Coydon Wallham

Nick Shepherd wrote:How close to the southern drip line of a couple of large oaks can I plant a couple of apple trees.  The trees are southern red oaks about 2’ in diameter.  I will use MM111 rootstock, planning on planting 2-3 apples south of and parallel to the oaks in an east to west row.

Maybe you could plant the row of apples starting about 5' away and angling out to 30 or 40' at the other end? Report back in 30 years on the how the various distances affected growth?

Esteban Ademovski wrote:From what I understand, it probably depends on moisture, temperature, compaction, and how much organic matter is mixed in. Since we'll be putting this soil back to use pretty soon for the new hugelberms by the Love Shack and Hanger Tree, and the other bobs and Ins coming up, I’d imagine it should retain a good amount of its biological activity during that short staging period. I’d be interested to hear what you’ve seen with soil like this, though.

No clue here. I've been slowly building a hugel as I pull material from other projects, and I am noticing stuff that I don't get mulch over and keep watered soon enough looks to be deteriorating. I guess just encouraging weeds to go wild on it until I'm done building a section should keep it in good shape?

Esteban Ademovski wrote:The soil is going to be hauled back and staged at Basecamp for an upcoming project.

Any idea how long soil like this can be staged and retain biological activity before it reverts to dirt?

Well, no sign of activity the last couple of days as I stood there and watched for a minute or two. Seems like the original mashup treatment was enough to convince them to move along...

Chance Lunceford wrote:It will kill them, horribly. It gets in between the joints in their exoskeleton and grinds away chitin until they are immobilized, and then they eventually die.

I will withhold that option until they prove aggressive to surrounding activity then.

I think I'll leave my drip bucket directly over the hive today. Would this or anything else lead to them abandoning this location for another while there is still time to prepare for winter?

I saw the suggestion in some of the other threads to use Diatomacious Earth on the hive. Would this kill them or just irritate them and encourage them to relocate?

I was out watering my hugel yesterday. I dumped the first 5 gallon pail around the sides from the top, then set down the second pail and opened the spout to drip irrigate. I then walked down from the top and started my loop to check on the growing things and was about to pull some spotted knotweed out when I noticed a bunch of buzzing activity near it. Looked like a nest of ground hornets?

I don't really know anything about hives except for cultivated honey bees and the good ol paper wasps. Earlier in the day I had walked into a storage shelter and spent about 5 seconds trying to rearrange my stack of birch bark when what had seemed like a few black flies suddenly seemed like a dozen loud ones. I looked up to see a perfectly round paper wasp nest about 2 feet in front of me.

My reaction to bolt was immediate an instinctual, but I got nailed on my temple and my hip. Surprisingly they weren't that much more painful than a horsefly bite, but definitely not a battle I was going to dive back into. That night the temps dropped down near fifty, and an 8' 2x4 came out of the dark to knock the hive off the wall and across the shelter. The next night, the hive was poked with a long stick and carried out into the nearby field.

Back to what I'm completely guessing are ground hornets because I've heard the name and buzzy little insects are swarming out of the same spot in the side of the Hugel. It is just over the edge from the top, I'm surprised none of them came after me while I was up there walking around with the buckets. Right after I knocked the wasp nest like a pool ball, I went over to the hugel and used the 2x4 to mash up the spot where I recalled seeing the buggers swarm out from.

The next day (today) I went back to water and paused on top to look down at the spot. After a while, I spotted a few buzzers poking around the same area. They were in constant motion so I didn't get a good look at them, but they didn't seem to be streaming in and out, but definitely were hanging around.

Is this enough description for anyone to tell me who this is and what they have going on there?

Should I try to flood them out, bury them in more dirt, invite them to a picnic with some honey scones and tea, ...?

Thekla McDaniels wrote:It’s another case of “it depends”.  Some corrugated cardboard might be toxic, while some are not.

I sometimes use cardboard board without the slick coatings.  It’s just because I think given a chance, fungi will generate enzymes and such to utilize a potential food source.  I could be totally wrong, it’s just what I tell myself.  In the old days, when AI meant artificial insemination, I saw a video of fungi breaking down used cigarette filters.  

I believe that would also depend from another angle. Specific Fungi are symbiotic to certain types of trees and/or need certain soil conditions. Some are used in bioremediation but only certain species work for certain tasks. So whether the right spores are around with the right growing conditions to break down what you have would... Depend.

Sue De Nimh wrote:I read the section on “TOXIC cardboard” and I have to say politely, that this is misinformation. The level of wrong is so wrong, that I barely know where to begin. So, first I will paste in a link to a post with links to various sources of information on corrugated cardboard in gardens. If you distrust industry, the links listed are outside organizations with goals similar to permies.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Permaculture/comments/1bp92jj/reuters_snopes_and_others_have_debunked_the_myth/

Now let me pick some particular misinformation from the article the book quoted:
1) Dioxins: These were an issue when chlorine bleaching was used to whiten paper, and was present in the rinse water drained from the pulp, leaving only traces in the pulp. EPA has been regulating dioxins in paper mill effluent since 1990. Manufacturers now use hydrogen peroxide which reacts with brown compounds and turns into water. So a) is your corrugated brown? No dioxin. b) Is it made in the last 20 years? No dioxin.

2) Formaldehyde: if you take wood and heat it to around 250F, it will release formaldehyde.  But fear of formaldehyde is one of those persistent fears generated by years and years of “telephone”.  I am retired from a research facility tasked with working in the public interest, and generating and evaluating peer reviewed science on wood, wood products, and materials used to manufacture products from forest resources, including wood and paper adhesives. The data used to label formaldehyde as possible carcinogen is based on a single study showing slightly elevated risk of nasal carcinoma in people working in processes with high levels of formaldehyde and no ventilation. Yet there was such a hue and cry in the media that agencies banned it “out of an abundance of caution”.  What this means in bureaucratese is somebody didn’t want to get called before congress and subjected to grandstanding attacks by elected representatives performing for the media, and for reelection.

The hue and cry came about because decades ago FEMA bought trailers for temporary housing using the cheapest materials in a hurry, then they sat in the heat and humidity all sealed up. At that time, particleboard used urea formaldehyde(UF) adhesive. It bonds sawdust well, it’s dirt cheap, can be made at the board plant by anybody-measure and stir 2 ingredients, spray it on, and hot press it. Voilà! Cheap and fast.  UF resin reacts with heat to bind, but with humidity and warm temperatures, the chemical bonds reverse to release urea and formaldehyde.  And if you heat sawdust in a hot press (like pressing board), it releases formaldehyde that is trapped inside the board and slowly diffuses out. But these details don’t fit in a sound bite, and cancer is scary. Have a reporter stand outside a building and intone a simple script with total confidence, and you get people screaming that “something must be done”. And now “everybody knows”, just like in the Middle Ages, when everyone knew that rags in the corner generated mice. Magic!

3) Sulfates: I will paste verbatim from a text on plant biochemistry “ Sulfate is an essential constituent of living matter.[…] it is present in the two amino acids cysteine and methionine, in the detoxifying agent glutathione, in various iron sulfur redox clusters, in peroxiredoxins, and in thioredoxins. Plants, bacteria, and fungi are able to synthesize these compounds by assimilating sulfate taken up from the environment. The animal metabolism is dependent on sulfur containing nutrients such as methionine and cysteine. Therefore, sulfate assimilation of plants is a prerequisite for animal life. “. Which is why calcium or ammonium sulfate are used to modify soil pH. Could sulfate in fiberboard change pH? Sure, but that isn’t toxicity. And sulfate rocks occur naturally, everywhere. And yet we exist side by side with them. If they were TOXIC, people would die, wouldn’t they?

4) Sodium hydroxide: pure NaOH is corrosive, and so are concentrated solutions, like lye used to make soap. It also reacts readily with acids where it is neutralized to water, and the salt of the neutralizing acid. In paper manufacturing, the NaOH is only a moderately concentrated solution. In the pulp it is heated under pressure to about 250F, and the corrosive hydroxide is consumed in breaking down the lignin. When the pressure is let off at the end of cooking, the water flashes to steam in the partially delignified wood chips, which, like beans in a pressure cooker, pop open. This slurry is drained, rinsed and only if needed, a small amount of acid neutralizes the pH to about 7.  This is the Kraft process used to make cardboard.

Sulfites, sulfides-not used in the Kraft process that makes corrugated. Because corrugated board is inexpensive yet strong packaging, and the Kraft process is the least expensive way to make strong pulp.  

Paraffin wax: do you drink milk out of polyethylene jugs? Paraffin wax is shorter chains of the same material. It also costs money, and is typically used to waterproof specialty packaging. And it looks different, so is easy to pull out, along with the boxes with colorful overlays, shiny surfaces… Printing inks from the US in the last 20 or more years do not use heavy metals, and are now based on soy oil.  

Need I go on? The author of this piece has read material he doesn’t understand, and like some people when can only see things as good or bad, has manufactured outrage at “chemicals”. It would be like someone who goes in the woods and ends up with poison ivy assuming the woods are poisonous.  Or saying potatoes and tomatoes are poisonous because they’re in the same family as nightshade.

I’m not arguing for indiscriminate spreading of corrugated everywhere. I merely asking for recognition of nuance, and begging Paul to please not use that article as a basis for decision making.

Here are the verification links you refer to in the reddit article:
*Snopes, a politically biased organization that claims here to debunk a specific claim about pet poisoning. It was behind an ad/data wall for me so I looked no further.
*Reuters, also claiming to debunk the specific claim of boxes poisoning pets. Their "research" consists of not seeing any reports of pet poisonings from a few agencies they contacted. The reassurances of general safety offered in their article come from the 'accused' party, Amazon, without any sort of verifiable reference to the claim.
[I'm not sure if at this point there is any necessity to clarify that disproving a random rumour floating around Facebook, completely unrelated to the discussion here, says absolutely nothing about the general safety of cardboard.]
*A paper manufacturer standing to profit from more widespread use and sales of cardboard.
aaaaaand:
*^^^^^^The same paper manufacturer ^^^^^^^^

The "outside organizations[sic] with goals similar to permies" would seemingly be the remaining links to SARE? Reading the proposal description in the link provided, there is no indication they are even considering unspecified side effects of the process that might be introduced by toxins. They only mention very specific markers of soil health they are looking for, worm and fungal behaviour.

The entire reddit article reads like a corporate sponsored hit piece to present false reassurances of safety. I see nothing in it but empty rhetoric built around diversional claims.

Your explanations of various specific toxins here add some relevance to the discussion. However, it is the now normalized behaviour of successful corporations to put on a show of researching and promoting consumer friendly tropes without engaging in any sort of binding agreement to utilize them or submit to regulations through an organization willing and capable of enforcing them. Greater profit is often obtained by bypassing or subverting safety measures whenever and wherever they can do so without being caught. And budgets are usually created to include the eventuality that they will be to ensure any penalties do not surpass profits.

As such, Paul's precautionary principle on the subject seems to me a wise default mode. The cardboard I use around my living space (not anywhere near where food is growing) exhibits a wide range of qualities, some disintegrating around moisture readily, others shedding the water and seemingly impervious to breakdown from moisture exposure over medium observable periods. Clearly blanket statements about the content of cardboard should not be trusted.

I share Kyle's interest in some sort of actual direct analysis of the content of random cardboard samples as long as it is by trustworthy, independent parties...

marie-helene kutek wrote:For the head and face, one can wear beekeeping kit or an Australian bush hat, like a cowboy hat with corks on strings attached so that each time you move, you swing the corks around or any other weight, could be buttons.It does keep bugs away and attracts quizzical looks from people who are not familiar with crocodile Dundee, you can look him up.

For a more classical take on the bush hat, check out Eric Idle in the Bruces sketch from the Flying Circus...