Ben Zumeta

I’d agree with Nina’s approach. A couple things I keep in mind:

Fruit grows much better on horizontal wood (but grape vines are flexible)

Cut at an angle for shedding water.

Airflow is paramount for healthy grapes, so cutting lower than trellis branches and ultimately thinning for 1-3 main stems—a left, right and maybe an upright if going for a higher trellis next year.

Cuttings are easy with grapes to expand, give away, or replant if it does bleed to death or die for some other reason. Grapes are generally very hardy thought once established, with most of my losses being due to drought in the first 2yrs.

The founder of Black Lake Organic nursery once gave a talk at Evergreen State College for their food program that I sat in on, and he asserted [“everything in sea salt is good for plants, or even necessary, except for the chlorine in NaCL.”] (paraphrased from memory) Most tap water has chlorine as well, and little of the other 70+ oceanic elements beneficial to most life in most contexts.

John Suavecito wrote:There are a lot of great questions and comments here. I use seaweed in biochar, as I have posted many times here in this forum.  I have also used freshwater algae that was overgrown in a lake. They are both highly nutritious.  As many of you mentioned, I don't use it to burn.  I make the biochar out of wood, mostly because we have a ton of extra wood here in the PNW USA.  I use the seaweed to inoculate the biochar after it has been burned and crushed.  I am able to lay it out flat and dry it.  Then I put it in 5 gallon buckets when it's dry. I just add some when I start the inoculation process, along with many other low cost/free nutritious amendments.  Remember, even if there are small amounts of toxins, charcoal and biochar are used as filters to clean, remove and store those chemicals where they won't get into the food.  This is even done commercially.  When I tested my soil, it was low in sodium, so I don't worry about the salt.  If I lived in a highly alkaline desert location I might.  

John S
PDX OR

Great point John, I do use kelp to inoculate biochar as well. Good to hear algae works as well.

I make a lot of biochar, but I would just mulch with seaweed or kelp. That is if it hadn’t disappeared locally in oceanic heat waves last decade.

I catch roof runoff from my house in a gravel filled trench/swale that runs into my zone 1 garden, dug with an excavator. I also catch road and driveway runoff in ponds and swales. This all recharges our spring below, which provides water to tanks atop the hill via a solar powered pump. When these overflow, it goes into an infiltration basin I recently dug.

I think peas and carrots are great gateway vegetables that really stand out when grown well. Strawberries are easy to grow and also have distinctively better flavor that can win people over from grocery store alternatives or not eating fruits and vegetables. If it would be possible to set up a farm stand near a school, church, or somewhere else people congregate regularly, that could help bring in customers in a dispersed area. I might then have a questionnaire or chat people up about what they’d like grown locally, or what they remember their grandparents growing or reminiscing about.

I think the thick chunky pnw conifer bark referred to is likely doug fir, possible ponderosa or jeffrey pine. All have been used as weed deterring mulch around my blueberries, and I think could possibly be a cardboard replacement for sheet mulching. I have also considered matted maple or oak leaves. This would utilize the plant’s physical adaptation to smother understory ladder fuels and competition.

Looks like I have it covered, thanks all!

I am making a trip to the Seattle area in the first week of March to see family. On the way back south to Northern California, I am picking up several large orders from Burnt Ridge Nursery in Onalaska, WA for friends, local businesses and nonprofits. These large orders will also require a trailer, which would be great to not have to haul around inner city Seattle while I visit family. Any chance I could park it at your place for a few days? I’d be very thankful!

PM if anywhere between the Onalaska area and Seattle and open to having a 16ft or so trailer parked at your place. I am open to reciprocating however I can that best suits you!

We have had the help of our local Fire Safe Council crew in making shaded fuel breaks around and below our structures, which are also along a strategically important corridor to protecting old growth, redwoods, nearby towns, and private forest interests. We have had five biochar burns this winter, consuming most of the 3 acres of brushy ladder fuels relatively close to decent place for the Ring of Fire Kiln. Standard burn piles were made on steep slopes too far to haul brush to the kiln reasonably efficiently. The crew cut and dragged it into a ring around the kiln as I fed it. Once the fire got ripping, it chewed up even green, wet brush with minimal smoke if at all careful in feeding. Putting fuels around and not on top of the flame helps reduce smoke a lot. The 3acres that have been converted to shaded fuel breaks still have the larger, healthier trees, any snags not risking a healthy large tree, and mosaic patches of diverse understory plants where they pose minimal risk of spreading fire. Much of the native vegetation will grow back.

We produced between 200gal-400gal of char per burn (some went most of a day, others just a couple hours). I estimate 1500gal+ total since December. What I plan to use in the garden, food forest, or putting back where it came, I inoculated with compost extract, fish hydrolysate, kelp, azomite and a little of my homemade oyster shell and weeds imbued apple cider vinegar. One batch I only inoculated with compost extract, as I intend to use this for filtration and decontamination purposes, like between my driveway and shop and our pond, above our water source, or off roadways going into ponds and creeks. I inoculate on the back half of quenching, once it is cool enough to walk on or touch. Char is further inoculated by being used at 5% of compost piles in progress, in chicken bedding woodchips, or mixed with 2 parts finished compost.

Pictures below include burns, shaded fuel breaks (finished and in progress), and uses of the biochar like in compost, bird bedding, pond and road runoff filtration.