Hans Quistorff

In the northern Sacramento valley there were black mission fig trees in the corners of the barley fields where the farm houses used to be. These were favorite resting places for the sheep that were brought in from the hills after the harvest.  They also produced an abundant crop of fruit. We cut limbs from them and using pressure washing pipe drilled holes and rooted them all along our fence line for shade.

If it works well I might plant tomato plants during Autumn each year rather than Spring. We go through stress for 'economic efficiency' (plant spinach instead so that you double your crops in the same space), but less efficient methods can be much more enjoyable and easier.

The ideal is to plant your harvested tomato and pepper seeds in among the spinach or other greens so they are sheltered by cold tolerant annuals which will reach maturity and be removed about the time most people start their transplants.
One of our co-op directors had a low tunnel full of cherry tomatoes. at the end of the season she pulled the spent plants and closed it up for the winter. The soil was covered in fallen tomatoes so when she opened it to plant the next spring there was a solid carpet of little tomato plants ready to transplant. The natural way to plant the nightshade family is to let the fruit rot on the ground.

I wanted a summer ground cover to keep the ground open so I could transplant raspberries in the winter. I bought a bag of bird seed and sowed it on the bare ground, mulched it with grass clippings and watered it thoroughly. I now have ripening about ten times as much millet, sorghum, thistle and sunflower seed.
The golden flax and lentils dried out early so I only have about as much as I planted to harvest for the chickens. My old hens have become experts at recognizing seed heads and pods to thresh their food so all I have to do is through the mature plants in the tractor to feed them.  They are working their way through the dwarf apple orchard now eating the wheat that came up where they buried seed they missed. This process started when a friend plantd wheat for a cover crop but then was not able to plow it in the spring. I mowed it with my scythe and stacked it in the barn to throw them a bundle each day.

Don't work any harder than necessary. let things reproduce as they naturally do.

Just when the smoke stopped washing back and forth from BC and Oregon we had a local wiled fire to the south west where our clean air was coming from. It is drizzling tonight so I may get some work done tomorrow.

I have been able to keep the house air good with a combination of an ionizing filter feeding air into a Filter Queen fine particle filter with a charcoal wrap. Normally the ionizing filter puts out to much ozone but the combination seems to be using up the ozone in the cleaning process.

I sealed some mullein tea last time we had a big thread on it and then used it later that winter when I needed it. will have to make more this winter for next summer.

For those that have little experience with X-ray images let me explain what you see here. Assuming the images are placed looking from the front as is done in the medical practice {chiropractors place them looking from the back] Repeated lifting and twisting caused failure in the fibers of the disks on the right side between the 3rd, 4th,5th and sacrum vertebra. Repeated wear and tear wore them down and probably caused an abrupt bend to the right. I would love to see the before images.
What the surgeon did was place a spacer between each vertebra on the right side then stabilized the column with a rod on each side with a screw into each vertebra. A lot of hardware to put into the human body but just like olc farm equipment tied together with baling wire it keeps functioning until the end of its useful life.

What is your observation on sprinkler irrigation of squash. does it increase infection of the leaves or diminish it because the leaves don't cycle between limp and erect due to heat and water stress?

I am in zone 7 so the the green tops of the bluebells are my winter cover crop. they are planted very thick and when they finish blooming the tops lay down and make the mulch for the summer. Other bulbs come up through them that bloom later then the flowers that reproduce by seed such as calendualas come up and bloom all summer.

The problem with popular is they send up new trees from the roots and eventually take up the whole area.  Though livestock tend to keep them in check by eating new shoots. I don't have grazing animals on my field now so it is a constant battle to keep them cut down.

I second the recommendation to experiment in the ground. A walipini is just a very large hotbed. That is  where you dig a pit put compost or manure in it for heat and put soil on top then build a frame around it to put a window over the top.  So you can build a series of such structures with small amounts of materials and differing depths and sun angles and use them this winter to see what works best in your climate. You can observe what plants actually do in your models and record the temperatures with a high low registering thermometer. Plus you may get something to eat out of your experiment

You can try different thicknesses of foam panels and heat absorbing materials on the back wall to see which produce the best results.

Actually your problem is not putting the pits in the compost. Not hot compost but worm compost or slow compost does a good job of sprouting peach pits. That is how I got my three trees. I used the compost it wicking barrel planters and when I recognized the seedlings I let them grow with the other plants until the second year then transplanted them during the winter. They started producing fruit the 4th year.

I have this thing about not putting avocado seeds in the compost because they grow so well then get killed by the winter freeze. I also don't compost berry seeds because they seem to grow even after going through the steam juicer; enough get planted going through the bird guts.

One possibility is to use the trunks of the next tree as support.  I use bailing twine to train the growth in the direction I want to provide shade for my raspberries. When possible I bend the leader towards an adjoining tree so that I have an arch rather than a limb crotch. Some T posts and twine can get the training started and eventually you can build a self supporting ladder like I have seen pictures of. I am using plums and peaches and they are inside the winter coverso they blossom and fruit earlier than the ones outside.