mark carter

Theresa Brennan wrote:I am hoping to get recommends for the best place to buy greenhouse plastic that is good quality at a good price. Thanks!

Tufflite 4 from cropking works for me, check it out, good luck

Making small wood stoves from scrap metal

I use 1 3/8" steel tubing, it comes in 24' lengths, commonly used as the top rail in a chain link fence.
 When I roll it into a half circle it's about 8' tall and 16' wide, when you use legs ( 1 5/8" ) you can raise it up 4' or so for a 12' ceiling.
 The rolling machine uses three pulleys, two are driven and one is used to put the roll bend in the tubing. Have built dozens of hoop houses with it.
 The local scrap yard gets 30 cents a pound for the tubing, I have picked it up for free just for hauling it away. Good luck.

I have tried snow caves, worked out fine.
On this camp there were about 20 campers from all over michigan and other states, some times canada too. Folks from wintertrekker, hammock forum and bushcraft forum.
 There were at least four hot tents, and a dozen hammock campers.
 Two weeks ago we did another camp, were we just used hammocks, total pack weight 23 lbs.
 Favorite time to camp, free camping, no crowds, no bugs, and with hammocks i have camped on hill sides and swamps, hard to tell we were ever there.
 My hammock allows me to get a good nights sleep, its bug proof and comfortable, great for older campers with back issues like me.
 I use a top quilt, and underquilt to stay warm.
Working on a new hammock hot tent so i can use my woodstove and sleep in my hammock, will post pictures of it when complete.

my hobby is winter camping, snowshoes and toboggan, I make my own pulks and toboggans. we travel to the northern lower of Michigan and set up tents and woodstoves. stay for a week or weekend.  

figured how to post pictures, the planting sticks are cut so they are chest high to the user, the reason I like them that long is that it lets me plant thru a fence or cage without having to open the cage.

Steven Kovacs wrote:

Maureen Atsali wrote:I like it!  Now to see if I can get the hardware to sell me just a short length of steel pipe... And if I can find someone with a hack saw to put the angle on.  (I don't think PVC would hold up here.)

Do you have any bamboo where you are?  I wonder if that might work.

don't have bamboo thats usable in michigan, i used a bandsaw to cut the angle on my planting sticks.
 Pvc tubing is fairly tough, and you can always hose clamp a piece of metal to the end of it.
 Aluminum tubing was available from the scrap yard for $1.50 lb so they cost 2-3 dollars to make. The funnel end i bought at msu salvage for .50 cent each. There 2" wide at the top and fit the tubing at the small end. There used on garden hoses so you can disconnect the hose under pressure and not spray yourself. The funnel on the end makes it easy to put the seed in the end of the tube. Good luck

The reason i started using planting sticks was that my rototiller quit working and i couldn't afford to repair it, still needed to feed my family, so i thought what would happen if fuel was to expensive or not available.
Thats when i started planting fruit and nut trees, berrys and crops that don't require tilling. Plant thru mulch and grow mulch.
 There have ben times when i was not physically able to plant but my kids used planting sticks and made  quick work of it, at harvest time i had plenty of help, some freinds picked on shares and we had enough left over to donate two truck loads to our local food pantry.
 

Marty Mitchell wrote:

Isaac Hill wrote:Hazels are Monocious, there aren't 'male' and 'female' trees, they're wind pollinated so they should be grown close to each other (hazel hedges are great) and my favorite place to buy the plants is oikos tree crops (http://www.oikostreecrops.com/Nuts/Hazelnuts/), this year they had a lot of different varieties that they'd developed. The native ones have smaller nuts, and the european ones are less resistant to diseases, so hybrids of the two are preferable.

oikos is were i purchased my first seedlings, and also from coldstream farm.
Had a difficult location that was clay on one end and loam on the other, i used thick cardboard and fresh woodchips on top for mulch. Cut holes for seedlings and planted them. Also added forest soil with mycelium to the holes, the cardboard and wood chips were soon colinised and helped the seedlings thrive. There now 8' tall by 12' wide.
 The row is 75' long and produces a nice crop of nuts. I belive having several types helps yeilds.
 Squirrels have spread them to several locations in my yard and the fields around me.



Awesome website link! Thank you for sharing.

I make my planting sticks using aluminium tubing,  and use mulch so the soil is easy to plant in. Just use the stick to slide the mulch aside, give the stick a twist and drop the seeds into the hole created, and use the stick to cover the seed as needed. Slide the mulch back after plant sprouts. Takes longer to explain than do. Works good for planting acorns and hazzle nuts.