Matthew Nistico

A timely topic, considering that many US jurisdictions, including my own as of this year, no longer accept glass for recycling.  I'm sure they were unable to obtain a contract with a local recycler, probably because the local recyclers couldn't maintain profitability and closed!

Edward Lye wrote:BEWARE of non-woven cloth bags. I had several in the past and they have this nasty failure mode in which all of a sudden they just disintegrate without warning - everything will drop out. PLUS, they use plastic glue to hold the fibres together. This will ruin your no-plastic resolution.

Interesting.  I have seen non-woven materials where the fibers are pressed/matted together with a glue, but never ones using natural fibers.  Are you sure what you have experienced weren't in fact using plastic fibers?  Even a lot of woven reusable bags use plastic fiber "cloth."

Pearl Sutton wrote:Me and another lady made them to sell years ago. Turns  out people won't pay 10.00 for a cloth bag, no matter how well made when they can buy a crap one for 1.00 that lasts 4 months before ripping. I had no energy to market them better, I'm still using them.

I'm surprised that you experienced this.  I have bought quite a few reusable shopping bags over the years, and I think $10 is a reasonable price for a good quality one.  My average price has probably been about that, maybe even $12.  Most of these have been canvas bags.  Some cheaper ones (I think they were $6 or $7 each) feature thinner canvas that hasn't held up as well.  I'm still using these years later, but they have developed small holes.  The thicker bags are better.

You are right: the $1 woven or matted polypropylene reusable bags they sell at the grocery store are not worth it.  I have read a study that, in order to break even in terms of resource usage compared to single-use plastic bags, they have to be re-used at least 100 times.  I don't think those cheap reusable bags are up to that challenge.

Some of the reusable bags I own are in fact also woven plastic, but they are heavy duty material that will last, I'm guessing, for decades.  That option is also out there.  I haven't been using these for as long, so I couldn't compare them to the cotton canvas bags in terms of how well they wear and how easy they are to clean.

Sam Shade wrote:I have three goumis I started from cuttings two years ago.  Absolute tanks. My dad ripped one of them out of the ground on accident and we put it back in with no ill effects.

No fruit yet though.

Well, get ready because, when they do start fruiting, they fruit A LOT!

I have both seedling and named cultivar goumis.  I have to say that the named cultivars are worth it in terms of superior fruit quality.  Since I have so many, I think this coming season I will observe and mark all of the seedling goumi bushes in my food forest for deletion.  I can use that space for something else and, so long as you have at least three or four thriving, producing goumi bushes, you have all the berries you could likely need.  I'm sure I have more like 10 or a 12 cultivar bushes that would remain.

I nominate Goumi berry (Elaeagnus multiflora).  It gets a bad rap from the uneducated simply through association with other elaeagnus species that are considered invasive.  But not so with Goumi - I have many bushes over many years and have seen precious few seedlings.  It doesn't root sucker, either.

In my climate and region - clay soils, temperate, USDA zone 8, but right near to the border of zone 7, high annual rainfall but frequent summer droughts - Goumi has proven highly productive, highly ornamental, and pretty much bullet proof.  Even where I have stuck it in too much shade, it still grows and fruits, just not vigorously.  It seems to thrive on neglect and shrugs off periods of too much/too little rain.

I really don't know why more people aren't growing this species, both inside and outside of the Permieverse!  The only downside I will admit is that the occasional thorn makes dealing with the bush slightly unpleasant.  But still a lot better than brambles or wild raspberry or other truly prickly plants.

Quite a few of the above posts concern growing sweet potatoes in raised beds or in containers.  I would like to propose a hybrid approach.  I cannot vouch for the success of this technique with sweet potatoes - for years I've been planning to someday try it out, but have not yet.  I got the idea after reading about indigenous Polynesian techniques for growing tuber crops.

Construct a large ring that will enclose your hybrid raised bed/container.  Originally, they used stacked stones; I propose hardware cloth bent and tied together into a circle.  It may or may not be necessary to line the interior with weed cloth.  Fill the ring with a loose soil mix.  In sandy soil areas, this could be just pure native soil.  In my heavy clay soil area, I will mix some native soil with some sand and some shredded leaves and with a lot of compost.  Plant your sweet potatoes - or white potatoes or any other large tuber crop you like; don't do regular root crops like carrots or radishes, as this technique would just be overkill - adding additional soil over the season to "hill up" as necessary.

The advantages of this hybrid raised bed/container are two fold.  Compared to an actual container, the advantage is that you can build your ring any size you like.  You are not limited by the size or weight or expense of available containers.  Wish you had a wider or deeper container?  Well, now it is easy to make your own.  Compared to a traditional raised bed, the advantage is that you don't have to dig your sweet potatoes, which process I have in the past found arduous and dangerous to the potatoes.  Instead, at season's end, untie and disassemble the hardware cloth ring, letting the contents collapse.  Then you can just rake through the loose soil to extract the tubers.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:I have enjoyed reading this thread. It reminds me that I could look into planting persimmon tree here.

I grew up with American persimmons. The ones I am familiar with did require frost to lose their astringency, even when fully ripe.  We learned we could get around that by putting them in the freezer. I think there must be a lot of variation in American persimmons because they are a native tree. Probably some lose their astringency naturally and some weight for the chill.

I was astonished the first time I heard of the Asian persimmons. I never saw one get squishy and soft. I loved it that you could eat them like an apple and they were not astringent, and they dried so easily.  

I live at 7000 feet. We have alkaline soil and a very cold winter with the ground usually freezing. Can anyone tell me which would be more likely to tolerate my climate? The Asian or the American persimmon?
Thanks

American, for sure.  But some of the American/Asian hybrids might also work for you.  They are generally intended to combine the tree and fruit characteristics of Asian varieties with the cold-hardiness of American varieties.

Dave Lotte wrote:

Matthew Nistico wrote:What brand/model toilet are you installing?

Cheap home depot one.  😁

Excellent choice!  I bought a Toto toilet at 3x the price, which even my plumber commented on when installing it, noting that I'd picked a pro-quality brand.  I chose it because it is fully glazed throughout the interior plumbing, whereas in cheap toilets the glazing extends no further than at the bottom of the bowl; beyond where you can see it, the porcelain is left unglazed.  Thus, mine is less likely to clog.  Okay, sounds like a good thing to have and worth paying extra for.  Mine is also dual flush and low flow (i.e. water saving).

It has turned out to be terrible : (

I'm sure having a fully glazed toilet is a good thing, but it has so not been worth the other drawbacks.  First of all, I don't know if this is a feature common to all dual flush toilets, or all low flow toilets, or perhaps mine was somehow just installed wrong - though I don't see how that could be the case - but there is practically no pool of water inside the bowl.  That is important, because the pool of water serves an important purpose!  Without it, literally every other time I use the toilet I must spend 15 seconds with the toilet brush or else have a very dirty bowl, as anyone might well imagine.  I cannot conceive that Toto thought this was a worthwhile trade off in order to save water.  At least, not in my market area - I live an hour's drive away from a temperate rainforest; water here is in no short supply.  I suppose that in desert climates they may have stricter regulations requiring such toilet features, but here I would NOT deem the inconvenience a good trade off.  (I plan to soon transition to a compost bucket toilet, so it will no longer be an issue!)

But the worst was when, after many years, the toilet started to run continuously.  The fill valve had failed and needed replacing.   Nothing unusual, and certainly no big deal, or so I thought.  But it was then that I realized how poorly designed this toilet actually is.  The bulky dual flush selector mechanism is dead center of the toilet tank, meaning that the fill valve is crammed to one side leaving little room for your fingers to get to it.  What is on the other side of the tank?  Nothing.  Meaning that Toto could easily have offset the dual flush selector mechanism to one side, leaving plenty of room to service the fill valve.  But they didn't.

Further, and far worse, this toilet is designed around a "streamlined aesthetic," so that the pedestal merges seamlessly with the tank.  Those pretty, clean lines result from eliminating the tank overhang on either side of the pedestal, like in a normal toilet, as can be seen in the photo of your cheap-but-actually-functional toilet from Home Depot.  That overhang is where you would normally reach under to access the nut and washer securing the water line up into the fill valve.  In my model toilet, since there is no overhang, you have to access it from the back of the tank.

First, the obvious: most people have never even seen the back of their toilet.  Why not?  Because toilets are ALWAYS installed backing up to a wall!  I could ONLY even attempt to access it because the wall behind this toilet happens to be skeletal, being in an unfinished house.  Otherwise, you would need to drain and detach the entire tank just to gain access.  But it was still a miserable job even with fortuitous access to the back of the toilet, because there is only a small hole in the back of the porcelain tank through which to access the water line connection to the fill valve.  You cannot get a tool through that hole, and only a small child could easily get their fingers through.

In short, I successfully replaced the fill valve and repaired the toilet, but it took hours!  In a finished home with a solid wall behind the toilet, any professional plumber on a service call would take one look and determine that the labor would cost more to replace the $20 fill valve than to replace the entire $300 toilet ($300 when I purchased 15 years ago; probably more today).

So, Toto has managed to design and market a very expensive, disposable toilet.  This could only be intentional - you cannot convince me that their engineers, who design toilets for a living, are actually this ignorant of the process to complete even the most basic toilet maintenance.  How has Toto managed to maintain a good reputation as a top-of-the-line brand?  I cannot guess.  Except that perhaps it is because the same plumbers who determine that reputation are the ones who sell and install expensive, disposable toilets!

What brand/model toilet are you installing?

Jon Ashley Mills wrote:Pan fried with gnocchi, cepes and celery leaves.

What are "cepes"?

George Ingles wrote:Tonight, I ate the first Chestnuts we have harvested from our trees!...  They are not like a typical Nut so much -- more like bread/potato/squash.

No, whereas most tree nuts are largely fats and proteins, chestnuts are starchy.  They also have good fiber content compared to other tree nuts.  I've read that chestnuts' nutrition profile is similar to that of brown rice.  This is why permies get excited about chestnuts as a perennial tree crop that could serve as a dietary staple.  If only we could grow a whole bunch more of them.  And defeat the chestnut weevil, which would have a field day in this hypothetical permie utopia.

There are, of course, other trees that already fill the same role of perennial calorie crop, but they are all tropical species like breadfruit and plantain.  Chestnuts are cool-temperate trees.

Regarding their role as a staple starch, several posters above have noted the European tradition of making pasta from chestnut flour.  While I've never tasted it, I would be excited to try.  But I'm not rushing to spend my time grinding up dried chestnuts, either.  Unless and until chestnut flour becomes widely and inexpensively available, it seems to me that roasted chestnuts incorporated whole into recipes are perfectly tasty and a lot less work.

Nota bene: upon a very cursory review of Amazon, I see imported Italian chestnut flour for just over $1/oz.  This is 5x the cost of the cheapest almond flour I see for sale, and more than 10x the cost of the cheapest organic whole wheat flour.