Horse manure contains a lot of viable grass seed. six months in a hot compost pile will either heat kill or germinate and smother most of those seeds, the downside of using it fresh is more time spent weeding, but in a layered system that won't likely be an issue.
growing from tubers means you get plants that produce the same type of tubers, much like growing apples from seed rarely produces a palatable apple, growing sunchokes from seeds is unlikely to produce the lage vigorous tasty tubers we want.
While the roundup has a long lifetime in soil, its also pretty mobile, the three year organic certification clock is based mostly on transport downstream and is pretty safe in most enviroments.
I would emphatically disagree with this statement, but I'll leave people to follow the info provided above if they desire.
if it were that persistent in the root zone there would be no need of a new application on each new years crop, I'm not trying to detract from the dangers of this stuff circulating around but giving up on every patch f soil thats been sprayed with roundup for the next century ain't gonna work.
juniper is indeed long lasting, especialy in the dry climates it tends to grow in.
To give a good answer to this we need to know about the climate and soil. Untreated pine poles will last 10 years or more in the well drained sandy soils of my families spead in michigan. But here on my homestead in the PNW on red clay with 6 months of rain with temps above freezing 6" treated poles are faling apart at 3-7 years. I'm hoping the red cedar I'm replacing them with will do better.
While the roundup has a long lifetime in soil, its also pretty mobile, the three year organic certification clock is based mostly on transport downstream and is pretty safe in most enviroments.
Your best bet for soild rehab would be to plant it in forage mixes and run a grass fed free range cattle or sheep and pig operation forthe first few years, slowly shifting to more veggies this also lets pastured poultry is also an option.
one big consideration as to weather this feild can become productive is the neigouhbors though, if its a 15 acre strip with cornfeilds on either side overspray and seed contimination will always be an issue and you'll never get non roundup ready broadleafs to grow well. if it's a small patch isiolated by woodlands it could become a great site in a few years and be self supporting in meat critter almost from the start.
The folks at Food Not Bombs here in Portland are doing great things in terms of conecting gardeners and garden plots and folks who need ta get some healthy food. I'm sure if you got in touch with them they'd be able to share some about their sucesses and pitfalls to avoid.
Blair Buchmayer wrote:Thanks for posting about that book for the Puget Sound region. I ordered it and am excited for it to come! I've been looking for something more specific to the region, feels like 99% of gardening books don't really apply here.
The climate here west of the cascades is similar to England in a lot of ways so organic guides written for that market work well. I don't put tomatoes in the ground till mid April or early June and will be planting kale broccoli and Brussel sprouts in august this year for December harvests
Mother Earth News highlighted this neat article in their email list this week might be a life saver for some bread addicted folks who are having issues with the gluten.
one thing to remember with coons is that they are territorial so if you have a coon that eats chickens and you shoot him chances are good the next one won't and if you have a coon that don't eat chicken she'll keep the other coons at bay, I've got a mama coon here that digs in my compost bins a bit and scares the crap outa an occasional housegeust cause she likes to hang out in my front yard in summer but she don't bother my chickens or goats so we get along just fine. in fact last years baby coons would walk right up within arms length of us to grab scraps at night.
I know folks here in coastal Oregon who just give em a lean too with a perch and a couple of buckets to lay in, you're more likely to lose them to owls and coyotes than weather
I'm studying environmental science at Portland State and it so happens we have a professor and team doing research on the urban heat island effect and how it relates to the total energy budget of the planet right now he estimates a few more years to completion and when I asked if he has an idea how its going to look he answered with one word "complicated"
you see those hot black surfaces lose heat through radiation to space at night just as much as they gain heat by absorbing radiation during the day thus higher highs in the summer and lower lows in the winter are one of the expected and observed results, but its more complicated than that
the impervious nature of roofs roads sidewalks etc. result in water not being absorbed into soil which changes the heat balance and effects the vegetation types that grow close by
its not just the roads and concrete roofs are also usually dark and absorb/transmit radiation easily in the form of heat lawns and parks are significantly different than forests and shrubs,
evapotranspiration (the evaporation of water from plant leaves) is also greatly different in city areas and as evaporation and condensation involve huge heat budgets with little temp change. This muddies the picture, a lot.
I'm going to be doing some data entry for this project http://www.fsl.orst.edu/eco-p/ultra/data-management.html which may be able to say something about one or two of these factors in the Portland/Vancouver area in five years or so, if our pilot surveys show enough promise to get us the funding.
wikipedia has a nice overview of black body radiation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation then one has to adjust to the fact that there are no real black bodies, an that the earth is a complicated system with moisture dust and other stuff in the atmosphere absorbing and radiating energy/
space cannot be "cold" only matter has temperature and the defining point of space is that there is very little matter.
I hope that even if I haven't answered any questions I've made it a bit easy to understand why climate research is tricky
perhaps you have the time and energy to begin feeding the Wiki so that we can see if it will survive? Paul is always pleased when someone takes a bit of the admin load off of him so that he can focus back on generating content
If the dog respects your wishes the trick is to catch him at it when he is being sneaky and not just scold but convince him you are angry to the point of violence. That moment of thinking you are about to kill him when your treatment is usualy mild leaves a dog with a lasting memory that that particular behavior is not cool
I consider the things I can find for free on-line much like a library that which I lose interest in before I finish just gets deleted when it comes to my attention again instead of tossed in a bag to take back next time I head to town. I did read ghia's garden a peruse the designers manual via illegal electronic copies, but purchased both as soon as I realized how often I would want to refer to them, Unfortunately I don't think my attitude towards the matter is common. I also donate a percentage of what it would cost me to stay up to date with MS office and MS operating systems to various open source projects every year.
One thing that dies frustrate me is when I want to thank some genius whose work I have acquired an illegal copy of and I cannot easily find where to buy a legal copy or donate to their cause, So I ask that you do include you name and website info conspicuously in several locations on each of your works. A short blurb about who you are and what you do may also guilt some folks who are slightly less enthusiastic than me about paying for the sort of world they want to live in into looking you up and buying a copy.
I'm trying to imagine a situation that would make animals so mineral deficient that they needed their salt broken up and cant say as I quite believe the books when they say it needs to be busted up.
I just filter them off to their own folder so they don't clog my inbox and I can read them at my lesuire works well cause when I have time to help I'm bored and looking in that folder a lot and when I am busy I don't see them
I had the urge to flame someone today so I stopped myself and decided to bump this back to the top and post a link to this thread as a reply to the comment that irked me.
security on PDF's if a bit of a joke as in any other electronic format that can be printed, I think the best way to keep the thievery down to a minimum may be.
I have to second the notion that papal buy it now buttons embedded on your website are probably the easiest and most accessible means to take small volume payments.
I could forward your request for website design help to the environmental club at Portland state, one of my fellow college students may well be willing to help just for the glory of being able to add it to their resume/scholarship apps.
another thing to consider may be a print on demand service to provide costumers with paper copies the cost would be a whole lot higher to both you and costumers but the chance of them going all over the internet via torrents is less
If you can't come up with anyone else I'll consider setting aside my aversion to situations that may result in me being asked to provide technical support, I am close enough to come down and help out in person an evening or two a week until you have it all happy, but I'll be learning with you I am not yet real experienced at the whole e-commerce thing.
Happy hunting and may you be the next rock stars of the green movement
in Michigan thermal mass is only gonna take you so far you still need to add a lot of heat and getting the most insulation in the ceiling and outer walls as you can is vital
your thermal mass is only gonna help inside of a good insulation envelope.
so assuming you have well built floors and a sound foundation I would suggest pouring two inches of concrete on top of the sub floors for thermal mass, then doing a rather standard sort of insulation retrofit to the outer walls. if you pull the insulation and stuff the walls with cob or slip straw you are gonna need more insulation on the outside of the studs, but pulling the siding then adding a sandwich of sheathing and the hard foam insulation can vastly improve the old houses by sealing up drafts and eliminating thermal bridging.
depending on what part of the state you are in firewood can be got for very cheap so wood stoves of any sort can be your friend. hint here is call local lumber mills for slabwood
after ignoring all the warnings to use a real name or realistic psedonym you will have to send a request for a name change to an admin from your "my profile" page (link above) and I doubt that anyones gonna approve it unless you want to use a realist name
Phil H wrote:
I have one of those. Well, not millions, but let's say tens of thousands. Unfortunately I have not been nearly greedy enough with my time, and thus have none to spare (take that, third ethic!). Doubly unfortunate is that my inner-hippy is now looking at my idle lathes and milling machines thinking "metal is so unsustainable - I gotta learn to build with bamboo!"
thats just silly, well made metal products are among the most sustainable products in the world because they last for generations and contain nothing that cannot be recycled indefinitely my scythe blade is over 30 years old my belt knife is about 70 years old and my stainless pans are over 25 years old, all of these things will be my children's in another 20-50 years. The sustainability issue is with where the power and heat to work you steel come from. and of course all the stamped out crap that bends up and need replacing every few months of use.
so I say if you proudly turn out high quality items in metal you are doing a very sustainable thing by preventing the purchase of inferior products that will not last.
my chickens seem to have done a good job of training the cat to stay out of their run I think if chicks are with an attentive mommy the cat will be no issue, but I could be wrong, certainly a flock o just feathered out pullets would be cat food
I'm thinking that the trick with using led's is picking another tack than standard lighting fixture. I like using strings of led xmas lights to give a gentle glow, I find one strand gives enough lighting to read by if stapled to the wall behind a chair
cities have all the issues of exhaust as do suburbs
farmland will most likely be sprayed drifting onto your place
best bet may be marginal lands that are hard to use but even there you will probably have some rich jerk on the top of the hill spraying more herbacide on his three acre lawn as a farmer will on 100 acres
best bet is to worry about the things you can fix instead
sweet potatoes are really hard to grow here on the wet side of the cascades or so I hear. I happen to find them detestable, so I haven't tried but I like all of the sun-chokes I have eaten.
I am extraordinarily greedy in terms of knowledge and skills whenever I meet someone that can do something I can't I try and convince them to show me how. I'm not nearly so greedy about material things, except for tools if I had my way I would have huge barns full of millions of dollars worth of tools for me to play with my projects with.
