Ben Zumeta

Upcoming! Salvaging Abundance Workshop #3 —
Fire on the Mountain: Shaded Fuel Breaks for Fire Protection and Biochar Production–Nature's Forever Fertilizer
May 9th — 10am-2pm
Old Growth Edible Landscapes HQ — 2750 Low Divide Road — 95531

RSVP with a PM here and/or at: http://dirtandglitter.org/design

Bring buckets or bins to bring some previously inoculated biochar home after the workshop.

M.K. Dorje Sr. wrote:.

Several years after planting them, I read that permaculture farmer Sepp Holzer recommended using Scotch broom as a mulch for chestnuts, so I pulled out all my weedy broom plants in that area and heavily mulched the chestnuts with them. I also gave them some mineral supplements the past few years- rock phosphate and an organic sulfur/magnesium/potassium mix. This seemed to make them grow faster and now they're roughly 18 feet tall. This year they finally flowered for the first time, but the nuts did not fill out.

Anyone here have luck with Chinese chestnuts in the Pacific Northwest? Do they require irrigation to form nuts in our dry summers? How about zinc supplements to help the chestnuts form? I've read that local filbert farmers use zinc supplements.

Great advice to pass along about scotch broom mulch! It has been shown to improve native pnw and norcal tree regrowth where it is mowed and mulched with or left to grow vs herbicide or pulling and removing. I hadn’t thought to use it on the hundred or so chestnuts I planted out this year, but I am going to brushcutter mow mine broom where it will mitigate fire risk to big trees and structures.

I agree it looks like a micronutrient deficiency (ie zinc) from the yellowing older leaves. I would foliar feed with a compost extract-kelp-glacial rock dust spray the entire plant, especially undersides of leaves where stomata are. Plants foliar uptake is a remnant of their marine ancestors, a bit how our lungs can only absorb fully hydrated oxygen due to our submarine gilled ancestry. Jon Kempf has cited 4-70x the uptake efficiency of foliar feeding vs soil application, depending on the mineral and plant species. I would still also soil drench with the same solution as above at least once in the spring.

Silage forks move 4-10x the amount of woodchips than a pitch fork. A shrimp fork is similar. Both moving silage and shrimp is done by pretty sturdy folk. My fork has moved hundreds of yards of chips, and was at least 20yrs old when my neighbor with back problems gave it to me. I think it is black locust and iron. Newer ones have lasted 5yrs so far being used by volunteers weekly at the public food forest I helped start….edit, just caught back end of post. Bulldog digging forks have served me well and are sold in the US through Red Pig tools, which are also great tools.

I just read an appalling article about herbicide being sprayed on thousands of acres of public forest land in California. Woodchips from public lands nearby that are left by the roadside had until reading that been my goto source. Turning perfectly good natural resources into toxic garbage to kill early succession plants that are often beneficial to regrowing native trees (ie N fixers) is insane.

In Samoa, where I studied anthropology and native agriculture, they grew breadfruit, taro and plantains as their primary staple starches. This was always supplemented by palusami, a coconut cream with wild onion sauce. Bananas, mangos, papaya and other fruits were common as well. Fish was caught in the lagoons and by seafaring canoes. Pigs were kept mostly for special occasions, but feral ones were a nuisance to the garden and a danger to people, and would be shared with the extended family and local community when culled. Chickens outnumbered people in the country, and in my host town Lotofaga, where I did my month of field research, roosters outnumbered people and this was particularly notable when I got a double ear infection free diving in sea caves just as the nation’s doctors went on strike. Each town had a bone setter and a medicine woman. The one in Lotofaga, Salome, likely saved my life massaging voluminous amounts of gunk out of my head when antibiotics were unavailable. It was the worst pain of my life but she helped more than any painkiller.

I think a lot of this experience in Samoa, and later in Fiji, has informed my permaculture approach. More than their incredible farming knowledge and green thumbs, I learned from going around the village sharing the harvest after a day’s work planting taro or harvesting coconuts and whatnot. I have never had better tropical fruit, but few things are sweeter than a “Malo” (“greetings and good health”) and heartfelt hugs from Samoan auntie. The ongoing strong traditional faasamoa network of extended family and community made this the most resilient town on the island to hurricanes, tsunamis, and predatory international logging companies. I have never met richer people, even though their per capita income would not pay rent in even a small impoverished American town like mine.

I see biochar’s value as utilizing and sequestering excessive ladder fuels from regrowing forests with the majority of trees destined to die young due to competition and forest succession. I would not pay for the material to make it, except for help with labor. Charcoal briquettes will likely lose much of their carbon and turn too much to ash in the process of burning off often toxic chemicals in them to make them viable in the garden or for filtration.

I would add tree collards. Very nutritious and tasty. Zone 7+, grows 5x+ annually even with steady daily harvest. I have some that will grow as tall as I can trellis them (8ft+). They are my favorite greens, and are at their best in winter. The only time they are not abundant is when snow makes them the only food available for birds, which eat them down to the stem. They come right back though once its above freezing. It is also very easy to propagate then with cuttings, but they never seem to bolt or go to seed after 6yrs here.

Many good suggestions above. If this 10x food cost scenario happens, the wheels have come off the bus. One of the holistic context questions comes to mind:

How can I be someone my community will support through thick and thin?

Helping neighbors avoid desperation, and keeping good relationships with them will be paramount in addition to growing food for ourselves.

I concur with observing for a year. During this first year I would create as much johnson su style compost as possible and at least one substantial air pruned nursery bed (I used Akiva Silver’s video). I’d collect seeds, cuttings, and perennial plants in the nursery bed for planting out when observation will have provided a much better idea of how the land behaves in varying weather. I would then start to consider how the main existing access paths and roads as well as structures’ rooves can be used as water management opportunities.