No, I have seen black chanterelles before. They have a curved cap. These had spiked caps. Maybe it is a new species, I don't know. There are at least 500 different kinds of mushrooms in Finland. But I haven't found a complete database to search for it.
Get a shovel, an axe, a chainsaw and a gardenhose. Dig a hole half a meter in diamenter around the trunk, using the shovel and the axe. Clean the big roots with the gardenhose. Cut them with chainsaw. You have to remove everything bit by bit. Very labor intensive. I would simply dig a hole half a meter in diameter and try to remove the top of the trunk, drill holes in it and cover it so that the soil on top of the trunk is level. Much less work. Will take decades to decay but who cares? Out of sight out of mind.
Last year I wasn't visiting Finland at all because my mother had a stroke. This year I was only for 10 days there. The perennials are doing fine and grass is taking over. I mowed a little bit here and there and threw in some clover seeds. Nothing dramatic. Minor repairs, cleaning the houses and roofs where more important. The terraces and perennials I planted there are doing fine - they are not dead yet anyway! Even though I never came by to put rotten wood in there. I left some big piles of brush and logs there 2 years ago and I will use them hopefully next year to get everything done as planned.
Damn, it is a shame I couldn't stay there longer - the island is soooo beautiful!
Power bred sheep are modern factory sheep who are explicitly bred for either wool, meat, milk, etc. I'm not a native speaker so I roughly translated what they are called in the german language. The opposite of them are old race sheep: Those are normally less trouble to hold but won't grow as fast, won't produce as much wool and milk and have (from a production aspect) unwanted properties, too. Some people can live from 100 old race sheep when you know someone who knows people who like special stuff. Most people need at least 300-400 power bred sheep to be productive.
As far as I know you can hold 6-8 sheep on 2 acres all year round - without aditional foodering. Is anyone disagreeing? When you think of a medium productive pasture, I mean.
White clover, gras and wildflowers. Top the seeds with mulch and compost. I bet you don't have power bred sheeps? If not than it doesn't really matter what you're sowing there. Only the toughest, bite and step tolerant stuff will prevail.
It is also possible that you have only a thin layer of sandy loam underground that creates the wet land. Disturbing the soil there might destroy this natural habitat. I wouldn't dig there unless you choose this site as your pond-to-be area.
Closed canopy is optimal for a pond. Remember: A pond with less than 1000 liter volume shouldn't get more than 6 hours of sunlight a day. Otherwise it will be a quite smelly adventure. Especially with ducks in it.
Pond foil is quite expensive. More expensive than wet clay blocks. If you build a pond with wet clay blocks you need to dig down 12 inches deeper than with using pond foil. This is how thick your clay blocks must be in order to create a pond with clay. You use swelling clay to seal the pond on top of the clay blocks. The thicker your clay blocks the more durable it will be.
Wet clay is quite heavy so you should consider transport costs, too.
Just two questions. 1. Why not chip the corn stalks and use them as mulch? They easily decompose in a years time. 2. What kind of soil do you have there? Moist/dry? Clay/sand?
I eat meat and love it. But to the people saying "Gosh, animal fat is great and awesome, healthy, etc. pp." - Why do we Carnivors fart like Klingons after a good a steak then?
It's not healthy to eat too much meat, eggs, etc. Otherwise we wouldn't fart. It just tastes great. Like tobacco or alcohol (just less harmful). It's a luxury good and musn't be part of a daily diet.
If you want calories and proteins go for nuts. You won't fart from them that's for sure.
I was very excited to watch this video because of the review and started to watch - "true stories of experiencing faith" should have made me suspicious though. I skipped the first song. I don't like women singing about their fathers. And after the first bible quote "Genesis numbers,numbers" I quit.
I care for an island in Finland. I thin out conifers and aspen. With the parts that I don't use for heating I build swales on slopes. Plant life loves it! I also planted several berry bushes like currants and planted cherry trees and hedges for birds. I create brush piles as wild life habitat. I often dig trenches fill them with brush and roll out the rocks as swales on places I want to plant trees and bushes. I also gather native plants with roots to go to seed on the island for more biodiversity. I also introduced some beneficial insects like sow bugs as decomposer. I use the coppicing method on trees that stand it like beech and willow.
Robert, I'm in Zone 8. West Germany. Maritime climate. River Rhine region. I use a plant called Forget-me-not as main mulching material. They grow wild in my garden. I just ripp them out of the soil when they turn brown and put them upside down back on the soil. Then I cover them with reed clippings and dead annuals. Everything I can find.
Size does not matter. I leave most of the tiny ones in the ground and I always get plenty potatoes from them. I disturb the soil in spring and they immediately start to grow. The big ones are easier to harvest by hand and that's another reason why I leave only the tiny ones in the soil.
You won't find unprocessed molasses. It's industrially produced. The lowest state of processed molasses is sugar-beet boiled in water. If it is edible molasses you can use it. If it is not allowed to be used as human food ingredient, I would look up the offical list of ingredients on the back of the package.
I have a pile of twigs and leaves, too. The soil is great to plant trees or bushes in. Amazingly dark because of the high carbon content. Perfect soil for funghi. Leaf compost lacks nitrogen, potassium and other stuff so it is quite poor soil even though it looks great and crumbly. Certainly too poor for most veggies. I would fertilize it with liquid gold, molasses, rockdust and of course kitchen scraps whilst building your keyhole garden. Rockdust is lightly alcaline and neutralizes the acidic tannines from oak leaves.
Paulownia is frost resistant after 2 years. Poplar and willow need moist to wet soil. Paulownia grows on contaminated, dry soil. Give them a sunny spot and they are a great asset. They don't grow high so they are outcompeted by slow growing trees that need a canopy to get established, eg. oak and fir. They are not as invasive as stated in wikipedia. There are always native trees that grow taller than Paulownia.
I wouldn't plant poplar. They are fast growing but without any value. Grow hardwoods, nut trees, honey trees. Stuff that is useful for you even when you don't coppice.
Just found this article about biochar in nature communications. If this link has already been introduced to this forum, feel free to delete this thread.
I would stop fertilizing for a good year if not forever ( ) and add sand for better drainage when you have heavy soil. That attacks the conditions barnyard grasses like. I would also rip them out manually. From my experience they are easy to pull, right?
Manually removing the motherplants is back-braking business. But with patience, ambition and changed conditions they shouldn't come back. They really do love an excess of nitrogen. Barnyard grasses only come up in my vegetable patches not in my lawn for this reason...
How often do you water and fertilize your lawn? Is it moist all the time? Barnyard Grasses like it moist. In nature they often indicate a depression where rain water accumulates sub soil and of course excess of nitrogen. Cut back on those two would be my advice. Starve them.
hügel wrote: Mmmh, where did you find that deficit size ? Europe may depend on imports now, but it also exports vast quantities of food, and wastes its humanure resources.
It's common knowledge that Europe is the biggest importer of food worldwide. Mostly from s.c. third world countries. But I'm not sure where I read it. You can look at the data from eurostat though if you're intrested in this sort of stuff: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_details/publication?p_product_code=KS-32-11-743
That, seriously, is just very sensible advice - tomatoes are okay for most people; for the other foodstuff you mention see Gary Taubes' most wonderfully comprehensive book 'Why We Get Fat - And What to Do About It'.
Thanks for your advise. Corn and potatoes are great and don't make you fat. 100g potatoes = 70 kcal, 100g pommes frites = 250 kcal. It's simple mathematic: Eat far more calories than you need to maintain yourself and you get fat. Eat the wrong stuff, e.g. pommes frites instead of unprocessed potatoes and you get fat pretty easy.
I wouldn't go that far, John. The production deficite in acres in Europe is double the size of Germany's agricultural land. Europe depends on imports - that's true. But going back to native diet sounds a bit radical to me. What does it mean anyway? Stop eating potatoes, tomatoes and corn? It's like telling an American to stop eating wheat in the form of bread, which is native to Euroasia...
No, seriously. What do you mean with it?
Young people are moving in the cities and the old ones are getting to old to manage land. The rural landscape in Europe is emptying over time. Europe is the only continent where more people die than are born. This is an advantage for nature. There is room for wildlife in Europe even though we don't know much about "our" wildlife. I never heard of Wisent before! It's a european Bison which in nature became extinct in 1927. All the 2000 Wisents in Europe are descendents to 12 Wisents that survived in zoos. Wildhorses, wolves, lynx, wild boars. Overall big wild animals gained in numbers by 34% last year.
There is already so much going on in Europe. Rivers get terraces so that fish like the sturgeon can get up the stream to lay their eggs. Sturgeons lived together with dinosaurs 200 million years ago. Scientists already located the river arms with the most suitable qualities for sturgeons. There is a masterplan from the EU to cleanse the rivers of Europe.
Germany produced over 20% of its electricity by renewable sources in the first part of 2011. Everyone said it is impossible or that the industry will suffer...
Yes, predators kept the herbivors in check. A landscape without predators is likely to be all-grassland. But a big forest is the lack in numbers of big herbivors. In this reservat "Oosvaardersplassen" groups of the size of 600 red deer are normal. They are herding animals and they aren't shy. They are trotting around like sheep. These guys from Rewilding Europe challenge the theory of Europe being covered with a thick forest.
Just read an article in the GEO magazine about Rewilding Europe. Europe's population gets older every day and when mankind leaves an area there is room for wild life!
On the most fertile land of the world metropolises are build up on. Cities grew over time and swallowed the best farmland the planet has to over. Most of the permie-people buy less fertile land which is available for little money and do something to improve it. They are doing right to save a piece of wild life habitat and cultivate a part of it. If you don't have a vision like them and hold one acre of best farmland, say: you sit in a patch of beets, think all the day about stuff and call that "cultivation", you're wasting land and should give it to someone who has a plan for it. To someone who has the strengh to bring up productivity. All those lawn owners in the cities are a waste of land in my opinion.
We have tons of studies about biodiversity in Europe about introduced species from oversea. It is a fact that introduced tree species are NOT used as habitat from native insects. When you plant say a black locust in Germany which is not native to the region you have a HUGE lifeless gap in your canopy.
It's not only about resistance and plant species being outcompeted. It's about all life being pushed away. Introduced species are not interesting for native insects. Evolution took tens of thousands of years to interconnect species with one another. You're careless when you plant aggressive invasives.
But if invasive trees are adaped to wasteland you're going to cultivate - that's a different matter to me. Better to have a green near to lifeless canopy than to have no canopy at all.
Short turnover plantations are only feasible with heavy equipment - the tree is cut near to the ground. When you're going to use your chainsaw coppicing is the best method and that changes the trees your going to use and the spacing of the trees. Hazelnut is great, ash tree, maple, lime tree, hornbeam. Just to name a few. I would try chestnut, too, as MattB suggested.
krakshot wrote: I have a landscaper who cuts grass on my lawn and he mentioned that as my lawn is new, that is part of the problem and when he puts down fertilizer in a few weeks, that should help or even get rid of the problem.
Now your soil is alive when your landscaper fertilized your soil is dead. You'll see it when you don't have mushrooms popping up anymore...
No, seriously. Mushrooms are an indicator for woody debris in your soil. It's perfect soil for trees to plant in.
Using cold water might be an issue, too. I always leave some filled up watering cans in the sun. Watering with cold water is stressful for plants in summer.
Ian Okanogan wrote: My question is whether it is possible to combine a monocrop agricultural system with permaculture system.
By definition: No. You can't combine mono crop agriculture with permaculture principles. Mono crop means nothing but one sort of crop that's harvested. "Mono" = "One". They consume are high maintenance and there is no surplus to the soil. Therefore: You do not care for the soil. You break a principle.
Cover crops are crops aswell. Combine a cash crop with a cover crop and you have the most basic form of a polyculture. You don't need 60 species to start with - just two.
) and add sand for better drainage when you have heavy soil. That attacks the conditions barnyard grasses like. I would also rip them out manually. From my experience they are easy to pull, right?