tuffy monteverdi

I also suspect there’ll be large climate and humidity controlled greenhouses for growing coffee. It’s too expensive and too definitely a successful crop not to.
It just won’t taste as good as real coffee grown in the ground in forests and with real sun.

Robert Ray wrote:What would we drink in the morning if we were limited to the 100 mile food experiment.
 I drink coffee, I like cofee, maybe it's like nicotine and I have an addiction. Across the street is a coffee hut and it has a constant stream of cars every morning.
 What would you be drinking if through some catastrophic event occurred and no imported coffee or teas were available.
Looks like Youpon is the only caffinated North American tea and it doesn't grow near me.
Is it just a ritual? Like packing a pipe with tabacco or fly fishing is it the process?

Well if we’re only talking about caffeine/stimulants, there’s Yerba Maté (Ilex paraguensis) which can be grown in some parts of USA and shipped or ‘trained’ all over USA; there’s also Tea (Camelia sinensis) which can be grown in many places in USA.
The Kola nut I believe has caffeine?
As does Guarana.
Also cocoa bean

Most of these can be grown in the zone 10 or higher areas of USA and there’s no reason why we couldn’t. It’s just been easier and cheaper to have it sent to onus already grown and processed from other countries.

Rubia, the coffee genus, includes cold temperate plants like Bedstraw and Madder, but apparently they have carcinogenic compounds. Maybe there’s a way to remove them and use these plants as caffeine for cooler regions?

Very Random

Whenever folks come over we give them tours of silvopastures, the animals, the native hedgerows /fencerows and annual-perennial gardens..

Jerry McIntire wrote:

Doug McEvers wrote:The soil building properties of small grains must be part of the equation.

Where is this Doug? What climate and growing zone? As Geoff pointed out, it depends on your location and the weather you have.

Grains are just grasses. Most of our cultivated grains are hybridized annual grasses, some are perennial.
But regular pasture grasses will do exactly the same thing. Perennials especially.
No need to grow grains for that purpose.

George Ingles wrote:

Disasters like Floods, Fires, Volcano, etc. have the potential to wipe out perennial tree crops or make crop-growing difficult for an extended time.  Having a surplus of grains in storage that last for several years may have kept human settlements alive during multi-year bad weather episodes in the past.  On the other hand, during extreme times, stored grains are more vulnerable to desperate thieves than in-ground potatoes/roots or tree crops…

If a disaster wipes out one’s trees, crops and property, one’s grain stores will also get wiped out..

Bob Starn wrote:Drainage can be a problem for Avocados in California -- enough to get root rot anyway.  The main problem is that we get our rain in a small number of winter storms, so there can be a few weeks at a time in the winter where cold water pools around the roots.  The general solution is to 1) plant the tree above grade (in a wide mound) and 2) make sure the soil nearby drains well (and if not, plant some fava beans or other such annuals to break up the soil).  Also planting on a higher spot in the yard helps so the water drains away, along with the cold air.

Yes exactly
This gas been our experience w avocados and pooling in a similar climate.  

Emirene Backues wrote:Not super common, but the easiest most versatile plant I grow is Seombadi/Korean Celery/Dystaenia takesimana.  This stuff is amazing.  Zone 6b temperate NE in the US- it is a perennial and overwinters without any difficulty, can brush snow aside and harvest lightly even in Feb or March.  It's now started to self seed and I'm happily giving seedlings away the my unsuspecting neighbors.  Mild flavor, depending of the age of the shoot and leaf it can be used in salads, stir fry, or soups.  Also while the groundhog and rabbits eat it, they don't decimate it like other plants (any brassicas, or squash varieties I try to grow that's not fully fenced).  Attached is a pic from early April this year after a very hard winter and not much else is green yet.

Fascinating!
I have not heard of this plant
Is the stalk as crunchy and juicy as regular celery or is it a bit tough and stringy (like other wild celery relatives).
Also, is it a problem to differentiate wild celery from the poisonous relatives: water hemlock and poison hemlock?

I love this thread!
So informative!

It’s shocking to me, but w all our animals and orchards, etc, we don’t have poultry yet. So in the process of getting ready, reading detailed threads like this from very experienced poultryists, is extremely helpful😊🙏

I’ve always had the idea to use the broody hens as “replacement workers” (why not? It’s a permaculture pattern in their genes and the extra chickens taste great).
So I’m Very glad to read about the different strategies.
Thank you 🙏

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:

Ellen Lewis wrote:...
Several people mentioned aloe. How do you use aloe as a vegetable?

Yes, I saw my own comment of some years ago: Aloe vera is easy to grow as a houseplant. But I don't eat it as a vegetable!
The most common use is on the skin, for burns, cuts and scratches.
It can also be used as a remedy for 'cold' and 'flu': mix half a jar of honey with one large Aloe leaf in a blender (it becomes a green foamy 'slime', but the foam will go down later). Use 1 tablespoon full twice a day (morning and evening). The honey makes it sweet, but still you taste the very bitter Aloe. Probably it helps because it's bitter (there's an old Dutch saying 'bitter in de mond maakt het hart gezond', 'bitter in the mouth makes the heart healthy').

I just want to throw some caution and info here about the use of aloe internally:

The gel inside the green parts has been shown to be healing for wounds, cosmetics, GI tract, and beyond.

HOWEVER, the green outer parts of the aloe leaf, the “bitter” parts mentioned above, are a GI irritant (certain compounds in it are somewhat toxic) and thus are basically a very effective laxative.
Concerningly, there are studies that show the green parts can cause GI cancers with prolonged exposure - (probably due to its irritating qualities long term). These studies have been done on rats, not humans, however the results are not ambiguous, they were clear.

This study uses whole leaf and doesn’t differentiate inner and outer leaf, which sadly was an oversight, but nevertheless:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3537128/

And this paper from the Williams Cancer institute goes into the mechanisms and the compounds responsible, with clarity and a little more depth:

https://williamscancerinstitute.com/aloe-vera-what-science-is-discovering-about-its-possible-cancer-links/

Anyway, one can effectively use the clear gel externally or internally, medicinally, it has very few of these irritant compounds, but the green parts might be best for constipation issues only, sporadically.
And there may be better plants or compounds for that purpose anyway, that aren’t associated with carcinogenesis.