Henry Jabel

Nicole Alderman wrote:I had no idea one could do something like this. Makes me wonder if horsetails could be made into a 'crete. How's your nettlecrete holding up?

Sadly I have no idea as I had to move to another part of the country. Where I have moved to initially had no nettles! Now after improving the soil have they only just started to arrive, the previous place was a chicken farm and then a sheep pasture so it shows me they really are an indicator plant. Sadly I dont have the space to grow lots of nettles now so apart from a small test block I doubt I can make a structure again.

If anyone wants to explore this idea more some interesting things to consider might be:

The chemistry of the plant before and after flowering as the nettles should be more saliceous after flowering.
Land area needed for a nettle block. I think it was a few square meters.
Inclusion of leaves perhaps it doesnt have as much tensile strength but does it matter?

Also I always thought it would be interesting to take a 'turf' of nettles to a site roll it out and grow the nettles harvest them and process them onsite for the building there. However its probably not too practical.

My guess is horsetail would work but it might be less strong than nettle. Why not give it a go? When they do hempcrete they dont use it for load bearing walls so the horsetail crete could well have some applications.

Greg Martin wrote:

Henry Jabel wrote:Here in the U.K you need to take an expensive course if you want to use herbicides commercially so you know how to use them safely and dont obvious things like spray them into rivers, etc. However if you plan to use it on your own property when you go to the garden centre all of that knowledge spontaneously appears in your head like when Neo says 'I know Kung Fu' in The Matrix.

Exactly, if it wasn't true my neighbours would not be using herbicides correctly and I would have problems with herbicide drifting on to my plants.

Here in the U.K you need to take an expensive course if you want to use herbicides commercially so you know how to use them safely and don't do obviously stupid things like spray them into rivers, etc. However if you plan to use it on your own property, when you go to the garden centre all of that knowledge spontaneously appears in your head like when Neo says 'I know Kung Fu' in The Matrix.

Nice work, looks great will have to try to build something similar when i get the chance. There is a company near Evesham that does greenhouses with a fairly interesting looking insulated material. Dont know if they can do a geodesic dome but might be worth a try.
https://www.kedergreenhouse.co.uk/

Failing that you can get twin walled polycarbonate on Ebay pre cut to size and persumably shape too.

Could be lots of factors but I guess they are still quite young?

I think the best thing you can do with the least disruption is get some decent compost and spread around to the dripline of the tree and hope for the best. If they are young its good to suppress any grass beneath them too.

Having discovered unhappy fruit trees at my gardening customer houses I discovered most of the time they were bought as large as possible and then planted poorly and then had problems adapting to the new environment. Sometimes they didn't dig a big enough hole, tease out pot bound circuling roots or add any ammendments like compost, mulch, liquid seaweed or mycorrhizal fungi. I am not saying this definately is the cause of your woes but it could be, sometimes the nursery will sell you a poor tree to begin with.

Rust it's a fungus

Page about rust Puccinia porri

Here are some suggestions on how to control it.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=214

What soil are you on? If you are on heavy clay like me adding some more sand can be good for drainage helping to prevent fungal attack like this.

Looks ok to me. If think they make the bizzare assumption that if your from outside the U.S you must be trying to bring down thier website via a DDOS attack. Persumably because selling silkworms must be of strategic national importance to the U.S government

Yes im from outside the U.S and I got Captcha'd too. Wasn't offered any malware though.

I think I better sort that out then

Depending on what the wildflower seeds you acquired you will probably won't want the grass there anyway. Most mixes sold here struggle to appear through established grass and do best in poorer soils, infact sometimes people use glyphosate to kill it before sowing their wildflowers!

I dont know how far 2, 4 D and etc penetrates into the soil but I would think cutting the sod out and piling to one side would work. But obviously you might want to research the plants in your mixes perhaps your wildflower mixes do prefer better soils than here.