dalo franss

Hi Kostas and all,

Kostas I read you are thinking of tracking the locations of your plantings and I had to think of farmOS.org.
I have been running farmOS for a couple of years now and am super happy with it.

FarmOS is a website/tool where you can track and manage all information about your farm or similar project.
In farmOS you add "assets" like "land" (you can import KML files which can usualy be downloaded from the official cadaster website of your government.), "plant", "seed" and have "logs" like "observation", "seeding" or "harvest" logs, most of these assets and logs can have gps coordinates and can show you everything on a map.
FarmOS is open source and free to run on any server, but if you don't feel like setting up your own server, take a look at farmier.com which is run by the farmOS maintainer.

Thanks for adding information about storing acorns !
My go-to method still is to harvest and immediately plant the acorns, some come out directly, others wait until winter passes.
I have not noticed the drying out you mention, but will keep an eye on that. My biggest hurdle is animals finding each and every acorn I planted.
This year however, there where almost no acorns to harvest because of the 2 years of drought we had.

Thanks for your continued effort and sharing all information
I learn a lot on this thread!

Hey Kostas,

I saw your videos from the post from a couple of days ago about harvesting and storing acorns.

What oak was that you harvested? I do not recognize it.

Can you explain in a little more detail when and how to harves the oaks/acorns?
They still look very green. Do you only pick the off the ground, or take them from the tree also?

Last year I waited until a little later when they already turned brown-ish but had very low germination rates.
When picking them green like that there is probably a lot less weavils boring in them and much more will be good to plant.

What I do is go out and spread a large net under the tree and then carefuly whack the tree branches and many acorns fall in the net.
I harvested some 6500 acorns in only an hour or 3. But I am not sure this is the best way to go.

I should mention this is Quercus Ilex (holm oak) I am talking about.
I usually try to plant them shortly after collecting them. I use a small pick axe with round point to make a hole and stick the acorn in.

Do you think this is a good way? Or is it better to store the acorns for a while and then plant them out?

The last years some animal has become very good at finding my seedings and goes from acorn to acorn and steals them all. This is very interesting since it does not steal the acorns lying close to my plantings under other oak bushes (kermes oak). All I find is rows of holes where the acorns where planted.

We also have alot (more even) Quercus Coccifera (kermes oak) which I will start planting this year to get my seeding count up, I aim at 20,000 a year but usually end up around ~12,000.

Before I forget,  I learned about these oak growers in north-east Spain https://balanotrees.org/acorns-as-sweet-as-it-gets/,
found them in a little intersting book/article about edible oaks written by Eric Toensmeier - he status of oak breeding and domestication as food for people and livestock In South Korea, Spain, and the United States.
https://www.perennialsolutions.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Status-of-Oak-Breeding-2.0.pdf

Keep it up

Last year I planted a whole bunch, just by putting the seeds in the ground but none have sprouted thus far.
Will wait another winter to see if any will come through, since, none of the Quercus Ilex have sprouted either.

I noticed that in certain regions of Spain people used to plant and pollard "fresno" trees, a bit in a similar way as they do more up north using willow trees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraxinus_angustifolia
Though most those fresnos do loose their leaves during summer.

I discovered a tree which I believed was a fresno, it barely had leaves that time. Went back today and found out it is probably a sorbus/sorbo/jerba.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormus_domestica

And now that I'm thinking of trees, there's also a good many olm trees here, they grow in many places. Usually where there's some runnof like next to a road. They keep their leaves in summer, and recover fast after some rain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulmus_minor
I planted and spread some thousands of seeds but never found one tree sprouting.

We have a lot of luck with apple, less with pear. though not tested clay balls technique yet. usually sticking in the ground which is a lot slower but seem to yield great results. We have some apples which have been planted from seed in full sun, and have never gotten any water, this is year2 to 3 and they are still going strong, not even loosing their leaves during summer.

Olive does sprout, but very randomly. Usually the ones I did not plant sprout. Very weird :)

I should mention this is a Spanish arid climate. Little rain, hard silt (clay-like) soil, lots of pine (halepensis) rozemary etc... so I think  quite similar to your climate, your pictures look a lot like here.

Keep it up!

Hi Kostas,

Thanks for your continued effort on reforestation and posting to this thread!

I was wondering if you have tried planting nettle tree (Celtis Australis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtis_australis).
I have seen it grow in very a similar climate in full sun in Spain and it does incredibly well.
It may be a native in your region?

Also, birds and animals love the fruits/berries and disperse seeds.

Keep up the good work, it's very inspiring!

Cool Dan,

i learn something now.
I thought the stem would start rotting when you water them.

thanks

I would not bury the stem up to the green leaves,
the stem was where originaly it had green leaves too, so it' s a stem not a root.

personally, i would not cut off the stem and let it create new roots,
but plant it in a bigger pot, and maybe support it so it stands up a bit more straight.
i think it would set the plant back, and make it grow slower.

it seems to me the pot was too shallow,  but i am myself still in the proces of figuring that out with an aloe i care for.
the oposite leaves remind me of too little light and the laying down of the plant too.
i am experimenting now with having a plant outside with more light
that's only since i have that oportunity now, before i had to work with the little light i had in my house.

Good luck!

Not sure about using a tarp,
would it let water seep through?

maybe there is a way to create a sort of grill / grid which is a bit off the ground
palets won't work i think, since the nuts would fall through and the planks are too wide...

but it would help dry the leaves and nuts so you can easily sort them and use the dry(er) nuts.

just some quick 2cents

Thanks for the answers!

I chose not to use the brambles for the bottom layer. And wont use the brambles for cover material just yet.
Mixing the brambles seems best indeed.
Maybe i can do a little test by creating an extra compost heap (non-humanure) and see what happens with
those brambles.

It is very woody, but i think, they might soak up some moisture when a bit wet...

Then there is the question of how to add the brambles too. Chop them up to 10" or smaller?
Long branches are difficult to work with and i do not have a chopping device...

Experimentation will tell.

Thanks!

Hi permies,

So, i am currently in the (rather slow and long) process of creating a humanure compost pile/bin/thingy as desccribed by Joe Jenkins in his Humanure Handbook.
I have a question though about the compost pile.

We have many brambles (blackberries?) of which we need to cut back a fair amount (fire hazzard near house etc).
So i was wondering if we can use those cuttings/clippings as the base and/or cover material for the humanure compost pile.

The Humanure Handbook describes digging a shallow hole and put a thick (2feetish) layer of cover material to act as a sponge for excess moisture.
when adding the toilet bins to the compost one would rake away the cover material, empty the bucket and re-cover also using fresh cover material.

So, can we use those brambles we cut back, which are rather woody and hard?
If so, do we need to add softer material like straw or hay together with those brambles?

Any advice is welcome.

Thanks also to Joe Jenkins for such a great and instructive book!
I shall promote it every oportunity i get
:)