David Chapman

It depends.

I say it depends because it depends on how militant you are about saving money. I stay at home and work on our food forest. However, we have not seen short term savings because:

1. We have increased expenditures for items like fruit trees and other materials for the food forest.
2. We haven't gotten rid of my car as I still need to go shopping often enough that it doesn't make sense.
3. The food forest isn't producing enough to greatly reduce our food bill.

My wife and I are militant about eating 100% organic. As such, our food bill for just the two of us was a little over $700.00 at its peak. Now it's in the $500's because of the reduction in food costs due to what the food forest and garden are producing. So it's starting.

BUT:

A. If you went about creating your garden/food forest in a more frugal manner than us, then you'd save more money over the short term.
B. We COULD get rid of my car and all it's associated expenses right now, but it wouldn't be as efficient. But it would definitely be doable and we hope to in about two years.
C. As the food forest produces more and more, I hope for our monthly food bill to get down to around $100.00 AND for me to be able to sell enough from the food forest where it's actually profitable for us.
D. It's hard to quantify the loss of potential expenditures such as health outlays because we are eating so healthy.
E. As food becomes more and more expensive (I believe it will be) I feel our food forest will turn out to be an absolutely fantastic investment.

Xisca Nicolas wrote:Everything you do?
The problem there is not about what you do I think!

Well, if it is, then it is about you taking photos of dead bees and giving feedback about it.
Simply inform it does not only kill mosquitoes.

Spaying was given up in France, in places like Camargue, because birds were dying.
In other places they only treat water for larvae.

They're well aware that it kills bees too. But I think that's a great idea. I'm going to create a blog with, "Before" and "After" pictures for each time they spray and start to educate people.

Thank you for the little kick in the ass

I'm so pissed off. I've been making a lot of great progress creating habitat for a variety of beneficials. The other day I finally saw ladybugs going after aphids! I was so excited and pleased.

Last night the local Mosquito control district did an aerial spray for mosquitoes. Today I went out to find bees dying what was obviously a brutal death and not a beneficial insect in sight.

*#&$

**&$

)#($

What's the point if the &$&#ing county is just going to nuke everything I do?

I'm planning to buy a ton of waterproof tarps to cover my beds and anything fruiting. Can anyone see a reason why that's a bad idea and won't work to avoid the pesticide?

Here in Florida every county has its own mosquito control group. Basically via air and land, mosquitoes are sprayed for quite regularly. The pesticide is usually something like Dibrom, an organophosphate pesticide.

The thing is, we have "organic" farms all over the place. How? This stuff is sprayed indiscriminantly on EVERYTHING. It drives me nuts and I hate it so much, but it is the way here and I don't kid myself and try to call my produce organic. The thing is, how are all these other farms getting away with it? What am I missing?

According to this mineral list, you're certainly right about the salt content being the highest, as would be expected. And the dehydrated salt water fertilizer would be silly to buy in my opinion, especially since I assume it's just sea salt.

I'm just curious if the trace minerals would be sufficient to be beneficial to plants.

I have been reading the various threads on means of obtaining trace minerals and the rock dust one was especially tantalizing. So much so that I began to research how to get it. The problem is, in order for me to get rock dust, I would have to have it shipped long distance. Not only does this cost a lot of money, but it's bad for the environment and the embodied energy of all my produce would go up substantially.

I began thinking about what I DO have near me that is full of trace minerals and the ocean was an obvious choice as it contains every trace mineral a plant could need.

Has anyone here ever used diluted ocean water as a means of replacing trace minerals in your soil? If so:

1. How much did you broadcast,
2. How much did you dilute it
3. How often do you do it
4. What have your results been?

Notes:
- Obviously a concern is salt and salt build up. Although this paper showcases that some plants may actually do well with a little salt.
- It seems these guys are selling a fertilizer that is basically dehydrated ocean water. It seems silly to buy something so easy to make to me but the reason I post here is people seem to have good results with this.
- Here's an interesting thread on the subject
- A Doctor Murray appears to have done extensive research on this subject and wrote a book on it.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

I'm not familiar with chaya. Is that the entire name of it? Why do you recommend it?

As we can get down to 28 degrees here, most of the avocados I have chosen tend to be reasonably cold hardy. They are:

2x Simmonds Avocado - I forget how cold hardy this one is but I wouldn't have purchased it if it couldn't handle 28.
Lila Avocado - Can supposedly handle down to 15 degrees for a short period.
Pancho Avocado - Can supposedly handle down to 15 degrees for a short period.
Mexicola Avocado - Can supposedly handle the low 20's for a short time.
Haas avocado - Not all that cold hardy but so yummy and I'll build a micro climate for it before winter.
Brogdon avocado - Not sure how cold hardy it is but I wouldn't have purchased it if it couldn't handle 28.
Winter Mexican avocado - Not sure how cold hardy it is but I wouldn't have purchased it if it couldn't handle 28.

I guess I've actually planted eight avos