Matthew Groves

Hello Phil,

None of us would ever neglect our hugelkulturs. All mulched and never a stray plant I'm sure.

BUT, let's say a "friend" were to let nature take her weedy course for several years.

Suppose this "friend" was interested in reclaiming the woody foundation for it's glorious original purpose.

I know there are garden experts and hugelkultur mavens, but In *your* expertise, what knowledge could you contribute to this reclamation process?

Thanks!

The response to me came from http://hoeggerfarmyard.com

One of my suppliers got back to me on the contents of the vegetable rennet.

They said, "It is made from enzymes (chymosin)."

At most cheesemaking supply websites these days, a good bit of the rennet sold (for all sorts of cheeses, including hard) is vegetable based.

I don't know how it's made, though.

I was under the impression that for shiitake mushrooms, you actually want to use pieces that have a lot of sapwood. The smaller 6-10" wood has much more sapwood than heartwood, and are preferable to larger wood which has a higher ratio of heartwood. The sugars that the mushrooms feed on are located in the sapwood.

Anonymous wrote:A better method? Freezing!!

Boiling to evaporate or distill takes far more energy than concentrating by freezing. When freezing, the ice that forms tends to be very pure and it leaves the sugars, salts, and other molecules behind.

The only good thing about the old firewood method is that is low tech and dependable.  Not energy efficient at all.  Commercial operations could save a lot of firewood and forest by switching to freezing methods, or possibly using a reverse-osmosis filter unit that has been customized for the purpose.

For the small time operation, freezing works well enough, but it can only get you so far in the process. For the larger operations, they'd rather NOT waste the (albeit, small amount of) sugar in the frozen part.


Reverse osmosis is used heavily in operations of size. They can take sap from it's normal 1-3% sugar all the way to 17-20% or more. Feeding the evaporator with 20% sap instead of 2% really cuts down on fuel needs.

Zach Weiss wrote:I was under the impression that in an insulated hive like this, with the bees producing their own heat, the honey doesn't crystallize. Again I'm no bee expert. For harvesting there are centrifuge extractors for extracting from comb rather than frames.

All honey is supersaturated, and will crystalize eventually. Some crystalizes very quickly, and others not for a while. It depends on nectar source and other factors.

55F is the temperature at which honey crystalizes the quickest, but that's only compared to other temperatures, not other nectar sources. Rapeseed, for instance, crystalizes both very quickly and with such hardness that beekeepers find it impossible to use an extractor.

Bees will keep the cluster in the 90sF even during the winter, and that cluster will be next to the honey.

We've been making syrup here in residential missouri for 5 years.

I'm looking forward to digesting all of RMH principles to apply it to our sugaring, but what hasn't come up in this thread yet is this very necessary concept in making syrup:

Evaporation rate is tied predominantly to surface area, not to heat.

You wanna sit all day to make a pint of syrup? Turkey pot is your container.

If you need to boil off 50gallons of water to make a gallon and a half of syrup? You need as large of a surface area as you can. I'll post pictures later.

Gotta run.

Thanks for sharing all the wealth, Chris!

Can clover flourish even in soil that's not low in nitrogen?

I like the height and nectar benefits, for sure.