A visit from Oslo
Speaking in front of an audience can be intimidating, but it can also be a valuable and transferable skill. What does this have to do with Polar Permaculture one might ask? Well, we had 25 students and lecturers from an architect school come visit us for a tour.
Before they arrived in the evening we had to complete our usual daily tasks, and then also prepare for the visitors. Apart from tidying up, cleaning the ‘dishes’ (trays, pots etc.), this also meant to assist Ben with making some healthy veggie snacks while he made mango smoothies with our locally grown basil and parsley.
The visitors arrived shortly after we finished getting ready, we introduced ourselves, and then we split them into three groups due to the limited space available in the lab. One group would start off with Hege in the gallery, the second one with Benjamin at the dome and the last with Anna and me in the lab. Ben and Hege told them where it all started and how it works, whereas we interns showed them our usual tasks. I was nervous at first, but since we work well as team and the visitors were clearly an interested audience, it turned out to be a really enjoyable experience. We aimed for 15 minutes per group before rotating, but it turned out to be closer to 20 minutes. I remember thinking ‘how am I going to talk for 15 whole minutes?’ but later on it was more like how do I stop talking without missing important things?
DIY or DIWHY?
We clearly are not very busy, or how does one explain this?
(PICTURE f CAM)
Jokes aside, when I saw the white elongated flower pots, I brought up the idea that they might work well on this shelf where we previously attached some hanging flower pots with cable ties. But how could we attach them?
We went to the only local shop that has things like nuts and bolts, got some fitting bolts with corresponding nuts and a drill bit, located some old wood-like pressed cardboard to use instead of washers as we couldn’t find the right sizes and voilà: A beautiful shelf for Ben’s cooking-class herbs.
Trial and Error
Our fertiliser experiment looks promising, but it is hard to tell which one is pulling ahead. The one with our usual nutrition, the Superba, looks the nicest but appears a bit smaller than the other two. The temperature and humidity can vary in the room, so this might have affected results.
(3 PICS FROM MOBILE, superba, mix, dahlia)
We set up broccoli the same way as the cress density experiment mentioned in a previous blog, but unfortunately it got mouldy and had to be discarded. We are assuming they got too moist, therefore future attempts will get a little bit less water.
We are also looking into ways to give the basil plants more individual space, as this might improve their formation and prevent sideways growth.
