S Tonin

Eino Kenttä wrote:What's the advantage of morning sun relative to afternoon sun, do you know?

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think I read that morning sun is "cooler" because it has more of the blue wavelength, while late afternoon/ evening sun is "warmer" because it has more of the red wavelength (because of our relative position to the sun an how the atmosphere splits the light, something sciencey like that).  I might not be understanding that correctly though.

Also, I think it's just generally hotter at the end of the day and direct sun only increases that.  I'd rather sit in full sun in the morning, when it's still cool, than at 5pm, when the heat of the day has soaked into everything, so why would plants be different (I might be anthropomorphizing a little here).

To preface: I'm in zone 6 as well, right on the border between 6a and 6b, with weather pretty much like yours (eastern PA).  I live halfway down a steep north-facing slope (600-ish vertical feet of mountain to the south of me), so I don't get as much overall light as somebody on flat land.  Both types of plants went directly in the ground for me, never tried any kind of container or even a raised bed.

My personal experience with mint root:  I planted it on the south side of my peach tree in a space that gets maybe 8 hours total sun (would be more but the peach branches cast dappled shade in the middle of the day).  Only like two of them put up any top growth.  The year I did it was pretty wet, so I didn't need to do any additional watering.  They seemed healthy before the fall dieback, but nothing came up the next year.  It made me very sad, but I justify it by telling myself I wouldn't have liked eating them anyway.

My personal experience with myoga:  The first set of roots I bought are doing okay, despite being planted in terrible, barely-improved heavy clay and shale soil.  It didn't help that I planted them upside down, which I only realized when I accidentally dug one up a month later.  Despite that, they did send up some spindly shoots and one or two edible buds that first year.  They're in part sun with a western exposure, between an elderberry and a juvenile apple.  I didn't want to move them because they just weren't very robust, so I bought more last year (I think 2 years after my initial purchase, maybe 3?).  These I planted in much nicer soil, right at the dripline of a huge (15' tall) Rhododendron on the eastern side of the house.  They get 6 or so hours of full morning sun, then shade for the rest of the day.  Even though this past year was hellaciously dry, they thrived.  I harvested a dry pint of buds and let twice that amount go to flower (some intentionally, but most because I missed them until it was too late).

So here's what I think worked better for my myoga: morning sun/ afternoon shade; loamy, consistently moist soil with a slightly acidic pH; no competition from mint (the western patch is in an area of moderate mint encroachment).  There was definitely deer browse on both, but I fenced off the newer ones so that probably did give them a leg up.  I also let the chickweed and clover grow in both patches as a kind of living mulch because I only have limited mulching material and they're low priority areas; nevertheless, it seems to work.

Did you ever have any luck getting any of these guys going?  Are you going to do it again this year?

I had a branch that needed to come of my crabapple and so I cut all all the little side shoots off of it; the whole big branch sat around for a few days outside (weather ranging from high 20s- low 60s F) and I just finally got around to cutting them and putting them in some warm water.  Going to add some rooting hormone a little bit later, after I do a final trim and wax the tops that need it, then probably just let them go for a while.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Do you want to define technology for your purposes?

Is slavery a technology? Or feudalism? (I think they obviously are, but I could imagine you meaning something more tightly focused.)

In The Dawn of Everything, they discuss cultures that adopted and then chose to give up agriculture, which seems like a pretty big deal.

I mean I guess slavery and feudalism could be considered technologies, though that doesn't ring true with me because it's more of a cultural thing?  I wasn't going in with any kind of strict definition in mind, just using the word "technology" in the most nebulous and conversational way, so I guess it's whatever people want it to be for the purpose of the thread.

Re: abandoning agriculture, I was thinking of Cahokia, where they abandoned their version of "big ag," but (to my understanding) still practiced subsistence-level farming in decentralized locations, so I didn't count it.  Is city living a technology?  To me it's more of a social structure.  I don't know what the line is and I dropped out of college 25+ years ago, so I don't even remember what my anth and soc courses had to say about it.

Okay, so in another thread, there's a kind of nodding agreement going on about what we want and don't want from the overarching idea of "technology," which got me to thinking: when have humans abandoned a technology without something "better" coming along to replace it?  I don't mean stuff like the Antikythera Mechanism or other various and sundry ancient inventions that we have a record of, but that never caught on in the wider culture, or knowledge/ lifeways lost to colonization, but things that were used for a while and people decided "nah, not for us."

Some examples I can think of:

-Great Lakes-area Indigenous/ First Nations people using copper for blades, but then going back to flint (this happened a few times over the centuries, as I understand it; both seem to have comparable durability and sharpness)
-Roman cement (I mean you lose a lot of things when civilization collapses, but that one seems like it would have been something they'd want to hang on to), same with Chinese mortar used in the Great Wall
-Arguably, chemical agriculture (obviously still in wide usage, but "organic"/ natural/ whatever is on the rise at least)

I know there are way more, but I'm blanking.  

Around here, our flavors predominantly run:

-Leaves
-Trash burning
-Brush pile burning (with or without accelerant)
-Fireworks
-Oh yuck, somebody's burning Black Locust in their stove
-Oh yuck, somebody's burning pallets or pressure treated lumber in their outdoor wood furnace, maybe it's a house fire? (often confused with Black Locust if only a light sampling on the breeze)
-Someone's grilling/ someone's grilling and not paying attention
-Wildfire (Appalachian Forest)
-California/ Canadian Wildfire, where the smell is coming from everywhere at once and you can't see it, save for a vague haze on the horizon and vibrant sunsets; smells like all of the above mixed together

I use pumpkin/ winter squash in my chili, either dehydrated & powdered or home-canned & mashed.  It cuts the acidity of the tomatoes (a problem for me) and adds a really nice body and flavor.  I've never had a complaint and no one even knows it's in there unless I tell them.

I was looking for the thumbs down the other day and thought you removed it.  Just now, reading this thread, I found it.  Was it always behind the meatballs and I have a flatulent brain, or did that change at some point?

Not quite what you were talking about, but do they have outdoor growing space/ interest in plants?  An assortment of seeds or a shrub/ small tree (that can be put in a big pot if they aren't at a permanent spot) might be a nice gift, especially if you accompany it with some kind of card with stuff about growing together or like, something about the seeds of love (like "May these plants flourish as have the seeds of your love," or something less pretentious).

Maybe you could give them a gift certificate/ voucher for a really interesting experience in their area?  Like horseback riding or a tour of a National Trust property (or whatever they're called in Scotland, if it's different, please pardon my ignorance) or a guided foraging walk or a pottery class or whatever.  Maybe see if a local shop in their area would do a gift basket with local products, stuff like honey or preserves or cheese?

I'm always leery of giving household stuff unless it's somebody starting from zero.  Oven mitts and towels are pretty safe, because those things do need to be replaced from time to time and will get used eventually, but it's such a faux pas if you pick something with a style that conflicts with their decor.  Things like draft stoppers and those long fabric tubes with elastic at the bottom for storing plastic bags are practical, but lack any kind of wow factor.  Same thing with a knife sharpener or one of those magnetic under-cabinet knife strips.

And the opposite of getting rid of gadgets: Mason Tops make a ton of things that fit on or around mason jars to turn them into other stuff: air locks for fermenting, infuser inserts for teas or fruit water, sprouting screens, lids with pour handles to turn them into a pitcher, lids and silicone sleeves to make them into sippy cups, soap pumps attached to lids, just all kinds of stuff.  I don't know if mason jars are even a thing over there, but maybe Amazon (yuck) would have all that stuff anyway.

(Sorry for not quite understanding the assignment, as it were; it's so hard to shop for people I know, let alone ones I don't!  So many of my favorite gadgets that let me get rid of other gadgets are kind of specific, like one of those jar wrench/ can opener/ bottle opener combo things, which they might not like and would just end up being clutter for them, or stuff like my Instant Pot and my countertop convection oven/ airfryer, which are kind of workhorse appliances and only something I'd gift to someone whose habits I know well.)

I'm not being facetious when I say her books (I have the collected edition) changed my life and put me on the path that ultimately led me to discovering permaculture.  My boss gave it to me for my 18th birthday as a gag gift (because she always said I was cheap) and little did anyone know it would turn me into an absolute monster, saving bits of string and putting tinfoil over my windows (to keep the heat out; dodging the alien mind control is just a bonus).