Eric Wiese

Thank you for the links to other threads Tereza and Anne. I somehow missed all but one thread before starting this one.

Using phenology as a timing system is especially interesting to me. I keep taking notes of occurrences in my area, for example when almonds begin blooming. But it's of course not a bullet proof method. For example, we had cases here where almonds began blooming before the last frost and then didn't grow much fruit that year.

I am positively surprised to see that many permies are planting by moon signs and having great successes! I am encouraged and will give it a try! I will do similar experiments to see how good and bad timing will compare. It's difficult (if not impossible) to isolate variables but I think if repeated over many times one could draw more solid conclusions.


Another thought that comes to mind while thinking about timing action is that following the moon gives an easy idea about the natural rhythms and help to align ourselves and plan what to do at certain times. For me personally, I am a homesteading-freshling, I still try to find my rhythms.

For Christmas I got gifted a little book about the moon cycles with a moon calendar for 2025 at the end.

So far, I've been reading up on the different cycles of the moon and some of them appear plausible to me as to how the moon could affect plant growth, harvest and animal life. It is an intriguing idea and going forward I will take note of those cycles and see what effects they have on my plants.

Do you have experience with the moon cycles? Do you swear by them? Do you think it's woo woo?


Quick recap what I learned so far and what I think about them:

1. Moon phases (waxing and waning moons): makes sense to me that more or less moon light affects plant and animal life alike.
2. Ascending and descending moon (the moon appears higher or lower each day): appears plausible as it results in more or less direct moon light and more or less gravitational pull.
3. Perigee and Apogee (moon is closest or furthest away): there is a 10% difference between the two extremes, meaning the moon will appear brighter and have a stronger pull when it's closest and less bright with weaker pull when it's furthest. Also plausible
4. Moon passing through lunar nodes and lining up with the earth & sun (causes for lunar and solar eclipses): double gravitation pull during new moons, weaker gravitation pull during full moons (as moon opposes the pull of the sun)
5. Lunar standstills: It wasn't mention in the book but I remember Mollison talking about it and that depending on where in the 18.6 year phase the moon is, there would be more or less wet/dry periods in either hemisphere.
6. The moon signs: here I am getting lost and don't see how the moon being at a certain star constellation would tell the farmer what to plant and to do. I suppose it's simply a way to time certain action, thinking of the moon of being a gigantic clock.
7. The planets' position in relation the the moon: here I am completely lost because I don't see how the position of the planets would influence us here on earth.

My hatchet had a dent and was also a bit rusty. So I stripped off the rust with sand paper and filed it until I got rid of the dent. Lastly I honed it a bit further with a small grind stone

We don't have P-Traps in the house but a kind of bottle trap. Hope it counts.

Ours was leaking because the exit pipe was sloping slightly upwards.

So, I bought a straight coupling; cut the drain pipe; shortened the upper piece; reconnected them together with PVC glue – all to set the exit a bit lower to create a slight downward slope.

While working on another BB yesterday, the handle of my axe broke. So now I am doing this BB instead.

The best wood around here is oak, which I sourced from a nearby dead tree. The bits didn't show much damage so I went with it.

I also decided not to replicate the previous handle, it is quite thin. I don't trust my skills yet to go for that as my first try, so I made a thicker handle.

I was splitting firewood the other day and whenever my axe got stuck in the wood, I hit it with another piece of wood from a thick branch to finish the split. The makeshift club was not heavy and I thought to myself how silly it is to make my life harder.
I remembered this BB and found it to be the perfect time to make a club style mallet. It's nice and heavy and finishing splits is a lot easier!

Excuse the metric system on the measuring tape, the mallet measures 50cm in length, which is around  19".

Tools used:
- Bow saw
- Hatched
- Small axe
- Drawknife
- Measuring tape

hans muster wrote:Hi Eric,
as you are in Spain and have holly oaks growing on their own, you might want to check out the following website:
http://balanotrees.org/sweet-acorns/
They sell grafted sweet oaks, which are edible and made up a substantial part of the diet in Iberia up to a few decades ago.

Thank you for the tip, Hans.  I might even be able to visit them directly as part of a stop to see family. Sweet acorn does not appear to be commonly eaten nowadays in Catalonia. But I did recently receive a bag of sweet acorns for consumption from an acquaintance. I seemed to be the only one in the family having an interest in eating them. It's surprising to me that around here chestnuts are very popular in October/November but sweet acorns are not. Culture is a very strong force when it comes what we consider to be food – or well, a good plant to grow.

On our land we also have a few young oak trees. They can be found in a smaller subarea we call "The island" because it has not been cultivated with barley by the prior landowner. There we also have a few almond trees growing from the cultivation before the barley, this land used to be an almond orchard before. The island does not show much more growth beyond that, I suspect that if I were to dig, I would hit rock soon. In any case, I planted almond seeds here which just one week later were mostly dug up by mice already.

Surrounding the island, where the barley had been cultivated, the soil is covered by a thick layer of White rocket (aka Mediterranean Wasabi, Diplotaxis erucoides). They usually grow Winter/Spring but this fall they shot up early due to the heavy rains. We live much further north of Valencia where tragedy occurred and luckily we were not hit by floods. The swales definitely filled and tucked the water into the soil. My hope is that the trees will grow their roots into the water plume underground. In-between the White rocket I planted primarily almond seeds but also lentisk and rose-hip.
Here I have not seen any dig ups by mice. I timed the planted right before the heavy rains.

Another plot is what might become our future chicken paddocks, which is why I planted here peach pits and apple seeds. Also here, no dig ups as I planted before the rains.


Thank you Kostas for your ongoing efforts and documenting every step. Your work is a great inspiration and I am grateful for all the information you have already gathered through failure but also success!

Not only will those trees that survive be planted on less cost, those trees will also grow much stronger! They'll have the survivor genes!

All the best,
Eric

Kostas,

I am attaching pictures to tell the story of the land around me. I am looking forward keep you updated the following seasons and years.

As you can see, many pine trees are on their way out. We have strong winds here and strong gusts take out the weak. In the clearings, oak trees welcome the sun. But even in the shade of pine trees, these oaks keep growing. In some areas, there's a strong thicket of Kermes oak. Even olive trees sprout there, I suspect that animals dropped them after coming from the olive orchards nearby.

The pines in the forest consists of Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis). So far, I have noted the following plants growing in our pine forest here. I find it interesting to know which plants can grow there. I hope this list can be helpful to some:

- Olive (Olea europaea)
- Kermes oak (Quercus coccifera)
- Holm oak (Quercus ilex)
- Mediterranean buckthorn (Rhamnus alaternus)
- Mediterranean Heath (Erica multiflora)
- Black hawthorn (Rhamnus lycioides)
- Lentisk (Pistacia lentiscus)
- Cade juniper (Juniperus oxycedrus)
- Phoenician juniper (Juniperus phoenicea)
- Lesser Asparagus (Asparagus acutifolius)
- White thyme (Thymus zygis)
- Bulbous bluegrass (Poa bulbosa)
- Alypo globe daisy (Globularia alypum)
- Somerset hair grass (Koeleria vallesiana)
- Helianthemum marifolium
- Themelaea tinctoria
- Stipa offneri

Hello Kostas and everybody who is participating in this great effort! It gives me hope that we can still steer into a better future.

We have here a collection of lots of great information, so I've been reading through this whole thread. I wanted to find out about your progress of the 12 past years. Hearing from you about how small action can lead to big effects got me really motivated to increase my own efforts in healing the land.

My partner and I find ourselves in Spain, in Catalonia, and we got hot and dry summers and cold and wettish winters. Our land is mostly a bare field with a few shrubs and some trees around the borders. Our neighbors almost solely grow either almonds, olives or barley. Our dream is to grow a food forest here and stir things up a little.

Establishing trees has been a tough experience so far. 5 years ago, at first we tried hardy and drought-tolerant trees from seed first such as Mimosa (Albizzia julibrisin), Honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos), and Mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum), European Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), Tipuana Tipu; and also transplanted many small Cypress. The results of our first efforts where that all Mesquite saplings got eaten (including by our own house cat), over 80% of the Mimosas, Tipas and Honey locust died due to drought, but many of the Hackberries and Judas trees are thriving. Of our 200 cypress, 160 did not succomb to drought and girdling by various animals around here, I consider this a success. Note that those trees, being our first, have been moderately watered but the pandemic made being there more difficult.

Last year we moved onto the land and since then I find more time to increase my efforts. Last year I collected many more seeds from the villages nearby. Cities and villages are a great source of hardy tree seeds! Especially leguminous trees. I still had put the seeds in pots and kept watering them, almost none of the seeds sprouted this time, despite scarifying those that needed scarification. Out of those that did sprout, rabbits and (I suspect) lizards as well ate many of those young trees. I also planted many acorns directly into the ground. It did not take long for the wild pigs to find them and dig up all! Not a great start but I am not getting discouraged.

This summer I discovered this thread and I got very excited to try again! I collected many seeds of Golden Rain Trees from a nearby village and hundreds and hundreds of almonds from abandoned almond trees that are scattered around the country side here. We also have Holm Oaks (Quercus Ilex) from which I collected acorns. During my walks. I love to identify plants I don't know yet and to my delight I discovered Lentisk (Pistacia lentiscus), hundreds of seeds have been collected as well.

I put all those seeds directly into the ground this year, including apple and peach seeds, and rose hip. I won't be watering them and see which ones the earth welcomes. I will keep you updated on my efforts.

My plan is to work my way outwards, starting on my land and expanding. We border directly to a pine forest and our worry is that one day forest fires could sweep through and threaten our livelihood. We are looking into fire resistant plants and the possibility of cypress is intriguing. Inside the pine forest there are Holm Oaks and Kermes Oaks (Quercus coccifera), I think they are on their way to slowly overtake the pine trees, which are dying and blown over by strong winds. The coming years I want to plant many acorns to further assist this succession.

Konstantinos Karoubas wrote: The golden rain tree has many strengths that can be useful to us here.
1. is a nitrogen fixer

Kostas, I have one question regarding the Golden Rain Tree. You mentioned it has the ability to fix nitrogen, I could not find any information on that, where did you hear about it?