Dawna Clephas

I recently went to a nice bamboo farm near Richmond Virginia and selected half a dozen varieties to bring back to my mountain farm in Southwest Virginia.

I took the tour that the seller offered and learned so much about the different uses for the bamboos. I selected one that grows tall with lower branching and will grow quickly to make a screen to foil the neighbors across the creek who like to shoot deer in my field

I selected another variety that makes good furniture, due to its clean lines and strong walls. Might want to use that for a teepee or fencing.

I picked out a couple more that are well known for their tender and tasty shoots. All bamboo have shoots but not all are good to eat.

Another selection was beautiful, with lovely stalks as well as nice canopy that would look good from a distance. It will serve as a focal point near my pond.

And I bought 2 plants of a type that is known to thrive in my area, as a backup in case the others have problems.

I will have to pay attention in the spring to ensure my goats and horses don't mow down sprouts before they can harden.  With over 150 acres here, I'm not really concerned about the bamboo spreading.

I'm a little late to this thread but wanted to share insight on buying smaller acreage.

In some regions the taxing authorities will consider the first buildable acre to be the homesite and tax it at a much higher rate than for the remaining acreage.  This rate captures the local govt's potential costs for providing services such as policing, schools, trash collection/dumps, and more to the purchaser.

Then the surrounding yard lot or pasture or woodland may be assigned various assessment rates based on perk-ability, agricultural suitability, and recreational opportunities (e.g. large creeks), as well as general proximity to either desirable (e.g. National Forest) or undesirable (e.g. quarries) features.

If you can demonstrate to the assessment office that a given property is only useful for, say, timbering or hunting, then they may wave the surcharge for the homesite assessment. Mitigating factors might include wetlands, steep or rocky terrain, or insufficient room to put in a septic field.

While I have never tried to make wine, much less anything stronger, I have associates who are very skilled in the art of distilling.

After one productive pawpaw season they tried turning the fruit into something they could store in a jar. It was, to the palate of all tasters, completely unfit for human consumption.

If there's ever another hand sanitizer shortage, they may be able to pawn the rest off on somebody.

That said, I started a couple of small groves about 20 years ago and forgot about them when they appeared to amount to nothing. Then 8 years ago I was kayaking past them on the creek and realized they had made a lot of strong babies.  I don't remember the name of the cultivar but it doesn't have the funny aftertaste of the wild ones and it hasn't given me any digestive upset. I only eat them fresh.

Please keep updating us on your journey, Eli. I'm about 30 minutes from you in Craig County, on some acreage I'd like to get productive and resilient to increasing climate change.   Perhaps we can meet some time and go through some ideas for our properties.  Best wishes to you!

Dried mullein leaves are quite brittle...wiping anything with them is going to result in a handful of fuzzy mulch.

Does anyone have thoughts about which seeds need to be scarified or otherwise pretreated to produce the best germination rates?

I recall this was an issue with ginseng seeds.

stephen lowe wrote: I was pacing the field trying to think of what weeds we could call greens or tea'!

I hear you-- I'm 16 miles from town, so if I'm cooking and don't have everything in the recipe, I start scavenging outside.
I'm not a huge fan of raw radishes but am intrigued enough to try the seed pods now.  I love the tops in cream soups.  And last year I started roasting the roots, which mellowed them.  Delicious, like pale pink, very juicy turnips.  Could make customers out of a whole new base!

Nice to meet you--wish you were closer and we'd surely be able to share time on some good projects. What's your interest in the horses?  I breed to race...love my Thoroughbreds

Joseph, some of my squash continued producing one year well beyond the point where I'd finished harvesting.   I don't recall the types I'd planted that time--some summer, some winter. Anyway, some matured and spilled ripe seed into the soil. The next year I was excited about these volunteers, but what the produced was hard and inedible --almost like gourds.  

I find that volunteer tomatoes seem to revert to tiny, intensely flavorful fruits I really treasure. Corn that field - crosses results in tough kernels with little sugar.  And saved lettuce seeds vary widely--the mescluns seem to reproduce truest to the parents.

The safest method is to keep different members of the same families far enough apart to eliminate wind and most bee cross-pollination...no easy task.

If you have deer in the area, they'll find your apple trees, wait for each apple to fall, and then paw through (and demolish) whatever you've planted til they locate each apple.

I suggest a pack of beagles for ground cover.