Alder Burns

When I lived in California, any kind of thistle, even the dreaded star-thistle, were the favorite foods for my hair sheep.  They would pick it out and eat it up out from among grasses and other seemingly more palatable plants. I would be out along the roadsides and neighbor's firebreaks with my scythe, gathering even more to bring back to them!  It was really sort of amazing to watch them work a thistle bur into their mouth, chewing methodically and gingerly from the stem end, spines and all.  Obviously, I had no thistle problem whatsoever!

I've never heard of or seen lizards doing anything with cow patties, but I definitely have observed turkeys doing it.  Years ago we were raising some turkeys, and had nowhere fenced well enough to let them free range except a pasture already hosting a dairy cow and calf.  So we fenced off their feeder so the cows couldn't steal their food and put them out there with them.  The turkeys, still pretty small, like small chicken size, immediately set to work on the cow patties, going after any maggots and insects and undigested corn, and scratching the patties down into the sod.  Then after a while we saw them following the cow around and picking off the big horseflies that would land on her to bite, if they could reach them.  Eventually the cow understood what was going on and would lie down and let the birds walk all over her to get at the flies!  It was a beautiful demonstration of how combining elements in the system benefitted all concerned....cow gets flies picked, turkeys get extra munchies, and pasture gets manure spread....

@ Brian White I never measured or anything, just aimed for a good dark brown tea.  Put a drop or 2 of dish soap in it to help it stick.  The mythology I remember reading is that if you make tea with 2 cigarettes worth in boiling water, and then drink the water, it's a guaranteed fatal dose!  So it's pretty strong stuff.  There actually used to be a commercial insecticide based on this, called Black Leaf 40.  I haven't heard of it in a long time, not sure if it's still around...

I need to grow some next year for sure!  My stash of old chewing tobacco has finally run out.  A tea of tobacco is the only thing I know of that will drop large numbers of aphids dead, and quick!  Nothing else works for me...not soapy water, not D.E.  My rutabagas have them bad right now and I'm out there rubbing and smushing every week.  I've been around some kids that grew it years ago....it's pretty easy once you get the very fine seeds to come up.

I've been making wine for many years from many different things, and vinegar is one way for wine to "fail", usually from lack of sanitation or too much exposure to air at some point in the process.  All of that vinegar was good and useful, whether from grapes, apples, plums, pineapple, etc.  About the only thing I failed to do with it well was to pickle eggs and sausages in it....and that was still probably not the fault of the vinegar, but a mistake in my process somewhere.

I wonder if anyone has looked at the various elms as coppice and fodder.  When I raised goats years ago in central Georgia, elms were among their favorite browse.  I would cut through a small tree part way with a hatchet and bend the top down to within their reach, so they could browse it and it would stay alive; and then later sprout from the stump to provide even more. I did this to all the species....I was interested in thinning the bush-forest anyway and making some clearings....there was oak, pine, sweetgum, and others, but they would go through and eat the elms first and most thoroughly.  I would also cut and carry branches to them if they were being kept penned for some reason or other.  It seems to me that hedgerows or thickets of elm could be maintained indefinitely on rotation for forage by working out a rest-regrowth and coppice-browse interval.

Since permaculture?  Not since gardening, or organic gardening, or simple sustainable living....but since permaculture proper.....well, to be honest the biggest dietary breakthroughs have been dumpster diving and roadkill.  Right now I'm less than a quarter way through 100 pints of venison thanks to two deer that presented themselves in fresh condition on the way to town last winter.  And in said town, just one grocery store dumpster feeds me exotica almost every time I go...exotic fruits, sometimes in winemakeing quantities, meat, fish, cheeses, breads....sometimes so much as to pass up for lack of a plan or ways to share it....this will change when I get chickens again....

I've used borax and boric acid many times as a pesticide mostly against mold and rot on wood and other building materials like drywall. It works well for insects like termites and ants too, and it even makes the wood fire retardant. But it leaches out if the stuff gets too wet, so it won't last long out in the rain....so it's not much good for outdoor uses like fence posts.  For bamboo, I learned years ago at a workshop that you want to cut stalks at least three years old....these are fully mature.  With many species you can distinguish the older canes because the ring of wax just under each node will turn from white to black.  After harvest, it's then recommended to leach the bamboo for a month or more under water, preferably running water.  For whole canes this can be done by tying them together in bundles and then making a raft of them, and then pile heavy things on the raft so that it is held just under the surface.  If you want split bamboo, it's easier to split it green, and then bundle the splits and leach them....split bamboo will often sink of itself; or will need a lot less weight to hold it under.  Then after the leaching, pull it out and let it dry slowly in the shade.  The water supposedly leaches out the starch and sugars in the fibers, which are the main attractant to insects.  Drying slowly helps the bamboo cure with minimal cracking....which is desirable for whole canes for building purposes.   There are all kinds of exotic treatments to be read about out there....some involve cutting the bamboo, and leaving it in the grove, held up by the surrounding bamboo, and then right away standing the cut ends in a bucket of preservative, so that the transpiration of the green top will suck the solution up through the fibers....this however would leave the bamboo unleached and full of sugars etc.  An even more intensive design I saw involved welding several metal barrels together end to end, without the ends on the center ones, so as to create a long metal tube that could be sealed with a removable lid.  Bamboo canes are loaded into this, bottom ends all toward one end, and a small amount of water added.  The whole thing is then stood up and a fire kept going under the bottom end.  Supposedly the water boils and forces it's way up through the channels in the bamboo and then condenses back down, which dissolves the sugars, melts the waxes, and alters everything such that the stuff is preserved in it's own juices.  After a few hours of this it's left to cool and taken out.  Recalling it makes me interested to read about it again and see if it's myth or fact...has anyone else ever heard of this?

It seems to me that the fear of running bamboos is overrated, especially for rural properties.  All of the new shoots come up at a particular season, usually in the spring or at the start of rainy season in tropical climates.  When they are a few inches tall...gather them to eat, mow them, kick them over, and you are pretty much done for that year.  The very easiest way is to fence the area you want in bamboo and then let grazing animals all around it.  Goats and sheep, at least, love bamboo over just about anything else and they will keep it corralled behind the fence.

Oh yeah and pro tip....bulbs that are in the lily family (like lilies, daylilies, and tulips) are vulnerable to deer, rabbits, and such like, and the bulbs to rodents like gophers.  Those in the iris and amaryllis families (like iris, crocus, daffodils, snowdrops, alliums) tend to be more repellent or poisonous, and so avoid damage by these pests in unprotected situations better.