L. Kuro

Poison hemlock. Highly toxic, not useful for anything, smells like battery acid and isn't even pretty, spreads like wildfire and is highly resistant to all causes of plant murder I try to inflict on it.

Anne Miller wrote:Cheerful Potato Mountain Herbs, please tell me more about Thneedwort as an internet search came up ZERO.

Why recommend something that causes:

M said, THE SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE DEATH, HALLUCINATIONS, COMA, PERMANENT PSYCHOSIS, KIDNEY FAILURE, DELIRIUM,

It's probably just a very hamfisted joke and not anything real.

Cristobal Cristo wrote:Nicola,

Ruminants do not need any grain to produce milk. Poultry does not need it either - only if someone wants to produce unnatural roasting chicken (extremely overweight very young bird, very tasty) - in the older times people were eating pullets.

I would say that the same rule applies to grains as to other food products - if it grows for you without extreme effort, pursue it.

I have tried twice: rye and wheat which were taken over by wet season weeds (which is 95% of natives/weeds/invasives that grow here). Then I learned that I have to prepare the soil better, by several shallow cultivations to destroy germinating natives within some timeframe and that I have to use much higher seeding ratios. Also in case of hand sowing, the distribution pattern is not uniform and it allows weed development in more open spots.
Mechanical seeder would be helpful, but it's rather too expensive for my 2000 m2 plot.
I was using recommended  200 kg/ha, so 20 kg per experimental 1000 m2. It was definitely not enough. It's probably right if helped with herbicides and fertilizers. I would opt for two times more to surpress weeds naturally. I may try again in the future.

The majority of ruminants available in America very much do need extra carbohydrates to maintain condition while putting out a decent volume of milk. That's why so many who try to just skip it end up milking skeletal animals. While it doesn't strictly need to be grain, that is the most economical way to do it at the moment unless you have groves of nut trees/a good fodder setup/tons of root crops ect. Just because Big Ag pushing grain feeding too far doesn't mean there isn't a reason and utility behind it originally.

Not easily, they are very sensitive and delicate. You'll lose animals to preventable deaths if that's a hard line you don't want to cross, especially if you're new to goats.

I keep mostly Alpines and love them, they're friendly and trainable. Bigger goats are surprisingly easier to fence in than little ones, and it's easier to help with rare kidding problems if you can actually fit your hand up there.

Annette Henry wrote:Well, I watched a 'what not to do' vid this morning on asparagus and it made me very glad that my plans utterly failed last spring regarding my asparagus patch.  I had no idea it was that invasive!  My planned patch was far, far too close to my garden for that to work.  So I began to re-imagine just what I should be doing instead.  I know wild asparagus grows in my area.  I found several stalks on my property just after we bought it.  However,  they are wild and I want some cultivated varieties.  Growing them in pots and putting them in the way the old advice keeps harping on seems far too much work for someone who is already overwhelmed with things to do, and as I said, I know it grows wild here - just not where I can harvest it as it usually ends up mixed in with the hay.  

So my idea is to till up a bed, and get it started really well, tilling some muck in and some 'potting soil' that's not really soil, more like chopped up bark.  Rake out all of the stones, weeds, and such, you know the drill.  But then, rake in asparagus seeds.  Just, rake it in and water and see if they come up.  

Good idea?  Bad idea?  

Missouri zone 6 on the plains for the usual questions.

It's not really invasive in any practical sense, some extreme native fundamentalists will just say that about anything capable of propagating from seed. It's a bad idea to just take things at face value from those types since they frequently lie or make things up all the time.

John Suavecito wrote:
If you add biochar before inoculating it and then add compost, research has shown a delay in plant growth.  The biochar sucks in the nutrition from everything around it for a couple of years until it achieves a homeostasis.   Compost is a great way to inoculate biochar, but it takes time.  If you want to inoculate quickly, I recommend liquid inoculation. I would add biochar after inoculation.

My two cents,
John S
PDX OR

It's worth remembering that those studies only added raw biochar and nothing else. This past spring I made a mix for tree seedlings out of worm castings, raw char, a bit of fertilizer with mycorrhizae and quality potting soil and my trees took off like rocketships, way bigger and better than just potting soil and same fertilizer the year before.

I'm moving to a piece of land with a lot of stones. I'd like to learn how to make use of them as a building material, but have no idea what I'm doing and don't want it all to fall apart the first time there's a bad windstorm. Where are some good online places to learn how to build structures with stone so that they're safe and last a long time?

Sweet flag grass has edible parts, although eating a plateful probably wouldn't be the best meal in the world.