Ryan ElSmith

s. lowe wrote:I'm not 100% sure what "fish aminos" means...

To be honest, I'm not sure either.  It was gifted to me and Im unable to ask the person who made it.  It may be a fish emulsion + molasses.  

I'll give the Kelp + fish fertilizer a go.  If I am mixing both of them together, should I cut back their concentrations compared to if I were applying them individually?  As in, if I normally would spray 1 tbsp kelp/gallon or 1 tbsp fish/gallon, when I spray them both at the same time, should I do 1 tbsp kelp + 1 tbsp fish in one gallon of water, or should I cut back on the concentrations?  

I just got a jar of fish amino fertilizer and will be applying it as a foliar spray to my fruit trees, berry bushes, and vegetables at a rate of 1 tbsp/gallon. Im am going to be applying it to a bunch of different trees, including apples, stone fruit, pawpaws, elders, currants, gooseberries, persimmons, honeyberries, pears, hazels, chestnuts, walnuts, and more.

First up, are there any cases in which applying fish aminos could be harmful to tree and shrub fruit crops?  Are there any trees which might become more susceptible to disease after it is applied?  When in a plant's growing season is it most useful to apply fish fertilizer?

What about veggies?  Should I steer clear of lettuce or other edible leaves?  Are there any veggies which don't do well with added fish fertilizer as a foliar spray?

Any other first hand tips?

Thanks!

Wow, such a lovely surprise to get the seeds!!  Thanks so much, Violet!  Would you like any tulsi or calendula seeds?

Does anyone have experience growing cultivars of seaberries?  The seaberries I was just looking at actually cost $25 - $30 per!  That seems crazy to me.  Im curious if they are really that much more productive and tasty.

Are seaberry cultivars worth the effort/cost it takes to get them?  Are their berries that much bigger and tastier?  On one hand, special culticars cost from about $20 a piece online whereas seedlings can be bought as a bundle or even grown for from seed for free.  On the other hand, I want high quality genetics for all of my plants, and if the genetics are low quality, I wouldnt want to bother.    

I plan to plant a bunch of seaberry bushes in the near future.  I could probably fbuy a bundle of 20 seaberry seedlings for the price of a couple individuals of known cultivars.  If I decide to buy some cultivars, I would have to buy them, let them grow until I could determine their sex, stool layer them, and then finally plant them.  Is it worth it?


If anyone has any seaberries that are stool layered and ready to transplant plant, I would trade them for some elderberry or black/red currant cuttings.  
 

Do you label trees individually in the forest garden?  Do you keep a working map?  A dedicated notebook?  Do you use excel?

We are still establishing my forest garden, about 4 years in.  Currently, I have everything split between being stored in my head, in scattered notes, emails, slack, etc, but I would like to consolidate my notes and improve my record keeping so that in 20 years, we can still know the genetic lineage of our persimmons, pawpaws, honeyberries, etc.  

Bonus points if your response includes photos!!

Is Lovage one of those herbs, like comfrey, for which if you try to divide it or harvest the root, it is impossible to remove all the root fragments and it sprouts back even more vigorously?

EDIT:

Whoa there!  An hour after I posted the message below, I realized that the page I linked to was funded by the Asphalt Education Partnership, which is a BIAS SOURCE!  I revoke my statements below!

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http://www.beyondroads.com/visual_assets/RAP_Leachability_Study.PDF

I skimmed this study titled "Leaching Characteristics of Asphalt Road Waste" and found out that the leaching hydrocarbons are actually less of a concern than Lead, although lead wasn't very common either.  Older roads that were used while lead was still a gasoline additive were shown to have higher levels of Lead.  This means the heavy metals came from the vehicles and the older the road, the more likely it is to contain heavy metals.

Given that I know the road where this asphalt came from is a rural, quiet country road with very little traffic, I am not very concerned about it's lead content.  I still dont like that this is the soil at the bottom of the raised beds, but I will continue to use it as planned.  I'll sift out the larger chunks as I cover the wood in the bottom of the raised beds and then top it with another 10" of nice topsoil mixed with composted manure.

Greg, that makes a lot of sense.  I didn’t explain this in the original post for the sake of keeping at simple as possible, but I am doing modified hugelculture, burying about 6-8” of wood as I turn the soil a shovels depth below the raised beds.  



Does anyone know if people who rip out asphalt and plant gardens underneath worry about toxins from the asphalt?

Where I live the county cleans out the topsoil that washes into the ditches on the sides of the dirt roads every year and people like to use that  for grading around their house.  A few years ago, my parents had them dump some topsoil in their lawn to flatten it out a bit (not what I would have done, but wasn’t my call.) Unfortunately, the soil they brought came from the sides of the asphalt country roads, not the dirt roads, and it was pretty sandy, mixed with bits of gravel and small pieces of asphalt.  Given that they had a mountain of soil on their lawn and didn’t want to deal with finding someone to pick it up and haul it away,  they used it for the grading anyway. Just recently, I built some raised beds for them where they had the grading done.  However I am now realizing that the soil under the raised beds has more asphalt than I thought and I am concerned about the toxins being in the soil and it getting into their annual veggies.  The raised beds are 12” high.  As I was building them, I also dug a shovels depth lower to loosen the soil and give more room for the roots to grow.  Now, I’m second guessing myself, thinking maybe I should sacrifice root space, put down a root barrier, and just build up above the asphalt-laden soil.  However, lots of people tear up asphalt and plant underneath, and I found this thread saying asphalt isn’t water soluble. https://permies.com/t/13571/Safety-planting-asphalt Do you think I should be concerned about the asphalt pieces below the raised beds?  I am open to doing soil tests, but I dont know what to be looking for at this point.