Sleepless Hatfield

I had tremendous fruit set on my paw paw trees this year.  I hung bags of rotten quail eggs in the trees about a week before the first flowers opened.  The odor was quite vile, but it did the trick.  Even the tree that is about 100 feet from the other two (which are about 20 feet apart) had a very good fruit set.

I got this idea a few years back from an article in 'The Michigan Gardener' magazine.  There is a paw paw breeder near Jackson, Michigan, who hung roadkill in his trees.  I didn't think I could stomach that, but the rotten eggs worked.

Patrick Mann wrote:
What about washing? I understand there's a bitter coating that is washed off from the quinoa you buy at the store.

Yes, many kinds of quinoa have saponins similar to those in other plants such as Soapwort, and they can be very bitter.  You  can rinse it under running water for about 10 minutes to leach them out.  I wouldn't try doing that until I was ready to cook it, because it would mean the extra step of drying it out again.

When I last grew quinoa, in 2009, I grew a strain from Seeds of Change that was specifically bred to be very low in saponins, so it doesn't need the leaching step prior to cooking.  However, in browsing their online catalog, the variety they have now isn't it.  I seem to recall it was called something like "Dave's Select Brown" -- or something with Dave in the name of the variety.

The method in post #2 above is pretty much how I've done it.

About the easiest way I've found of separating most grains from the stems/stalks/heads/chaff/etc is to put them into a plastic kiddie pool and stomp on them.  Then remove as much of the course debris by hand or with some kind of sieve/screen, and use wind power to remove the chaff.  Pretty easy, really.

Yeah, that's not right.  I don't know what it is, but having butchered about 50 or 60 birds this year, chickens, ducks, turkeys, and quail, I can honestly say I've not seen anything like that.  The ducks I butchered were, coincidentally, 2 years old also, some of my excess Rouens, and they had nothing like that inside.

I can only speculate -- some kind of tumors, may fibroids similar to uterine fibroid tumors in women?  Of just some kind of abdominal fat deposits -- we know ducks are a very fatty meat, and domestic ducks given a good diet do eat a lot and get fatty.

Honestly, I've never heard of injecting ducks with hormones, no any poultry, and I'm sure it wouldn't be legal in the US.  But who knows -- that is weird , maybe you could e-mail the photo to your state's Dept. of Agriculture's veterinary pathology service and ask them what it could be?

The OP didn't state where he/she lives.  I would kill for the ability to grow Asians here, I've tried a few times with the hardiest varieties and with the hybrids Rossenyanka and Nikita's Gift, but always end up losing them to winter kill.  I have to content myself with my Meader, which is an awesome variety, and the only one that has done well long term.  I had previously Ruby and Garretson growing and fruiting, and even lost both of those above the ground level to a particularly harsh winter back in the 1990s.  I do have two small trees of Prok started, although both have only been in the ground one winter, hopefully they'll also be hardy, as they were developed by NY State at Geneva, IIRC.

I bury them in a hole at least 12 inches deep, under a fruit tree or similar plant that can benefit from the nutrients.

Never had an issue with anything digging them up as long as they're at least a foot deep.

How are Muscovies as layers?  I think I've read that they have a low production capacity, something like only 50-60 eggs a year per hen? 

Not like a chicken or some of the breeds developed from Mallards that can lay close to 300 eggs per year under ideal conditions.

No, wild cherries are fine.  If they eat them, the pit will pass harmlessly though.  The cyanide containing compound is in the seed inside the pit.  Even if they ate the pits, the LD50 of the cyanide compound is pretty high, its unlikely they would be able to eat enough to kill themselves.

Black walnuts aren't a problem, either, they will just ignore them once they sample and find out nothing edible there for them.

I've grown 'Northstine Dent' for several years.  Its a dent, not technically a flour corn or a flint (dents are in between flour and flint corns in terms of hardness and the ratio of the two kinds of starch).  Its a great short season corn, productive, good ear size, short stalks to about 6 feet, generally 2 ears per stalk.  Its an heirloom from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which has a cool continental climate and about a 90 to 100 day growing season.  Very nice corn. 

Unfortunately, I don't know if you could find seed for this in Australia.  Johnny's Selected Seeds in Albion, Maine, USA was my original source, since then, I've just saved my own seed, and it comes pretty true.

I took my old mail box, mounted it on the post near a crabapple, opened the door and put a front on it with a hole and perch, and it is used by wrens almost every year as a birdhouse.