I'm growing some of the Lofthouse-Oliverson landrace muskmelons this year. I got seed from The Buffalo Seed Company. I planted them in my melon patch next to the landrace I've been creating for the last few years here in the Ozarks than had a number of different varieties put into it. Most of the lofthouse ones ripened earlier than any of the ones from my seed. The plants from my own seed tend to be more resilient to the pests and diseases in my environment. The lofthouse seed should make a good addition to my own landrace to extend my muskmelon season a week or so earlier.

I finally got a harvest from my hopniss (Apios Americana, also known as American Groundnut) this year, and I really like the flavor. I've just peeled them, chopped the larger ones into bite sized pieces, added some sort of oil/fat, salt, sometimes other seasonings, and baked them in the oven either by themselves or in a mix with other roots. They can absorb a good amount of oil/fat. I only hot a small harvest this year but am looking forward to trying more of them prepared in different ways in the future. Samuel Thayer says he likes mashing them and using them similar to refried beans.

As far as chestnuts go, Dunstan chestnuts may be worth a look at. They are Chinese/American hybrids that have been selected for blight resistance, yield and nut size. Many similar breeding projects are ongoing, but the Dunstans have been grown and selected in north Florida. All the other chestnut sources that I know of are from further north and so may not do as well in the climates of the deep south. The biggest difference between north Florida where the Dunstans have been selected and where you are in Texas is that Texas is drier, but the soil you describe sounds good for chestnuts to me, as long as the ph isn't above 7. Chestnuts like good drainage and are drought tolerant once established as long as the soil is deep enough for them to get their roots down into some more reliable moisture, so sandy near the surface with clay underneath is a good situation for them.

I have chestnuts from a number of sources, and the Dunstans I have are some of the more reliable ones here in southern Missouri. They are seedlings so there's a decent amount of variability, but mostly good traits from what I've seen.

I would not agree with the statement that chestnut will grow wherever oaks do. There is a lot of overlap, but there is a much greater diversity among oaks than chestnuts. The genus Quercus has over 500 species worldwide, while the genus Castanea has only 8 species in it. I have seen oaks growing in rocky alkaline soil in semi-desert conditions in the southwest that chestnuts wouldn't have a chance in.

I have nine yaupon (ilex vomitoria) plants here in zone 6b, up to five years old, that are doing fine. They didn't look the greatest after it got to -10 last February but the damage was mostly superficial and all recovered, even the smaller ones. Yaupon makes a good caffeinated tea similar to yerba mate.

I'd like to be included.

Interesting discussion about lycopenes. I'm not a huge raw tomato fan in general unless they're in a salad with a good amount of dressing, mostly I like cooked tomatoes. I assume it's not the lycopene that I dislike, because I love autumn olive and goumi fruits which supposedly have the highest lycopene content of any known food. I'll literally gorge myself of fresh autumn olive fruit from the right bushes (they vary in flavor considerably) when they're at their peak ripeness (If they're too astringent, often they just need more time). Most other people aren't as enthusiastic about them. So I'm wondering, do those of you that don't like red tomatoes also not like autumn olive or goumi fruit?

Also, I know of one autumn olive bush that has yellow fruit instead of red. it's probably a mutation that has far less lycopene, as it's a fairly young bush that is in an area where all the rest have the normal red fruit. I think they taste different but equally good myself.

How about Poncirus trifoliata, the trifoliate orange?

I meant to address more the original topic of the post, the hand sanitizer situation, but it's really just a microcosm of the mindset of the whole medical system. Since I'm more conflict averse than you, I'd personally have just used the sanitizer, it's a small enough matter to me that I would have just done it to keep the peace, and just avoid situations like that as much as I can, but I'm glad to hear in general from those who aren't going along with everything. The events of this year have brought to a head conflicts that have been simmering for some time. While the medical system does have some good things to offer and people with real skills, the arrogance that permeates so much of it is astounding when compared to so much else in life. Although there are individual doctors that buck the trend, by and large what i see coming out of the medical establishment is dis-empowerment. A crisis like COVID could be used as a chance for empowerment, a reason for people to listen to their body and work to improve their overall state of health, as well as become less dependent on the industrial system. Indeed, many people have done just that, as increased sales of seeds, local foods, and herbal products has shown, but the media won't touch that at all. Instead, all we're told is to be passive, to do as we're told and hope "they" come up with a magic bullet. Vitamin D levels are are a huge factor in COVID outcomes which means people shutting themselves indoors out of fear or because of being forced to by the lockdowns will likely worsen the outcome if they get the virus.

One thing often left out of the discussions about things like hand sanitizer, masks, lockdowns etc. is, what exactly is the goal here? The goalposts have been shifted repeatedly, from "flatten the curve" so as not to verwhelm hospitals (which I won't argue with at all) to ongoing security theater that in my opinion has been causing more harm than good for months now. No country has eliminated the virus. New Zealand thought they did but then ended up having more cases, and some small Pacific island countries shut down their borders before they had it in the first place. So, it's now a fact of life that isn't going away. Luckily, there's still enough diversity in the world that different countries (and states in the US) have done different things and we can see the different outcomes. I've been paying attention to Sweden since the beginning, they didn't lock down, although they did ban large gatherings and shut down Universities for a bit. The mainstream media kept predicting doom for Sweden back in the spring, but I've been thinking the whole time they would end up better off in the end. Masks were never widespread there. This is a good summary of the current situation in Sweden. They appear to have mostly gotten over it, cases are very low and deaths are almost zero now even as many countries that have locked down are facing more waves. The US has passed Sweden in deaths per population, and several countries that locked down such as Italy, UK, and Spain have had higher death tolls per population from early on. The overall impact of COVID in any given place is probably going to be similar whatever measures are taken, the difference being the duration of time it's going around. The exception is if hospitals are overrun, but Sweden never had theirs overrun, and they have the advantage of having much less of the indirect effects, the effects on mental health, small businesses, people with other health conditions that aren't dealing with them out of fear of COVID, etc. Not to mention still living in a freer society. A case could also be made that getting it over with quicker as the Swedes did also helps those who feel like they need to be especially cautious as well, they could rigorously isolate themselves for the worst of it and be able to come out of quarantine sooner when the risk has plummeted.

I predict that in a few years, once the dust has settled, the reaction much of the world has had to COVID will be remembered as akin to burning a house down in order to kill a snake that's inside.

I've noticed the information on the care of cultivated persimmons, particularly American varieties and American/Asian hybrids, is hard to come by and/or contradictory, so I'd like to share my own limited experience on the subject and hope others with fruiting trees will share their experiences.

I have two cultivated persimmon varieties that have been fruiting heavily for a few years, Juhl and Rosseyanka, plus other varieties that are smaller. The persimmons have proven to be resilient and have few of the pest, disease and rot issues that make many common fruits difficult to grow here in southern Missouri. So far, my pruning of the trees has been fairly minimal, just training to a central leader, thinning branches a bit, taking of some real low branches near the ground, and topping off the central leader of the Rosseyanka the last couple of years to keep its height in check. However, I think I'll do some more substantial pruning this next year of the Rosseyanka at least, for reasons I'll discuss in a bit. I have been harvesting wild persimmons for years, but I've found the cultivated ones are more tricky. Altogether, I like the flavor of the cultivated varieties better, and they're larger and more productive, but there are downsides in the realm of harvesting. The wild ones have small, firm enough fruit that is small and firm enough that it can drop from large trees, 50 feet up or so, and still be intact when it hits the ground, so its simple to just harvest them of the ground. The cultivated varieties are different, particularly the Rosseyanka.

The Juhl is a selected variety of American persimmon, also known as Yates. It ripens early, starting generally late August here, with fruits continuing to ripen for at least a month. I particularly like the texture for eating, it has a more smooth texture than the wild ones, as well as being significantly larger. They fall from the tree when ripe, similar to the wild persimmons. I have been harvesting these from the ground like the wild ones so far, but I noticed this year a percentage that got crushed in their fall to the ground. It was still a fairly small percentage, but I'm concerned that it will be higher as the tree grows taller, as the fruit from higher up will hit the ground with more force. It seems the larger size and creamier texture that's nice for eating may make the fruit more fragile as well. I'm considering pruning the tree more heavily to keep it from getting too tall (it's probably about 15 ft high right now), also maybe mulching heavily underneath it before harvest to cushion the fall of the fruit. Those sound a lot earier than harvesting from the tree does, as the fruit ripens so unevenly and just wants to fall off when its ripe.

The Rosseyanka is a different matter. It is a cross between the American and the Asian persimmon. It ripens late in the fall, has pretty large fruit, is tasty and productive, but has been very annoying to harvest for me so far. It has very fragile fruit that cling on to the tree. If the fruit gets too ripe, it will simply disintegrate and fall off, leaving the stem end still clinging to the tree. The first few years of harvest, I harvested them before the first hard freeze (generally the end of October or early November). Few were ripe by that time, but the others ripened inside over the course of several weeks. I had to use hand pruners and clip off the fruit stem with one hand while holding onto them with the other hand, as the stem will not break odd readily like an apple or pear stem will. That makes getting to the higher up fruit really annoying, as I have to get up a ladder or into the tree with two hands free, and I need a helper to hand the fruit down to, because if the fruit is close to ripe, it can be easily crushed in the sort of picking bags that I use for apples. This year I had someone on the ground holding a picking pole up to me, I'd pick several fruit and put them into the small basket at the end, and then he'd bring it down and put them in boxes. I can't use the picking pole directly to pick the fruit as the fruit are too fragile and the stems too strong (pull hard and it will likely break off partway up the branch rather than just breaking off the fruit).

This year, I decided to wait longer to pick the Rosseyanka fruit, after hearing that it could stand substantial freezes on the tree. They went through a night in the low 20s, and I finally picked them yesterday. I'm thinking it was a mistake to wait this long. Such low temperatures don't ruin the fruit, but they changes the texture of some, particularly those that weren't fully ripe, making them more mealy. The very ripe, squishy ones weren't noticeably affected, those were very tasty, but very ripe Rosseyankas are also extremely fragile and will crush or puncture easily. In the future, I think I'll harvest them before we get a hard freeze, anything down to the upper 20s or below. They are easier to handle when they're not fully ripe as well, and seem to ripen up perfectly well indoors even if it takes a few weeks.

I'm thinking at this point that in March when it's pruning time that I'll open up the Rosseyanka a lot to make access easier, plus prune the central leader back harder than I have been to limit its height. But if anyone has any helpful tips on the harvest, pruning and care of cultivated persimmon varieties of bearing age, I'm all ears.

A few years back, I noticed that the heat was getting to me for the previous couple of summers more than it ever had before. It would be fine at some times and then feel stifling other times with the same temperature and humidity. Digging into this issue, along with other health issues I was having, led me to discover I was gluten intolerant and one of the symptoms was spells of increased sensitivity to heat. Some other things can also trigger the same reaction to a lesser degree too, and once I got that figured out, my heat tolerance returned to being quite high again. That's one of the reasons I appreciate dealing with varied weather rather than being in a constantly climate controlled environment, if I'm responding more poorly to different temperatures, it's a sign that I should be doing something differently.

I'm applying the same reasoning to my cold sensitivity, which has no quick fix since I've gotten cold easily my whole life, but I have had a certain amount of luck in dealing with the cold better. my fingers don't go numb from the cold nearly as easily as they used to. There is no one single thing I can pinpoint those improvements to, just more years of experience in working with my body and feeling generally healthier.

I prefer living without air conditioning. I'm glad for the energy savings, but I don't feel like I'm sacrificing much by not having it. Sure, it does feel good for a minute to walk into a cool air conditioned building when I'm hot and sweaty, but staying in one for long periods of time feels stuffy and less healthy for my body than being in a place with good air circulation. I already have to deal with being closed up in the cold of the winter (luckily not for too long here in southern Missouri compared to when I lived up north), I don't want to be closed up in the summer as well. I adapt a lot over the course of the summer, the same heat that's oppressive in an early June heat wave is a breeze by this time in August. Eating a lot of homegrown watermelon helps a lot too. Adapting is both a matter of the body and the mind, doing more vigorous stuff earlier and later in the day is necessary, not in the middle of the afternoon. I enjoy the summers, although I'm also glad for the change of seasons and cooler weather in the fall, too.

I do agree with others who say that every person is different. I go to sleep with a fan on me when it's the heat of the summer, but almost always end up waking up a few hours later to turn the fan off. Some of my friends joke that I'm a lizard. I grew up in colder climates but never could get used to the sort of intense cold where there's snow on the ground for months. Some nice crisp winter days and a little snow now and again are okay, but once it gets cold beyond a certain point there's just no way for me to keep my extremities warm without bundling them up to an absurd degree such that it's hard to get around and I don't have much use of my fingers.

Also, have you ever eaten the sweet potato greens? They make a real good cooked green, I start harvesting greens from my plants when they're big enough that taking a small percentage of their greens won't really interfere with productivity of the roots. It's just the time that few other greens are coming in due to the heat.

How about okra, watermelons, and sweet potatoes? I've never lived in Florida, but I've heard they're some of the few common annual vegetables that thrive in Florida summers and sandy soil. Here in Missouri they certainly thrive in summers we sometimes get that get hot enough to stress tomatoes and halt green bean production in its tracks.

In my experience, thornless blackberries do well around and underneath apples (Thorny ones should too but you probably don't want them there if you want to access the apple trees easily). The ones with partial shade from apple trees do even better in my experience than the ones in full sun. However, when I planted a mulberry among them, they died back from the areas that got too shady. Mulberries are more vigorous and have denser shade than apples, and the blackberries couldn't take it.

A useful resource for growing without or with less irrigation is Steve Solomon's Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway"

It focuses on annual vegetable growing in the maritime Northwest climate, but there's useful things in there even for those of us in different climates and using a broader range of growing methods.

Possibly it's just a difference in perspective as to how dry is dry and how wet is wet, but I've had a number of experiences of harvesting watermelons after a heavy rain and finding them not quite as sweet as the ones harvested before the rain, even if the look and color is similar. They still have access to moisture in the deeper levels of the soil, however, even if I let the top bit dry out a bit.

In my experience, watermelons are quite heat tolerant, up there with sweet potatoes, peppers, and okra. They will thrive during heat waves that stress out even some other warm season crops like tomatoes and green beans, as long as they have good soil moisture. Make sure the soil doesn't get too dry while the plants and fruits are in their rapidly growing stage, but in my experience it can result in better tasting fruit if the soil gets a bit dry once the fruits are full size and ripening up.

Flagstaff Arizona is at 7000 feet in elevation. It's quite a different climate from the hot deserts of Arizona. According to Wikipedia, average summer high temperatures there are around 80 degrees, with an average nighttime low of around 50. Low humidity, sounds like a very nice place to be in the summer. I can't say exactly when potatoes would be harvested there, it would depend on the variety too, but I'd imagine in the fall, maybe late summer, because there's a short season up that high and I don't think they'd be mature before then.

Science as a method is a very useful and powerful tool and has brought us many things. Like any tool used by humans, it can be used well or poorly, for good or ill intentions, corrupted by those with money, power and influence, and simply subject to fad and whims of egos of humans as so much else is. That's why especially when it comes to what I put into my body, I want the freedom to make my own choices, using experience of myself and others as well as science. I appreciate many things that the scientific method has brought me, but when I hear people use science as an excuse for authoritarianism (people all need to do X because science), I have the same negative reaction as I do when I hear religious authoritarians try to force everyone into their idea of religious morality. Not that anyone in this thread is doing that, this thread seems entirely reasonable to me, but I've been hearing that a lot in the last few years. Not only are there the issues of human imperfection and corruption already mentioned, there's also the issue that our bodies are not all the same. If some food or medicine is helpful for 80% of the general population, or of the population of those with a particular diagnosis, but deleterious for the other 20%, then those in the 20% will get a raw deal following recommendations from science that comes from studies of the whole population, even if the science is flawless. Experience and intuition can give us a lot of knowledge about our bodies that science hasn't figured out completely.

All of us take risks every day as a fact of life. Those who take the risks that society encourages and get the short end of the stick are usually absolved of any blame, after all they were doing everything they "should". Even by mainstream estimates, medical error is a leading cause of death. However as soon as someone takes risks that society discourages and meets with failure, they are often widely scolded and ridiculed, even if many others took similar paths with good results. The results of the path myself of anyone else is taking won't be known until it's over, even if he have educated guesses. People making different choices gives all of us more examples in our lives to either emulate or to spurn. If you accept evolution (as I do) then natural selection will sort it out.

I can taste a lot of difference between many of the blueberry varieties that I have. Pink lemonade is the most unique, but the blue ones have plenty of diversity too. I am able to grow rabbiteye, southern highbush and northern highbush varieties here, and a variety of cultivars of each. I don't notice as much difference between the different northern highbush varieties as the others. There's quite a bit of difference in flavor between the two southern highbush cultivars that I have the most of, Ozarkblue and Summit. I particularly like the rabbiteye blueberries, which have a distinctly different flavor and texture to me from the highbush types, although rabbiteye types tend to be more finicky about waiting until they're fully ripe. If picked too early they will be mealy and lack a full flavor. The variety Tifblue in particular, which I like for its heavy yields and having berries later in the season than any other variety I have, is also annoying in having berries that appear blue but aren't really ripe yet. If they don't pull off easily, they need more time. This is also true for the highbush varieties, but most of the highbush varieties have more leeway in being picked a little under-ripe, they will be more tart but still good. An advantage of rabbiteye varieties is that they don't need to be picked as often. I can pick many of them only every 5-7 days when they're ripening and get more fully ripe fruit that way, with only minor losses to fruit drop. My highbush plants need to be picked more often or there'd be greater losses of fruit to the ground.

I have two small honeyberries that I planted in a spot with some afternoon shade two years ago. They have survived but not grown much, they don't like a southern Missouri summer much, which is similar in heat to most of North Carolina outside of the mountains, even though a colder winter puts us in zone 6b. The USDA zones say nothing about summer conditions. Western Oregon and Belgium are much cooler in the summer than Missouri and North Carolina despite the lack of winter extremes in the more maritime areas.

An update: Very low production this year. The plant that produced well last year had only a couple dozen nuts on it, a few other plants had a small crop but nothing major, even though the plants still look quite healthy.

According to this article, there are at least some Kenyans looking to bring back traditional nourishing foods. I don't know if any of these people are anywhere near you, Maureen, but if so you may be able to find others with similar values.

Weston A. Price Foundation Visit to Kenya

I should have been more clear in my last post, I don't mean to dismiss any concerns about negative reactions. I've only had the berries raw in small quantities myself, never had more since I wasn't particularly fond of the taste of them raw. I could very well have had a bad reaction to them in larger quantities as well. Even the commonly eaten nightshade family plants don't sit well with certain people, and I've had my share of food intolerances too like with pawpaws which I shared on this thread. Sam Thayer has in general proven a pretty reliable resource for me, and I think the toxicity concerns he's addressing are more from people who've claimed it's extremely poisonous through confusion with belladonna, but like with any food its good to trust what our bodies tell us. After hearing Joseph's experience, I'd think it best to try it in small quantities first. Cooked berries may be more easily tolerated than raw ones as well.

Sam Thayer has written a good deal about black nightshade at this page. It is used extensively as a food plant in many places of the world, reported poisonings can be traced back to misidentification, usually with belladonna (which is the plant the deserves the name "deadly nightshade", but they are pretty easily distinguished from each other.

You might want to get in contact with Nat Larson at The Draw He's not too far from Ashland and has quite a permaculture project going.

I can't see from that view whether the leaves are opposite or alternate. Milkweed and honeysuckle both have opposite leaves. I think what you have may be sprouts of American Persimmon. If so, the leaves will be alternate, and the patch of sprouts will most likely be coming from the same base. Persimmon spreads readily by suckers, but they tend to space themselves out a bit.

This is something I've thought about quite a bit too. I like the Ozarks where I'm at a lot, it has a lot of good features, but I am worried about how hot the summers will get in the future and increases in droughts and flooding in this place that's already a land of extremes in many ways.

I consider climate change a very real and serious issue, but I'm also skeptical of specific predictions regarding its effects because of how complex the climate system really is. However based on what's been happening so far and paleoclimate evidence of the far past during times when CO2 levels were higher, I think we can expect significantly higher sea levels (although much of that rise will likely happen even farther into the future than 2100), warming most pronounced at higher latitudes, overall warmer averages most everywhere (but erratic cold snaps as well in many places because of jet stream changes). The changes in rainfall patterns are even trickier than temperatures to try to forecast. Warmer overall means an intensified water cycle, and more average precipitation overall. However that extra precipitation will likely be very unevenly distributed both geographically and temporally, much of it falling in heavy downpour events, and increasing temperatures also means increasing evaporation rates and increasing chances of flash droughts.

Looking at the lower 48 states from a purely climate change perspective, I'd put my bets on the higher parts of Appalachia, the interior northeast, and the upper great lakes region, particularly around lake Superior. The reasons are summers that are cool enough currently that they could get a decent amount hotter without becoming too extreme, and reasonably high amounts of annual precipitation that is also well distributed through the year, including the summer months, and moisture from multiple sources. Of course there are other issues going on than just climate change, and everyone's situation is unique so some other area might be best for you.

The Olympic peninsula is probably a decent choice as well, possibly one of the best spots in the west if above sea level a bit. The issue I see with the Pacific northwest in general is with the lack of summer rain, the summer dry season likely getting longer, hotter and more intense. I'm wary of anywhere that depends highly on winter mountain snowpacks, as warmer winters mean that even if precipitation stays the same or even increases, there will be less snow in all but the highest elevations because more of it will be rain. Being near the North Cascades might actually be better than the Olympic Peninsula, as they are higher elevation and the snowpack will thus be resilient in the face of more warming. Oregon will be worse off than Washington, as the Oregon Cascades are mostly not that high except for a few volcanic peaks. I expect the Pacific Northwest climate to become increasingly more like California's climate is now. The issue is that the ecosystems currently there aren't adapted to that extent of heat and drought and there will probably be mass tree die-offs and huge fires there when California-type dry seasons start happening, although this could be mitigated in local areas by good management.

Areas of the west that get the summer monsoon such as Colorado are more of a wild card, some say the monsoon could get more intense, and the mountains there are high and cold enough the snowpack declines probably won't be as dramatic as many other western states. However, Colorado is pretty dry to start out with except in some really high-elevation, cold areas, so it wouldn't take too much to push it over the edge.

The Appalachians/interior northeast/ upper great lakes, on the other hand, all have relatively high summer precipitation. I do expect droughts to worsen a certain amount in those areas, but IMO they have more likelihood of staying moist enough that the ecosystems will transition more by warmer-climate-adapted species increasing and cooler climate species declining, rather than by massive fires and die-offs of whole ecosystems. I have spent some time in southern Appalachia, and it's amazing just how many different sorts of weather patterns can bring precipitaion to those mountains. Unlike the Northwest, where the wet on the west side/dry on the east is very dramatic, the Appalachians have moisture coming from many sources. Moisture can come from the west, from the south, and from the Atlantic to the east, even from the northwest behind a cold front that's dry in most areas but then hits the mountain ridges that run perpendicular the wind and squeezes out the moisture. Who knows what unpredictable effects climate change will have on rain patterns, but areas with many sources of moisture are more likely to still end up getting enough of it.

Another thing to consider is that looking at a map of the world, there are very few dry climates along and near east coasts of continents (presuming they're facing an actual ocean, not a smaller body of water such as the Red Sea). There are many deserts and semi-arid areas along west coasts of continents, by contrast, as well as some very wet climates. I suspect climate change will push deserts on west coasts northward into some areas that are now Mediterranean climates (southward in the southern hemisphere). Eastern North America is unlikely to dry out as dramatically, even if flash droughts get more common and the heat and humidity in many lowland areas gets more and more extreme.

I haven't mentioned Alaska. I do wonder if at some point parts of Alaska will become desirable places to live. I've never been there and don't know enough specifics to have a strong opinion, but I imagine the more extreme rate of temperature change there will lead to convulsions in the ecosystem, and things like melting permafrost will wreak havoc in the places that have it.

A few more thoughts after a few more years of working with these swales,

I have noticed wildly varying rates of water infiltration on various spots on our land, as the layers of bedrock vary from very porous to pretty solid. The soil above the bedrock matters too. Some swales that I put in a while back drained very rapidly, out of reach of the plants. I've mostly filled those in with organic matter, creating a sponge for moisture which has proved useful, but some of them aren't really doing that much for all the time and energy I put into them. Others are very helpful, it all depends on the placement. On the particular area I'm working with, there just isn't much runoff from ground that's in good vegetative cover unless the soil is really saturated, even then I think much of the water getting into the swales is coming through the soil, a temporary water table that drains down pretty quickly once the deluge ends. So, the swales in areas with good vegetative cover uphill aren't really doing much.

The swales that I do consider very helpful are the ones that are collecting runoff from impervious or compacted areas such as gravel roads. I have a couple of swales that collect water, nutrients and organic matter coming off of a low-traffic gravel road, and that keeps the area near them noticeably lusher during dry summers as long as we get a few of the types of occasional showers and thunderstorms that are common here, Even if they don't bring enough rain to make much of a difference in most places, the runoff that concentrates in the swales will moisten the area around them significantly.

Water retention is tricky in karst. If there's evidence of runoff or erosion swales may help. I could suggest digging some test holes and filling them with water to see how fast they drain, but the thing is a hole may not drain too excessively, but then when expanded into a swale may hit a spot where the water can get through cracks in the bedrock and drain fast.

Southern Missouri is definitely one of the harder climates to design a building for, as it has to deal both with tropical-like heat and humidity in the summer, and also winters that, while mild compared to the northern US, are still cold enough to need to incorporate heat-retention strategies for.

As has been mentioned before, mold is one of the major problems in this climate. I'm not a building expert, but I have been in a lot of different styles of buildings in this and similar climates, and heard plenty of other people's experiences, and a few things stand out, namely good airflow and being up above the ground. I have lived without air conditioning here without any major issues with mold while others I know have been severely affected some of those same years. My situation isn't ideal, but the airflow is good enough with cross breezes and it's not in contact with the ground. Besides the obvious matter of having a roof that doesn't leak, having a raised floor seems to make a big difference. I know of many buildings without a raised floor, whether it be on a concrete slab or earthen floor, that struggle with mold, and earth-bermed houses tend to be even worse. There may be ways to do an earth-bermed house here that doesn't have mold issues, but you'd have to really know what you're doing. In my experience, buildings with crawlspaces tend to have much less mold issues.

I love living in the woods, but too many trees and shrubs too close to the building reduces airflow and can also lead to too much moisture/mold. Some trees to provide shade from the heat are nice, but I'd keep branches trimmed a ways away from windows. i know of a place that had mold get bad when some tall shrubs were planted and grew in front of several windows.

I'm in 6b and have some muscadines. I enjoy the flavor and their disease resistance (I have trouble getting much out of most other grape varieties here). I do have winter damage in cold years though. It got down to  minus 5 last winter, and some of them are okay and some may not have made it, I don't know for sure because some are just starting to grow, extremely late. Even the ones that look the best have some tip dieback. The ones that seem hardiest are on an arbor make of cedar rather than the wire trellising or fencing the others I have are, and are also near some trees (but still get a good 6-8 hours of sunshine during the growing season). I have done nothing special to protect any of them.

Another thing I've noticed with muscadines here is that pruning too early is very bad for them, I've pruned dormant plants that looked like they had healthy cambium only to have the stems split later during a relatively minor cold spell (low/mid 20s) and the plants die back severely, or even die completely. At this point I'm waiting to prune them until well into April just before growth begins. i know that's different from what the literature says about optimal pruning time, but it works better for me.

This is some of the best news I've heard in a while.

Agreed.

If all humans were to somehow abruptly vanish, the ecosystems in North America and the majority of the world would not revert to their pre-human state. The North American ecosystems before humans arrived were dominated by many species of megafauna that are now extinct and must have shaped the ecosystem in ways that we will never fully understand. Having certain areas be as undisturbed as possible is good to have a point of comparison with areas managed in various other ways in the same ecosystem, and since so much land is currently managed so badly, preserved areas are generally much healthier, but as Allan Savory has demonstrated, some brittle ecosystems need quite a bit of disturbance (his examples come from the actions of herds of animals) to thrive and will degrade from over-rest. Preserved areas in many regions of the country have no animals larger than a deer around, even in areas where wolves, bear, elk and buffalo still roam, that ecosystem developed alongside the native peoples of North America after the megafauna went extinct.

It is known that islands that are closer to other land where species disperse from end up with higher biodiversity, other factors being equal. This website on island biogeography sums it up with this quote,

A modified version of the classical island biogeography model proposed by MacArthur and Wilson (1963) is depicted above. The model considers the interaction of two main parameters, colonization and extinction, and then considers island size and distance from mainland as predictors of the species richness found on each island. Both colonization and extinction can be thought of in terms of rates or probabilities, and the size and isolation of islands impacts the probability of colonization and of extinction. Simply, Islands close to the mainland will more readily receive colonists from that mainland and, similarly, probability of colonization of large islands will be higher than that of small islands. Thus the larger the island and closer to the mainland, the more potential species will arrive. Species will also more readily go extinct on small islands than large, due to factors such as smaller population sizes and less available habitat. These parameters go hand in hand predicting that species richness will peak in large islands near mainlands, and be lowest in small islands far away from the mainland.

I have seen a few aggressive invasive species that do decrease biodiversity in the patches they take over, although oftentimes the claims are exaggerated (I've seen areas labeled monocultures of an exotic species that I can see quite a few other species growing in). However, we are glimpsing a very small period of time, as well as one with a lot of other human-induced factors that are changing the environment, so its no surprise that different species are thriving in the changed conditions. Humans have greatly accelerated the movement of species around the world, but there has always been a certain amount of movement, and I think the above example of island biogeography shows that more migration tends to increase biodiversity overall. That doesn't mean that none of the new species caused the extinction of species that were previously present, but the number driven extinct must end up fewer than the number of arrivals.

I've heard from some nativists the idea that certain exotic species will never find a balance and simply take over and leave much of the planet as near monocultures. If that were true, I'd think the islands with more migrating species would end up with less biodiversity, as periodically an aggressive species would come through and wipe out most of the others. Herbicide companies do love it when people have this view of exotic species, and have been known to support native plant groups and push them toward chemical use to eradicate exotics.

There was a time in early American history when peach trees were aggressive enough on parts of the east coast that some people worried they were taking over the landscape in places. That was before pests and diseases caught up with them, some imported themselves but others adapting from native wild stone fruits. Now there are occasional naturalized peaches but they don't appear on any invasive species list. I imagine the same will happen eventually to the invasives of most concern today, more pests and diseases will come after them and balance the populations out, how long that will take is the big question, my guess is that species that have native relatives will have more pests/diseases move to the new species more quickly.

While I'm generally not in the nativist camp, there are certain aggressive species that I would never spread to new areas, because even if they will eventually come into balance, in the meantime I wouldn't want to chance it by adding one more stress to all the others going on in this era.

I'm in zone 6B, and as far as blueberries go I've had the best luck with rabbiteye varieties and a few southern highbush types. Northern highbush types are more fickle in these hotter summer climates. The ph does need to be acidic for them as has been mentioned. Hidden Springs Nursery is in your area, I've had good luck with their plants and they aren't too expensive either, they don't have all that wide a selection of varieties but the ones they do have tend to be good for organic growing in our zones.

I'm in MO just north of the AR border. I ordered and planted twelve from Foxgreen Farms in 2015. Only 3 survived the first year, although they were a bit neglected. Those three grew well in 2016, after I cleared and mulched around them. Since the Foxgreen plants are unsexed I wanted to get more to ensure we had both male and female for pollination, so I planted two more last spring (2017) from Indiana Berry. They started to grow and then unfortunately  died shortly thereafter, shortly after a period of torrential rains, the soil is well drained where they are but maybe all that water weas still too much for them to handle at that vulnerable a stage. The three older plants looked good through the spring and were 3-4 feet high by summer, but then in late summer what had been the biggest, healthiest looking one suddenly had half its growth die off, and the rest not look so great. The other two plants didn't look that well in the late summer/fall either. There was plenty of moisture at that time (it got dry later in the fall) but not excessive, and the summer was cooler than that of 2016 which the same plant thrived in, so I'm not sure what caused that. I'll see if any of them still look good next year, if they don't then I doubt I'll try them again unless I can find some that have thrived in a climate similar to or hotter than ours, everyone who I've heard has success with them seems to be in cooler climates. I'd love to try the fruit if any of them ever get big enough to produce.

Interesting Thread,

A couple of thoughts,

Not everyone thrives on the same diet. Diets were diverse even 10,000 years ago, depending on the environment that people lived in, there are many things in modern diets that weren't around 10,000 years ago, but there wasn't any single paleolithic diet. Evolution and adaptation of humanity never stopped and is continuing, but it can't keep pace with the rate of change in our modern world. Also, agriculture spread to different regions at different times, so depending on your own ancestry, you might have ancestors that were hunter-gatherers more recently than 10,000 years ago. The last 150 years have seen a particularly rapid change, adding so much toxic stuff to the environment, antibiotics to alter our microbiomes, and changes of food processing away from traditional ways (an example, before the introduction of baker's yeast, sourdough bread was the norm). I agree with Rebecca Norman that changes of diet aren't the only factor in food issues, other changes in our environments need to be looked at. Just talking to people of different generations in America is very revealing, the prevalence of food allergies have exploded in recent years, along with other conditions of immune dysfunction, such as autoimmune diseases. The microbiome has already been mentioned, that's huge, one issue rarely discussed is aluminum adjuvants in vaccines, there's increasing evidence that they're involved in conditions of immune dysfunction. Aluminum adjuvants are used specifically to stimulate the immune system, it's not too surprising that they end up stimulating it in unexpected ways as well.

I have to disagree with the idea that survival after reproduction means nothing in human evolution. That would be true in a species that don't take care of their young, but in humans there's often going to be a big difference in the welfare of a child with living, healthy parents than one with sick or dead parents. In the harsh times that shape evolution the most, the children with healthy parents will be at a particular advantage. While much less important than parents, surviving grandparents may even give an evolutionary advantage as well, as they can be helpful to the survival of the family as well, they can take care of grandkids and share their knowledge from a long life experience.

I give this nursery 2 out of 10 acorns.

I've had a similar experience, albeit not quite as bad, I did actually get my plants. They came way later in the year than they said, during the middle of an exteremely hot droughty summer, and most of them died soon even though I was watering them regularly. The surviving hazelnuts and chestnuts from Badgersett have not done as well as ones from other sources including Oikos Tree Crops that I planted the same year. They wouldn't respond to me either, I won't be ordering from them again.

In areas which have runoff from heavy downpours, swales capturing the water could provide pockets of more moisture for trees. I've only briefly been to the high plains, but noticed a lot of heavy clay in places which seemed like it could hold water well. However, in that sort of climate I wonder if building and restoring the soil in the landscape overall would mean there wouldn't be much runoff anymore to fill the swales. Cities/suburbs are a different matter since they have so much impervious surface area such as roads and roofs, which if diverted into the areas that still have soil would increase the soil moisture in those areas greatly, provided they have the soil to hold the extra captured runoff.

What could be done with the vast plains landscapes is an interesting question, and since most of my experience is in wetter climates I can't say for sure, it would be interesting to hear if anyone has gotten edible savannas to establish in such a climate. Prairies historically grew in many places that were wet enough to grow a variety of trees, Iowa for instance, and were kept open by a combination of fire and grazing herds of bison and elk. The plains of Colorado are much drier than Iowa, but even western Nebraska has some national forest areas that were planted on what was plains. I'd personally think that the most sustainable way to manage the expanses of the high plains would be predominantly as grassland with holistic management practices, with trees concentrated in the wetter parts of the landscape, both natural watercourses and pockets created by earthworks. The krater garden sounds like it could work well in windy areas of the high plains that are cold enough to get blowing snow in the winter that would tend to settle in the krater garden, which would include trees. Windbreaks also reduce water loss substantially in windy areas.

I'm a tree lover but also recognize more trees isn't always the answer. I'd think there could be more trees than there are now on the plains but the landscape will probably remain largely open (assuming the climate doesn't get unexpectedly wetter).