gamcod importing materials, ghost acre, mulches, seeds, tubers

Buy non-GMO seeds from far away and have it shipped or go to the store and buy.  Make sure to note how much you spent.

Tubers and bulbs need to be organic.

You can use saved seeds/tubers/bulbs.

"ghost acre" is any land that is within 500 feet of the patch.  So, technically, this is about 18 acres.  Within this land, you are welcome to grow stuff that can be used as a mulch or fertilizer.


MULCH

You are welcome to add (from your ghost acre):  sticks, hay, straw, weeds, manure, rocks, kitchen scraps, home made compost, pine needs, wood duff, leaves,

Manure is allowed ONLY if 100% of the feed and medication is from on-site.  No imported hay/feed/medication. And that will need to be stated in the video.

Wood chips (from any type of chipper) are not allowed.  Sawdust from a sawmill or from a woodshop is okay.  If from a woodshop, there needs to be assurity, on video, that there are no glues.

No cardboard or newspaper. No plastic.

For each substance you use, we need, on video, a little info about it.  How organic is it.  How do you know.  

Something within 500 feet from a neighbor is okay if you can attest to how organic it is.



renting an excavator for a day is fine.  Note the cost.


Running a tiller is fine (because it is dirt) - but you do need to explain that running a tiller on soil would be a bad idea.  And make sure to be tilling in organic matter.



(what am i forgetting to mention here?)

paul wheaton wrote:

renting an excavator for a day is fine.  Note the cost.

How about borrowing some pigs or other llivestock for a week to clear the site? I don't know much about keeping livestock, but it occurs to me that pigs would be excellent at this. Chickens to a lesser extent because they wouldn't dig up the roots so much.
If you're allowed fuel for an excavator, food for some manual help would also seem fair?

Nancy Reading wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:

renting an excavator for a day is fine.  Note the cost.

How about borrowing some pigs or other llivestock for a week to clear the site? I don't know much about keeping livestock, but it occurs to me that pigs would be excellent at this. Chickens to a lesser extent because they wouldn't dig up the roots so much.
If you're allowed fuel for an excavator, food for some manual help would also seem fair?

If the animals are not tortured or abused in some way (like is often done with chicken tractors) then it seems okay.

Would the pig's food for the prior X days need to have been organic?

What about seedlings from the store?  Or potting soil for home grown seedlings?  I can get organic potting soil from my local home improvement store...

paul wheaton wrote:

Nancy Reading wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:

renting an excavator for a day is fine.  Note the cost.

How about borrowing some pigs or other llivestock for a week to clear the site? I don't know much about keeping livestock, but it occurs to me that pigs would be excellent at this. Chickens to a lesser extent because they wouldn't dig up the roots so much.
If you're allowed fuel for an excavator, food for some manual help would also seem fair?

If the animals are not tortured or abused in some way (like is often done with chicken tractors) then it seems okay.

What's the story with abusive chicken tractors? Is the assumption that most chicken tractors are too small for the number of chickens people stuff into them? Does anyone out there have a good rule-of-thumb for how many square feet per chicken is humane for a chicken tractor? I live in an area with so much raptor and coyote pressure that it's difficult to get the girls out and about without using a chicken tractor.

Scott Ehresman wrote:
What's the story with abusive chicken tractors? Is the assumption that most chicken tractors are too small for the number of chickens people stuff into them? Does anyone out there have a good rule-of-thumb for how many square feet per chicken is humane for a chicken tractor? I live in an area with so much raptor and coyote pressure that it's difficult to get the girls out and about without using a chicken tractor.

From the article Raising Chickens 2.0

The important part of this pic is to note how much greenery was consumed yesterday. These are about five feet wide and ten feet long. With 35 chickens in each. That, in my opinion, is way too many chickens for such small pens. I think that such small pens should have no more than 15 to 20 birds and should be moved at least twice a day. Salatin recommends that the birds consume about 30% of the vegetation. This looks more like 90% to me.

Jeremy VanGelder wrote:
From the article Raising Chickens 2.0

The important part of this pic is to note how much greenery was consumed yesterday. These are about five feet wide and ten feet long. With 35 chickens in each. That, in my opinion, is way too many chickens for such small pens. I think that such small pens should have no more than 15 to 20 birds and should be moved at least twice a day. Salatin recommends that the birds consume about 30% of the vegetation. This looks more like 90% to me.

Yikes! That's horrifying. I think I can avoid that situation with my five pampered ladies 😂 Thanks for the link and reply!

Mike Haasl wrote:Would the pig's food for the prior X days need to have been organic?

What about seedlings from the store?  Or potting soil for home grown seedlings?  I can get organic potting soil from my local home improvement store...

pig:  it depends on what all your are doing with the pig.

seedlings: i answered your same question here.

Fencing materials go around the 200 sq ft so they are considered in the ghost area. But what about trellises? They are within the 200 sq ft so they must be no plastic and from ghost acre only? I'd like to use bamboo poles free from a friend's house as sticks I have are too thick to be pushed into the ground.

I think bamboo trellis is tolerable.  But sticks from within 500 feet would be 10x better.

Perhaps making some trellises and cages could earn you a SKIP BB:  Build a Tomato Cage and Pole Bean Trellis from Twigs

Hey Paul, does the wood for the hugel that you keep encouraging have to be super local? I don't have that many trees, I'd have to pester neighbors. But I can't certify that those trees never got sprayed. I could maybe cut firewood from a few hours away and haul it in for a hugel, but it's going to all be evergreens. Isn't that not the best for hugels?
And the mulch in the hugel? I for sure don't have that much mulch on my "ghost acre" resource list. I'd have to haul that in, too.
Is making a hugel bed so much better that you would approve those extra resources? Really want to know, not just being a snot.

Also, is a keyhole-style bed acceptable for this project? Like a u-shape? If the hugel project doesn't work out for me.

if you are gonna do hugelkultur, you need to source your wood within 500 feet, and you need to talk about how unsprayed it is.


Conifer wood (evergreens) is fine.  It's what i use.  It's what sepp uses.

Keyhole is fine, but you gotta define your 200 square feet with a simple shape, not something that follows a keyhole.

If I grow squashes, do the vines need to be contained within the 200 sq ft?

paul wheaton wrote:

Keyhole is fine, but you gotta define your 200 square feet with a simple shape, not something that follows a keyhole.

Does it mean people must calculate the path within the 200 sq st? Otherwise a 4 ft x 25 ft row can use the entire area for growing and a 14×14 must put paths some where? Also, if people put up fence 2 ft around the 200 sq ft, that means they can't use the perimeter as path?

My plotted area is a dumbbell shell to fit within existing tree guilds. If necessary I can designate part of that as path and not access the growing area from elsewhere.

I'm trying to find the thread it was in, but I swear the vine question came up before and the idea is to have it inside the footprint.

I think this has to due with scaling, the idea is what can be done in 200sq ft and calculating it up to an acre. This is because most people don't have the luxury of a whole acre or time to tend a whole acre. If the vines were outside, the scale now gets kinda wonky.

May Lotito wrote:If I grow squashes, do the vines need to be contained within the 200 sq ft?

Wow, that is an amazing question.  Good one.  Stumper.  

Part of me thinks that it would be good to move the vines back into the 200 square feet.  And if you choose to let it out of the 200 square feet, then into the video you say something like "I guess I can't count that because it is outside the 200 square feet."

Another part of me thinks that if it is just one vine, that's fine.  

Yet another part of me thinks that if i allow one vine, somebody will argue that they should be allowed six, and that becomes a huge part of their strategy.

I think I am going to dodge this and say "edge case".  If you have one vine escaping, can the one or two squashes be counted?  I think if that it would be good to get that into video and then we figure it out later.  It might be good to come up with two totals: within the 200 square feet, and another total that includes the vine.

May Lotito wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:

Keyhole is fine, but you gotta define your 200 square feet with a simple shape, not something that follows a keyhole.

Does it mean people must calculate the path within the 200 sq st? Otherwise a 4 ft x 25 ft row can use the entire area for growing and a 14×14 must put paths some where? Also, if people put up fence 2 ft around the 200 sq ft, that means they can't use the perimeter as path?

My plotted area is a dumbbell shell to fit within existing tree guilds. If necessary I can designate part of that as path and not access the growing area from elsewhere.

A square or circle will probably include a path or two.  A 4x50 rectangle probably does not include a path.

I need a simple shape to the viewer can instantly recognize "yes, that is indeed 200 square feet."

Regarding the long narrow shape and vines and all that...   I was, at one point, imagining a 200' long garden that was one food wide.  With a trellis if the vine containment was an issue.  While I could grow a literal half ton of squash in that 200 square foot garden, I realize that the average viewer watching would realize that I'm trying to "game the system" and it might not make for the best overall video.

If there was a huge prize for the maximum calories, it would encourage this sort of tricky thinking, that's why I support the only fiscal prize being minutes of footage in the movie. Then the best stories, prettiest gardens and cheapest and most productive gardens are rewarded.

I need some approval before continuing. Is this shape Ok? It looks simple to me and only takes middle school geometry to calculate the area.

Mike Haasl wrote:Regarding the long narrow shape and vines and all that...   I was, at one point, imagining a 200' long garden that was one food wide.

And if you plant squashes that grow 10 ft long vines both size, the leaves will cover an extra area of 4,000 sq ft!

I plan on doing vertical trellising and effectively increase the arae for photosynthesis.

May Lotito wrote:I need some approval before continuing. Is this shape Ok? It looks simple to me and only takes middle school geometry to calculate the area.

May,

I cannot tell what shape you are trying to suggest.

Is it a circle?  A square?  A rectangle?

It's two circles with a rectangle between them.

I have 4 tree guilds/ flower bed/ bamboo/ oak tree around it.

The shape is not okay.  Sorry May.

Originally, I was going to limit this to rectangles that were 20x10.  But people convinced me to allow other rectangles and circles.  A dog bone shape is not for this project.

That's all right. The area is meant for a hedge row for wildlife not for production anyway.

How about a simple arc? I'm thinking of starting a 25' section of hugel, but the area that looks best could use a bit of curve to it...

Must be a circle or a rectangle.

One thing that is not clear in the first post is "dookie hunting".  If a deer comes onto your ghost acre and donates some fertilizer pellets, and you wanna scoop that up and add it to your GAMCOD plot, that is excellent!  Of course, if the material contains persistent herbicides (because the deer graze on neighboring land with herbicides), it will hamper your production, so you would be wise to not use it.

Lots of bird attracting perches to encourage direct fertility donation....https://permies.com/t/187008/permaculture/attract-fertility-birds-bats