Greenhouse Experiment

A new experiment in Growing Renewable Affordable Food (G.R.A.F.) began today in a very modest way when I put a electronic Temperature Data Logger in the inexpensive small green house that I recently purchased. The Temperature data logger looks like an ordinary memory disk, and can be put in your computer like one to be programmed. After you program it to take temperature and other readings you desire on a predetermined schedule, it can be taken out of the computer and, running on a battery, can take measurements anywhere you place it. You can then put it back into the computer and download the data. It was given to me by a friend in Madison, the science adviser to the Nonviolent Worm, who did the science on the AIR project. (His son did the actual work on the inserts and is the one considering an affordable way to make the sunroom electrically self-sufficient using solar energy.)

My experiment is to regularly measure the temperature inside the green house, as compared to outside, as I add layers of plastic using the ‘ air spacers’ to create pockets of air between the plastic. The experiment sounds logical but my science adviser friend gave me a caution warning today since he tried something similar some years ago when he lived up north. When he created his green house with just plastic layers he found that the temperature in the green house in the winter was lower than the outside temperature. Here is his explanation of what happened. “I did some reading and found that poly sheeting is transparent to infrared, unlike glass. So the heat of the ground just radiated right out of the greenhouse leaving the ground in an icy grip of cold. That was the end of my inexpensive green house since glass was out of the question. Of course, inside your house, Bob, you have glass that doesn’t allow the infrared to pass through so you are ok there.” Despite this precaution I am going ahead with the experiment because I am not sure if the plastic on my green house is like the poly sheeting he used and maybe will act more like glass. Also mine for now is on concrete not ground. (This base might change to ground, insulation or something as I experiment.) I, weak in science as I am, am not afraid to experiment.

Also today I decided to vote for Senator Obama as a way to express my disgust with the fear-mongering that is going on by the Republicans in this campaign. I was thinking of not participating in the reality show called the ‘presidential elections’, and in act of resistance being more like Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker who never voted. However, after receiving so much mail and robo phone calls at our home associating Obama with Crime, Terrorism, partying with elite during a crisis and all kinds of things, I have decided to vote. After looking at this mail and getting robo calls, sowing seeds of fear, I decided that I need to vote to express my protest of all this hate and fear that is being thrown out. I think it is racist, hateful, violent and sinful. I was going to write a public letter why I decided to vote for Obama but Jim Wallis in the Sojourners Newsletter today expressed it better, clearer and softer than I could in an article called Be Not Afraid. If you need it read it. Experiment with Truth, Not Fear.

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