Categories
Gardening

Gardening from the Ground Up

The concept of gardening from the ground up is that I start by creating pure compost in a worm bin which I then use to make compost tea which is circulated through an bioponic system. The system should require no fertilizers or chemical additives to grow vegetables in a dirt-free, weed-free environment.

I have decided to document the process of building the system, cataloging what works and what corrections I have to make to keep the system working.

This week I received the works I ordered (500 red wigglers) and placed them in the worm bin I had prepared. I expected that they would settle in comfortably but after the first day I found that roughly ten of them had escaped to seek better accommodations (and died on the ground in the attempt). I realized that I had too much course material in the worm bin and added about a gallon of peat moss. Twenty four hours later I checked on the worm bin and found that none of the worms had left so we may have a good bin situation now. I will keep monitoring over the next week to be sure.

Categories
Sports

Expanding the Big 12

As a BYU fan, the news on Wednesday that the Big 12 was openly exploring candidates to expand by 2 or 4 teams in the near future was very exciting. For years I’ve hoped that BYU could get into the Big 12 and there could never be a more obvious opportunity for them to do so than this.  I have long believed (and possibly even publicly stated – I can’t remember right now) that the Big 12 needed to get to 14 members, both to be level with the SEC and Big Ten and also to have some wiggle room if the power conference landscape shifts in the future.

Looking at the current landscape I identified what I believe to be a very good expansion scenario. Here are the four schools I think they should add as full conference members (in order of strongest to weakest addition).