John Suavecito

I want to follow this thread.  I don't have a lot of skills in this area, but it's really interesting and could have a lot of positive effects.

John S
PDX OR

This is such a cool idea! I am your same age.  I know so many people in our age range who just complain and take more Big Pharma pills, then die. What you are doing is so, so much better!  What a great solution! I am always looking at ways to get around and keep active, using diet and plant medicines to still participate.  Great post!

John S
PDX OR

Kudzu is listed in Chinese medicine as one of their top 50 sacred plants.  However, I think they had specific rules (and may still have those rules and practices today) in China that kept it under control.  I live in the PNWet, so my climate is very different. Many plants that are invasive in the SE, like autumn olive, are just fine here.  We have long, dry, hot summers that are very different from those in the SE and E USA, and long, wet, cool, drizzly winters.

I would love to grow kudzu, but I would start in a container.  If I were to grow it in the ground, I would take a hint from our equivalent: bamboo.  It is extremely invasive here, especially the tall kinds that grow in sun. If you grow bamboo here, you need to put in a barrier all around the plant.  There are commercial barriers that they sell exactly for this.  Bamboo nurseries, which exist here, will only sell you the bamboo if you explain exactly what your plan is to stop its invasiveness.  Some will plant it in an area surrounded by cement barriers. That's ok too.

I am excited to hear about these experiments.

John S
PDX OR

This fruit is from the Phillippines, and it is famously sour.  Called Kalamansy there, they usually add sugar.
John S
PDX OR

I think this whole "Paw paws are poison" idea is going way too far. I've been on many different forums on the web in the last 30 years in which we talk about fruit and some have addressed this idea and moved on, but this is the only one where it just kept coming back to it.  Maybe it's because, on the other forums, most of the people were quite familiar with paw paws.  The Native American nations brought the paw paws with them to new areas on purpose because it was such a good fruit. The largest native fruit in North America.

There has been a lot of research about excessive breeding of plants. Many types of fruit have been bred so much that they no longer have as much flavor or nutrition.   Some people will eat a Concord Grape, or a pie cherry, or an heirloom apple and be stunned by the flavor! I was.  There weren't any flavors like that in my grocery store!  Well, the paw paw and the American persimmon have hardly been bred at all, so they retain distinctive, natural, wild flavors.  Much of the health benefits ascribed to vitamins in plants are really about the effect of hormesis.  The plant is putting chemicals into itself so you won't eat too much of it.  Your body adjusts to it and evolves to becoming a stronger being afterwards.  That's how you actually become healthy, and it may have to do with the promising anti-cancer research going on in these and other wild foods.

John S
PDX OR

There's another way of hauling that is especially good for parents. I have a large backpack and a folding bike. Sometimes, when I needed to pick up my son at some kind of practice, I would ride over on my bike, with my folded bike tied into the backpack.  When I got there, I would untie the folding bike from the backpack and set it up to ride home, with my son riding the other bike. It worked out well, until he bought a car and became too cool for such shenanigans.

John S
PDX OR

You can also put up a fence or just have a conversation with them, showing that your concerns are reasonable, and trying to find a cooperative way so both people can get what they want.

John S
PDX OR

I often think that we have to find that motivating link that will get them excited. For some, it's the taste of home grown fruits or vegetables.  If you offer them a piece of home grown fruit, few will say no.  For others, it's saving money. I just told a neighbor that they don't have to pay someone to haul off their leaves. They're good for the garden.  Some people who work a lot of hours will be amazed to realize that if they have a backyard food forest, they don't have to travel far to go out into nature and relax.  Some people are birders, who love to see them in their backyard.  Some people will be excited to see the organic vegetables are essentially free when they come home from Whole Paycheck and realize how much money we're saving.  I think it's a different motivation for each person.

John S
PDX OR

The thing that makes sense to me in this one, is that you've got all of these rice husks, as I understand it, that are organic waste.  If you dry them and burn them, that makes sense. One point I was trying to make is that if you've got too many trees, like us here in the PNWet, trees make for more material. But maybe they have rice husks instead of tree wood, so go for it.  Dry will make more char and less smoke.

John S
PDX OR

I also just eat many of them as is.  I freeze the vast majority of them because I grow so many.  My wife makes pies, crisp and cobblers from them. They are delicious.
John S
PDX OR