Brian White

I got a lee valley scythe as  a present for a friend and I think it is great. Probably ok for pencil sized brush.  Definitely works well on Himalayan blackberries.   But if you want to do something cheaper and more tough, you might try to search old  heavy scythes on the online markets, craigslist, etc.   Get one in half decent condition and cut 1/3 to 1/2 of the blade off , make a point on it like usual, and  it should be fine for rough cutting.   I had a very heavy scythe in Ireland, and I did that to it,  and the same in Canada,  I had a heavy old scythe,  cut it down to more manageable and it was way easier to use.  This was like the shorter scythes that I used in Norway.  And both of them were easier to use for rough work than when they were long.  I just used the angle grinder to sharpen at the start of the season and a scythe stone the rest of the time.  I tried piening once but didn't get the hang of it.  

Where I live, there is an agricultural supply  place called Borden Merchentile  that also has scythes,   probably more heavy duty than Lee Valley.  There might be still the "Austrian Scythe guy" who made custom scythes.   I used scythes for a summer in Norway as actual work, and in Ireland,  a lot to keep the weeds on the side of the road clean.  There are a lot of different types.  Even a one handed "lady's scythe"  that was very lightweight in Norway. I just tried it for a few minutes.   When I was working in the orchard in the Fjord,  the scythe was a little bit heavy with a short blade.  We had the scythe stones and we would sharpen them every 10 to 15 minutes.  My co-worker was a city boy from Holland and he couldn't keep up. But he sure tried!  So yeah,  scything is an acquired skill, and some people will never get it.  And there are lots of types, perhaps you need to go to an agricultural fair and try some to see what works.

Lee valley scythe is a beautiful tool.    I bought one in the spring for one of my friends.   I used heavy duty ones in Norway and in Ireland and for a day or 2 in Switzerland over the years and the Lee Valley one is nicer to use.  But for pencil thin wood,  you might be better off going with something else.   It will do Himalayan Blackberrys no problem.  but its a grass scythe really,  if you have wood, I think it would do it, (I have done it on a small scale) but a heavier duty blade is in order if you are going to do it every year. It is the nicest scythe I have used.  You need to buy the scythestone and holder too.   You stick the holder into your belt at the back or side,  with a bit of water in it as lubricant,  and sharpen little and often.  

Well,  I am still working on the Azolla project.  On and off.   I am going to tweak the miracle mix, to get more phosphorus, iron and sulfur,  and a lower PH.   A professor in Germany was very skeptical about the whole idea, seemed to think it wouldn't work at all.   Growing Azolla with wood ash as the nutrients DOES work,  but at PH 9, the plants are suffering,   and have a pale yellow colour.  The professor suspected that the yellow is Iron deficiency.   Growing on dirty water, they have a rich dark green.   It is hard to miss the difference!  I now have a big aquarium, a small aquarium,  an old wet saw "basin" that is about 3 and a half inches deep and they are all growing azolla with wood ash as the fertilizer! I weigh all the azolla every 10 days or so, harvest some and put enough back so that it quickly covers the water again.  I also have a 4 inch wide eavestrough in one of my greenhouses,  it has a 10 ft long run of azolla in 3 or 4 inches of water.  The airlift pump is set to drop some water into it every hour or so.  It takes the water from the "sump well" in the greenhouse. And the water flows and drips out at the other end of the eavestrough.  From there, it returns under the plants to the sump well.    This means that my "nitrate maker" is a closed loop in the greenhouse.   In this one, I am only going to harvest and weigh what I harvest. (not the total amount). I am dropping the harvested azolla around my cucumbers where it rots and molds up quickly and hopefully delivers its nutrients directly to their roots.      So, what is next?  Well, I thought ash was a good idea, but it has a  lot of calcium magnesium and potassium and that drives the PH up too high in the water.  Plus, volatile stuff is driven off when wood burns.  Plus it doesn't have as much phosphorus as I thought it would.  SO,  I am going to make up a new formula.   There will be rusty nails (I take apart pallets to burn and do my projects, so I have a lot of kg of nails!)    Azolla needs Iron, and wood ash doesn't have much.   Epsom salts for sulphate,  and I have found bone meal that is about 13 percent phosphorus and just 2% nitrate.   I have gooey yellow clay under the ground that probably has little nitrogen in it, and I will muck it up to be like butter and add it to the azolla water in the aquariums and in the wet saw tub. That will probably provide any aluminum that the azolla needs.  And hopefully trace elements too.    So, anyway, that is the plan.  Some bone meal and rusty nails  at the start of the eaves trough,  some epsom salts into the sump well.   And a mix of clay, epsom salts,  bonemeal, wood ash, and rusty nails in the aquariums and the wetsaw tub. I am also going to try to make "soil" using masonry sand and azolla.  Some I will try just mixing the azolla and sand, and some,  I will boil or steam the azolla.  Maybe in a mason jar with the sand.  This is just for faster rotting and faster soil making. I will try to add screenshots of the various azollas when I process some video.  Thanks   Brian

Elizabeth Horsley wrote:I'm just learning how to spin and am paying around $30 USD per pound for wool. Granted that's good quality washed and carded wool, but still. The idea of wool rotting in a barn somewhere while I'm paying that price makes my wallet hurt.

As someone who's sold crafts before, I'm sure the $30 per pound is reflective of the cost of producing and shipping a niche product like wool for spinning. I'd like to connect with a farmer who has that excess wool. I'd be happy to pay a fair price, pick it up locally, and process it by hand. I just want to clothe my own family and friends by doing a little spinning and weaving in the evening.

Wool is so cheap on Vancouver island, (the farmers get so little money for it) that a company is pelleting it and selling it as a soil amendment to gardeners. It's crazy.   Meanwhile there are  world famous vancouver island Cowachen sweaters being hand knitted.   And I bet those ladies are paying top dollar for their wool. Something just isn't right when the farmer loses money shearing his or her sheep.

I found this a while ago.   It makes the case for harvesting azolla wherever you see it.  Azolla isn't simply growing in all sorts of new places because of climate change,  it is also growing because there is a lot more phosphate and nitrate in the water.  It is a symptom,  (and if you harvest it,  a cure,)  for too much phosphate in the water!  If you leave the phosphate there,  and kill the azolla in place (people use herbicides) then you create the ideal conditions for toxic algal blooms that will kill all the fish in the water  and low oxygen in the water as the azolla rots.   This video explains it better than I can.    

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Interesting experiment! Aquatic plants are known to be high in nitrogen, which is why they stink to high heaven when pulled out of the water and left to decompose.

Azolla is listed as an invasive species in some areas. So it seems that experiments require some caution -- not creating any situation where it could ever get into natural water bodies. (Think about 100 year floods and such. That's when things get away from us. Flushing down the toilet isn't a confirmed kill either. End of speech.)

Edit: I am also interested in potential toxicity from the cyanobacteria symbiant (if that is the correct term). Much potential, many questions.

No worries on the prairies, the winters are much too cold for it to survive. Here in Victoria, it has already successfully invaded.  Actually I advocate for them to remove it in the local pretty Swan lake, because when you remove it,  it removes excess phosphorous too,  but so far swan lake nature park just lets it build up and later rot. Azolla is a standard "crop" in Kenya, the Philippines, etc. as poultry and animal feed.  So yeah, across most of the USA and Canada, it is much too cold in the winter for Azolla to survive. There are lots of videos online about growing it. Until about a decade ago, it didn't survive Victoria winters, but it has warmed up and now, I see it a lot more. Excessive phosphorus in the water is the main reason that it expands its range here, I think.  Mine is the first video about growing it in water enriched with wood ash.  Farmers put chicken poo or cow poo in the water to make it grow faster.  But in that case, it isn't fixing nitrogen, it is just absorbing nitrate from the chicken poop.  In the winter when there is mass starvation, it might be better to grow azolla over wood ash and save the chicken poop for the vegetable  fields.  They find cooked azolla is better for poultry.  

Brian White wrote:

Anne Miller wrote:If I understand this, you are making fertilizer to water other plants.  Super great idea.

 No, I am making green manure,  from ashes, to use as a nitrogen rich mulch or soil additive on other plants. It says on the internet azolla contains about 4% N,  0.5% phosphorus and about 3 percent potassium.   That is the N, P and K in artificial fertilizers.  When you grow Azolla on wood ash, the entire amount of N in it is fixed from atmospheric nitrogen.  And that is pretty cool!   I will actually be topping up the water and changing the water  from time to time and adding a little more ash,  so, yeah, I will be using the water on plants too.   But the water won't be high in nitrogen.   Thanks Brian.  

 I don't think there is much heavy metal in wood ash.  

Anne Miller wrote:If I understand this, you are making fertilizer to water other plants.  Super great idea.

 No, I am making green manure,  from ashes, to use as a nitrogen rich mulch or soil additive on other plants. It says on the internet azolla contains about 4% N,  0.5% phosphorus and about 3 percent potassium.   That is the N, P and K in artificial fertilizers.  When you grow Azolla on wood ash, the entire amount of N in it is fixed from atmospheric nitrogen.  And that is pretty cool!   I will actually be topping up the water and changing the water  from time to time and adding a little more ash,  so, yeah, I will be using the water on plants too.   But the water won't be high in nitrogen.   Thanks Brian.  

Wood ash is full of minerals, lots of P and K but no N,  it has zero nitrate.  So if azolla grows in water above wood ash,  it has to fix nitrogen from the air,  there is nowhere else it can get it!  The Iran war has stopped 30% of the world's nitrate production so we have to fall back on the natural world to fill the gap and it simply cannot.  I read somewhere that Azolla can fix nitrogen twice as fast as any other higher plant, so it has that going for it!   On 28 April, i put 50 grams of wood ash into an aquarium (surface area 1127 sq centimeter, along with 25.9 liters of water and 30 grams of azolla.  I also conducted the experiment in a larger aquarium. In that one I added 100g wood ash, 51 liters of water and 111g of azolla, its surface area was 2250 sq cm.  The big aquarium was in a more sheltered area.   I didn't even know if the azolla could grow with that much wood ash, (it makes the water pretty alkaline). There were a few things swimming when I added the water but by 2 days after, I didn't see any animal life in either aquarium.  Probably killed by the alkalinity or maybe toxic stuff in the ash.  About 2 weeks later I weighed the azolla. In the little aquarium it had more than doubled in weight (2.93 times  on may 14th), but was still not covering the surface. In the big one it covered the surface but had only increased from 111 to 254 grams,  2.28 times the amount I started with.   So I harvested some and filled both aquariums with Azolla again, (almost covering the surface in both of them.)  Anyway, next stage is to harvest some every week (1/7 of the surface area, I guess) and get it to a steady state of growth.  I plan to expand the experiment to several shallow containers too.  Small scale farmers across Africa and Asia grow azolla, but their ponds are often fertilized with chicken manure, or pig or cow manure, which contain nitrates so this means their azolla is probably not fixing so much nitrogen, because the plant gets it from the water if it can. (it takes less energy to suck it up than to make it!)    Anyway,  my experiment shows that Azolla can survive with that much ash in the water.   Maybe in the future other people will grow azolla in Ash ponds?   I think it is a good way of converting the ash into a full spectrum  fertilizer!  And if you don't want to spread the azolla as a mulch, you can always feed it to your animals or fish as part of a varied diet.   I think I will harvest some azolla, solar cook it, and then mix it up with pure  sand in a pot, then grow some plants (not legumes) in the mixture.  I will probably mulch it with azolla too too.  So whatever grows in the pot, its only source of nitrogen is the decomposing azolla in the pot.       Here is a brief video about the Azolla experiment.  Please don't be shy and leave a comment.  The haters are usually not shy, and they freak out at new (to them) ideas,  so help balance them out.      Thanks Brian