r ranson wrote:
As for Vitimine D absorbtion. It depends on genetics and diet, but from what my doctors have told me, most of it is absorbed through the eyes. This is contrary to what they taught me in school way back when, so I'm guessing they got more information since then.
I looked that up and everything I see says both. obviously the skin has a much larger surface area than the eyes, so it makes sense that there would be more absorption through it.
I've noticed in a number of areas on my property that there are little to no earth worms. A few of these places are garden beds I've worked for years on adding mulch and organic material to. Obviously I'm missing something or there is something in the soil that is driving them away?
I've been plugging away with permaculture on my two acres for about 8 years now. I've been admittedly disappointed with the results for the most part until the last two years when suddenly there is much improvement.
A lot of my property was a garden for a past owner. The "till it to death and pour artificial fertilizers on it" type of garden. The soil was dead. No earth worms, no organic matter. I decided to start turning it into a part of my food forest, planted trees, bushes,etc. then waited, adding mulch, nitrogen fixers,etc. either things didn't grow at all or just languished unchanged from year to year until the last year or so. Suddenly this year things are taking off, trees have doubled or quadrupled in size in the last two growing seasons.
I think basically my soil was just so worn out it literally took 8 years or so for it to rebuild to the point where things will grow.
I know this is probably more specific to garden beds, vegetable patches,etc, but my food forest essentially really started to take off when I decided to stop cutting the majority of the grass and "weeds". My two cherry trees turned into a mini orchard of about eight trees because new trees sprouted from the far-ranging roots of the original trees.
A blueberry bush came up in one place I stopped mowing (must have been planted and forgotten by a previous owner of the property) . Clover started spreading everywhere in an area with low fertility. Five or more American persimmon trees came up and at least three have started fruiting now in the last year or so.
Basically when it comes to weeding/mowing/etc. I look at the area and only remove that which might be invasive, use space or light I want for something else or something nasty (poison ivy).
What uses? Recreation, water for crops, water for fire protection, fish, mitigating winter temperatures for nearby plants come to mind.
A half acre pond should be plenty big enough for fish for a food source.
As for types of fish, sorry can't help there. Maybe check other ponds in the area?
What else do you need to know? Read through this forum. Pretty much anything anyone could want to know about
permaculture and ponds has been covered here, and there is a quite a bit.
Mark, Lemon trees are the LEAST cold hardy of citrus trees, you'll need to keep it above 29F at the least.
I have Owari Satsuma mandarins in ground in my greenhouse, but they are hardy to around 22F, so there is wide variance between varieties of citrus.
(The only heat source is two incandescent light bulbs, one near each tree. They are turned on by a greenhouse thermostat at around 35F.
I have a small greenhouse I made out of used windows I bought at Habitat for Humanity, it's kept my in ground Satsuma mandarin trees protected for about 7 years or more now.
The greenhouse stays up year-round but many of the windows can be removed or opened for summer use. When I take them off I just put them beside or in the greenhouse.
Tammy Farraway wrote:Prior to getting these citrus, I watered my houseplants like you suggest. The lemon and lime didn't respond well, so I changed how I watered them. They live indoors year round in the same spot, so pretty stable environment. YMMV.
It's a good idea to check the root balls once or twice a year regardless how you water to be sure the roots are in good condition.
I have had about 20 potted citrus plants and I lost a number of them to root rot because of watering more than they needed.
Tammy Farraway wrote:When our indoor lemon and lime trees started losing a lot of leaves, the research I found said possible causes were BOTH too little water or too much water, which was extremely frustrating to say the least!
The best rule of thumb I've found to insure that pretty much any potted plant or tree receives the right amount of water:
1. Water the plant fully so that it so that water is coming out the bottom.
2. DON'T water again until the top inch of soil feels dry. Go to Step 1.
This rules out variations in pot types (plastic pots take longer to dry than clay) or variations in the water usage of different plants.
This also helps to prevent rotten roots from standing water in the bottom of the pot.
Watering on a set schedule doesn't make allowances for temperature or humidity, for instance watering every Wednesday in the heat of the summer might be just right,
but in the winter and inside, the plants usage of water will be less and you may end up with too much water and root rot.
BTW loss of leaves in citrus is normal when moved from indoors to outdoors or vice versa. The change in sunlight and length of sunlight triggers
this and is normal. Once the trees stabilize they will regrow leaves.
Joe Grand wrote:Cris Bessette,
Do you have a problem with the seedlings take over, I have heard that it is invasive plant, but I have had it for several years & it has not spread at all.
I was wondering if anyone else had a problem?
Can you share a recipe with us, thank you.
So far I haven't had a problem, but I mow and cut around the trees. They will come up anywhere the fruit falls though, and I've had them roll down hill and start a plant
at the bottom. They definitely could be invasive if you don't stay on top of maintenance. With one tree, that's not going to be a problem, I have something like 40 of them
so it's a bit more work.
With my hedge of them I plan to rake the fruit up under the hedge when these start fruiting.
As for a recipe, the easiest way I've found to make jelly is to cut each fruit in half, and fill up a small pot part way, fill the rest with water and put on a slow boil for a while.
This leaches all the juice out and kills the seeds simultaneously. Whatever juice I get, I use a standard citrus jelly recipe from then on.
Make sure the knife and pot you use isn't terribly important to you unless you have some acetone or some other suitable solvent to clean the sticky resin off.
As for the taste, trifoliate orange jelly tastes like a mix of lemon and gin.
my Trifoliate Orange hedge is averaging between 4-6 feet tall and total length is about 30 feet. I can tell that within a few more years nothing will be able to get through it.
I have about 5 large mature trees that are covered with fruit right now.
I'm still working on finding things to do with the fruit. I've made jelly a number of times,
but it is an acquired taste (a bit of a resinous bite to it), and cleaning up pans, spoons etc practically takes acetone to get that resin off. I've thought of grinding the
fruit up and making incense or something like that.
Cris Bessette wrote:Cold hardy tropicals (or tropicalesque) that I've had luck with here in North Georgia:
Pineapple guava (Acca sellowiana), I've noticed no winter damage to these.
Cris, What varieties of Pineapple Guava have oyu had success with? I am in North Alabama (Zone 7B) and want to try to grow these on the east side of my house. Would roots be a concern?
THanks
The truth is I have no idea about variety, I just ordered a few off the net somewhere (Amazon? Ebay?) and planted them, it's been 5 or more years ago. I'm pretty sure they stay pretty small as trees,
maybe 10 feet tall on average, so I don't imagine the roots would be big enough to damage anything.
personally, I would think with a constant water supply coming in, you will get some kind of pond, liner or not.
Just let the water run in, and see how well the existing soil holds water and for how long. If not enough,
then stop the ingress of water, let the hole dry up and try a liner or clay.
As for "gunk" you're not generally going to get algae or other build up if the water is moving and not stagnant.
Some buildup of natural algae, mosses, water plants is natural of course.
In my little North Georgia county this has been a subject of discussion for the last week or so.
The governor is being petitioned to close all public recreation areas.
Just occurred to me that learning guitar or another instrument is a pretty permie thing to do.
Creating music on your own instead of consuming, creating entertainment on the cheap, homestead activities,etc.
In older times, this is what people did because this was the only way you were likely to hear music, DIY music.
I know I've gotten a lot of joy out of my 30+ years playing, sharing music with friends.
John F Dean wrote:We planted 2 a couple of years ago. The seem to be taking forever to grow. I this usual?
plants being plants, it depends on the situation.
I started with fresh seed and 6 years later a few of my trees grown from those seeds are already producing fruit.
I took your survey, but I'm reallly not clear on what attributes you are envisioning for an "indoor garden",
are we talking about a few pots with herbs in them, or a large operation that might say, take up an average room?
The scale of the "indoor garden" is going to effect responses. Auto-watering wouldn't make any sense for a few pots, but would for a room full of planters.
IF I was to need an indoor garden, it would have to be stackable or use vertical space as much as possible. It would have to have LED lighting to make up
for any lack of natural light, it would have to be clean and provide protection from soil/water from getting on home surfaces, uncomplicated without bits and pieces
to get lost or broken. Rugged construction.
I don't currently have an indoor garden per se, but rather I keep plants, trees/bushes etc, inside during the winter that will go outside. I also start young plants
for eventual planting outdoors, so I do have similar experiences. Keeping things clean and dry are some of the more involved bits with this.
Each LED uses about 10-15 ma. Red LEDs use about 2 volts and blue/green/white LEDs use about 3 volts.
The only LED Christmas lights I've seen that run on DC are small battery powered sets and ones that have controllers integrated for different flash patterns.
Yes, Christmas light sets would look better without the 30hz flicker, but they are cheaper to produce without the extra diodes / capacitors necessary to make smooth DC to run them.
when I've cooked with it before Lemon Balm seems to loose it's distinctive flavor/smell.
Personally I would suggest adding at the very end of the cooking, or after.
This site says they're hardy in zones 2-7. Would they survive in Z8?
I've never seen them for sale, and haven't noticed any growing, so I wonder if it would be difficult to find seeds online. Hmm.
I've bought seeds for these a few times online. I've started them out in pots but they seem to be growing very slow. They also go dormant in the winter even indoors.
I'm hoping I can put them out in the ground in the next year or so.
Water flows downhill. Let gravity do work for you.
Put the pond where the water is already collecting- seems like a good indication that a pond will work there.
Leave room for "wet lands" around it, make the pond shallow and wide like a saucer, plant water loving plants and crops around the edges.
Jay Grace wrote:While not an actual tropical. Pawpaw (asimina triloba) fits all the looks of a tropical.
Really large glossy leaves and relatively large fruit compared to any other North American fruit.
I second this. They are the only hardy member of a tropical family of trees. The leaves are huge.
Not to mention, one of the tastiest fruit in this solar system.
I've found the flowering of Christmas cactus is completely dependent on temperature.
I have a few, the one at home in the cool kitchen is putting on buds right now, the one at work in the always warm building- nothing.
Many people think that meditation is inherently connected to certain religious beliefs or you have to join some philosophical system.
Meditation works regardless what you believe, it's a natural function of the human mind to be able to be entranced through various repetitive activities.
I personally have found simple breathing and walking meditation techniques to be useful to me.
Cold hardy tropicals (or tropicalesque) that I've had luck with here in North Georgia:
Pineapple guava (Acca sellowiana), I've noticed no winter damage to these.
Owari Satsuma Mandarin (Citrus reticulata "Owari") these are planted in the ground in a mostly unheated greenhouse, but I think they would be fine through most of the winter here outside.
I'm experimenting with a few other citrus-
citrus trifoliata- completely hardy here, but questionably edible fruit (I make jelly sometimes).
Citrangequat- Cross between trifoliate orange, mandarin and kumquat- planted outdoors- a bit of winter danage, but has come back the last three years, still hasn't gotten big enough to fruit.
Not tropical, but exotic to some:
Figs My oldest tree gave me more figs than you can shake a stick at this year.
Wild maypop/passion fruit (passiflora incarnata) : Volunteered, keep spreading on anything they can climb on.
Japanese persimmon (Diospyros ) A farmer near me has a whole orchard.
My biggest challenge so far is physical. My fingernails were too long. It took a lot of pain to get them short enough. My fingertips were totally soft and wimpy. They are currently numb from the callus building effort. Perhaps the will resolve itself in a month or so.
Are there any stories that you want to tell me about how you learned to play the guitar? Are there any favorite Internet resources that I should check out? Any songs or chords that you most recommend for beginners?
Something I used to do when I was trying to build up calluses is to rub alcohol on the tips after playing a while, not sure if it worked, I got calluses anyway from just playing.
I was self taught from the beginning. I just bought a chord book (long before the internet) and learned chords, then joined a band in junior high which gave me motivation.
Steven Rodenberg wrote:Fukushu and valentine now in glass encloseurs each have a 4 bulb heating/light strip
Question- wouldn't you get more heat out of that light strip using incandescent bulbs?
Just two 40 watt incandescent bulbs are enough for my 10x10 greenhouse to stay mostly above freezing.
Tyler Ludens wrote:Thanks for the interest in this project! Lemon tree is doing fine so far - tiny lemon is hanging on, getting a little bigger all the time. I plan to keep this tree quite small, around four feet tall or so. I had a small lemon tree in California that bore several lemons at a time on a little three foot tree in a pot, so size is not that important for a decent supply of lemons.
I'm planning another subtropical plant scheme near another rain tank in another part of the yard. Can't decide if I will go with a Satsuma or try for the impossible dream - a Banana!* I recently purchased David the Good's book Push the Zone and it's got me all excited about trying subtropical and maybe even tropical plants. I'm currently keep two kinds of Taro alive in pots, and trying to start warm climate Yams also.
*I tried planting Bananas several years ago but had no clue what I was doing so they all died. I'm an expert at killing all sorts of plants.....
I highly recommend Owari Satsuma. Mine are doing great. The only "banana" I can get to grow reliably in the ground here is Musa Basjioo, look great, but fruit not edible.
I just bought an Ice Cream banana that I will be growing in a big pot till it pups so I can have a few to experiment with.
I've had a couple of stomach ulcers, the most recent time this is what I did to make it go away:
NO
1. No coffee, no tea.
2. No sugar
3. No spicy
4. No alcohol
YES
1. Lots of water
2. Bitters 3. Broccoli, cabbage, fermented foods
4. Chicken and rice
5. Yogurt
6. Proton pump inhibitor (Prilosec) (don't use more than a few weeks at a time, may cause your stomach to start making MORE acid oddly enough)
7. Good probiotic (Try a health food store for better ones than in grocery store)
I cheated a little bit here and there, but mostlly stuck to this for a few months.
Sena Kassim wrote:We just purchased 5 paw paws this past summer. They are all still in pots. Hoping to find an superb space for them. Full sun is ok? That's def helpful. I was thinking more understorey too. Then I heard it stunts their growth. Lots of large mulch rings. I am so pumped to learn more about these amazing trees.
We live in zone 7b. Should I plant now? or wait until fall?
Thinking I should wait..
I'm not clear on your location, but here in the USA it is already fall, and yes, this is the time to get trees in the ground.
Like I said in my previous message, I've had the best results and growth in full sun.
They should be shaded the first season just to let them more gently acclimate to your climate vs the climate where the grower had them.
Water them occasionally if you have a dry winter, but they will be fine in 7B and will be dormant through winter.
Cameron Whyte wrote:Just a quick question. Planted some seeds in spring of this year and the two that survived are now a few inches high. Do I need to protect them from frost snow and otherwise miserable weather in zone 8 Pacific Northwest? They are both planted outdoors in a forest clearing. Also another question. One of the sites is in a depression has become waterlogged from a week of rain. Should I worry about lack of oxygen for the roots? Thanks
I would worry more about water than temperature.
Make sure they don't dry out the first few years so they have a chance to get their roots dug in. Definitely would try to rectify the situation with the waterlogged one.
Personally, given your situation, I might put a bucket or something over them to keep them from being damaged physically by having weight of snow on them, but they are not going to freeze.
