Dan DMan

High humidity or rain can greatly reduce pollination too.  I like the idea of collecting several head and  putting them into a paper bag, give it a shake, tear out a corner, and giving gently puffs of air onto each corn silk; then a squirt of oil the next day.  It makes for fully pollinated corn when you have ill timed rains all the time like I do here. 

I know some offer "organic" courses, but its just same old ag but using organic products.  Permaculture is a copyright term to prevent collages from teaching "permaculture" and screwing up the whole idea.  What the term others use?  Nature mimicry?

There are things like:
http://www.merrittlandhort.com/permaculture/permaculture.html

And  there is always the permaculture course, and course on DVD.  The permaculture institute is recognized my many the world over including the world health organization.  So there may be some vale in having their certificate IF you plan to offer consulting ect...  To get your certificate you have to take the course then send in photos and design materials of a property you designed and finished.

For those of us who are poor the permaculture 13 DVD set is on bittorrent.

33 ways to eat grasshoppers: http://www.amazon.com/Eat-bug-Cookbook-grasshoppers-centipedes/dp/0898159776

lol, seems to me that kind of thing is just a fact of life, so you need shade houses or plan to harvest and sell the hoppers then buy what you need.  Seems to me if you can manage a large enough fenced turkey pen around your gardens then you might be able to raise a very nice crop of turkey to sell and eat.

Dang must have mixed them up.  Its all Latin to me 

escogidositio wrote:
Somebody mentioned a "list of things that grow near walnut trees"... can you share?

A walnut guild:

WalnutNeeds no intro I think.
Currants
Hackberry a wildlife food. domesticated versions for people too. secrete a competition-suppressing substance; an intriguing harmony vibrates between these two allelopathic trees. The toxins from the two species almost seem to complement each other. Juglone, though stunting the growth of many plants, doesn’t have much effect on grass, whereas hackberry’s toxins inhibit grasses and other shallow-rooted plants.

Thats the main guild, but we can be more productive...

Chiltepine a perennial, is the feral parent of the chile pepper and bears habañero-hot half-inch fruits.

Wolfberry is a thorned shrub that drops its leaves in severe drought and holds berries relished by birds. Both are members of the Solanaceae, the nightshade family, which also includes tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and eggplants.

Russian olive. Nitrogen Fixer
Elaeagnus, will also work, as the drought-tolerant Elaeagnus species seem insensitive to juglone.  ceanothus, or, in the Southwest, Apache plume may also work.

elderberry

pepper
tomatoes
eggplant

mulberry as a border/transition tree to other guilds.

Thanks for all this great info!  Here in east texas we get loads of rain, most of  which runs off.  Summers have been very dry, but the occasional 1/2 inch down poor than runs off and  dries up.  What if I put a field line over the logs and ran out a pipe to catch the run off water and place it into the wood?  Perhaps I could cap it off during times of heavy rain.  It seems to me that with out clay soil it would take a long time to get the wood soaked.  What do you think?


Seems like putting water  directly into the wood may provide a way to quickly capture runoff water.

I have a battle on my hands to keep my sqaush plants.  The stink bugs come every year and kill everything.  At this point Im so steaming mad at them I would almost rather poison everything to death than  let them live.

Is there ANY natural control for these things?

I heard of planting sunflowers and buckwheat with large yellow pipes to attract/bait them and using sticky traps to capture them.  However, the sunflowers are not yet yellow..

I have been doing humanure composting and I see no issues with it other than the fact that at the very time I want to relax I have to go dump poop..

So I am working on building a long term composting toilet to get my change out down to every 20 years..  Then I can drag out the container and drop a new on in.

Take a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4XRDYnIf0U&feature=related

The main thing is to have a container that can hold a years volume of input x 3+ years.

Thanks! That looks interesting.

Well, Im off to plant my part of over 24,000 seeds for corn, spelt, and aztec amaranth... This scale of garden IS work   But I enjoy it..

I ate persimmons every fall growing up.  Infact, they where my dinner many many nights.  When they are orange to orange with blackish marks on them and soft they are ready to eat (no frost required, zone 8 here).  The softer the better.. Just avoid the skin.

I have not seen any in years, but I know there must be some as the coyote poop is full of them in the fall..