Les Frijo

My tap water is chlorinated so I make sure to leave it out overnight first so I don't kill off my little microbe buddies for these types of things. I don't know how much it matters but I do know that sometimes I can smell the chlorine in the water and sometimes I can't.

I would leave it at this point. In general there are beneficial insects that overwinter inside stems. if it were earlier in season I would vote to chop and drop the top half or so and leave the bottom half standing until spring cleanup. Get the best of everything. I doubt there is very much decomposition taking place in winter anyway but once it warms up in spring that stuff will go to soil pretty quickly.

r ranson wrote:Oh, protonmail has finally got themselves off the naughty list - they send emails to my main provider to tell me there are proton emails...it's silly, but I keep a lot on my main provider to be a canary as it is one of the most sensitive ones for this kind of censorship.

I got an email from permies to my proton alias saying they were bouncing back and clicked the link for instructions to fix it. Never got the instructions email.

I changed my email from the alias to regular proton.me email and now I get emails from permies again.

I give this product 1 out of 10 acorns. Mostly for the shady marketing practices.

It probably is still one of the best off the shelf fertilizers. I used to use it thinking it was organic because it says ORGANIC in big letters in the branding. If you do a little digging you will find it is a mixture of "natural and organic" stuff. Whatever that means.

The safety data sheet is pretty worthless.
https://www.espoma.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GT.SDS_.7.2025.pdf

I still have some of this and their others. Trying to figure out what to use them for but will not be on anything I eat.

What I really want to know is what is in the feather meal etc. Lots of possible "toxic gicks" can be in those ingredients. Without test results all you have to go on is marketing.

If I need fertilizer now I will test soil and add only the organic amendments I need until the soil is well built and doesn't need any purchased inputs to feed itself. Any and all amendments should have test results for the heavy metals and other gicks.

Marketing is just a huge turnoff for me.

Let the products sell themselves. - D. Boon

Have not received an email from permies for many days. Using a proton mail alias. I'm not complaining just an FYI.

Leslie L Wilson wrote:3 and a half Years in Ukraine and I FINALLY have a location and talented team to build Rocket Mass Heaters here in Kharkiv. BUT it needs to be portable. And we need to build these fast! Winter is nearly upon us and people will be freezing - life & limb - for lack of good heat... again! I'm looking at Paul's video collection, but these wooden benches and shippable cores are not very up to date. Can someone help me find the best current design for "shippable core"?

Also, given the lack of ducting pipe in Ukraine, I'd like to do the barrels-in-the-bench stratification method from the video collection if that's still viable. Please, can someone help me flesh out the best process my team? We want a style that we can mass produce in our workshop, then donate (along with our labor) to people and soldiers in need of genuine heat here, near the heavy fighting and major destruction of houses and infrastructure.

Thanks for any and all help Lighting a fire under this project!

Maybe look here if you haven't already.

https://rocketheater.com/

Maybe they can help or give you some ideas.

Best luck!

r ranson wrote:We used to use brewers yeast.  Not sure what it is, but sometimes we put it on popcorn to make it taste better.  It was yummy for both humans and dogs and cats.  The vet recommended it for added b vitamins.

It was cheap in the bulk section of he human grocery shop in the early 1990s.  Not sure what it's called today.

I've used this as well. Mine is called nutritional yeast.

I've also used this product and it worked. It's yeast with liver flavor.

https://www.purina.com/dogs/shop/pro-plan-veterinary-supplements-fortiflora#feeding-and-nutrition

How is this not on the list I wonder? Oh yeah...