Cj Costa

greg mosser wrote:that one’s definitely a chenopodium. in my area i’d call it lambsquarter, Chenopodium album. less sure of species for your area…

thank you.. I though it was goosefoot  I just want to make sure it was edible.

Oh I do love trying to figure out plants.
I think I know what this is. But I wanted a second opinion.

Please let me know what you think it is.... Thanks

Honey over maple any day.

Several reasons:
-Great for the fruit pollination
-Has a bunch of healthy effects including helping allergies
-It can be stored a long time
-and now it is going to be so easy for me to harvest honey from the flow frames. I found this place on ebay https://www.ebay.com/str/increasable7
I bought 4 flow hives to start for honey harvesting.   I didn't want the mess of harvesting the honey and bugging the bees or dealing with all the equipment cleanup after, so I'm trying this out this year.
So far, everything looks great, quality looks good and they came quickly.   There are lots of people using these for easy honey harvesting including some using tubes to drain directly into buckets, so easy!
It took me a long time to find a place that wasn't so darn expensive. Hope this help you all out too. I can't wait to taste the honey.
I will let everyone know how it works out at the end of the year. I'm going to compare it to the regular frames hives I have too. This will be interesting!

Wow that is very very nice of you to get someone started.
I check out your website and it is fantastic.. The pricing is very reasonable too. I hope you do well
I will send the link to my friends and family. Good luck and if you ever want to sell organic seeds let me know. I have lots in bulk that I have saved over the years.
I like helping small business.
thanks
and have a wonderful Christmas

Derek Carter wrote:Hey everyone I wanted to announce a $1000 Food Forest Giveaway I'm lunching on my nursery website!

https://foodforestnursery.com/food-forest-giveaway/

Enter by December 24th to win a $1000 store credit towards a Food Forest bundle. Huge selection of fruit and nut trees, berries, and vines. No purchase required

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Beadsapp

I design glass lampwork beads with art melted on the bead. I have been designing for about 25 years.
I do custom dog, birds , cat beads and pendants. I love design ones with all kinds of animals.

I call it wearable art  :)

do check out my store there is hundreds of  and jewelry there.  Not even all the things I have. Just not enough time in a day to put everything up.
If anyone wants bead supplies I owned a beads store for 13 years so I have tools, beads and finding just ask....

I wanted to share some  Custom Glass dog beads I made and some glass pens.. all the beads are made out of glass. melted at 2000 degrees and kiln annealed for strength..
Please let me know what you think.

I was one of those people that just though you dig a hole put some good soil in and the tree would grow.. I was wrong in so many levels. I lot some trees and some manage to survive. At the beginning it was hard to find the right info from the right people. It was more let me try this and see if it works. Now I look more to nature to tell me. However it is really really tough to find a forest in the desert..
What I want to do is just not here. They are a few people that have grow food forest in Phoenix so I know I can do it. It is just getting the soil ready that is very very tough here. I'm welcome your expert advice. I'm going to be planting in January- febuary so I'm trying to get the grow ready for a crazy amount of trees and berries.
I was thinking, of old manure, compost, topsoil mix with lime and amendments and plant dakion radish and peas as a cover crop to great the soil nice. what do you think?

Now on finding people that know what they are doing.. yeah that is a issue because as a nation we have gone so far away from nature that not alot of people know how to grow there own food. I still have problems myself in how long to water my garden and trees.. it is tough our here when it reaches 120..
I have come across alot of people who want to grow stuff but don't have a time or money too. but they do have the time and money for the next new I phone or computer.. Right but that not going to feed you.




Just as a small example, you will constantly read "prepare the soil one year in advance with compost, lime, other amendments and cover crops," yet how many people just show up the day of and dig a hole straight into sod/old pasture? Have you ever seen how long it takes trees from the edge of pastures that are self seeded to struggle for many years against heavy sod growth before transitioning to a woody ecosystem, besides things like willow, aspen, blackberries etc.? It will be decades possibly before you get a tree of any height when things are left to their own on degraded pastureland, possibly never depending on the distance to bedrock/water table/a million other factors. And these are native trees, not fruit and nut trees with even higher requirements. People love to go on theoretically about ecosystems and how land regeneration functions, has anyone actually ever looked at it, or does everyone just read the same books that give a nice fairy tale picture of how land goes from pasture to scrubland to forest, completely ignoring what actual reality looks like?

I have seen people do really dumb things when planting trees. Mixing half clay with half fresh manure and soaking the roots in this mixture, shoving all the roots down into a hole in a bunch and not compressing the ground, wrong height in the ground, planting trees in wet spots, planting too old of stock, planting potted plants that are rootbound... there is an inumerable number of errors an unskilled person can do when planting something. Not to mention somehow people seem to think a degraded pasture that can hardly grow grass will somehow magically feed a conventionally grown 3 year old fruit tree.

Wow lots of good info here.

I started to plant my food forest about 3 years ago. I started off as a test to see if things would grow in the desert.
I lost some trees but most survived to my amazement. in zone 10 I have lots of grapes,figs, mulberries, pom,lemon, orange, barbatous cherry, dulce, moringa, jujube. along with lost of herbs.

I did have a lot of set backs such as high wind and no water..
It is tough to get a true forest to get going in a area that gets about 4 good rains a year
I had some trees that just got burnt. It got up to 120
I also learned that I spaces the tree to far away from each other and I will plant much closer this time

So here is my take away.
1. I'm going to start a new food forest in zone 9 land
2. I'm going to build a netted structor with shade about 20% and help with the wind
3. I'm going to build swale and flood them with well water.
4. want to try to have more tropical trees such as papaya, mango and some berries.
5. I'm also thinking of a misting system ( at the beginning to get them to live..)
6. I'm also going to use way more mulch and compost at the beginning then I did.
7. plant the tree closer together and have more berries.


I figure if I baby the food forest a few years then I can take off the netting and it will grow out perfectly.. well
that is my theory anyway
This is the list of trees and plants I'm going to start off with all the plants are for zone 9 growing
Persimmon
paw paw
pluerry
figs
lemon
orange
dulce
loquat
cherry tree
peach
necturine
apricot
plum
banana
apple
mango
papaya
blueberries
blackberries
raspberries
goose berries
boysenberry
kiwi
grapes
draonfruit
nopal
lemon grass
comfry
ginger

I'm going to start off with a 20' x 50' hoop house with 50mesh netting and add on if I need space. all the sensitive plant are in and the heat tolerant plant can be out side of it.

If you have any in put love to here it. I will post pictures when we get started on the build. right now we are going to have someone flatten the land out for us to get started on a  new adventure.
this is going to be fun.

just a note I already have pom, nopals cactus, dragonfruit, lemongrass, rosemary, mint and a full garden growing at this new location and they are all doing amazing.

I thin food forest can work anywhere but you have to plant native trees and work with the weather. in cold weather maybe a underground green house and for hot weather a shade structure. If your in the tropics where is rains a lot you can plant alot more.

Silver, gold and cash
I also do have trade items such as
Seeds, jewelry, batteries, tools, water and food
also knowledge.( if you know how to do something that is a trade too.)

You never know money isn't going to be worth as much as stuff people need to live.
If they can't get it at the stores then what?

I also have planted many fruit trees so I have a year round food source.

you can trade anything if you have chickens to can trade eggs with neighbors.
Think olden days when everyone traded for things people need.
I find if you figure out what people are going to need you will make out better then even having money..

What great ideas in this thread..

We just had a major wind storm and it knocked out 40 electric poles and 22000 people electricity.  We didn't have power for 2 days. now normaly it wouldn't be too bad but I live in a area that it hits 117 in the summer. So many people had to leave there homes to go to cooling stations.

We didn't because I put in a whole house generator a year ago. We had ac and power for the freezers and fridge for the whole time.  We put the generator on for 1 hour in the morning , 2 hours at 12 and 1 hour at 5 and 2 hours at 8  both days and the house stayed at 79 for the whole time. I spent about $50 on gas  so my family didn't have to leave and our food wouldn't defrost.

We also have solar grid tie but we are looking into upgrading to a non grid tie system.

As a prep we do keep 6  6 gallon water totes filled
the pantry full of can and dried food
a first ad kit
losts of herbs and essential oils for pretty much anything
we also have wood for a fire place if it is in the winter time
we also find having a 2nd location is a plus even if it is just land that has power you can always have a rv and live in it for the time. We don't have a rv but thinking of getting one.
as a prep.

thanks for the info..