Kai Walker

Still the problem of WHERE to plant them.
Have tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce right now but plan on pole and bush beans.
Thank you for your reply and information.
Oh and have sweet potatoes to try again this year.
Pillbugs destroyed last years's crop....
Can't plant any kind of melons due to ants eating everything from the inside out.
I won't use insecticides or pesticides.
For weeds, either pull them up or use 30% distilled white vinegar on them.
Even that won't kill the one dreaded weed I have....

greg mosser wrote:

Kai Walker wrote:How to pay for an order with cash and FAR from Florida?

Also, any incompatibility issues with other plants?

if you have a safe way of sending cash, i suppose that’s a possibility. i can send you my address once a total is agreed on. i’m not sure if FAR is an acronym, or what the florida portion of your post means. i’m in western north carolina and can ship anywhere that will let me in the continental u.s.

yacon are in the sunflower family and seem to play nice with many things. i haven’t noticed any particular issues between them and things they’ve grown around.

Far meaning 1,375 miles-ish

What about money orders? I have no CC/DC nor can use any electronic payment methods (for some reason all those block me)

FYI: sunflowers attract certain pests like Japanese beetles and their grubs (which can be quite big too).

From a search:
Potatoes and beans (including pole beans, bush beans, soybeans, and dry beans) are the most detrimental companions for sunflowers.  Sunflowers release allelopathic chemicals that stunt the growth of these crops, while potatoes also risk developing fungal diseases like white mold or phytophthora blight from sunflower residue.

You should also avoid planting sunflowers with:

Leafy greens (lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula): These are easily shaded out and suffer from nutrient and water competition, often resulting in bitter or stunted growth.
Brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts): As heavy feeders, they compete aggressively for soil nutrients and moisture.
Tomatoes: Sunflowers can reduce tomato yields by blocking sunlight and releasing chemicals that weaken tomato root development.
Rhubarb: Both plants attract the rhubarb weevil, which damages stems and reduces harvest quality.
Grass: Sunflower seed hulls contain toxins that can kill lawn grass if they accumulate.
Fennel: This herb releases its own allelopathic compounds and attracts beneficial insects away from sunflowers, disrupting pollination

Speaking of allelopathic, I have both black walnut trees and pecan trees (same family) and have trouble growing things as it is.
Had 2 pecan trees cut down (about $5000 cost at the time) - BIG ones.
Still have quite a few big ones.
The sunflowers I grew were grown furthest from those trees. But they now interfere with potatoes and tomato plants (nightshade family), peppers too.

Trying to figure out where I can actually grow the Yacon.

One other spot I have a small non movable solar array occupying that space.

Two of the pecan trees are a whopping 70 feet tall or so.
LOTS of shade to help reduce air conditioning costs.

Would love to try it but hate to waste money on something I may not be able to successfully grow.

Is that $2 per ryzome? Is there a minimum amount you have to buy?
Approximate shipping costs?

How to pay for an order with cash and FAR from Florida?

Also, any incompatibility issues with other plants?

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Hey Kai. Have you tried Greg? Here is his selling Yacon thread. Pricing and instructions for ordering are in the first post there. Can you guess where my Yacon came from?

Umm Walmart?
Thanks for the link to Greg.

I can't seem to find a place that sells Yacon.
Any links or suggestions?
Would love to try it.
Thanks.

r ranson wrote:I worry about that too. It's confusing to me why wheat is suddenly seen to harm humans when some populations have been eating it as the main source of nutrients for thousands of years.

Crohns means we're on a low fibre diet anyway. But I am worried about missing out on some of the other main nutrients that wheat gives us.

Wheat is a trigger food in our family, but this is only in the last 12 years or so. We don't know what the trigger is in the wheat, but it doubtful it's the wheat itself. Probably something to do with how it is grown or how it is processed. I can handle wheat grown in Europe and local wheat that is ground then sifted (instead of separated then ground like the commercial stuff). It's hard to go wheat free without going gluten-free. On the doctor's orders, the family members are cutting out anything related to wheat in hopes that the body can heal up and we can start eating it again.

The thing is, we should be genetically suitable to eat wheat, barley, and oats since these are the ingredients of my ancestors. I think it's something in the way wheat is grown in China and North America that causes the symptoms. Or it might be the added vitamins we are sensitive to.

Non GMO wheat is generally OK. It is the GMO variety that typically can cause people digestion problem.
Same with Oats, Barley, corn, similar grains.

Carbohydrates cause inflammation in your arteries. That causes them to coat themselves internally to protect from the carbs (actually it is glucose the carbs make). Result - hardening and clogging of your arteries.
Excess glucose can cause fatty liver disease, similar to liver disease alcoholics can get.

Glucose in your blood stream acts like tiny shards of glass, scraping your arteries.

Fiber can be obtained from other sources other than grains.
Fiber is needed to offset (aka reduce re-absorption of) bile.
Not enough fiber and you can have other liver and gallbladder issues.
Bile is needed to metabolize fats both good and bad ones.
Just a few things my doctor told me...

Dunno why we need to even list a gender. Shouldn't that be optional?
For age, how about over 18 instead of real age or birthday?
It's not like either would have any effect on what their comments and things would be.
Just wondering.

If you can thin the oil, it could climb the vertical wick.
I like the teapot lamp!
But alas, wife refuses to let me use hers....

Lauren Ritz wrote:Life happened this past year. In January, in order to keep my sanity, I planted 36 tomato seeds and 12 pepper seeds on a sunny windowsill in a house kept at 60 degrees F. No bottom heat, sandy garden soil. 27 tomatoes came up. I don't remember the germination rate on the peppers, but after a month in a dark box, sporadic water, heat, cold, and me forgetting about them for lengths of time, I ended up with 2 peppers and 6 tomatoes when I got here. All of them recovered relatively quickly once they started getting actual sun and water.

The tomatoes appear to be a pillbug magnet. Literally, the pillbugs will pile up around them in a mound until there's nothing left, completely ignoring everything else they could eat. So I now have 3 tomatoes left, one in the hydroponics and two that I haven't planted yet because I know the pillbugs will get them.

On the other hand, I have one pepper in the hydroponics (one of the 2 that survived, the other is thriving in acidic clay soil) that really doesn't want to put roots down in the water. It has plenty of roots in the sphegnum moss I use as a base, but only one stringy root in the water. I suspect it's drought tolerant enough that it's resisting the transition.

My brain says, Hm. Possibly drought tolerant pepper that doesn't like the hydroponics, and tomatoes that the pillbugs will feast on if I set them out...

I'm thinking I'll take the pepper and put it in the ground, then put one of the tomatoes in the hydroponics in its place. Not sure, though. The pillbugs really like these tomatoes, and I'm not sure if that's something I want to encourage. I could get seeds off these tomatoes, then lose them all next spring because the pillbugs still like them. A lot.

I guess I'll find out.

I am PLAGUED with pillbugs. At night they look like a moving carpet on the ground, literally.
Soap water kills on contact pretty quickly. But doesn't touch the hidden ones.
I bought some special nematodes that kill them with little to no results.

For my grow bags, I literally had to wait till cold weather, then COOK pots of the dirt to 204F to kill them, their eggs, pathogens, etc.
Takes hours to cook 80L bags of dirt.
At least I got to mix in some fall leaves for next spring, soil sulfur, Azomite, Alaska Fish fertilizer, and table sugar to get it all started.
Will use urine every couple of weeks for the nitrogen boost.

About a month before planting I will mix in some bone meal.

At least I will start out bug free anyway.
Oh and even after the 11F cold weather there were still some of them alive.

What a pain having to go through all this.

Pill bugs were so bad they were eating the flowers off the plants. They ate 5 tries at growing bush beans too.

I did read you can pour boiling water on the ground to kill them. But that kills any plants you have too.

Tomatoes:
I grow mine in laundry baskets that sit in clean oil change pans of water.
Very few bugs that way.

Rj Howell wrote:

May Lotito wrote: I have seen video of one made out of flat carbon felt and it burns without smoke. .

I just tried my carbon cloth and find it's too thick. Lights yet won't stay lit. Before I switch wicks again think I'm going to try this copper tube warmer. I'll start the experiment by just warming the oil and see if there's a difference.

A guy on YT uses a copper tube in his. Seems to work OK, and with carbon felt or cotton wicks.

For me, I haven't tried it yet. - too busy and arm injury.... sigh...
On my Hurricane lanterns, I use carbon felt with copper wire sewn in to get thermal feedback.
Using lamp oil in those.

I suspect that if you heat the olive oil, it will thin out and travel farther up the wick.
Stuff is a little thick compared to other oils.