Brian White

Just wondering,  if you added a lot of sauerkraut juice to cabbage and kneaded it in, would it start up sour enough and ferment safely like sauerkraut?    Just asking because I am supposed to not eat much salt.   Thanks

I have a tracking solar heat concentrator, the sun scoop since April 2025.   Most people use these types of things as a solar cooker. But I did a water boil test and it delivers over 600 watts for about 8 hours a day in Summer.  Perhaps enough heat to cook a months worth of food.   BUT it is unreliable.  If it is cloudy for a few hours,  scary bacteria might grow.  So,  I have been thinking of and trying dump loads all this time. My go to dump load is about 10 liters or soil and chopped up weeds in a steaming pot. 2 inches of water in the bottom, and after 2 hours it is nicely steamed, and there are no weed seeds left alive.  In theory it should be much quicker but heat travels really slow through soil, and most of it gets radiated from the sides of the pot as water bubbles up,  and the middle takes a long time to get hot.  I use it as a 3.5 inch mulch when I transplant or grow seeds. (3.5 inches because I can level things off with a 2 by 4.   A lot of permies don't like this because "It kills the life" but as I see it,  there is plenty of life 3.5 inches below and it colonizes it really quick. (a lot of bacteria, protozoa and fungi are necrophiliacs and they breed faster than rabbits and they love my "dead" soil.  Plus, the plant roots have a great opportunity to encourage the life that they prefer as co-contributors.  I solar steam 10 liter batches,  in pots but if you are using pv,  you can do the same thing with an insulated metal barrel as a giant steaming pot, and get it up to about 80 or 90 C and have a thermostat to shut it off.  200 liters of soil at a time and you might get it done in a day.     That's almost commercial scale.     I take about a week to fill a 200 liter barrel with the 10 liters per batch thing.   AND I steam up lawnmowed weeds, and clippings,  that can go in the barrel too, and it steams much quicker than soil because the heat zips through it. (Soil is a good insulator).   Steamed weeds rot really quickly, and I just use them straight away as mulch. I skip the composting stage totally. And I also skip the weeding stage. It is pretty cool.  I also use the heat to dehydrate fruit herbs, vegetables, herbs and tobacco (for insecticide).  And I adapted a vevor 3 gallon distiller for the heat concentrator,  (just barbecue black painted the bottom black) and it delivers about 6 ml per minute of distilled water,  or hydrosol if you are distilling essential oil.  Of course you can distill alcohol too if you are allowed. It would be good for cleaning, and if you know how to distill of the meths first,  might be ok for drinking.   I found fennel to be the best but I only started very late in the year when everything, including the mint was woody.  When doing essential oils,  you make it like a steamer with maybe 4 inches of water and then wire mesh and then your herbs.  I read up.   When they steam rose petals for its essential oil as  perfume, the water left in the bottom of the still is "rose water" and that is valuable stuff!  But what is in the water after distilling fennel, or mint or weeds or grass from your lawn?    Probably sugars and proteins.   And I bet that if you added some yeast to it,  or pour it slowly on mushroom straw,  stuff will grow!  And if it is yeast, you might be able to get very useful cleaning alcohol from your waste grass, etc.   And maybe some yeast to feed to animals or fish.      So yeah,  what I do with solar heat,  anyone else could do with solar PV as a dump load and they could actually control it better.   My reflector is a bit under 1.5 sq meters in area, and I plugged the heating numbers into google.  It told me that on a sunny day,  it gives me the same heat amount as you could get from three to five grid connected 400 watt  roof mounted solar panels.    (of course on a cloudy day,  mine gives you nothing).     I hope to work on the soil steaming some more,  and either get the big  insulated barrel thing going,  or get a smaller system going, that is continuous flow. (As the soil gets to a good temperature, a thermostat turns on an auger, and soil gets moved) because that would be really neat. So yeah, distilling, dehydrating and soil steaming  can use up some of that spare energy to do very useful stuff.      sun scoop playlist

        Hi, Remy,  I am specifically growing Azolla to fix nitrogen. Duckweed cannot fix nitrogen, so if there is no nitrate in the water, it cannot grow,  and it is just recycling nitrate that is already there.      Permaculture cannot replace commercial farming and the food produced commercially with artificial nitrates,  without fixing a whole lot more nitrogen.  A bit over half the nitrogen fixation on earth is done with natural gas in giant chemical plants.  Anyway,   I now have azolla growing in a greenhouse in high phosphate water and it is producing extra biomass in the greenhouse, out of inorganic material and nitrogen gas from the air.   I also am growing azolla in low nitrate/high phosphate water and it is growing great and producing new biomass using nitrogen from the air to produce the new biomass.  Supposedly, Azolla fixes nitrate twice as fast as legumes, so that is why I chose it.  It is fine to recycle your urine,  but new nitrate must be produced every yeah too. Or the people of the world cannot be fed.  
 

Remy Urbaniak wrote:Hi,
interesting experiment.

If your goal is to use Azolla specifically, than fair enough, however if your goal is to produce biomass for composting and mulching then duckweed is far better option on less than a hectare pond. On such small scale you do not need nitrogen fixing plants as you already have a ton of nitrogen you are disposing off every day - urine ! Urine is perfect fertilizer, rich in N, P, K, contains all the trace elements and has very low to zero percentage of undesirable elements.
.

 

I got a lee valley scythe as  a present for a friend and I think it is great. Probably ok for pencil sized brush.  Definitely works well on Himalayan blackberries.   But if you want to do something cheaper and more tough, you might try to search old  heavy scythes on the online markets, craigslist, etc.   Get one in half decent condition and cut 1/3 to 1/2 of the blade off , make a point on it like usual, and  it should be fine for rough cutting.   I had a very heavy scythe in Ireland, and I did that to it,  and the same in Canada,  I had a heavy old scythe,  cut it down to more manageable and it was way easier to use.  This was like the shorter scythes that I used in Norway.  And both of them were easier to use for rough work than when they were long.  I just used the angle grinder to sharpen at the start of the season and a scythe stone the rest of the time.  I tried piening once but didn't get the hang of it.  

Where I live, there is an agricultural supply  place called Borden Merchentile  that also has scythes,   probably more heavy duty than Lee Valley.  There might be still the "Austrian Scythe guy" who made custom scythes.   I used scythes for a summer in Norway as actual work, and in Ireland,  a lot to keep the weeds on the side of the road clean.  There are a lot of different types.  Even a one handed "lady's scythe"  that was very lightweight in Norway. I just tried it for a few minutes.   When I was working in the orchard in the Fjord,  the scythe was a little bit heavy with a short blade.  We had the scythe stones and we would sharpen them every 10 to 15 minutes.  My co-worker was a city boy from Holland and he couldn't keep up. But he sure tried!  So yeah,  scything is an acquired skill, and some people will never get it.  And there are lots of types, perhaps you need to go to an agricultural fair and try some to see what works.

Lee valley scythe is a beautiful tool.    I bought one in the spring for one of my friends.   I used heavy duty ones in Norway and in Ireland and for a day or 2 in Switzerland over the years and the Lee Valley one is nicer to use.  But for pencil thin wood,  you might be better off going with something else.   It will do Himalayan Blackberrys no problem.  but its a grass scythe really,  if you have wood, I think it would do it, (I have done it on a small scale) but a heavier duty blade is in order if you are going to do it every year. It is the nicest scythe I have used.  You need to buy the scythestone and holder too.   You stick the holder into your belt at the back or side,  with a bit of water in it as lubricant,  and sharpen little and often.  

Well,  I am still working on the Azolla project.  On and off.   I am going to tweak the miracle mix, to get more phosphorus, iron and sulfur,  and a lower PH.   A professor in Germany was very skeptical about the whole idea, seemed to think it wouldn't work at all.   Growing Azolla with wood ash as the nutrients DOES work,  but at PH 9, the plants are suffering,   and have a pale yellow colour.  The professor suspected that the yellow is Iron deficiency.   Growing on dirty water, they have a rich dark green.   It is hard to miss the difference!  I now have a big aquarium, a small aquarium,  an old wet saw "basin" that is about 3 and a half inches deep and they are all growing azolla with wood ash as the fertilizer! I weigh all the azolla every 10 days or so, harvest some and put enough back so that it quickly covers the water again.  I also have a 4 inch wide eavestrough in one of my greenhouses,  it has a 10 ft long run of azolla in 3 or 4 inches of water.  The airlift pump is set to drop some water into it every hour or so.  It takes the water from the "sump well" in the greenhouse. And the water flows and drips out at the other end of the eavestrough.  From there, it returns under the plants to the sump well.    This means that my "nitrate maker" is a closed loop in the greenhouse.   In this one, I am only going to harvest and weigh what I harvest. (not the total amount). I am dropping the harvested azolla around my cucumbers where it rots and molds up quickly and hopefully delivers its nutrients directly to their roots.      So, what is next?  Well, I thought ash was a good idea, but it has a  lot of calcium magnesium and potassium and that drives the PH up too high in the water.  Plus, volatile stuff is driven off when wood burns.  Plus it doesn't have as much phosphorus as I thought it would.  SO,  I am going to make up a new formula.   There will be rusty nails (I take apart pallets to burn and do my projects, so I have a lot of kg of nails!)    Azolla needs Iron, and wood ash doesn't have much.   Epsom salts for sulphate,  and I have found bone meal that is about 13 percent phosphorus and just 2% nitrate.   I have gooey yellow clay under the ground that probably has little nitrogen in it, and I will muck it up to be like butter and add it to the azolla water in the aquariums and in the wet saw tub. That will probably provide any aluminum that the azolla needs.  And hopefully trace elements too.    So, anyway, that is the plan.  Some bone meal and rusty nails  at the start of the eaves trough,  some epsom salts into the sump well.   And a mix of clay, epsom salts,  bonemeal, wood ash, and rusty nails in the aquariums and the wetsaw tub. I am also going to try to make "soil" using masonry sand and azolla.  Some I will try just mixing the azolla and sand, and some,  I will boil or steam the azolla.  Maybe in a mason jar with the sand.  This is just for faster rotting and faster soil making. I will try to add screenshots of the various azollas when I process some video.  Thanks   Brian

Elizabeth Horsley wrote:I'm just learning how to spin and am paying around $30 USD per pound for wool. Granted that's good quality washed and carded wool, but still. The idea of wool rotting in a barn somewhere while I'm paying that price makes my wallet hurt.

As someone who's sold crafts before, I'm sure the $30 per pound is reflective of the cost of producing and shipping a niche product like wool for spinning. I'd like to connect with a farmer who has that excess wool. I'd be happy to pay a fair price, pick it up locally, and process it by hand. I just want to clothe my own family and friends by doing a little spinning and weaving in the evening.

Wool is so cheap on Vancouver island, (the farmers get so little money for it) that a company is pelleting it and selling it as a soil amendment to gardeners. It's crazy.   Meanwhile there are  world famous vancouver island Cowachen sweaters being hand knitted.   And I bet those ladies are paying top dollar for their wool. Something just isn't right when the farmer loses money shearing his or her sheep.

I found this a while ago.   It makes the case for harvesting azolla wherever you see it.  Azolla isn't simply growing in all sorts of new places because of climate change,  it is also growing because there is a lot more phosphate and nitrate in the water.  It is a symptom,  (and if you harvest it,  a cure,)  for too much phosphate in the water!  If you leave the phosphate there,  and kill the azolla in place (people use herbicides) then you create the ideal conditions for toxic algal blooms that will kill all the fish in the water  and low oxygen in the water as the azolla rots.   This video explains it better than I can.    

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Interesting experiment! Aquatic plants are known to be high in nitrogen, which is why they stink to high heaven when pulled out of the water and left to decompose.

Azolla is listed as an invasive species in some areas. So it seems that experiments require some caution -- not creating any situation where it could ever get into natural water bodies. (Think about 100 year floods and such. That's when things get away from us. Flushing down the toilet isn't a confirmed kill either. End of speech.)

Edit: I am also interested in potential toxicity from the cyanobacteria symbiant (if that is the correct term). Much potential, many questions.

No worries on the prairies, the winters are much too cold for it to survive. Here in Victoria, it has already successfully invaded.  Actually I advocate for them to remove it in the local pretty Swan lake, because when you remove it,  it removes excess phosphorous too,  but so far swan lake nature park just lets it build up and later rot. Azolla is a standard "crop" in Kenya, the Philippines, etc. as poultry and animal feed.  So yeah, across most of the USA and Canada, it is much too cold in the winter for Azolla to survive. There are lots of videos online about growing it. Until about a decade ago, it didn't survive Victoria winters, but it has warmed up and now, I see it a lot more. Excessive phosphorus in the water is the main reason that it expands its range here, I think.  Mine is the first video about growing it in water enriched with wood ash.  Farmers put chicken poo or cow poo in the water to make it grow faster.  But in that case, it isn't fixing nitrogen, it is just absorbing nitrate from the chicken poop.  In the winter when there is mass starvation, it might be better to grow azolla over wood ash and save the chicken poop for the vegetable  fields.  They find cooked azolla is better for poultry.