s. ayalp

Ok here is my problem. English is not my first language. I don't use it daily (other than my work, engineering stuff). So when time comes and I need to write something about gardening, permaculture etc I struggle to express myself. I can write 10 times more, express myself 5 times better in Turkish.

What I have been doing recently is that, I write whatever comes to my mind, Turkish, English, any language. Then feed it to AI and ask it to translate and edit it. At the end I need to edit AI's version too, because it is usually full with junk. Nevertheless it is like 10 times less stress for me. I can create a post in 10 minutes, instead of  an hour of correcting vocab and grammar.

I also dont want to see permies turn into an AI junk bin - as it happened to all social media platforms. But I want to post more, share more. A lot of stuff happened in the last 4 years and more to come...

What you guys think?

This might be a little off-topic, but my observations on Solomon’s remineralization approach are roughly as follows.

Anything below 20% is basically a total loss. For example, if boron is below 20%, you are likely to see all kinds of problems related to boron deficiency, as well as problems with nutrients that depend on boron. Calcium is a good example: fungi and soil biology cannot move nutrients around properly without boron, and calcium itself is large and relatively difficult to move.

Between 20% and 40%, deficiencies tend to show up mostly as reduced yields.
Between 40% and 70%, I have found that a functioning soil ecosystem can compensate for most deficiencies. At this range, I did not need to add much more directly to the soil. Regular foliar feeding was enough to produce very good crops and yields.
Personally, I do not think there is much need to push beyond 70% when dealing with living soil. At that point, the biological channels seem to be working well: no foliar feeding is needed, and visible deficiencies largely disappear.

If you want to go back to where you started, just burn the plant material. Burning turns organic material back into mineral salts, and you lose much of what you were trying to build biologically. We made that mistake once.

For large areas, however, I have found Solomon’s approach much harder to apply directly. This is especially true in dry farming, where things become much more complicated. It depends heavily on what you are planting and how much rainfall you expect. For example, if you are growing wheat, you need to pay particular attention to the minerals wheat is most sensitive to. Wheat has a strong requirement for Zn, and phosphorus availability is closely involved in that system. So in practice, you may need to spread mineral corrections over two to four years, or concentrate each year on correcting the nutrients that the current crop is most sensitive to. Gradually, the overall mineral balance will improve. But one thing is essential: plant material needs to go back into the soil. Another option is to import suitable organic material—for example, properly selected oilseed press cake after the oil has been extracted—or other organic residues with a useful mineral profile.

In the end, mineral balancing really comes down to a few practical questions. In dry climates, adding mineral salts can become risky very quickly because the threshold “too much” can be way less than what is needed. You can improve the numbers on a soil test, but realistically it may take eight to twelve years to do it safely and biologically. At the same time, there are plants that are naturally adapted to mineral imbalances or high salt conditions—many of them are species we tend to call invasive. You can use those plants to capture excess minerals, build biomass, and bind those salts into carbon. And suddenly, you are doing permaculture! :)

If you are importing organic material, there is another question: can the economics support it? And more importantly, what exactly are you importing? They use a lot of nasty stuff to extract oil from oil seeds. Do you want those in your soil?

So, long story short, my experience goes as: anything below 20% should be corrected as soon as possible. Try to get above 40%. There is probably little reason to push much beyond 70% in a biologically active soil. For large areas, correct minerals gradually—either by addressing the crop’s most critical deficiencies one by one, or by combining gradual mineral balancing with cover cropping during the rainy season. You want to grows much as organic material so anything -humic acids, foliar feeding- all are on the table. Go crazy with cover crops while mineral balancing. And never, ever burn the plant material.

Hope I didn't go waay out of topic :)

I pee on it.

Actually I add it to the compost pile while building it and occasionally - like every morning- pee on it :)

I used to add a lot of stuff, make mixtures, rock dust, minerals all sorts of stuff. I dont know how or why but pee+ biochar works the best. Fungi also likes it.

Thanks! So it seems like there is the black oil seed sunflower and that is it's name. It is one stem and single headed.

While searching I came across Peredovik oil seed sunflower which is poly headed (southern exposure seed exchange). It seems strange that there is like 150 heirloom corn variety for flour,but just few oil seed sunflower.

I am gradually transforming a 11 acre conventional sunflower-wheat plot into a mixed permaculture- market garden - demonstration plot project. It will take couple more years for the process to be complete. Meanwhile I have to learn how to grow wheat and sunflower. It is fun to see how some increase in organic matter content and mineral balancing does to production.
Here is the problem I am facing right now. Sunflower seeds -hybrids- are way too expensive over here. So much expensive that, it almost costs as much as all other inputs. So I did what was expected of me and tried to stabilize f1 sunflower. Then I hit to a rock wall. Unlike wheat - which even F2's perform well,  F1 sunflower seeds are like tomatoes - F2's has nothing to do with F1. Million heads, some tiny flowers some massive flowers. Stalks way too thin or way to thick - some look like Boa trees.

I have been searching for heirloom sunflower seeds for seed oil production. Not the ones for bird feed, not the ones for eating, but for seed oil. While it was easy to find heirloom wheat varieties it has been extremely difficult to pinpoint a single heirloom that was used for seed oil in say 1950. Am I missing something? Why are all varieties for seed oil production F1's? Is there anyone selling old varieties?

I know there will be some loss of production per acre and also oil percentage, but cost saved from buying expensive seed each year should help with the math.

Thanks!

buffalo wings pizza ( at a place called Zetti's)
Oh I miss them so much!

I went to UB for two years, We were eating buffalo wings 5 days of a week, detoxing in the remaining two.

cool!!

Sourcing seeds is a major challenge over here. Even F1's. Info such as how long does it take from sowing to harvest, disease resistance etc- is not available. There are many local seed sharing groups that claim to save heirloom varieties from commercial companies, but they also suffer from the same problem. I feel lucky if I receive any package from them that has something written on it. Sometimes you receive seeds of a tomato that is claimed to be ancestral, then it turns out to be an Italian heirloom that has nothing to do with the guys grandma.

There is also two other issues that I deal with. Lately I am busy and usually I don't have more than 1 hour per week in the veggie garden. It takes ton of babysitting some heirloom varieties. The other issue has to do with Istanbul's climate. It is humid and hot. Some years it is mostly Mediterranean and doesn't rain for months, but some years it rains throughout whole summer. Powdery mildew -and other mildews- is a major issue. Istanbul has a huge metropolitan area, creating a massive heat island and also air pollution. Regular spraying by municipality does not help either.

So decided to grow my own landrace varieties. And I had some promising results with squash. I was able to get some seeds - landrace varieties, mostly Lofthouses and from some friends. Greg sent squash seeds - resistant to powdery mildew, a variety he has been selecting for the last 5-6 years.

Since I don't have free access to seeds, there is no seed share group focusing on the subject, my first year goal is to grow as many as possible. Turning each seed to 10-20-100 or more.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:It seems that cooking does not destroy the compound involved in favism. I suppose that's why there is reluctance on the part of food manufacturers -- liability issues. Hence the research.

A couple of interesting reads from Wikipedia:
Fava/broad beans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicia_faba

Favism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose-6-phosphate_dehydrogenase_deficiency

I know, I know, Wikipedia isn't the last word on any subject. I do appreciate how it frames the parameters of the debate, allowing me to ask good questions.

Definetly. It helps a lot.

That being said, when an age old info comes up I dont discard it even if it does not make much sense. When I was a kid I loved to run under ladder (I dont know why I did that, just doing it) My grandmother told me it is actualy a veery big sin. I didn't check it and I was 25 years old when I learned that there is no such thing What I am tring to say is there is usually some truth or a reason behind any age old info. This age old made up "sin" probably helped saving someone breaking his arm/leg.

About fava beans - And I really dont want this to turn it into here is an info, see this article type of discussion - nor permies is a place for that (we dont like that here).
I checked and came up with this article : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924224419301992

where it says:
"Vicine and convicine are thermostable, but their concentration can be greatly reduced by soaking the seeds in water or in a weak acid solution (Hegazy & Marquardt, 1983; Jamalian & Ghorbani, 2005) prior to cooking. Thermal processing such as boiling, roasting, microwave irradiation, and frying can reduce the v-c content in faba bean seeds (Hussein, Motawei, Nassib, Khalil, & Marquardt, 1986; Ganzler & Salgó, 1987; Muzquiz et al., 2012; Cardador-Martinez et al., 2012). In addition, the combination of enzyme treatment with fermentation (Pulkkinen et al., 2019) or of alkaline extraction with acid precipitation can reduce v-c content by more than 99% (Vioque, Alaiz, & Girón-Calle, 2012). However, removal or destruction of v-c by dry milling for protein concentration on an industrial scale is problematic because air classification of faba bean protein (Tyler, Youngs, & Sosulski, 1981) concentrates the v-c up to nearly four-fold in the protein fraction (Fig. 1). Pitz, Sosulski, and Hogge (1980) reported a similar trend. Wet processing methods for protein purification, e.g., isoelectric precipitation, can remove anti-nutritional factors such as v-c from protein fractions, but these methods are costly and energy-intensive (reviewed in Singhal, Karaca, Tyler, & Nickerson, 2016). The best solution for the reduction of v-c is breeding for low v-c faba beans, and the discovery of a low-v-c accession with up to 95% reduction in v-c content compared to wild type has enabled the transfer of the low v-c trait to faba bean cultivars by sexual crosses (Duc, Sixdenier, Lila, & Furstoss, 1989)."

Long story short, at the end we reach to the same conclusion I will continue to boil beans for the time being - till we have some seeds of low v-c beans

Does low concentration of those coımpounds make people with favism sick? Frankly I have no clue.

My final recommendation is about diseases. There are many tools, ways and such for dealing with diseases and pests. This book has most of them. Even if you dont implement the recepies, it is definetly a concise referance book about the subject. Highly recomended.

"With growing consumer awareness about the dangers of garden chemicals, turn to The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control as the most reliable and comprehensive guide on the garden shelf. Rodale has been the category leader in organic methods for decades, and this thoroughly updated edition features the latest science-based recommendations for battling garden problems. With all-new photos of common and recently introduced pests and plant diseases, you can quickly identify whether you've discovered garden friend or foe and what action, if any, you should take.

No other reference includes a wider range of methods for growing and maintaining an organic garden. The plant-by-plant guide features symptoms and solutions for 200 popular plants, including flowers, vegetables, trees, shrubs, and fruits. The insect-and-disease encyclopedia includes a photo identification guide and detailed descriptions of damage readers may see. The extensive coverage of the most up-to-date organic control techniques and products, presented in order of lowest impact to most intensive intervention, makes it easy to choose the best control."