Consistent moisture in the soil seems to be the determining factor for me. Where the soil did not get wet enough to keep wicking water to the plants they did not grow and produced only a few small tubers.
A volunteer in dry soil at the back of my greenhouse nest to the wall where rain water was wicking in grew fine though spindly due to lack of light.
Afterburner Mass Heater
Reburner was suggested and that keeps the same acronym.
Esther one removes the scary rocket and more accurately describes the function. Also avoids the confusion with the open flame rocket stove.
The outstanding memory of ours is that my mother was told that it could shell peas. She blanched the pea pods and then passed them to me and I ran them through the wringer. The peas popped out of the pods and rolled back into a tub and the pods into a tub on the other side.
My zone is a little warmer and my herbs are in containers that I can move to best locations with the seasons. My goal is to feed the soil microbes during the cool season and get an additional production from the containers. What works for me is top multiplying onions. As the sets mature on the top of the onions I plant them around my herbs and they grow all winter supplying green onions. during the summer I have alpine strawberries.
I'm wishing I had done this under the corn, there is bunch of smartweed popping up there.
Maybe I can smother the smartweed with mulch and plant into the mulch.
Is there an edible nitrogen fixer that would work for undersowing this time of year?
Sugar snap peas is what I had planed but I did not get the corn planted. I figured the stalks could work as a trellis for the pea vines.
I had the same results with kale seed which I have in abundance. It suppressed grass around asparagus without hindering the asparagus ferns Also gave me a second crop in that space.
The split and healed vertical branch looks the most problematic to me. Removing it will probably cause another of those rings of bark trying to close off the bare wood and after many years a rotten core. The tree can remain remarkably strong even when hollow but snow load or twisting winds can break them eventually.
As others have indicated you can just keep removing parts of the tree and it will regenerate itself.
We had a row along the highway and when they were considered hazard we cut them for lumber and 10 years later repeated the process. Not unusual in this area to find bicycles and bed springs incorporated in massive regrowth of large maples that were cut down and then ignored.
I do the combination of salal and Oregon grape or Washington holly berries. The skin of the salal berries will give a dark to black color to preserves if that is desired.
The plant spreads by roots underground, therefore can be propagated by dinging up some roots and transplanting them; best along the edge of a hedge row. Can be mowed to maintain low height.
Not bur dock; you don't want the burrs when it goes to seed . What you want is curly dock which has seeds more like beats. It penetrates blue clay on my property. Roots have the same usability as burr dock best harvested in winter for the stored nutrition for the next years seed production. Dandelions may show up on their own If it is sandy soil plant a cover crop of wheat in the fall; it has high energy seed that can get started without much soil life. When you harvest the wheat the stubble makes a protective cover to start new seeds which feed on the decaying wheat roots. Feeds my chickens and my soil.
Was working on my own signature links and just had to fallow yours.
bricolage:
something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things. Add ier to a french word means one who does that activity.
Your pile of good soil is important because it has native soil life that is not in the wood chips and compost. So sifting the weeds out and mixing it with the compost will will turn it into soil. The life and death of the organisms in the soil is what releases the nutrients to the plant roots.
Be wary of any grass roots that are long with a white growing tip. These are the invasive and will grow along under the cardboard until they find an opening then come up. Do not cut the root because each piece will grow. dry them and then burn them.
I set a 2 day wait on this before I answered. So On second thought I went out on the mowed part of my meadow to see if could find something like it.
I found 2 things had to be in place. (1) the clover leaves are bruised but not cut by the lawn mower; the cut ones have a jagged brown edge that is narrower.
(2) the clover has to be crowded by something that is growing faster and shading or starving it In your case the grass. In my case it was dandelions. In most cases it was the clover that had the stronger root power and stressing the grass.
You need to mow undesirables before they set seed and if possible let the desirable set seed and spread that where needed.
get started with the chicken tractors as soon as possible.
The invasive scotch broom we have here has proved to have medicinal benefit for rabbits. They often get liver damage from coxidiosis which is spread by the bird population. When it is a small part of diverse forage the rabbits select the proper dosage and the livers are restored to health.
Occasionally the scotch broom will have both yellow and red in the bloom which is very decorative used as cut flowers. Be sure to chop and drop unharvested branches after flowering to prevent seed which happens when the pods split and twist throwing the seed long distances. The seed seems to be programmed to come up progressively over many years.
Jennifer Richardson wrote:Josiah made a good catch--somehow we managed to only show half the cold sink in our scale drawings, instead of the full 5 feet. Here's a modified version:
Glad this shows the black pipe idea. I have been working on this for some time. It needs to be a double loop to work well. The air heated by the black pipe should be pulling hot air from the ceiling under the grow bed and into the bottom of the pipe in front of the window. The black pipe would continue down the back of the ceiling and under the grow bed to store heat there then empty into the well. The reverse cycle with radiant cooling at night the black pipe draws air from the well where cold air is falling from the window warms it with the stored heat the cooled air is then wormed again as it rises to the ceiling. A deep well is not necessary just the air space in the 2.5 feet below the floor. Multiple loops can be installed different diameters could be used to test which is the most effective.
Joe Grand wrote:For ten years the wife say get an adjustment, it will help.
I say nothing will help old age, then I got AFIB & agree to try getting adjustments.
Now I call my Doctor Angel Hands & my wife will never let me forget she was right.
My bone structure was leaning to the left, but you could only see it with an X-ray.
Now I get a adjustment weekly & am reminded that my wife was right, but I feel 100% better at 60 than 55.
At 55 I had the same problem. went to massage school and worked for a chiropractor. Now I am 80 and still working on myself.
Fallow the links in my signature if you want my help.
Lorinne's experience seams to match mine. One possible variation she did not mention: the OP is making a deer fence so the posts are high enough to put log across the top the gate post. It only needs to be half the diameter of the posts. With a diagonal wire brace from the top of the gate posts to the bottom of the adjacent posts it can support a heavy gate. If you wish to have the gate swing all the way back to the fence to get it out of the way mount the hinges on the side of the post that it opens. If the hinges are on the opening side of the posts the gate can swing both directions. 2 gates meeting in the middle has advantages for a wide opening.
Lady bugs and paper wasps need places hibernate in cold winter climates so greenhouses and shelter built out of reclaimed material with lots of gaps and crevices for them to over winter make a difference In how soon they show up for work. To insulate the north wall I covered the inside with carpet padding and strips of carpet. As soon as the greenhouse is warm enough for aphids it is also waking up the predators.
Interesting that this was under animal care in the PEP forum. As mentioned by several posters ants care for aphids as their milk cows. I discovered them even bringing them in the barn for the winter. Back in the 1940's I discovered ants tending aphids on the ivy vines that had worked there way between the logs that made the upper part of our root cellar. It was winter time and too cold outside for aphids. Again in the 1980's When I was moving something heavy I dislodged a rock from the wall of a planting bead beside the side walk and there were ants tending aphids on a dandelion root during the winter.
Then there are the paper wasps that consider aphids their meat cows. Paper wasps are quite different in their habit than Yellow jackets and hornets. They are semi solitary often working together as a sisterhood rather than as a queen and workers. They do not close their nest with an outer covering and so are aware of your presence so you can talk to them and be respectful fellow gardeners. I have never been attacked by them and have even carefully move their nest when in an inappropriate location. I have only been stung by them 3 times in the many years of working together and that was because I was unaware that I was damaging their nest. Those stings were very shallow and just to let me know I was in the wrong.
Jay Angler wrote:
The third question! What are people's suggestions for covering working coposts that are usually being added to every week or so - sometimes on top, sometimes stuff dug in, sometime stuff added to one end, or for covering resting composts when your dirt is solid clay so a complete "soil cap" simply isn't possible?
The whole reason I'm composting so much is that we got a piece of land that is mostly forest, but in one area the former owner's son added a bunch of mineral soil/clay fill from his pond building company and ran big equipment on it - think very compacted, impossible to work once it dries out, but the areas I've worked on with compost or around compost are starting to be something like soil. This is the only area I've got available that gets sun and it would be overrun with Himalayan blackberry and pioneer trees if I don't keep them at bay and plant the stuff I would chose that need that sun.
A lot of good questions, I will comment on the last one.
I have a clay field, probably the bottom of a lake filled with volcanic ash. If it is too dry ore too wet it is impossible to work with. By mowing with a scythe and piling up the mix of green ans dry grass and covering it with old carpet it composts down to workable soil. The carpet was torn out due to pet damage and some was cut in convenient 4 foot wide strips and rolled up. Curly dock come up in the space between the strips breaking up the clay when worked with the broad fork. I shift the carpet strips 2 feet after forking and adding more grass then transplant squash into the slits between the strips of carpet.
Radiator fans are set up to pull air through the radiator. I think the vacuum would distribute the air flow more evenly through the fins. You could try hanging the radiator from the ridge and the fan pull the air down to the floor. The water flow in the radiator is also normally from the bottom to the top. Your set up is simple for installation to have the outfall to the tank but it may not be fully using the elements capacity. Possibly mounting the radiator above the inlet tank and pumping the water into the bottom of the radiator then letting the current inlet line drain to the high tank. The fan could then be beside the pump simplifying the electrical and blow the air down on the floor for more heat distribution.
Telletherapy Though I am working on providing service by telephone and telleconferancing this post is about learning the intermediate skill Telletouch. Telle meaning at a distance. Telletouch A principle that you probably learned a long time ago is that every action requires an equalizing reaction. We will take advantage of this to feel what is happening where it is hard to reach. but first we need to learn how to touch. An established principle of therapeutic touch is that a light touch has a profound effect, a moderate pressure has a moderate effect and heavy pressure turns response off temporally.
Practice for telletouch is to balance a nickle on a fingertip and try to keep it there without looking at it. Touch a finger from each hand on opposite sides of a barrier without looking and then look and see if they line up. These skills are valuable in every day life such as putting a nut on a bolt when you can not see it.
Now let us practice telletouch on our self. One of the most important reactions in our body is the movement that happens around our ears in response to movement in the hips. Not going int detail, It has to do with maintaining our balance and looking straight ahead while walking.
Are you ready to practice and start on a journey of discovery? Find the point of cartilage at the center front of the ear and touch just in front of that light enough to just feel the point of the joint of the jaw under the skin. Are they in an equal position? One could be higher than the other one tilted in and the other out. Move the jaw slightly to feel how they move then without the teeth locked move the hips side to side and one forward while the other back. Do you feel a mirror motion under your finger tips? This is a reflection of the muscles that pull your legs together pulling on the pubic bone. Now add another point of touch at the same time touch the tips of your thumbs to the point of bone below and behind the ear lobs. This will mirror the motion of the top front corner of the pelvis, I use the term mirror because the chain of muscles pulling the hip up will pull down on the skull.
Practice walking slowly and carefully. can you get the motions to move equally and smoothly? If not you may have a protective posture pattern because of some injured place in your body. Such protective patterns cause over use of other parts of your body causing them to become sore requiring another protective pattern. That keeps multiplying until you hurt all over and get diagnosed with fibro myalgia syindrome Translation you have unexplained pain in muscles and connective tissue in eleven or more places on your body and that is making you hyper sensitive to potential pain signals.
Now let us apply this to your efforts to be a permaculturist. You are out in the field with your scythe or hoe or rake and some place in your body starts to ache or has a pain with a certain position or motion. Doing the above routine may help you discover the protective action that is causing the problem. If you try to continue with proper motion The actual cause may manifest by sending a pain message to your conscious brain. Pain is the body's message to the conscious mind that you have to do something different. When you know the cause you can apply the correct treatment. often people come to me with a sore shoulder that relief from any treatment they have received only lasting a few hours. The actual cause was an old injury in the spine or an ankle. The protective pattern caused them to repeatedly swing the arm in an unnatural way causing repetitive use injury. Correcting the body's perception that old healed injury still needed protection permanently solved the shoulder problem.
My laying hens seem to crave brasicas and radishes things that deliver more sulfur for the yolk. If I fork out any perennial grass roots after a pass and then water the annual weed seeds com up and are their first choice which are removed very quickly so you cane move through more quickly. I am on my second round now but I am in climate zone 7b almost 8 so my growing season starts earlier. If it is an area that will not be planted I feed the hens bird seed and they bury enough in spring to feed them in fall Then I feed them soaked wheat which grows all winter here and ripens in summer. If winter wheat is planted in your area you might try that after the garlic is planted to open new ground.
Note that the wofati was sited to minimize solar gain in order to test whether enough heat would be in the mass of the berm. I personally would put in some solar collection to heat the core of the berm. Climate batteries are usually designed to bury heat deep in the mass during hot weather so the surface of the mass is still cooling the interior of the structure then the slow migration of the heat reaches the interior of the structure during the cold weather. So far the performance indicates that the interior of the berm is not warm enough to prevent cooling the interior below comfort level because it can only add heat when the temperature of the interior drops below the berm temperature. I would want the core of the berm to be at least 80 degrees by September.
Can you briefly explain to me what exactly magnet therapy and why it does what it does? Maybe you already addressed this above, I might not be making the connection.
Thanks,
Eric
Magnets can be used give additional energy to electrons. The amount of energy in the electrons determines how elements arrange themselves in chemical reactions. Low energy levels in cells is a common part of illness.
Use the link in my signature line for more information.
Catie George wrote:Hans, thanks for starting this thread!
My mother relies on a monthly massage to help with pain management, which isn't possible right now. She has some carpal tunnel, inflammatory arthritis, and one leg shorter/significantly weaker than the other due to an old break and surgeries. Her shoulders are very tight/sore most of the time, a lot of the tension seems to come from her bad leg. She uses a lot of heat and rolling on the floor on tennis balls in a sock to manage it, and is rather obsessed with good posture and ergonomics and good shoes with orthodics.
Having missed her monthly massage, she is in more pain than usual.
Do you have any suggestions for additional things she can do to manage through this time?
Thank you Anne Miller as you have found those are all effective tools to use.
Catie: A simple point t share with your mother is that pain is your body's message to the conscious brain that something has to be done different. All the tissues are in constant communication through the central nervous system and we are not conscious of the messages they are just responded to automatically. Her short leg if she is not wearing a compensating orthotic sends a message"I have not reached the ground yet. The weak parts send a message when they can't take any more load or repetition. I am sure she is a very determined woman but if she has trained her mind to ignore these messages eventually they will be elevated to pain level to get her attention.
Touch is another form of communication with the conscious mind. When her therapist touches her brain pays attention and new programming is developed to deal with the overload. The tennis balls likewise send new messages about the tissue condition they are pressing on. It should not be a heavy pressure. The rule is a light pressure will have a profound effect, a moderate pressure has a moderating effect and a heavy pressure turns the message off. As mentioned turning the message of makes it louder the next time so should be used cautiously with the intention of changing the causing condition while it is off. Even more effective than rubbing with the fingers as Anne mentioned or the balls is to hold them still on the tender spot and moving the armor leg listening to the messages for when the pain is less or goes away then rest in that position for 2 minutes to give the nervous sytem time to reprogram the muscle tension. I recommend The play balls sold at Walmart. The different sizes have different uses. I will cover that in another post because my inbox is full of other responses from permies.com.
I am a licenced massage therapist in Washington State, retired to a homestead and I am active on magnet therapy forums. Therefore I started this subject to give a place for permies to ask questions on those topics.
I originally found permies.com because Ask.com said the question "Whitch is bettera scythe or a string trimmer/" needed to be answered. I have been here answering questions ever since. Yes if done correctly swinging a scythe is good for the spine. I call myself an Antalgic Posture Pain Specialist. Which means explaining why trying to avoid pain causes pain.
Reflex Posturology is what I call the science of it
Because I love answering questions my web sites have a form on most pages to ask questions. After 80 years I may have a good answer.
I am down the sound from you. though I don't have mink that I know of I do have raccoons; They worked there way under the edge of my chicken tractor and pulled a hen out. I should have locked them in the end that has 1.5 inch mesh on the bottom and separating it from the other 8 feet of the tractor. I made it that way so I could shut them in when I want to move the tractor a long distance. It is 12 feet long and 4 wide with adjustable large wheels from a lawn more on the enclosed roost/nest end. It has the advantages of both the chickshaw and the chicken tractor. With tee mink pressure definitely do not make the nest boxes to pull out of the back. make the roof so it opens on the back to reach the nest boxes. The purpose of the larger mesh is to prevent build up on the mesh requiring frequent cleaning. The problem could be a solution if you have some building skills.
Make a tray with plywood and 2x2 around the edge to slide under the roosting bars instead of having the mesh on the bottom. If you notice Justin was putting a tarp under the chickshaw to catch the droppings. With the tray it would be mink proof and you could pull the tray twice a week and use the fertilizer.
Feel free to contact me on my face book page Qberry Farm if you have questions because I am a ferry ride away.
Chelsea Hartweg wrote:
Your website is awesome, and I am DEFINITELY trying this plant out on our new homestead! I'm wondering. We live in Raleigh, NC (zone 7b/8a), and I'm trying to think if I could manipulate a microclimate that could help it survive the winter. Do you think one of those fabric tree covers would help it? Or even just keeping it out of the wind? I would rather not have to move it. If this works, I want to plant a LOT of them as fodder for animals. Our homestead is only .94 acres, but I want to grow as much as we can to support the animals both for health, environment, and reducing feed costs. This seems like a really good possibility since i know some folks grow microgreens or sprouted grains as animal food. Maybe this could work too!
This was posted last year. Did it work for you? I am in the same hardiness zone so it should. I ate leaves from winter hardy kale all winter and the plants produced abundant seeds the next summer. I even harvested frozen leaves for fresh use. This last summer I harvested 3 pounds of seed + a bin full of pods that I have not winnowed yet. The chickens crave the kale for the sulfur in it to make the yolks in their eggs. Problematic for feeding milking animals because it flavors the milk.
Your current concern seems to be planting seeds. This is where a small amount of purchaced soil that does not have any seeds in it is valuable to a new gardener. Having been trained by my mother 75 years ago to recognize different plants when they first emerge there are many that I can't tell apart from their weed relatives. Therefore I recommend starting seeds in containers with sterile soil while you work on your garden, Just to see what they look like. You can make a hole in your mulch and transplant them later and as a new gardener do not be ashamed to purchase started plants to gain experience with a better chance of success.
To avoid weed confusion you can make a narrow trench in your prepared soil and fill it with sterile soil and press your seeds into it. that will give you a more clear distinction between the seeds you planted and seeds that were already in the soil of the garden.
Please don't be obsessed with doing it just right. Every garden and every year is a scientific experiment to test what will work for you. There always has to be successes and failures to gather the knowledge of what works for you. I hope you will make it a life long experiment; it has been for me.
Have you considered that the raised area may be an abandoned raised bed. If you don't want to garden where it is it makes sense to move it to where you want the garden bed. The soil is more alive than what you purchase. You are learning permaculture which is a design science. The recommended procedure is observe what is there and draw it out on paper. Go in and draw out what you would like to have. Then go out and measure what you would like to have and see if it fits. then revise it and try again. It is much less work to redo it on paper than with a shovel. There is no wrong just learning experience.
Thinking about this ' Would surrounding the riser and back half of burn tube with chicken wire and cob would make it stable. Would the expansion properties cause the cob to break?
Like Walker, I like the finish of brick on the outside, possibly slate or tile on top of the burn chamber. Cob on the inside could be shaped to hold a barrel and direct the exhaust to the bench and chimney.
leila hamaya wrote:yeah, i do this too. i tend to be a bit too scatterbrained to be really good at rooting blueberries, i have tried a lot of times and really had a very low percentage of them actually take. i can root out some things pretty well with cuttings, easy things anyway...but blueberries i find difficult. they take a long time too...and maybe part of the issue is you need really thick branches, which take forever to get thick enough in blueberries. you have to take the really choice parts for cuttings, and it takes a long time to get that much to take big cuttings like that...
I am just old and don't get everything done that should be done so grapes just constantly root where they reach the ground and I miss pruning them.
But the blueberries: I noticed yesterday that the plants that I bought 3 years ago, which seem to have been potted rooted cuttings and have produce small amounts of fruit but never grown vigorously, have vigorously growing side shouts where the native soil has piled up around the base of the plant. Speculating that the potting soil left on the roots at transplanting is not friendly to soil life and perhaps the root ball was circling before they were put in a larger pot.
So this thread has motivated me to make a plan if I have the energy to do it when I should. This fall I will dig the plants up, separate the side shouts, wash the potting soil off and replant them. Put the original plants deeper to encourage more side shouts.
I personally would mow the tall plants and drop them at the top of the slope. Of course I mow with a scythe so I can be somewhat selective. I try to mow any undesirables before they make seed. and desirable after they make seed but before it is dispersed. Then I move what I cut to where it needs more cover and seed. I have a problem with field daisies so I cut them at the soil level then later when vetch and alfalfa have set seed I cut them and cover that area. with them. My winters are also some times 7a or 7b or 8.
