BUILD YOUR OWN ECOSYSTEM

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Some time after I read the Growhole poster, I had the opportunity to visit another commune where an underground greenhouse had been made from the cellar excavation of a burned-out ranch building (see Fig. 2). This gave me the idea that a growhole doesn't necessarily have to be built into a hillside. "Since there's no south-facing embankment on my property," I reasoned, "why can't I just dig a hole in the ground, build a greenhouse on it and use the excavated dirt as insulation on the north wall . . . providing, in effect, an artificial southern slope?"

In the spring of 1972 borrowed $100 and hired a backhoe to dig out a 12' X 24' X 4' hole in the ground. For over a year the crater just sat there, with each rain or snowfall slowly filling it in again. Friends and neighbors were curious at first, then gradually ceased to mention the huge pit and accompanying pile of dirt which had become something of a local landmark. They were too polite to say so, but I knew that nobody (including my family) thought anything would ever come of it.

We had enough money saved to continue construction in the late summer of 1973. By then I had become interested in aquaculture through the writings of John Todd and Bill McLarney of the New Alchemy Institute and—after conversations and correspondence with both researchers—decided that fish farming would have to be a part of my greenhouse. I'd also been getting into hydroponic gardening and was curious about the feasibility of developing an organic nutritive solution. Slowly I formed the idea of an ecosystem: a food-proclucing unit that used no outside or polluting source of energy and was designed to take maximum advantage of nature's basic law of recycling.

In early September we began building the greenhouse. The construction was simplicity itself and could easily be duplicated by anyone. The photographs tell the story.

Once we'd cleaned the hole of the dirt and debris accumulated over a year and a half, we poured a concrete footing as a base for the cement blocks. Desire to save on the expense of concrete made us decide not to lay a slab floor for the entire structure but just for the area beneath the fish tank. The floor of the greenhouse proper consists of three inches of coarse gravel.

The cement-block walls were laid up without mortar, the use of that material being a skill which doesn't come naturally to me and which tries my patience exceedingly. I once built a root cellar of cement blocks and mortar (see MOTHER NO. 25) and found that it took me most of the day to lay up two courses. Even then, I was glad the final result would be hidden by dirt!

The mortarless method of cement-block laying is fast and simple: Two courses of block are neatly stacked up, with the aid of string and plumb bob to make sure they're straight and square. Then cement is carefully poured and tamped down every other hole. Wait for setting, and you're ready for another course. Reinforcing rods are put in the openings at four- or five-foot intervals to give the structure more strength. In this way, working rather leisurely, two men built the greenhouse walls in just two or three days. (I'd like to add that for this much concrete work a cement mixer is worth its weight in gold. I finally went out and bought one . . . it's something no homestead should be without.)

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