have somehow affected the seeds in the soil. But it looks like all it did was slow things down a bit at the beginning of the season. Just look at those little guys poking there heads above the soil. For me that is one of the most exciting parts of spring when the seeds you place in the ground finally come up and you know that spring is really here.
Ok so not only do I have plants coming up but I also finally completed my cob garden bed as least as far as I am going to complete them. They ended up having an average height and width of about 5-8 inches. It definitely was a learning experience throughout. I thought I had a good soil right of the bat because it displayed a good ratio of clay to aggregates and my initial block test was promising.
I was so wrong...
So I started shaping the walls in the morning and by the afternoon they had cracks in them an inch thick. I saw this and I thought to myself what am I doing wrong. Well after consulting my resource Building with Cob and online sources as well it became obvious that I did not have enough sand and other aggregates. So off to the wholesale soil place I went to pick up construction grade sand. With sand in hand I made some test balls of clay sand mixtures. It turns out after it was all said and done I needed 1 five gallon bucket of sand per 3 five gallon buckets of sub soil to make a cob that cracked less.
I also discovered along the way that drying speed and compaction were also critical to cob holding together. So I started stomping on and otherwise beating the crap out of my walls with my hands, feet and boards to really cement the layers together. The extra compaction along with the slower drying courtesy of my tarp will produce a better, stronger cob.
Hopefully....
I am honestly still in the drying process of this whole thing so its at the point of wait and see.
Well that's all I got for you for now.
Oh here are some pictures too.
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| Beating the cob into submission my poor hands |
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| Some cob blocks I tried making using forms, not my most successful endeavour |
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| Making it look pretty |
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