Greg Harness

Welcome Maddy!

I have been working my way through the back catalog of Paul Wheaton's Permaculture Podcasts, and I was listening -- just this very morning -- to these episodes:

Podcast 332 - Maddy Harland on Most Recent Issue of Permaculture Magazine Part 1

Podcast 333 - Maddy Harland on Most Recent Issue of Permaculture Magazine Part 2

It could be a soothing white noise. I’d be fine with it.

S Bengi wrote:Just lock them up for the week that you are away,
and setup automatic feeding/water and clean out the coop and laydown alot of carbon.

We usually have a farm-sitter come feed and water the animals when we are away. My ducks are new to the equation, and we haven't gone away since the ducks have been out in the run and gotten their own house to sleep in. I like the lock 'em up idea. I know I could get a farm-sitter to feed and water in the duck house. I think I'd have a really rough time getting anyone to come out daily at dawn and dusk to open and close the house. My ducks do go in their house at night, but usually I have to herd them. I'd worry that an automatic door on a light-sensitive timer would close without the ducks inside.

F Agricola wrote:We used the livers, fried in butter, with bacon, eggs, tomatoes and potatoes or 'bubble & squeak' for breakfast ... with buttered toast ... yum!

I will definitely have to try this.

Roy Hinkley wrote:Giblets and rice.  Mom made this regularly.
Clean hearts and gizzards. Cut to bite sized.  Fry with onion. Add enough water, bring to a boil and add rice.

I like all the suggestions for rice, including dirty rice. How does everyone like to cook their rice? I have an electric stove and I cook rice on the stovetop in an old Revere Ware sauce pan we got for our wedding thirty-some-odd years ago.

Tom Baker will always be my favorite, but I have a deep affection for the zaniness of Sylvester McCoy, especially when Ace accompanied him.

All of my soil is pretty compacted, but the paths in the garden are of course much worse than the soil in the raised beds. What suggestions do you have for cover crops for paths? I'm thinking about clover, but I'm open to any and all ideas. I'd love to plant something this fall that would grow in the spring. I'm in Idaho USA, USDA zone 7a. Average first frost is October 10th.

I'm looking for advice about growing cottonwoods from cuttings. What size cuttings do I use? Do I soak the cuttings or treat them in any other way? How deep do I plant them? Do I mulch around them? How much water would I give them? What time of year is right? I'm full of questions.

I'm digging up this old thread, wondering what Permies have tried and learned over the past five years. Suggestions for removing goathead so far are:

Harvesting for medicinal use (although I can't find specifics of what parts of the plant to use, how to use it, or why).

Pull it (but do you leave the taproot?).

Plant thyme or mint or sage as a competitor.

Obtain or attract puncture vine weevils.

Roundup??? I don't think so.

I wondering how a sheet mulch would work. I'm also wondering how harmful it is (other than the seeds that hurt when you step on them barefoot) to just leave it be while improving the soil.
What's worked for you? What hasn't?

Roy Hinkley wrote:Giblets and rice.  Mom made this regularly.
Clean hearts and gizzards. Cut to bite sized.  Fry with onion. Add enough water, bring to a boil and add rice.

This sounds wonderful and simple.