hi all,...... it seems we've all had our learning experiences with storing preps. previously to this year we dug a 3'by 3' hole in the back of our masonry garage and buried a 5 gallon crock that had a slight crack in it, surrounding all sides with about 6' of dry peat. we went to the flea market and found various glazed ceramic jars with loose fitting lids and filled the crock with drypeat and put the preps in the little jars inbedded in the peat we put a pieceof slate over that,more peat and then i piece of plywood. this seemed to work for short storage, but i was concerned about the location in the garage with all the related machine stuff. last year some preps that had been stored for a while seemed dry so i sprinkled a bit of rainwater in the preps and just a little in the surrounding peat. the next time i opened it up all the preps were floating in water. saturated. i thought they were ruined so i put them in the rainbarrel and just watered the garden with them. on heike marie's (oregon) advice i decided to relocate the storage spot. we have a corner of a finished compost pile under a tree protected by 2 fences. we dug it out reburied the crock in pure finished compost. we went out and got a large piece of Pennsylvania bluestone to cover it with. now we need to make more preps to put in it and find an answer to the question about the peat. water or no. hope this helps somebody. :)sharon ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Robison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, August 19, 2002 12:24 PM Subject: Storing Preps
> At 12:00 PM 8/18/02 -0400, Merla wrote: > >The terra cotta pots and wet peat moss are for storing little tiny > >ziplocks of Bio-Dynamic preparations. It is most important to keep the > >organisms in the prep alive. I have a big pot with moss in it, but > >SStorch's message just informed me for the first time that I should have > >wet the moss. I've probably killed everything because it's really arid > >here in August even in my root cellar. > > Not so. We typically store in boxes lined with dry peat moss. One time, I > used damp peat around a terra cotta pot. It turns out that prep 500 is > hygroscopic, sucks up water like a sponge. The prep turned into soup and > was ruined. Do other folks have comments? > I recall one post that a low-cost storage device is to buy one of those > plastic-wrapped bales of peat moss. Cut a slice off the top on three > sides, so that the 4th side serves as a hinge and the top slice is a couple > of inches thick. Hollow out holes in which to put your prep containers. Set > the top back in place and store -- a root cellar would be fine. > > > > ========================== > Dave Robison
