Alex B.

They seem to love my mammoth sunflowers and they don't seem to damage them too bad. I plant them every season as a trap.

If they get too prolific I'll pull a leaf or two with lots of squash bugs/eggs and feed it to the chickens.

So far so good. (but I also have lots of lizzards, frogs, and benficial insects to help me out)

Hugh H. wrote:
Thermal mass is good but only works if shaded during the hot weather.  Otherwise it will heat up to buggery and cook your plants even better.

I'd be thinking of open-canopy trees to solve this problem, i.e. those that will give a little bit of shade but not too much.  Deciduous if possible to still get all the winter gains you talked about.  However they are not an instant solution

Awesome!  And I know just the tree! Thank you!

By the way, we spent some time in Adelaide on our honeymoon...nice place great memories and tons of wine! . Thanks again!

You might want to check out eattheweeds.com

Green Dean is in the Orlando area and regularly does foraging hikes where he identifies tons of edible stuff.  I would bet you are already surrounded by more than you realize....at least I know my wife and I were astounded.  He also has a great YouTube channel.

A few hours of my time saved me countless hours in the garden since I had been pulling all kinds of edible weeds...now we make more room for them.

Also there's an active central FL barefoot gardener yahoo group with great people chock full of insight.

Good luck!

Joop Corbin - swomp wrote:
Hey,

just a thought,
a thermal mass (like a very big rock/stone, or waterbody/pond) will temper extremes: when hot, it aborbs the heat; when cold it will radiate warmth.

Thanks! Makes sense (sort of)  I've tried water barrels to keep an area warm on a cool night, I'me having a hard time wrapping my head around the large rocks keeping it from getting too hot.  I would have assumed you add rocks for adding heat, but it took me a bit to grasp the whole concept of adding rocks to increase moisture too.

I'm new here and relatively new to permaculture...trying to catch up.

I set up a south facing keyhole raised bed in my garden.  (the open end faces south)
The "u" has walls about 3' thick and about 2' high.  Lots of organic material. 

I'm in zone 9 ish and my thinking was this would catch sun, give me lots of edge, and pour off the cold on the nights we freeze here.  I still think that will be the case, but...what about the warm (ok frigging HOT) days?  I cooked all my fall starts today, and all the awesome organic material was dry as tinder in the keyhole but still nice and moist in my traditional raised beds. 

Not sure how to keep it warm on cool nights and cool on hot days...I need a garden thermos lol

What am I missing?  Rookie mistake? I appreciate any advice, Thank you.

I'm in Lakeland and it spouts anywhere there is bare soil on my farm.  Are you wanting seed to plant?  We grow red amaranth and the native wild stuff shows up with it all over the garden.  The wild stuff may have crossed with the Hopi red we grow but both grow like, well, weeds  let me know where you are and what you're after and I'll see if I can help you out.