Jay Angler

Sitting sorting small seeds from chaff and listening to music on the computer to keep me company.

This came on and I thought of r ransom and all the effort you're making to learn classical guitar.

Can you get any more classical than Beethoven's 5th?



You don't have to be any where near this skill level to have fun and enjoy the sounds you are making!

That is a pretty cool technique.
1. I wonder how they built the metal frame, or whether it is available to buy where they live?
2. I wonder if the wire ends up encased in the concrete? I would have thought they'd have had to add concrete to the inside after removing the hose.

Considering how difficult/expensive it is to get large water tanks on my island, a simple system to build a safe and reliable one would be really useful.

Are there different types of concrete that are safer for water storage?

paul wheaton wrote:  ... grew one apple tree.  It is famous for being the apple that ripens earliest.  And it has a distinct flavor.  We have two of these trees and one is bearing fruit.  And it is intense the good feels I get when I bite into one.  The variety is called "yellow transparent."

I do believe I have one growing beside the house. My ducks and geese like it as much as I do.

The apples make a decent cooking apple if picked before being fully ripe. As an eating apple, they're yummier ripe. The ducks aren't as fussy as me, and the deer are happy to eat any windfalls they can get.

Short of 8 ft fencing with unappetizing plants on the outside, nothing I've ever read comes with a guarantee!

Yes, Marigolds have an odour that is supposed to deter pests (deer count as pests in my book), but trust me, if they get desperate, they may decide to eat it anyway.

The same is true of both sunflowers and allium family plants like garlic and walking onion.

Some mints might discourage them more than others.  They do seem to avoid Lemon Balm with is in the mint family. It mows nicely too, in my ecosystem.

They supposedly don't like the furry leaves of comfrey, until we had a dry spell and they were feeling desperate.

If you know a few people with male dogs that need brushing or pruning, I have used dog fur twist-tied to fences at nose height. It has to be refreshed in the spring and every couple of months during gardening season, but it seems to suggest to the deer to go elsewhere. It looks like I've decorated with pom-poms! In the spring, the nesting birds steal some of it, but I'm willing to share. Just having anyone with a dog inviting it over to mark your land regularly, may be of some help.

Some people plant "deer gardens" far away from their "people garden" in the hopes that they will go there instead, but if the population is high enough, and the lack of alternative food sources great enough, this too may fail. I feel a little as if feeding *any* wildlife is a double edged sword, as their population may increase as a result and then the problem just gets bigger.

Here are some threads about fencing. I personally have had no luck with the black plastic deer fencing once it gets a bit old and they get used to it. Nor did I have luck trying to use electric fencing - they just evaded it - I would have had to keep plants too trimmed back.
https://permies.com/t/140079/Wavy-Deer-Fence
https://permies.com/t/154835/Deer-fencing-advice
https://permies.com/t/141026/Dealing-deer
https://permies.com/t/184425/Deer-fencing-sounds-works

There are people in my area who "paint" on agricultural lime like a white wash to help shade their green houses. It washes off in the winter rain.

There are other people who run strings over the outside and grow climbing edibles (pole beans and tomatoes are the two I'm aware of, but I think in warmer climates, sweet potato vines may have been used this way). Living plants do a great job to shade and cool. You may be too hot for this approach depending on your weather.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote: Excellent! Glad to see a cultural shift. We are always envious when we visit -- we can see that the amount of food that can be grown out there is simply insane. :-)

Don't be too envious - the deer and rabbits require Fort Knox to keep them out. Spring lasts forever and the cool summers make it hard to get tomatoes to even consider ripening.

That said, fruit trees grow well with minimal care. We have 4 kinds of apples, 3 kinds of plums, and if I could get them planted, figs and jujuba. For small fruit, we have raspberries, grapes, wild blackberries, and again, if I can figure out a spot where it will be happy, Hardy Kiwi.

Trouble is that I can't eat too much sugary fruit!

I haven't read exactly what the rules are, but I understand that the flowers and unripe seed pods of Maple trees are also edible?

Are Daylilies native or naturalized in your area? (flower pods and roots and maybe shoots are edible)

We have Fawn Lilies. I think they were considered a famine food here because Camas was the bulb of choice. There are different names and subspecies across North America, and I think the edibility may have differed also. I recall doing some research and there was at least one Native Tribe that considered it food.

Ours is Erythronium oregonum. Pictures here: https://ancientforestalliance.org/fawn-lily/
I believe I read that the leaves are also considered edible, but I haven't tried them.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote: I've spent time over the last 30 years on long walks through Vancouver Island (Sidney and Victoria) every spring, and have observed a fair amount of "snootiness" about vegetable gardening. Sort of the echoes of old-school British class snobbery, where only the "lower classes" grow food. The upper crust grow flowers. Personally I find it hilarious, but it appears to be a genuine thing. I don't know if that applies on the mainland.

Certainly that's still around. However, there is a huge permaculture trend here as well, along with publicity about how poor Vancouver Island's food security is. A lot of our more recently arrived citizens hail from the Prairies to get away from the snow. They have much more respect for farmers - or often were farmers themselves. The presentation today was *very* food focused and the seniors in the room seemed perfectly happy with that focus. They are also a great number of people on a fixed income who will be watching it erode with inflation.

The number of attendees wasn't huge, but they did seem to be listening. There was a discussion about CSA's. If they go that route, at least it will support local farmers which will hopefully keep some pressure on the food security side of things.

I just attended the opening presentation of our local library's new free seed library. The presenter was the coordinator of a not-for-profit local regenerative farm. I kept feeling this is not what the audience needed - they were all people with small back yards or possibly only balconies.

The library manager (I'm on first name basis with her) was wondering at the end what this could be the start of. I suggested to her that considering we are the seniors capital of Canada, that a talk on container veggie gardening might go over well. It wouldn't meet their calorie requirements, but it would boost their nutrition if the focus was on nutrient dense foods like parsley, oregano, mini-tomatoes etc.  She thought that was an awesome suggestion.