Eino Kenttä

No idea what species (or even family) that is, but it doesn't look like a beetle. I'd say it's something in the Heteroptera. More related to stink bugs than to beetles. Hopefully someone who knows more about insects than I do can give you a more specific ID.

We will expand our annual gardening area this year. That was the plan anyway, but it feels a bit more urgent because of current events. The idea is to grow mainly staples: a lot of potatoes, sunroots, some carrots, peas, etc. We're also trying for scarlet runner beans, which might not be such a safe bet in our climate, but it would be brilliant if we could grow our own dry beans.

For what it's worth, on an open air museum I know of, there's a building roofed with birch bark and turf with the top portion of the roof nearly horizontal, and it's not leaking at all. It's possible, but I'm inclined to think that a simpler solution would be to pick a roof construction that has at least some slope at every point. I've never heard of caulking between the bark sheets being done traditionally, it's probably too labour intensive to be practical for an entire house, but it was clearly used for birch bark canoes...

M Lijn wrote:
I have also heard that in Iceland, some houses do not even have birch bark in between the roof and the soil. And they’re well insulated enough that the main heating source is the human body! (Iceland being a wood scarce region.) Or at least no one said they used it in the video…

I've been wondering about that, and I think I might have a theory. In the video (if you're referring to the one I think) he mentions that the turf has to be taken from wet places. The Icelandic rocks are obviously volcanic. When volcanic rocks weather, bentonite is one possible end product, and I imagine any clay-like material formed would tend to end up in wetlands. Bentonite, once it gets humid, acts as a moisture barrier. Probably not a perfect one, but he does mention in the video that they used a thick cover of turf, which would mean that the majority of the water is shed before it goes through.

I agree, not all bitters are created equal. Coffee is not the same as willow bark, and neither is anything like the saponin bitter of good king Henry. I think saying that we can just differentiate five basic flavours is probably a huge oversimplification. And how we perceive taste does vary hugely between people. For example, I find wintercress, Barbarea vulgaris, to be horribly bitter when raw (but tasty cooked) while a friend of mine insists that it just tastes sweet to him.

Rebecca Norman wrote:And then some people in this thread say their Good King Henry is not bitter. I wonder if maybe in the high desert environment I was growing it in, it was more bitter than usual.

I think you might be on to something there. A lot of secondary plant metabolites are more abundant under different forms of stress. On the other hand, Stephen Barstow doesn't exactly live in a very dry climate (I know, since our place is just a little bit north of his) and even though he's very much used to bitter plants, he doesn't like his good king Henry raw... I think our bodies are probably just telling us that those saponins are not something we should be eating in larger quantities. I've never even tried GKH raw for this reason, don't like any of its relatives raw either, including spinach...

Yep. I maintain that every description of reality is a simplification, and a lot of the information online is a description of a description of reality, if not even farther removed from the real thing. Even the simple-seeming stuff, where you can probably find a million "how-to" videos or articles online in about five seconds. Even if you read or watched all of them, I'm willing to bet that there's a lot you still won't know about the subject, because it's too subtle to be put into words, or because the only way to that knowledge is to do it for a few years, or because just a few people in the world have realized that particular thing and they're not the ones writing online tutorials...

Turf-covered buildings are definitely traditional, although they mostly used other types of frames. We've been looking a bit at buildings in outdoor museums and such. Even though our frame is unconventional, it does seem like it'll probably work.

We're doing it on a tiny scale, but with silt from a very small river (or creek, I guess?) that has no industrial activity upstream of us and very little in the general area. We also haven't been at it for very long, so no long-term data yet. However, it does seem to be working okay so far. I did see a little bit of compaction/crusting on one patch of freshly applied silt during the dry part of last summer, but I expect it'll go away as soil building progresses. Otherwise, I guess adding biochar or something would solve this problem.

As for pollutants, I probably wouldn't worry about it, personally, unless there's something extraordinarily nasty in the area the silt came from. Also, since you're planning for a food forest, you probably wouldn't harvest that many root crops from that land, but more fruits and nuts, yes? That reduces the amount of potential nasty that might end up in the food, if I got it right. Don't know if it's true for all species of plants, or all pollutants, but I've understood that plants tend to keep nasty stuff out of their fruits to some extent. It makes sense, the genetic integrity of the next generation is at stake...

Rebecca Norman wrote:Can someone who is growing and liking Good King Henry post a photo of the "shoots" that come up in the spring? When I grew it, there were no shoots but a rosette. I remain confused about the usefulness of this plant!

I think there's possibly some confusion over terminology here. The "shoots" probably refer to the immature flowering spikes, since as you mention, the plant doesn't make a shoot as such (no proper stem for a shoot to center around). The flowering spikes are very tasty stir-fried. Ate them at a friend's place a couple of years ago, our own plants haven't really started doing much yet. I think they need more seaweed...

Hugo Morvan wrote:I've put a big black container over the sprouting good king Henri. It's foliage yellows out, but is crunchy and sweet, not bitter at all, and i asked a friend what he thought of it who really doesn't like bitter tastes. Not bitter.  

Oh, that's interesting! I thought the bitterness was supposed to be saponins, right? Guess if they're there to deter herbivores, there's not much point for the plant in making them before getting into the sunlight...

When doing laundry by hand, we use olive oil soap. Just shave a little bit off the soap piece with a knife into warm water and slosh it around a bit so it dissolves. Works well, but I don't know how it'd work in a washing machine.

James Bradford wrote:what about using thatch for the upper most part of the roof ...so its lighter

That's an interesting idea. Not sure how to make the intersection between turf and thatch, though... If the thatch touches the turf, I suspect it'd rot fairly quickly in our climate. Also, I believe a thatch roof should ideally be steeper than ours.