Eino Kenttä

Isn't it just that the non-human harvesters are really adept at picking out the good nuts, and leave behind all the empty ones? It wouldn't really make sense for the nuts to reabsorb all the seeds that weren't eaten... If they did that, what seeds would germinate?

I read somewhere (possibly somewhere on here?) about a nut grower using squirrels as a work force, by placing buckets full of sawdust around his trees. The squirrels would harvest all the good nuts and bury most of them in the sawdust, and then the grower would take them, and leave some corn as payment for the squirrels.

Otherwise, it's probably very location dependent. The only time I have personally harvested any good amount of hazelnuts, it was in this weird and wonderful place that had a forest of hazel, elm and oak, which feels somewhat exotic to me, right next to mountains too high and barren for any trees at all. The nuts were all on the ground, brown and ripe, not even bug-infested as far as I remember, and there were lots of them. The area does have most of the critters mentioned, definitely squirrels, crows and ravens at least, so it definitely is possible to get a good harvest despite these. No idea what actually makes the difference though.

Ooh, that's a cool idea! As far as I can tell, it should neatly sidestep (at least some of) the toxicity issue with eating caragana seeds. The one toxin I'm aware of in these is canavanin, a non-proteinogenic amino acid, and since it's water soluble I imagine not that much of it would end up in the oil? Maybe?

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:One thing is certain: the pods are tiny and it will take a lot of pods and a lot of labour to gather an appreciable amount of seed for oil. I wonder, can you gather them in a late green stage (easier to handle) rather than ripe seed (exploding from pods), for pressing?  

In my experience, they don't shatter so much until they dry, so if there's a rainy day after ripening but before natural shattering, you can gather them all then and dry them indoors on a screen, maybe with a cloth on top to stop the seeds from escaping. Around here (Scandinavia) the seed pods often stay whole until late winter or early spring, but that might be because our climate is a lot more humid than in the native range of caragana.

You certainly would need a lot of seeds to get a good amount of oil, though. Plants For A Future claims that the oil content is about 12%, so way lower than hazelnuts for instance. Still, if you have a lot of bushes, I can totally see that it'd be worthwhile. Do tell us how it goes!

Hmm... A thought: did you plant the apricot close to where the old one was? Prunus fruits put out autotoxicity chemicals in the soil, so if it's too close to the old tree's site, that could possibly explain why it's not doing super well... If it started declining only after planting, that is?

...but sometimes for an entirely different problem.

Beside diseases, pests and soil nutrient depletion, there's one more factor to consider here. No idea how significant it is for different crops, but autotoxicity can definitely be an issue for some of them. Basically, it's allelopathy between members of the same species. Growing the same crop in the exact same place several years running can in some cases effectively poison the ground for that specific crop, reducing plant vitality and yields. If I recall correctly, the rose family is renowned for this, so it might be an issue with strawberries for example.

Then again, much like pests, diseases and nutrient depletion, I imagine autotoxicity is much more of a problem in monoculture systems than in polycultures. In a polyculture, the plants can move around to find a suitable place every year. Also, I wonder if the greater microbial diversity supported by a polyculture might degrade the autotoxicity compounds more rapidly. I don't know of any research that directly backs this up, but I think it would make sense. The microbial community in the soil definitely has an effect on the severity of autotoxicity, as per this:

Metabolomic analysis of peach orchard soils showed that amygdalin accumulated progressively in the rhizosphere with longer continuous cultivation. Exogenous amygdalin inhibited plant growth, with stronger suppression in sterilized soil, suggesting a protective role of soil microbes.

Stumbled on this interview with Professor Jayati Ghosh, about prosperity within planetary boundaries and why economic growth is ultimately a doomed strategy. Very interesting, she explains things in an impressively clear and understandable way, without economist jargon. Much recommended.

Neat idea! How do you think it'd work in the winter? I'd guess the lower temperature would mean way less evaporation, even if the char is humid, leading to less cooling, and the cooling would be counteracted by the insulative properties of the char. At least as long as the char isn't completely saturated with water in winter...

Here's a spinoff idea: use the char as part of the growing medium in a green roof. Okay, you'd lose the increased evaporation from sun heating the black char, but on the other hand you'd gain transpiration from the plants. The biochar would then mainly function as a moisture reserve for the plants, and a booster of plant growth, ie standard biochar function.

As a side note, we're planning to build with charcoal, not in the roof but in the wall. The idea is a cordwood wall with a mortar consisting of char, clay and straw - basically cob with the sand replaced at least partially by char. In our climate, insulation is generally more valuable than cooling, and it'll be under a roof overhang anyway, but I suppose if the heat became unbearable we could always throw a few buckets of water at the outside of the wall for cooling. Although I strongly suspect that might decrease the lifetime of the wall!

Looks to me like it might be a virus. Found this about bean mosaic virus. Some of the leaves in your picture resemble the ones on the website, especially the puckering of the leaves.

Otherwise, it's possible that it's a nutrient deficiency of some sort, maybe of something that the tomatoes don't need as much of as the beans. Not sure what nutrients fit that bill, other than maybe molybdenum (since legumes use Mo in their nitrogen fixation enzymes) but Mo deficiency doesn't really look like that in the pictures I can find.

Jay Angler wrote:What have you done this week that makes you feel richer?

This week was the last week on my seasonal day job for this spring. Done, yay! Just now, I went out in the forest around where I'm staying at the moment and dug up a load of plants that will be planted on our land: a hazel, a tiny wild cherry tree, a gooseberry bush, ostrich fern, Solomon's seal, wood avens, and a couple more things. Guess which did more to make me feel rich: working a week at a decently paying job, or digging up a boxful of random wild plants?

As a bonus "feel rich" moment, I also saw a badger foraging for worms up close. Like, extremely close. We were probably just four meters apart when the badger finally spotted me and ran.

Interesting idea! Cool substance for sure, but also slightly frightening, using something that allergenic on stuff that's supposed to come into contact with food...

As for waterproofing unglazed pottery, I heard of a method where you apply conifer resin to the still-warm pottery pieces after firing. The resin melts, wicks into the pottery and seals the pores. I imagine if you burnish the inside of the piece and apply the resin from the outside, whatever you keep in the container might not even taste of pine resin... Haven't got around to trying this yet, but I will eventually.