Hello everyone it's been a while since I posted anything. Where to begin.
Although I read about Canna edulis a few years ago I didn't believe it was actually good. I dug one up and cut it with the shovel. I threw some to the pigs and they didn't go for it. It was hard and had hairs in it so I didn't bother trying it until a few weeks ago. It's good. It really is a lot like potato but more watery and a few hairs. So I went looking around the yard for all the clumps that have been neglected for years and I dug them all up for transplanting. I was amazed at how much I found. There was about 600lb including the leaves. It took me 3 days to plant all of it because the areas where grassy. I could have done a much better job if I would have planted it in spring among the corn crop. There is a study online that was done about the benefits of intercroping corn and Canna edulis. Insect pressure on the canna is relived by the shade of the corn.
I've stopped planting Napier grass due to the management issues that do not suit intercroping with trees. Basically if the grass gets too tall it has to be burned down and that would kill the trees. Napier should be intercroped with herbaceous perennial vines like chayote and with legumes like vetch , climbing beans and desmodium.
We had yet another fire that killed or damaged more than 100 trees. Unfortunately in our area we can't use mulch and we have to use the tractor to incorporate the residue because of the fires. The fires are caused by retards and ass holes or by retarded assholes. Apperently they represent a large demographic here. Hopefully the Canna will help suppress fire along with a number of other fire suppression plants that we have been growing. We definitely need more fire suppression. Ideally we would do holistic grazing but that is also a huge risk because of the retarded assholes again. Theives are known to steel livestock and leave you tied up if worse.
I've been considering anti theft animals like free-range
chickens, fish and rabbets in a large enough pen that has boroghs in it. Or edible reptiles like egwanas, tho it might be too cool here for that.
We are going to be intercropping the corn from now on with warm and cool season vetch and with oats. This year we didn't get a good stand of the cover crop for 2 reasons low seeding rate and some of the seed was covered too much. We planted when the corn was about 75 days old. We broadcast the seed one day before scuffling the corn. Inevitably scuffling will burry some of the seed too deeply but I think that is still the best method. We just need to up the seeding rate. We only used 5kg of oats 3kg of sorghum and 5kg of vetch per hectare. After seeing the result I would up the rate to 25 kg of each.