Starting a garden in the Fall gives the soil amendments added time to break down and become more available to your vegetables next year.  Soil amendments are materials you can add to your garden soil to regulate the Ph level, add nutrients, change soil texture, add organic content, etc...   Before you know what soil amendments you need, you need to know what soil type you have.  The best old school way of testing your soil type is to take a handful and make a fist.  If the soil stays firm in a ball and you can poke your finger in it without crumbling, it is mostly clay based.  If it stays in a ball but crumbles when you poke your finger, you have good soil that will sustain enough water and nutrients.  If it falls apart when you let go of your fist it is sandy and will require some treatment for water retention and nutrients.  More on soil types, testing methods and followup treatments in follow up articles.

Starting a new garden plot will take some work, but you will reap the rewards.  First stake out your new plot with wood pegs and string.  I know not everyone has the space but I used 10x20 feet which I'll explain why later.  Once you have your plot staked out, you can use a spade shovel to cut out the sod that needs to be removed.  I found the best method was to cut one foot strips along the width one strip at a time and then cut those strips into 2 foot lengths.  A bit hard to explain, but basically take a spade shovel and cut your sod into 1x3 foot strips and then cut under about 2-3 inches to make sure you get under the roots.  This method allows you to reuse these sod patches to patch your lawn or stack them upside down to start a compost.

Once the sod is removed you will need to turn the soil that was underneath.  Depending on the soil type, you can use your spade or pitch fork or a mix of the two.  The main goal is to break up soil compaction and allow the soil the breath.  Break up the soil enough that you can rake it level.  Depending on what you will grow next year you can also churn in compost or manure at this time.  Another thing I do is to top the newly worked soil with straw.  This helps with erosion and keeps moister, but most of all I like the way it looks and keeps the garden and back yard neat.

At this point your pretty much ready for spring time turning and preparation.  I wanted to explain a bit as to why I chose 10x20 feet for my plot.  I have an active dog and young son that use the back yard so I'll be putting up a 3ft fence around the garden plot.  Nothing fancy, a wood frame with chicken wire or similar walls.  Using these dimensions, coupled with the fence, will let me peg a tarp or clear plastic over the garden thus extending my growing season by early thaw and frost protection.

In the last two articles in the Solar Energy Primer we discussed how to reduce energy consumption and Solar Panels.  In this article we will discuss DC to AC Inverters and the different models on the market.

The AC inverter is the heart of your Renewable Energy Systems Power Panel.  Unless you want to revert back to really old school where the only off-grid options where a battery bank and 12volt RV appliances, it is necessary to have an AC Inverter.  The basic function of an Inverter is to take input DC voltage (VDC) and convert it to AC voltage (VAC).  It's secondary function is to charge a battery bank should you chose to have one.  Most grid tie systems don't have a battery bank, but could have one for backup power supply.  If you are off-grid, a battery bank is a requirement.  During times of none sufficient power supply from your renewable energy systems, the inverter will convert DC power from the battery bank to AC power for your home appliances.

Electricity can be viewed as a Sine Wave, which is a mathematical function that can be viewed as a graph.  You can search the Internet for more information, but for our purpose think of Sine Waves as the purity of the electricity provided by your inverter to your appliances.

There are 4 types of Inverters:

• Square Wave Power Inverter - These are very inexpensive and not to be used for home systems.  Usually in the under 500W range, you will see these inverter types used in cars and boats and plug into a cigarette lighter.
• Modified Sine Wave Power Inverter - One of the most popular inverters due to its economic price, it produces and AC wave form somewhere between Square Wave and Pure Sine Wave.  These inverters are sometimes called Quasi-Sine are less expensive and work with most AC appliances.  Some appliances without a regulator will cause a buzzing sound and some appliances such as motors that use speed controls or timers will not function with these inverters.  Modified Sine Wave Inverters are recommended for small cottage use or boats, but not your average home use.
• True Sine Wave Power Inverter - These inverters produce the cleanest power and work best with all AC powered appliances in your home.  Although True Sine Inverters are more expensive, it is worth every penny.  After spending your hard earned money on producing your energy via Solar, Wind or Mini-Hydro, the last thing you want is to then lose it and/or produce "dirty" power.  True Sine Wave Inverters are now very affordable and are really the only way to go for off-grid home AC inverter use.
• Grid Tie Power Inverters- If you are already connected to the Utility, you can stay that way with a Grid Tie Inverter and use the Utility as your backup power.  As an added bonus, most Utilities now provide "net-metering" which allows you to sell your extra power to them.  This in effect means during peak producing hours, and after your optional battery banks have been charges, you will sell your extra power back to the Utility actually spining your meter backwards.  The Grid Tie Inverters are True Sine Wave Inverters with a added function of sensing your power consumption and synchronizing with the Utility to sell it and push to the grid.  It also has a safety feature to sense power failure from the grid and if so, cease pushing electricity.  This is a safety feature for Utility workers to ensure no home electricity is powering the grid while the workers are repairing the issue.

When configuring your Renewable Energy System keep in mind that all your DC components such as Solar Panel array, Battery Bank and Inverters all need to run on the same voltage.  In followup articles we will discuss wiring run length and gauge.  These are all tied into selecting the proper VDC for your system.

You may be wondering what to do with your heavy usage appliances like stove and dryer?  Well you can compatible inverters in series to double the ouput voltage.  You would use this technique to produce 220-240 volts required for these heavy appliances.  You can also configure them in parallel to double your power.  We will cover these topics in much more details in later follow-up articles in Solar Power Primer series so stay tuned!

Keep it Green...