Ray Sauder

I firmly straddle the fence on this topic.  I have a very large boulevard with 42 different flowering weeds growing along with grass.  (I have larger wheels and lowered wheel mounts to get a 1 foot high cut to showcase the flowers.)  The dandelions are awesome - beautiful yellow flowers, dynamic accumulators, shelter for little grass seedlings under their leaves,  dew collectors, survive the summer drought, etc.  They help other plants right up to the time when THEY KILL THEM DEAD and take over the kingdom!

So I compromise and let them live 1 full year.  Each spring before the flowers turn to seed, I dig up ALL dandelions, getting the whole root, and chopping the plants fine for fertilizer.  At the same time I plant a spring bulb into the hole left by the tap root and pay attention to everything else growing in my wildflower lawn.  I have thousands and thousands of scilla, siberian squill, snow drops, grape hyacinths, crocus, star of bethlehem, etc. etc. finished blooming and some needing to be transplanted, having roamed too far from home.   The other plants blooming along with the dandelions are thousands and thousands of violets, and dandelions are one of only a few seeds that can successfully take root among the violets.  I have other plants among the violets but they need my assistance to grow there.  Did I mention dandelions are low maintenance?  They need no help arriving; only help to keep moving along and leave....

This might seem like a lot of work but there is a surprising thing about dandelion seeds.  Unlike other nasties that can survive 50 years to plague future owners, dandelion seeds last only a year or two.  So keeping a sort of dandelion-free lawn is pretty easy.  

I'll give you another bit of information you will never see anywhere else.  It would be nice to have a plant which is allopathic to dandelions, meaning it will kill them or at least not allow new seedlings to sprout.  There is one! - autumn hawkbit.  O.K. it looks like a dandelion so average observers might think I actually do have dandelions.  But the hawkbits are a kinder, gentler version.  The flowers are smaller, with many on one stalk.  They prevent even their own seed from sprouting so they spread out nicely rather than hogging all the space in one spot.  And they bloom in the heat of late summer when not much else is trying very hard.  If there is one drawback its that the flower stalks are pretty tall and leggy.  Now that my wanted weeds are well established, it is time to shorten the lawn height and with that I will encourage my hawkbits to evolve locally to bloom on shorter stalks.

I'm slowly building a database on weeds: for each one...why you want it, what good it does, how it gets along with others, what is its superpower, and most importantly, what is its kryptonite in case you want to get rid of it....

Ray Sauder

Barbara:  Fruit flies are not something you can keep out.  The eggs are already on banana peels for sure and lots of other fruit as well.  So they hatch, grow, and turn into flies very quickly in the bin.   We keep 4 or 5 different fruit kinds on the counter at all times.  Some to ripen and some because my wife does not like them cold from the fridge.  We prefer having all the fruit flies in one place in the bin rather than hovering about all the fruit.  They will prefer going to the rotting stuff.

This also makes them easy to control.  Not eliminate, but control.  We keep our house at 65 degrees F so it is only a problem in July and August when the house gets warmer.  When the kitchen bin is full there will be quite a lot of fruit flies settled on top.  Before I disturb it, I spray a very tiny shot of Raid in the middle.  Then I take out a small piece of rotted banana peel and set it aside.  I empty the bin, put a quarter sheet of newspaper on the bottom and place the 'set aside'  banana peel in the bottom middle.  Any fruit flies that escaped during the bin disturbance will come back to this piece and a bit later I spray this piece directly with a tiny shot of Raid.  It seems to kill the eggs laid as well as the flies because there is little problem for the next 2 days....one can of Raid lasts 2 summers....

Ray

Barbara:  Every kitchen compost bin I have ever seen has a tight lid.  That seems reasonable but it does not work well because food quickly decays anaerobically and smells terrible.  A bin with no lid dries out better, decays aerobically and does not smell bad.  My rule for the family is keep the compost dry.  I am compost/digesting for 25 years with a family from 5 to 10 members.  This means that bones, meat, egg shells, everything goes in there.  To keep it dry, a piece of newspaper is put on the bottom, dry scraps such as mouldy bread are set aside in a separate pot to start the new batch when the bin is emptied, soups, gravy, spoiled yogurt, etc. are poured directly into the outside compost/digester.  Of course that means extra water has to be added to the compost/digester.  Which I did for 24 years, but I am now running the outdoor vessel lidless as well.  Instead of a tight lid, I have a wire mesh lid that lifts with one finger and the vessel is located under a shed roof eave which thoroughly soaks the contents every time it rains....

Other advantages of a no lid kitchen bin: 1) it is very easy to toss a banana peel, apple core, etc. into the bin.
2)  Any beautiful ceramic pot, flower pot, etc. can be cheaply obtained at a thrift shop.  One the right size and decor for your kitchen can easily be found.  Right now we are using a very large, very old ceramic potty!  3) If it is dry, it does not even need to be washed after emptying.   4) Inquisitive minds will enjoy watching the always changing panorama of mold and decay going on.....O.K. that's just me; maybe that is the rationale behind having a lid....

Ray Sauder

I have a wide sandy boulevard in direct sunlight most of the day.  I tried for 35 years without any success to grow lawn here.  No amount of watering or choice of grass type made any difference.  It had to be a cold-hardy grass for 4 foot deep frost in the winter and also survive summer heat waves.  It had to endure sometimes very wet spring or fall seasons and 4 week long hot droughts.  When I retired, I decided to solve the problem by looking to weeds as my solution.

First I tried white clover, said to be drought resistant.  It certainly outperformed grass; took longer to die but was just as dead!  Then I stumbled on bird's foot trefoil.  It really was drought tolerant and had beautiful yellow flowers as a bonus.  Creeping buttercups followed, then autumn hawkbit, chicory with blue flowers, yarrow with dark pink flowers, hedge bindweed with 30 foot roots and huge pink morning glory flowers, several kinds of daisies, chamomile, knapweed, yellow clover, red clover, alfalfa, Indian strawberries, cinquefoil, violets, and a lot of vetch and so on.  All beautiful but still stuff died if I didn't water when the drought came early before enough foliage had grown to shade the ground.

It became clear early on that just picking drought resistant plants was not enough - I was going to have to change the ground from sand to soil.  Even before I started with the weeds I had started mulching all my leaves from 3 large maple trees on to this boulevard every fall.  Rather than just raking them onto the road and letting the city take them.  But the soil was improving only very little.  Then I read an article that said:  "whatever amount of organic material you think you might need to change sand into soil; well, you need 100 times that amount!"  That was a game changer in my efforts.  I started collecting all the neighbor's leaves off the road with my mulching lawnmower and saving them in huge plastic bags to use all through the following spring and summer.  I started composting all the leaves falling on a 10 car parking lot next door and adding that compost to my boulevard.  I figured 1 inch of compost was maybe equivalent to 5 inches of mulched leaves.  In the spring when everyone else was raking their lawns clean, I was adding a layer of shredded leaves every couple of weeks or as fast as they disappeared.  I have a lot of hedges and all the trimmings were mixed with leaves and strewn on the boulevard.  When my maples dropped their keys I scooped up as many as I easily could and, yup, on to the boulevard they went.  Later, the row of elms across the street shed an enormous quantity of elm keys/seeds.  I shovelled them every day for a week and a half off the road and on to my boulevard.  

The same article also said that as much foliage as possible above ground and as much root growth as possible below ground was also important.  So now I have a 3 foot high jungle of wildflowers and rapidly improving soil.  And amazingly, when I part the foliage and look at the ground, it is wet and the grass is green and lush down there.....

Ray

There is a ton of good info in this thread....and most of it should be tested to see if it helps an individual case.  But I am going to throw out a completely different idea:  Years ago I had a 29 year old customer who came in every week and was often suffering from symptoms of Crohns.  He hated to take the medications his doctor was insisting on but his flare-ups were just too severe if he didn't.  I told him about a procedure I had read about where Crohn's patients were given whip worms (from pigs and harmless to humans) to teach the immune system to leave human tissue alone but attack foreign tissue.  By sheer co-incidence his sister was a pig pathologist in a nearby agricultural school and had access to such a thing.  But she was aghast at the idea and flatly refused.  He then moved away and I did not see him for 5 years.  He always said he watched his diet very carefully but after reading these posts in this thread, I'm not sure the diet advise he was getting from his doctor was necessarily the best.    Five years later he walked into my store again and told me his Crohn's was gone and he had fantastic health.  Of course I was immensely curious and asked him what had cured him.  His reply: "I haven't washed my hands since I last saw you and I lick public doorknobs!  I keep my immune system so busy it leaves me alone!"

Razer

Preliminary observations on biochar:
Two years ago in the spring, I re-seeded several bare patches in several lawns.  I made a fine mulch of shredded leaves, compost, and in some cases biochar to cover the seeds and keep the moisture in while they germinated.  The areas of biochar germinated and grew very quickly - twice as fast as other areas.  The mulch cover worked so good I tried to re-seed more areas in the summer but this time total disaster.  The dark biochar had warmed the soil and speeded up growth in the spring but made the soil way too hot in the summer.  In fact the best seeded new growth area soon died when the heat and drought hit early.

In another area of well-established lawn, I put biochar  (soaked in urine) in 3 separate one foot square patches.  The grass here was kept high enough to hide the biochar from the sun and those 3 patches grew taller and greener than the rest of the lawn for most of the summer.  The following summer I could not see any difference in those patches from the rest of the lawn....

Nancy, if you are making raised beds, you have the opportunity to amend the soil before you plant anything.  I believe lots of compost and/or manure would address problems of acidity, wetness, and drainage better than charcoal.  But even without proof of helping, I would also add charcoal to the mix.  It should be "charged" with nitrogen first.  Use charcoal on the surface only if you need more heat retained from the sun or have high foliage to cover it....

Ray

No one has mentioned roasting pans.  I had 2 old ones different sizes just used for storing things in.  I believe roasting pans are enamel (glass) on steel and they work very well.  I use them in a cast iron stove and just let them cool when the fire goes out so they don't warp.  The lid does not have to be fastened down;  the weight keeps it down enough so flames or oxygen cannot get in but expanding gasses lift it enough to have a ring of burning gas all around the pan.  The larger one I tie together with string just to get it through the too small opening and set in on the wood laid out level ready to burn.  Roasting pans have a high molded lid  and I fill the pan heaping high before setting on the lid.

Yesterday I did a pan full of old walnuts and eaten pine cones cleaned out of a squirrel infested shed.  They both made very nice biochar.  All second hand shops have fairly cheap roasting pans but they also throw out many that are too dirty or scratched to sell...

Ray

Many years ago I attempted to bring fresh air down an unused flue of a 2 flue chimney.  The chimney was 40 feet high in the center of the building and the used flue was around 150 degrees warm.   It was just about impossible....

Now "hot" and "cold" are relative and I have been intrigued by the wofati concept of digging a trench to let the "cold" floor air fall down and push up the "warm" deep trench air.  I would love to  know what actually happened in that situation.  Assuming the "cold" floor air was anywhere from 32 degrees to 0 degrees F. and the year round temperature below 4 feet was 40 degrees F., here are my guesses:
1)  At 32 degrees; with equal volume air in the trench and in the wofati, maybe 1 or 2 degrees warmer....
2)  At say 24 degrees or lower; probably no measurable effect....

Please someone who did this; let us know!

Razer

"We use this exact same one. We keep it on the kitchen counter, and we empty it every morning for the chickens. The inside smells bad, when opening it, but when closed, no smell. I don't rinse it out every day, but I do about once a week. And maybe every two months I actually wash it.
It's really zero hassle, zero smell when closed. Almost every day we fill it full."

If the inside smells bad when opening and/or emptying it......well, don't you have to open it multiple times all day long to add stuff like a banana peel or whatever?  Part of the reason we don't like a lid is the convenience of tossing stuff in with just one hand all day long and for several days without it smelling.

Razer