Jake Whitson

We're currently planning a 25sqm freestanding  greenhouse, and a 40sqm conservatory/attached greenhouse (with ground insulation and possibly climate battery) for building in the spring (April/May here in south central Sweden). Our instinct is to go for glass, because we want something that doesn't need replacing every 10-20 years like polycarbonate. However the only glass that's used here is safety glass, partly because of the snow load in the winter , and I know that that contains a PVB mid layer, which I can't find any information on the lifetime of - the PVB film when sold separately only has a lifespan of 15-20 years according to 3M, which puts us back to the same time frame as polycarbonate! An alternative would be double glazing, but that's prohibitively expensive and also has degradable parts. Does anyone have information on the lifespan of security glass? Perhaps someone can convince me it's ok to replace your polycarbonate glazing every 15years? Because as far as I can tell, that's going to put a significant dent in the sustainability of the enterprise, not to mention the unknown availability of polycarbonate that far into the future. All comments welcome:)

It's worth bearing in mind that cement and concrete make soil alkali - I've come across many blueberries that have died from being too close to a wall, or concrete driveway. Also, a little soil from the pine forest mixed in the hole when you plant blueberries, or used as a mulch, will often help them a lot. Or even plant the blueberries under the pines in spots where there is enough sun. Good luck!

Maybe it goes without saying, but with limited time/resources I would always go for fruits first - almost all fruits are perennials (usually woody tree/shrubs) and hence the far less work. Also they are usually more expensive to buy in shops than vegetables (because of their fragility and short shelf life which makes picking and shipping expensive). Forget about a fruit tree for a few years and probably nothing bad will have happened to it. Fruit self sufficiency is easy! I would hazard a guess that figs would be grow well in your area - great fresh and also dried for the cupboard.

Morchella elata, one of the black morels, commonly crops up in coniferous bark mulch here in the UK. Usually by accident though. You could try inoculating the chips with some morel spawn.

This is a root tip of aspen, colonised by mycorrhizal fungi 3 months after being inoculated with our Edible Forest Garden Mix. There's some more pictures and information on our website chaosfungorum.co.uk and I hope this may be of some interest to some of you!

The above picture is of a cobnut tree inoculated 7 months previously with one of our mixtures of mycorrhizal spores. The mushroom is Laccaria laccata, or 'The Deceiver', a fairly decent edible mushroom. Below is a trial of willow cuttings - the first group untreated, the second treated with mycorrhizal fungi - both at the end of their first growing season

Hi all, I'm new to the Permies forums but I thought I'd share with you some successes I've been having with mycorrhizal fungi. I started up a business two years ago creating what I like to think of as next generation mycorrhiza mixes - that is, containing much more diversity than anything else currently being sold, and consisting almost entirely of species which produce edible mushrooms. Of course, inoculating trees with edible mycorrhizal mushrooms spores and getting crops of the same are very different things, but some of the trials we have been doing have yielded some promising results.