Guy Fellow

Lots of great tips here. Summer chip drops are great for composting since they have leaves and other green sources to speed up the breakdown. I piled up mine near the woods and let it rot for a year.

For my raised beds I did big logs in the bottom, then filled the rest with hale bales. I soaked the bales with crystallized urine from an online retailer. It is a high nitrogen source you mix with water and the carbon of the bales to break it down. Then I topped with bagged compost, dirt, and anything else I could get.

If you go this route, fill it up higher than you expect, mine shrank in half. I filled mine at the end of growing season so that it would break down over winter and be ready for spring planting.


Potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, acorn squash, peppers, nasturtium, dill, and comfrey all growing well in these beds.

I use yogurt whey to spray on my plum trees. They were heavily infected with black knot fungus. I trimmed it back for a few years with no success, but I started spraying two years ago with whey and it hasn’t returned.


You can also use it in aquaponics to treat ick in fish. The Survival Podcast had an aquaponics guy on a while back and discussed its uses.

Heather Sharpe wrote:You might wish to consider Solomon's Seal root as a part of your protocol. It sounds like you have lots of good ideas for anti-inflammatory herbs, which is definitely important. Solomon's Seal is more for bringing moisture back to the joint and surrounding connective tissues, making movement much easier, less painful and reducing inflammation in the process, since it reduces friction. I've found it to be a huge help for my own joint pain and connective tissue issues. Another neat thing about it is that it can restore the proper tension to ligaments, whether they are too tight or too loose. I usually use the tincture. It doesn't take much to make a notable difference, usually.
You can read more about it here.

Soloman's Seal made a huge difference to me. I work on a computer and developed constant pain in my wrists and finger joints. It was going on 3 weeks, I had tried wrist braces, hot/cold packs, etc with no relief. I took a soloman's seal tincture that my wife made and literally the next day the pain was halved. By the second or third day I felt back to normal. Now it's part of my regular regime. I've encouraged lots of other folks that spend time typing to try it out and they have had positive results too.