What are we going to do with old wind turbine blades. Daniels Fund is putting up money (a lot of money) for charters. The keys to increasing primocane blackberry production.
No choice is without consequence, and that applies to wind turbines too.
Like everything else on this planet wind turbines and their parts have a finite lifetime. By my reading, it's generally between 20 and 25 years for the current technology.
Many of the components in the wind turbines can be reused: steel, copper, etc.
One of the components that people are now struggling with finding a use for is the blades. They are made of fiberglass and thus harder to recycle. Many end up either in landfills or (as you'll see in the first link below), unceremoniously left in a field somewhere.
People are struggling mightily to try and find something to do with the blades now (see the second video for an option--grinding them back into fibers for use in reinforcing concrete), but the problem is whether or not there is a good bargain in doing so.
I.e. are we saving anything (resources, energy, greenhouse gas emissions) by reusing them with current technology?
This is not to say that taking down a, say, coal-fired plant doesn't result in material without a use. This is not to say that we should stop seeking alternatives.
This post is here to remind you that there are always consequences to every decision. There is no magic bullet.
And what we'll do with the renewable tech as it ages out, forgotten by politicians and a media more eager to support renewables than give a full picture, is one consequence we too often don't discuss.
Daniels Fund is putting their money where their mouth is on school choice.
I've long known (since the first school I taught at was a private school and Daniels Fund was a presence there--as well as having many of our high-flying students be recipients of DF scholarships) Daniels Fund supported school choice.
They've made that even plainer lately by putting up a BIG sum of money to support charter schools in Colorado.**
To quote the article linked below:
"The Daniels Fund promises to add 100,000 seats to non-traditional schools by 2030. Those can be secular or religious private schools, publicly funded charter schools, or 'micro-schools.'"
I'm glad to see it. Good for them and good for the charters.
**A quick note, Daniels Fund is investing big here, but they are spreading their money across a group of Western States: it's not just Colorado.
https://www.cpr.org/2023/07/07/colorado-non-profit-puts-up-a-lot-of-money-for-more-seats-at-charter-schools/
Increasing my (primocane) blackberry production. I think I’ve started to figure it out!
An update on bending (and tipping) the blackberry canes
I promised an update on my blackberry plants as the growing season wore on: to give a sense of the success or failure of bending the canes over, tying them horizontally, and then cutting off the tips per the paper I'd posted about earlier.
The blackberry canes are starting to show their terminal buds now which means flower and fruit are not far behind and I'm happy to report that this year I will have a much more abundant harvest than in years past.
If you look at picture #1, you'll see one of the bent over canes with its vertical shoots. I outlined roughly in red to help your eye see the tied-down cane and the surprising number of verticals coming off. If each of those bud out and make fruit ...
In picture #2, you'll see one of the canes I tried to bend, but which broke, forcing me to just "tip" it (cut about 6" off the end). Tipping a plant causes it to activate the buds along its stem and you can see that those buds (again, traced in red to help your eye see them) have come off. As before, if each of them bears fruit I'll be doing much better than having the single cane with only one bud at the very end.
That leads to the question of which is better: which will produce more flowers and fruit, simply tipping the cane or bending it over and then tipping it after you let it grow horizontally. According to the paper that inspired this whole thing, the tied-over canes win, but in my home garden I'm not so sure.
Lastly in picture #3 you'll see the name of the game baby! Look at all those little flowers on the terminal end of this shoot. I circled one so you could see what I'm talking about. After years of meager production, I can't tell you how happy I am to see more than one or two flowers on the end of a cane, along with knowing that multiple canes look this way.
If you've been growing primocane blackberries and struggling to get production, here are my tips (and notes for myself next year):
--try the horizontal tie-down method, but start the bend sooner. Not mentioned in the paper that inspired this trial was just how damned easily those canes snapped! Bend them sooner and do it with a large radius.
--If you do snap a cane, no biggie. Just tip it. If your crack is already 6" below the tip, make a clean cut above the next leaf joint down. If it's closer, go down til you're 6" from the tip and cut above a leaf joint there.
--Do this in about mid-June here in Colorado--the bending or tipping of broken canes. In years past, I did try tipping, but I realize now that I started way too late. You should tip earlier so your shoots have a chance to grow long enough and big enough to make fruit.
--Prune the tinier canes and any that come up after you start bending (or after you get about 10 good canes from the plant). It's tempting to think you're losing fruit, but I think what I'm finding is that helps the plant focus.
--Avoid the temptation to fertilize a lot. Some slow-release balanced fertilizer at the start of Spring is fine. I realize this year that I way over fertilized last year and got lots of plant but not lots of fruit.