Dieter Hatfield

Many thanks for all that information about Cistus.  I can confirm that Cistus forms a beneficial symbiotic relation with soil-fungi.  I have found large numbers of Boletas among the Cistus ladanifer on our hillsides – which greatly surprised me because those hillsides have very poor soil.  But I haven’t seen any Cantarelas among the Cistus yet.  The fact that Cistus forms a symbiotic relation with soil-fungi is probably the reason why it can survive on very poor soil without any humidity – the fungi supply it with nutrients.  This is probably also the reason why we seldom see any grass among the Cistus.  The fungi dominated soil environment favors perennial plants at the expense of annual plants such as grass.  Whether one calls this allelopathic effect or something else is probably more of academic interest.  I have notice too that grass land can be taken over by Cistus – especially Cistus ladanifer, but never vice versa, except of course, goats were to have a go at it. 

But I’m not so sure about the fire hazard presented by Cistus.  I think Cistus – especially Cistus ladanifer - is generally considered as fire retardant.  At first this seems surprising, because one assumes the resin of ladanifer to accelerate fires.  I think the reason for this may be that, in particular on marginal land like on hillsides, ladanifer has a rather scraggy growth consisting mostly of hard wood with only a few leaves which doesn’t provide all that much material for combustion.  We had one fire on our land and plenty of others nearby, and I sometimes noted patches of ladanifer spared by the fire.  The trouble is that Cistus is often interspersed with broom, which really does burn like hell.

The information about the “muito bomba” is most interesting, and shows the importance of getting the dosage right.  Trude, can you be more specific about when what parts are collected?  I suppose you refer to Cistus ladanifer?  When you say “plant tops”, do you mean young leaves that are not yet fully grown?  Would the buds before flowering be any good?  What is the best time of the year to collect the leaves?

I like the bit about using Cistus for fertilizing the garden.  It reminded me of one of Bunuel’s first movies in which he showed the extreme poverty of mountain villages in the Estremadura.  The villagers in that movie used Cistus as a source of fertility.  I always wandered how exactly they did it, because that wasn’t explained in the movie – at least I can’t remember it.  Driving the cattle over cut bundles of Cistus seems ingenious.  Wonder if Cistus is any good in the garden without the manure from the cattle?  Well, crashing the hard wood of the Cistus plants with the hooves of the cattle probably also was important in the example you gave – Rose.

I can’t believe that anyone would actually spray the hillsides with herbicides! Have people gone completely mad?  I always thought that the one advantage we had living on the poor soil of these dry hills is that no agrochemicals are used anywhere near.  I hope they will never do that around here.  It is bad enough to hear the bulldozers from the logging companies roaming around.  I sometimes have nightmares about a bulldozer driving through my garden.  Wonder what Freud would make of that? Well, I’m deviating – better have a cup of herb tea.

Cheers,
Dieter

PS: Burrinha, Many thanks for the pictures.  I haven’t been able to look at them because my Internet access is too bad.  Will comment later, if necessary, but I think we both have about the same types of Cistus.

Wild boars used to come and dig up our land in regular intervals.  We decided to get a large dog which solved this problem and many others all at once.  She is a German Sheppard and can produce a really dangerous-sounding loud barking.  Visitors turn pale when she comes running to greet them.  In reality she has a very soft heart and couldn’t hurt any living creature.  She is very good company and more considerate than most humans I know.  She just likes to chase after everything moving.  If the wild boars decided to turn against her, she would be in trouble.  But the boars don’t come looking for trouble; they just look for food and don’t want to be disturbed by any noisy dog, so they bypass our land by about half a mile now.  Around here, dogs and cats are indispensible part of any remote homestead.

Dieter

PS: Best to get a female, they are more homely and won’t look around the neighborhood when they get the urge.  We almost never put our dog on the leash, yet she will never move more than 50 meters or so from where we are. You don’t need to get a pure race dog.  It’s important to see what the parents are like (or at least the mother).  A lot with a dog is inherited.  You can only do so much with training.  And to train a dog to the point of suppressing all his natural tendencies isn’t really desirable.

A friend of ours gets severe gout attacks whenever he eats shellfish (crabs, lobsters, etc.) or large chunks of fat meat.  He knows it, but these things are part of his traditional diet and he just can’t stay off it.  Instead of changing his diet he takes medicine to make the pain go away.  The medicine will probably kill him by ruining his kidneys or liver.  Such is the force of habit.  I think, cutting down on meat and shellfish and eating more fruits and vegetables will probably do the trick in many cases.

Dieter

Burrinha,

Thank you so much for letting me have those references.  I will need to find some especially sweet thistles – I suppose that is what donkeys like?!  I will ask a friend to order these books for me since Internet and home delivery doesn’t work too well in my part of the woods.

You are lucky to have such knowledgeable neighbors.  People around here - especially the younger once - are not very interested and consider everything growing in the wild as “lixu” to be gotten rid of.

Regarding the business of trying out unknown herbs, I’m a great fan of Paracelsus who considered that everything can be either poison or remedy; it just depends on the doses.  I think that applies to medicine, herbs and food in general.  Hence, trying a bit of an unknown herb isn’t going to kill anyone.  The trouble is how to learn about its effect.  Just trying a little won’t teach you much.  And taking large doses of an unknown plant over a long period of time really isn’t something anyone would want to do.  So we are back to relying on the experience of the forebears.  Or do you think it is possible to get a hunch of how a herb may work just by looking at it?

Cheers,
Dieter

PS: Saw the first honey suckle flowers today, seems a lot earlier than last year.

roman shapla wrote:
The yapparikenkou site is the only place I've seen it for sale, so that's why I'm looking for someone who can help me with the purchase.

Roman,

This site sells health food products.  The わら一本の革命 総括編 粘土団子の旅 has been out of print for a number of years.  It was last published in 2001.  The Tokyo book store Kinokuniya used to sell it.  You could try mailing them: webmaster@kinokuniya.com.  The complete reference is  わら一本の革命 総括編 粘土団子の旅  福岡正信 ／自然樹園 ISBN:9784938743024, price: 2,500 Yen.  But they probably don't have it anymore.  I don't know any sites selling second hand books.

Dieter

Burra Maluca wrote:
I guess there's only one way to find out! 

I would have to be one crazy donkey to try out every herb on the land.  We seem to have a lot of the poisonous once: digitalis, mentha canina … But to be fair, there are a lot of beneficial herbs too.  A couple of years ago, I discovered honey suckle.  Last year, I found large amounts nearby.  It is now one of our favorite ingredients for herb teas, and might have helped us through the winter without a cold.

I did a Google search on cistus crispus.  There is one reference that talks about it being a toxic plant, in another there is talk of the medicinal values.  I live in a remote place with very poor Internet access, so I haven’t been able to download the pages and check it out.  Will have to do more searching.

Ours are just starting to flower, though ours are pink not white.

You may be in luck, and you have cistus incanus.  Herb tea from cistus incanus is supposed to be very good for strengthening the immune system.  It is thought to be effective against flue, even virulent strains like bird flue.

Great to have you here, by the way – we're almost neighbours!

Thanks for the welcome.  We have 30 acres of very dry clay soil near Sao Teotonio in the Baixo Alentejo.

Dieter

PS: Do you know of any references (books, online, human, etc.) that would help me identify herbs and other plants in this region?  The names used by the old people around here are often not found in any written form.

Herbtea made from cistus incanus (rock rose) is supposed to be very benefical.  Unfortunately, we don't have any cistus incanus, but we do have a few acres of cistus ladanifer and cistus crispus.  I guess, cistus ladanifer is no good for making herb tea.  I tried using the dried leaves once for making tea, but it tasted awful and I didn't drink more than a mouthful.  I wonder though about cistus crispus.  It is in flower right now and all the hillsides are white with the flowers.  I can't find any references for it.  Does anyone know if cistus crispus can be made into a tea?  I dried some of the flowers, leaves and flowerbuds.  It has a pleasant smell, but I haven't tried making tea from it yet.

Dieter

roman shapla wrote:
Thanks everyone for the fascinating discussions!

I hope this isn't too off topic, but I'm trying to purchse one of Fukuoka's books (he gifted it to my wife and it was lost by the post office. I've spent the past 6 years trying to track it down)

I have found it online, but I can't read Japanese. If anyone could help me with this I would be forever indebted to you!

http://yapparikenkou.com/images/238_7120_1[1].jpg

Best wishes!
-Roman

Hi Roman,

It is the cover page of the "Wara Ippon no Kakumai - Sokatsuhen", subtitled "Nendo Tango no Tabi", which he published after his travels to the US, Europe, Africa and India.  The equivalent English publication is called "Recapitulation".  Nevertheless, the latter is not a translation, since the contents of both book is quite different.

Dieter

BDAFJeff wrote:
Dieter
Do they sprout up thruogh the mulch and how thick do you put it? I would like to try this using the little mulch I have.
Do you cut the grass before you spred the mulch?

No, I don’t cut the grass/weeds before covering it with mulch.  I use about an half inch of mulch or as much as necessary to cover the grass/weeds completely.  Crimp down the tall grass in one direction by stepping on it with your foot or whatever instrument you choose to use; then place the mulch on top to keep it down.  If you crimp it down all in one direction, it will be easier to apply an even layer that covers the grass well.  It is more important to cover the top of the grass, than the bottom part, because it is at the top where it will try to grow again.  I usually keep a few heaps of mulching material as reserve to cover the places where the grass grows through the mulch.

Under the cover of the mulch the grass will decompose within a few weeks together with the roots and, together with the mulch, will turn to soil after a few months.  The decomposing grass will generate heat that facilitates the germination of the seeds.  Still, germination rate can, depending on conditions, be a bit lower than when seeds are covered by soil.

It will take some experimenting and experience to figure out how much mulch or how many seeds you need.  It is also important to familiarize yourself with the lifecycle of the native weeds and grass in your area: when is a plant fully grown? what is the best time for cutting/crimping? when is the maximum biomass or N production? and to combine the answers with your cropping schedule.

The ideal is to have our soil permanently covered by plants and to figure out how we can grow food crops together with weeds or grass without even using mulch.  For example, as I already explained in another thread, I can grow broad beans in a field of crab grass without tilling and without mulch.  In Japan, I know of a natural farmer who grows carrots together with crab grass, also without tilling and without mulch.  A precondition for growing food crops together with weeds is a very intimate knowledge of the lifecycle and behavior of the plants on our land.  This is a very exciting way to learn about nature.

Dieter

Hi Jeff,

I’m not a commercial grower, so I don’t need to worry about yield.  There is always more than enough for us to eat and I aim to produce quality rather than quantity.  Therefore, I don’t use fertilizers, chemicals or even manure.

My situation is different from yours, in that I have plenty of mulching material.  We have 30 acres, but due to dryness, it is only possible to cultivate a small part, all the rest goes to biomass production.

I think if you improve your soil with organic matter, you will over time find that there will be a lot more organic matter grown per square foot.  We have heavy clay with very little organic contents.  Putting a thin layer of topsoil back onto the clay will do wonders.  Even just a layer of mulch will produce double the growth already in the following year.  With very good soil it is possible to farm a field without any biomass inputs from outside that field (no fertilizers either).  But this degree of fertility is typically only reached in a wet climate where you have a lot of biomass production.  In a dry climate we will need organic matter input from outside the field for producing most food crops, if we want to farm without fertilizers.

I basically use the same crops you do: the three sisters (pulses, corn, pumpkin) for dry land, and all other vegetables in my improved garden soil.  I think you should try to experiment with different crops including weeds and grass, to figure out what will produce the greatest amount of biomass in your area.  It also depends very much on when you cut weeds or grass.  Green grass will disintegrate rapidly and leave the soil exposed; fully grown dry grass will cover the soil for many months.  I don’t worry about weeds anymore, since I decided to grow with weeds and not against them.  I just cut when necessary.  I usually broadcast corn, pulses and pumpkins into the tall grass; then cover the whole with mulching material cut from another field.  I do this in April or May when we still have enough irrigation water, so I place a sprinkler on the field for a couple of days to make sure the seeds germinate without soil-contact. Pre-germination is also possible with most pulses.

If you speak Spanish, you may also want to look into “frijol tapado”.  That is a traditional no-till method used in Latin America that doesn’t require herbicides.

I live in the South of Portugal where it gets very dry and hot during the summer.  We have a lot of pulses that will grow almost without humidity.  I use different types of dry beans, chick peas and what they call chichus around here.  I don’t know the English name.  It is a flat pulse that is almost square with round corners.  It looks a bit like the white edible lupine bean.  Anyways, it will grow even in very poor soil almost without any humidity at all.  Well, perhaps dryness is not a problem where you live.

We do have a lot of grass hoppers too, but they only pose a problem for seedlings or small plants.  I learned to place my seed boxes for growing seedlings in the shade of trees, where they don’t normally go.  They seem to prefer sunny places.  After 16 years, I have given up hope that there will be a natural predator appearing on the scene.  I think if it got worse, I would have to get farm animals.  Last year, I lost a lot of dried beans and chickpeas to worms too.  For the moment, I just wait and see what happens.  Pesticides are not an option for me.  I think when the soil improves over time, the plants will become stronger, and the problem may go away.

Cheers,
Dieter