Emilia Andersson

I make illustrations and I just printed a new batch of notebooks with new designs. Permies might appreciate the chicken notebook - it's my personal favourite.

Marisa Lee wrote:I suppose people may think you're weird, but don't they already?

Marisa you made my afternoon!

Oooohhh you're in luck, there are SO many wonderful agroecologists on the Peninsula. (You'll probably get better results looking for the term agroecology rather than permaculture.) Here are some that I know, personal friends. Please approach them with respect and contact them with a mutually beneficial proposal (offering free labour/requesting a farming apprenticeship, subscribing to a veggie box, funding offer, finding out about a seed fair, buying services) to make good use of everyone's time, since these are busy and polite people.  
- [start with the letter after T in the alphabet here... I wasn't able to post the full name of this NGO since its first word, in Maya, is a pesky SMS abbreviation in English! ha!] Yits Kaan and Comerciando como Hermanos, agroecology and training/events centre in Mani, Yucatan run by religious people. Make an appointment in advance, otherwise only a couple of people will be around, in the office. Great place for holding events in "real world" conditions i.e. sleeping in hammocks and no air conditioning. Wonderful for focusing the mind on relevant questions. Delicious local cooking.
- UIMQRoo (Universidad Intercultural Maya de Quintana Roo) has a BA course in agroecology engineering, for extension workers basically, and they have lots of bright students and graduates and an integrated experimental garden with rabbits, tilapia, chickens and lots of plants for feed and food.
- The Xiu family farm in Mama, Yucatán. Pioneer agroecologists and melipona beekeepers, also running a fruit and vegetable CSA into Merida. Agroecology legends. https://maps.app.goo.gl/GyZ9FVUw5d1Db7aLA
-  [The letter that follows T in the alphabet here...] Yool Che in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo, an NGO with sterling work and a weekly tianguis.  
- A bunch of young people split from the above a few years ago and started their own group, Jóvenes de la Zona Maya, saving and selling heirloom seeds and honey.
- Misioneros AC in Maní, Yucatán. Heavy hitters. They're a community-based Maya organisation who have a small medicinal garden (and have friends who run a considerably bigger one, also with residential places for disabled or elderly people) and promote milpa, meliponas, seed saving, Maya culture and tradition and processing and selling some interesting products like banana flour.
- [The letter that follows T in the alphabet here...]  Yich Lu'um, Sanahcat, Yucatán. An NGO of very committed and driven agroecologists.
- The anti-GMO beekeepers in Campeche under Lady Pech, hardnosed advocacy work/defensa del territorio.
- A few years ago the government-sponsored programme Pies Ágiles sent out young agronomists to learn/support agroecology in lots of different parts of the Peninsula, they´ll have tips on great initiatives. The programme still runs but under a new name that I've forgotten. There's probably a list of initiatives.

Keep an eye out for the various seed fairs, Fiestas de Semillas, that take place in different villages starting in April-May. Wonderful places to pick up locally adapted maize seeds etc for your complete integrated milpa, chatting to farmers about how to grow them, and imbibe Maya culture.

I have to warn you to stay clear of Ka Kuxtal Much Meyaj in Campeche though. They were an excellent organisation until they suffered a palace coup by an unscrupulous leader in 2021 and haven't been the same since.

Followup local Indigenous wisdom for ricin uses, from a Tseltal friend from Tenejapa: "My aunt uses this to kill cockroaches. She cooks on an open fire and the cockroaches like the smoky part of the roof. She'll close the windows to the (outdoor) kitchen and burn a bunch of ricin leaves on the fire. When the smoke has dissipated and they go back inside the floor is littered with dead roaches."
Who knew!

Brilliant, friendly permies. Thanks for the responses.
We also grew them for mulch (and shade), although rust-proofing trucks also sounds like a brilliant use.
I'll stop worrying and maybe try letting the collected seeds sprout with a bit of soil in the same bucket they're in now.
Happy December!

Hello!
We've allowed two ricin plants to flourish in our near-vertical gabion cage garden, mainly because they shade the terraces during our harsh winter. (Harsh in a different way - our Mexican mountaintop winter is dry with piercing sunshine in the day and cold nights). They're about 4 m tall and their branches spread out to an approx. 5 m diameter. Now we've learned that the seeds can be super toxic if chewed. Nobody in our household has shown any indication of picking and chewing the seeds so far, but who knows, visiting children etc. And the plants are ridiculously prolific, sprouting new clusters of seeds constantly.
Earlier we've cut down the seed clusters and left them in a bucket with lid to grow mold and, we hoped, eventually turn into useful compost because it's a lot of biomass. But we may need to get more proactive and maybe dispose of both the trees.
US websites seem to propose cutting down the entire plant in full hazmat gear, boiling the plants "in a large pot" (this makes me think the person who wrote the articles have no clue, because we're talking medium tree-sized plants), burying the soup three feet deep and double/bagging then disposing of the hazmat suit, the pot and the tools at your local hazardous waste treatment centre. HA!
Do you permies have more common-sense suggestions?
We live in a dense urban area so "burning the plants on a windless day well away from people and animals" is not an option.  
Apparently the ricin dissipates once the seeds germinate and sprout, so maybe letting them grow for a week and then murdering the seedlings would work?
Our roof terrace gets extremely hot with the abovementioned sun, might the seeds die broil and stop being toxic if left in black bags out there?

Appreciate ideas!
(P.S. getting the plants to stay dead will be another issue, they are ridiculously determined to live and sprout new leaves constantly in response to pruning.)

Pearl Sutton wrote:
Got the pallet on plastic by the fence (that's a heavy water flow area, had to put plastic all over and under it) and then started getting OCD and space folding it all. Failed to get a pic of the first layer, I used the little 2 foot sections of metal to fill the cracks, and made a stable base for the rest, then started stacking arcs.  

...see if this was me this is where I'd abandon the project and leave the trampoline parts for future archaeologists.

William Bronson wrote:
I'm going to suggest ribes, like currents and gooseberries and canes, like blackberries and raspberries.
They generally take of themselves, they are delicious and they are easy to propagate.

Hi Inez! I'm with William on this. I inherited my grandma's cottage in Finland and the 20 blackcurrant bushes were alive and kicking after years of neglect. They needed pruning and they like fertilizing (with your home-made mixes!) but even without extra care you get a delightful harvest. You have to spend a few days picking currants and then you have some fantastic eating options: jam! (my favourite) or if your parents don't want to spend time stripping the berries off their little stalks, you can make blackcurrant juice concentrate with a Nordic steam-juicer a.k.a. "Mehu-Maija". Redcurrants are tarter than black ones but they seem to be a bit hardier and also make delicious jam or juice (or pies, frozen berries, smoothies, muffins, dehydrated, jelly, etc). Gooseberries are super delicious too, a bit harder to pick because of the thorny branches.

If your parents want zero labour input you could plant species for non-humans... blossoming things for pollinators, birds, special bat habitat, sanctuary for threatened local species, soil construction???

Permies delivers... the way you (we!) all take time to think about other peoples' problems and post solutions in complete sentences just warms the heart. Special thanks to Phil Stevens who cross-referenced my compost query!
Interesting point about tradescantia thriving on being disturbed. It's a great pioneer plant, brilliant ground cover, it just covers everything else as well.
It does flower so I guess it is spiderplant, maybe I can make friends with it too (while maintaining limits!).
I feed my snails to the neighbour's chickens, haven't tried tradescantia... in case they miss out a piece it'll engulf their garden too... better not.
Looks like I'll be spending more time in the garden. Instead of boiling tradescantia cuttings (ripped-up fistfuls in reality) I'll try smashing them into a black plastic barrel and leaving them in the sun. I'll get more coffee chaff from our friend with the coffee roastery, maybe grounds as well, for the compost. Give the most fibrous compost a second go in the anaerobic barrel. Make a new potting mix from what we have to hand: compost, clay and sand, not brilliant but that's what we have in terms of "soil" and if you buy it in sacks off other people it turns up full of pine needles anyway and the sacks decompose into really pesky microplastics.
I don't mind pootling around the garden, but hauling large amounts of matter is a problem: I mostly cycle, usually with the four-year-old in the bike seat and keeping an eye on the dog so she doesn't leap in front of traffic. Hence carting coffee grounds, chaff, manure, leaf litter etc is an issue.  

Ooh, Marvin, tell me more about Ribes tolerance to juglone. I've planted a black walnut about ten m from my cherished blackcurrants.

Marvin Warren wrote:
I've sort of carved a niche out for myself as the local juglone expert, and in the process I've gained a lot of firsthand experience with our lovely native walnuts. Here's what I've personally tried  and witnessed so far that I haven't seen already listed:
...
-Ribes
sally considered 'permaculture plants', but they all have their uses, whether food, medicine, groundcover, early-season nectar, etc.
Also, where's this wiki? And in the original post, when you say sorrel, do you mean Rumex or Oxalis (or both)?

Linda