Lance Mellon

What's y'all's opinion on what strength rooting hormone to use for roses? Hormex offers #1, #3, #8 and #16. Wouldn't it make sense to use the strongest? I root many varieties. Now I use #3 and get pretty good results with 50% of varieties but some are stubborn. What does it hurt to go full strength? Thanks

Timothy Norton wrote:Instead of doing a breakdown poll, I figure I will start with a simple question. Do you compost at home?

[applepoll]

Feel free to discuss the particulars below.

I dig a hole and put all the compost materials right in the hole right in the garden cover it over. Take about a 2-ft deep hole about two or three feet wide. All the old corn stalks and scraps from the previous year or put down into this hole. This includes weeds, leaf mole, fresh leaves, dead gophers, pieces of wood, anything. Just bury it all around the garden. Cover it over with a foot to 2 ft of dirt. You can rake your garden all around and get it smooth and ready to plan. If you get more garden trash dig another hole. Dig holes around two feet apart all around fill it all with the trash cover it over and you're ready to plant. The natives in the Brazilian rainforest have been doing this for thousands of years. It's similar to Hugo culture. Just bury the trash in the garden and when I say trash I'm talking about scraps from the previous year. Cover it over plant your seeds and water. The leaves and weeds that are down in those holes in your garden will rot amazingly quickly. Happy gardening

Greenwood in the wood stove doesn't do too well. Seasoned wood that's not green but is outside in the snow works quite well though. If it's damp on the outside it only goesl so far to the center of the wood. Good hardwood can be split in the middle of a snowstorm out the back door laid up against the house. Bring it in and once you throw it in a hot fire it will quickly be dry. I have gone many years without a woodshed in Pennsylvania and had a nice hot fire all night long in my airtight stove. Yes I let it damp down all night long and started up in the morning. The idea is to start one fire a winter and it will burn till the 1st of spring. And that is with sometimes wet or snowy (but not green) wood. Just knock off the snow and throw it in the fire and it will be completely dry seasoned wood if that's what you started with when you were stocking up your winter supply in the late summer and fall. This is from many years of experience of heating with only wood.

The stuff is plastic and polluting and does not work, is unsightly, expensive. Horrible stuff-ought to be banned. I am a professional gardener in San Francisco and I am always ripping it out. Stay away! :-)

I really like my Hubertus automatic knives from Germany. I have one that's made out of staghorn and another out of rosewood but my favorite is a mother of pearl handled switch blade. These are very high quality pricey knives. So what I really use for everyday work is my Opinel #8 carbon steel beech handled knife but for show or other you can't beat the Hubertus.

I give this knife a 10 out of 10. I got my first Opinel number 8 carbon French peasant knife as we called them back then in about  1972. It was given to me by Louie on his 3,000 acre farm that I was living at up in North western Pennsylvania. We use these knives for everything. Back then we mainly ate deer meat during the winter of 70. We had a hind quarter hanging on front porch of the house that we built. It was called Frank's cabin and we built the whole house for $5. Mainly the cost of some used windows and a busted up wood cook stove. We've got most of the wood on our sawmill and plus there were donated items as well. It was a beautiful little cabin. I don't know what happened to that knife but years later I bought one at a flea market for $5. That was about 15 years ago and I still have it to this day. It's a beech handle number eight carbon steel. I've sharpened it many many times and it still looks straight and all together there. I lock the knife in place with this sliding lock that comes with a knife so many times that I wore it out. So I wrote Opinel in France and ask them to fix it since they offer a lifetime guarantee. But they refused. So I managed to slip the spring steel locking mechanism off and bent it and barely managed to slip it back on and now it works quite well at locking the blade. It's pretty essential if you're using it you don't want it to close it on yourself and cut yourself. I use the knife for just about everything. I'm a big gardener and I use it for weeding and for cutting strings to tie up my tomatoes or a thousand other uses. I always keep it in my right pocket. And being in the city it's good to be packing a knife. I have bought a few knives directly from Opinel now over the years as gifts and they even will engrave a name or slogan on the side of the knife so they make excellent gifts. I gave my daughter and grandson each one among other people's. The wooden handle is a real plus. That's what really makes the knife. Mine is made out of beech. If you get fancy woods the price goes way up. It used to be $17 but now $19 for a number eight size basic knife with beech or olive I think. If you want Ebony or other fancier woods or steels like Damascus etc the price goes way out. The company offers also all kinds of cutlery from French chef knives to fairly inexpensive pairing knives. They also manufacture wooden handled garden tools. Lately they've been making plastic handled knives. I can't believe they would go that route. But it's a growing business and it seems like they're doing quite well. I hope they don't forget about their roots though.

Go get yourself one of those old used metal and wood handled Foley food mill. You'll never need a blender again. If you're making blackberry jam cook your berries and sugar and put it through the fully food meal. If you're making cream of tomato soup cook your tomatoes put them through the fully food meal. Skins and seeds will be left behind everything else will be pressed through. It's much better than a blender which chops everything up in the little pieces. The Foley food mill presses it through. It's got a better texture.
Back on the commune in 1972 is where I learned about the Foley food mill. I am 71 years old and still use a Foley food mill. I actually have two of them. You can still buy the screw with the spring on it in case it gets lost on eBay. You can also buy the meals on eBay and Amazon. They are indestructible in the last a lifetime. They clean up quickly and there's nothing finer. No electricity just a hand crank on the top similar to those stainless steel ones pictured that are a modern take off which I'm sure work fine as well.

I have been building hugelkultur beds for many years (since the mid 70's) and even before I knew what they were called and before I even heard the word hugelkultur. I did remember reading in the wonderful book "1491" by Charles Mann where he describes the indigenous people in the Amazon digging 10 foot pits and throwing logs, compost and any kind of organic matter and covering it up this creating over eons huge expanses of ultra rich acres of land for their Brazil nuts, mangos and myriad fruit grown in uneven mixed non-rows. Hence the experts were fooled into thinking these discovered lands were untouched wilderness (and not fruit farms).
After building my house with recycled timber and boards from a 150 year old farm house given to me and disassembled over the winter of 1976 I found myself with loads of leftover hand hewn logs and boards. Taking the 3 bottom plow east and then west I had a ditch down through a thin soiled field. After laying down the wood scraps I plowed it shut and allowed it to rot.
Most of the time though I practice hugelkultur in smaller ways. Burying the contents of the compost bin,  scraps of wood from the wood shop, tomato vines from the summer along with the rotten poles-dig a pit and throw em in along with weeds, old mulch and anything that rots. As long as it's 6" below the soil you are good to go. It all rots eventually and your soil will come alive. The microbes will do the work-just add water and voila-bloomin super soil!

If you have wild blueberries grow and all over your yard and they're healthy looking it's an indication you have acid soil.