joe royce

What kinds of Hazelnut cuttings are you looking for? Just the blight immune stuff?

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Hey, no worries, don't misunderstand me: it's a cool tool. It just doesn't apply to all situations. The right tool for the job, you know? (I'm still curious about details on the ratio of fells to pinched chainsaw bars, having pinched a few myself.)

I currently have several four-storey asymetrical balsam poplars that need to come down, on a 35-degree slope, in a narrow corridor so they don't destroy my apple trees. This is genuinely scary shit, and they are big enough to kill people or take out the adjacent 15kV power line. I have cables, snatchblocks, winches, and a very sceptical attitude as to what can go wrong. This is about managing risk up the wazoo. Wish me luck.

The best way to manage risk here is to hire a competent climber and have them removed in manageable chunks. No professional would try to fell those trees as you have described them.

Anyway, dragging this thread back on track you seem to be asking about what kind of fruit bearing plants are already adapted to dry environments, but can survive the cold AND wet of our winters and springs in the PNW? Figs and pomegranates come to mind as being pretty easy go-to plants for arid climates. They don't mind the wet of the springs and falls, but do really well when pushed by dry summer conditions. Jujube is also very tolerant to dry summers, but can survive cold winters. Some people say they even thrive. Guava is borderline, but many of the Chilean varieties are able to survive the winters and do great in the dry hot summers.

If you're not against it, you could look at water holding crystals as a soil amendment? Deep mulching isn't going to really help after the water sponge has been depleted. What a lot of people don't understand about water and establishing trees is that water is prone to falling too deep into the soil where new roots can't reach and/or being too easily evaporated from the top layers where the new roots are currently trying to establish. Without something to maintain the water in that root layer while establishing you're gonna have a bad time.

The Fukuokian method has a trick to it: experimentation and observation.  I, being the rebel that I am, enjoy using this 'wild' method in even my zone 1 and 2 areas for growing all manner of plants.  It's a bit risky to be sure and one can never predict the outcome, but that's the point in some ways.  So experiment, observe and be willing to accept any yeild as being a success.  I learned a whole lot about plants, their relationships, how they live and die, and how the gardening books are flat wrong by using the 'grow and let go', no-till method.

I will say though that sheet mulching is a key factor in taking control of the ground back from things like sod and buttercup.  Without it, it's unlikely I would have seen as much success as I have thus far.

marina phillips wrote:
We're really excited to see exactly how tall Paul is.    

He's tall.  Monolithic tall.  Like a juggernaut or something(look it up).  It's scary.  Almost as scary as how much he knows about... everything.

Let's make clear the whole PDC cost issue since it seems to be a hurdle, mentally, for most to get over.

The average PDC tuition costs $1200, as where Larry Korn's PDC costs only $800.

Lodging costs are approximately $25 a night, with full laundry, interent, kitchen, hot tub, shower facilities, etc.  And that's the expensive option.  You will not beat that EVER with any conventional option and most PDC lodging is pretty convential.

Oh yeah.  Then all the food. Organic, cooked and catered, tailored to diet concerns be them medical or philosophical.  That's runs about $10 a day per person, with full pantry access.  Thats all your meals and snacks covered for the entire day for less than dinner at a cheap resturant. 

But where does all the rest of the money go after the instructors, the chef, the food, and the facility?  Well advertising, so you can know that this impossibly cheap deal is available, doesn't come free either.  Someone has to make it, print it, publicize it, work the network, travel to post flyer, run a website, make connections, get Paul Wheaton's support, etc.

And someone has to do the accounting, and the regisration, and then logistics, and the menu planning.  Oh, and the fees for guest instructors, plants, materials, demonstrations... Am I making myself clear?

And then there is the work trade discounts, and the scholarships so that genuinely intersted, and yet poor, people can come learn it too.  There are no institutional grants and government subsidies for permaculture education. 

So if you have thought to yourself, "Wow, that's a lot of money, this should be a community supported effort." Well it is.  It's more of a community supported effort than most PDCs you will find out there and yet it's still having a hard time meeting quota.

Regarding Fukuoka and the forest, that is covered in One Straw Revolution I believe as one fo Fukuoka's early and late abandoned methods, along with other expeirments like digging on organic matter to improve soil quality.  I got the impression he was pretty much done with all that silliness by the time Larry would have arrived. 

I love that you brought up how the forest needs it's own biomass Larry, so many forget that fact.  It's a difficult line to straddle, improving our own land within our short life without violating the complex and fragile structures nature has constructed.

HG, soil science is a funny subject and you would be benefited by talking to Larry Korn, a true to god soil scientist, regarding this subject as he knows far more than I do on the subject.  My short rebuttal would be that although there is a major short term of explosion in microscopic life in the soil directly after tilling, the reordering of the layers that are built in soil over time return the long term health of the soil to a beginning point; a point of having to build layers all over again.

Fukuoka, and later Bill Mollison, both talk heavily about the long term dangers of tilling and promote a no-till method all but exclusively.  I understand you are educated in your opinion about soil, but I have to observe that there are many well educated experts that disagree with you in part or whole.  Just a thought.

Hey Larry, in an attempt to get things back on track here let me ask you a question or two!

Firstly, what is all this "fukuoka x" stuff going on?  Fukuoka raised beds, Fukuoka Bonfils method, etc?  It's like Fukuoka is becoming a brand name somehow, and I'm not entirely sure that simply not tilling the soil makes it an "offical Fukuoka product".
How do you feel about that?  How would sensei Fukuoka-san feel about it?  Do these methods really parallel the Fukuokian method or are they merely borrowing his name?