Frederik Grøn Schack

Nice to hear that you have good reviews, that must be because you bring some value to the customers and I think that's core in today's world of reviews.

A thing I've stumbled upon, is that the amount of published books has sky-rocketed since the world war (just about quintupled) and the amount of people reading is in decline. A study even found that half of all Americans aren't able to read a 7th grade book. So it's a tough competition for a declining market.

Mihai Ilie wrote:

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:The flowers smell wonderful and my honey bees are intermittently fond of them. They make a wonderful clear as water honey that does not crystallize. Unfortunately, it is considered invasive in my county [Portage County, WI.]: They are extremely prolific and can colonize any yard. Removing them is arduous work: They make many suckers. I'd love to have more in reach of my bees.

I have a hectare and a half (3 acres?) Of black locust on tthe top of a high hill in Romania.It is such an imporfant tree for bees that we probably have more black locusts in Romania then all the black locusts in USA.
In Romania is verry common to find black locust honey for sale at every beekeper shop.Its cristal clear and has the black locust flowers aroma and its also verry sweet because it contains mainly fructose wich is sweeter than glucose and sucrose.
The black locust honey its the most important feature of this tree here and we use ittt ssometimess as fence posts or for fuel wood but rarely since we have otther better trees to make fire.
We only plant it for honey production .

As far as I remember, they honey from black locust is sold as acacia honey, even though the tree is not an acacia.

I'm just a little conflicted, because what I've learned so far about permaculture is to find natural solutions. Observing and adapting to nature, instead of trying to control nature. I'm affraid that I'm going to end up in a fight with nature, instead of a symbiosis with nature.

I need to at least try to find a way that will work, then I'll have to adapt what I eat, so I'll eat what's possible to grow in a permaculture way.

Ultimately I'll have to eat the birds that eat my vegetables :D

Before you get too deep into it, try to look at www.pfaf.org :-)

There are several databases around the Internet, I also like Daves Garden www.davesgarden.com.

I'm personally building an Access database for the plants I'm particularily interrested in, but it's not very user friendly to say the lesat, but does what I need. If you are interrested, then I can send you a copy.

I think it's a good idea with some sacrificial pants Tereza, do you have experience with onion as a pest repellant? I think of planting them around the patches I make.

Sounds like a dog or two should be fine :-) I'll try that before spending on fencing.

Thanks for the feedback Dan.

Yes, I knew about theft from my travels in South America, but that didn't scare me :) But I had never imagined people stealing fruit trees, cutted plastic tubes, musrooms and wood :D The Uruguayans are extremely laid back, lazy, smiling, friendly and useless workers. Considering the laziness of the police, it's a miracle that this is not a wild west here, I think they are too lazy to be agressive :D Oh, yeah, there is of course always the occasional person that is hunting from a vehicle besides our small local police station (comisaria)(we've seen it three times in two months), but no police officer ever objected.

We are currently looking for a German Shepard, but the property is about 250 meters long and we live in one end and would like to grow the fruit trees at the other end. The plan is to build a cob house at the other end of the property, as it's a much better location, so we would like to start the fruit trees now, so they can grow while we build.

I should maybe take the dog for a daily walk along the fence, then it will maybe develop a territorial understanding and hopefully detect intruders :)

The soil is heavy in clay at the end we're staying at now and I even have a place where water passes in the heavy rains, which has something like pure clay. The other end of the property has better soil, is better for foundation, is located higher, close to a lovely view to an old quary (lake). The location where we plan to build the house, seemingly has a very good mix for a cob-house a meter down. I consider to make a small lake where a dig up this material and pad it with the clay from the clay deposit and make another lake at the clay deposit. I know, I need a mini-digger and a dumper and they need to be secured :)

I'm all into solutions, I know they are there, so I'm not affraid and I have more of a tendency to giving up too late. But it's always nice to get inspiration from others.

Thanks :)

Hi Permies!

I'm a Dane that moved with my family to Uruguay, to start a permaculture living. We bought a piece of land, where I've been restoring a primitive house. Two months ago, we finally moved onto our land.

It's an extreme change to move from rainy Denmark to sunny Uruguay, I love heat and sun, but I learned that you can't grow most vegetables in direct sun here. So now I adapted my strategy and cleared some ground under some trees (without turning the soil) that is providing a partial shadow. I put some seedlings and some seeds in the ground. From this a learned that the seedlings did fine, but someone ate all the seeds. I tried to put some lemon and orange seeds, that I couldn't imagine that anybody ate and put them in a bit deeper trench, which I covered, two days later the trenches was dug up and no seeds left. I saw that the birds were very active in my new kitchen garden and figured that they were probably eating both my seeds and some insects. So I searched the Internet and found an interesting tip about putting fishing line over the row of seeds, which should scare away the birds. Well, not these birds, they hop around happily between the fishing lines, but so far they didn't dig up the seeds. So that's where I'm at now.

I also made a small experiment with mulching around some of the seedlings, that had grown fine. The seedlings that was mulched was eaten the next day, the rest of the seedlings were fine. So I think I learned something very useful here, the trees not only provides partial shadow, but also a perfect resting place for birds with a gorgeous view to the insect buffet on the cleared ground. This is basically a B&B for birds or AirBnB if you will :D Of course, as soon as I mulched, the insects could hide in the mulch and their lunch wouldn't be disturbed by the birds.

I need to mulch around my plants to keep the moisture in the ground, as it's not raining very often and I'm currently watering almost daily to keep the clay soil moist. Clay is another reason why I need to mulch, I need to get organic matter into the ground. The mulch would also be helpful to keep other vegetation down. So I'm considering to keep a fringe around the kitchen garden, free from vegetation, so the birds can spot the insects before they get to the vegetables. In this way, I'll maybe have a chance to mulch around my vegetables.... Any other ideas on this?

Another issue is that we tried to start some fruit trees and they grew fine, until somebody stole them, first a couple, then a couple more and then another one. Yes, they steal anything here in Uruguay, because there are no consequence, the police is lenient to say the least. So that's another thing we need to figure out how to handle. It seems that the surveillance system we put up around the house, keeps them away from the immediate vicinity of the house. But we can't and don't want to cover 2 hectare with cameras.

I hope that somebody can learn something from this post and hopefully somebody will have some suggestions / knowledge that we can use in our particular situation.

Best regards,
Frederik