Nathan Blevins

Thanks for all the replies!  

@greg mosser - For getting out of the rosea family, that is a good suggestion.  We have other areas of the property to focus on pawpaws, persimmsions, and mulberries.  Maybe I need to expand those investments and I have not researched their "cousins" at all!  :)

@Ezra Beaton - Thanks for the info on varieties that work for you.  I was not sure how much "resistant" really meant.  Those varieties you listed are on my list of options!  :)  

@bruce Fine - I am very familiar with Knox Seed!  I was there this weekend buying my cover crop! : )  I'll check with them and the local nurseries.  

Hey all!

First off, I am excited to post to this wonderful community!  I have been a long-time lurker but read my daily permies threads with joy each morning.  Just wanted to say that you all are awesome and all your creativity really keeps my spirits high!  

Okay - I am working on building my dream home, which I really need to post about someday.  Part of that dream is planting a permaculture orchard on the back-side of my 23 acres.  I have found a great spot and I am work through observation and planning.  That being said, I do have one major problem (and a couple of minor ones) that I hoped that you all could help guide me on.

Cedar Rust -  My property is an old dairy farm in East TN and, as you can imagine we have A LOT of cedars.  In this case, it is impossible to thin the cedars and/or manage the cedar rust spores that I see every year on the cedar trees.  My dream is to plant trios with apples, plums, peaches, service berries, and pears - all of which have the interaction with cedar rust.  With that in mind, I have started to try to figure out a plan.  I really, really want to avoid having to use any sprays to manage potential issues.  My goal for this year is to plant the first 2-3 rows of the orchard with a variety of "testing" trees to start the journey of seeing how to perform with cedar rust presence.  I realize that that is a multi-year journey, but I do not want to end up planting a ton that I will end up ripping up later (or stump grafting?).  

For my apple trees, I am looking for semi-dwarf apples that are known to be cedar rust tolerant.  Right now, I am researching a few different nurseries (such as Stark Brothers) and first looking for cedar rust tolerance and then selectin based upon other attributes.  Do you all have varieties that you have used that have proven to be extremely resistant?  Should I be looking elsewhere?  

For my other trees, I am really having a hard time finding any information on cedar rust resistance of pears, plums, service berries, or peaches.  I am not sure if that is because there is NOT a resistant variety or if they are not as susceptible as apples.  Any recommendations on what to select or where to research on this one?

Am I am being ridiculous in wanting to "fight" my property cedar rust proclivity?  Should I be considering things outside of the Rose families altogether?

Trios / Nitrogen Fixer - So, in my trios, I am leaning to select honey locust as my N.  My property already has a lot of black & honey locust and they grow well in the area.  I have read of a variety of hawthorne that is a Nitrogen fixer and has a great fruit... but it is the cedar rust problem all over again.  When it comes to the honey locust, I read very conflicting information on whether or not it is a true nitrogen fixer.  Even on this forum, I have read past posts with some confusion.

Does anyone have a definitive answer on if the honey locust is a nitrogen fixer?

Should I just got with the black locust just in case?  Since the black locust is so coppicing friendly, it may have multiple purposes.  However, I fear that coppicing it would result in reducing the nitrogen fixation.    

Thanks in advance for the help!!

Nathan

I sadly didn't make it in either - due my own scheduling conflicts.  Would love to see a recording but understand if that is not feasible.  Sounds like it was a great sessions (based upon the questions).  :)

Do you think you maybe overloading on books for the subject?

You make a good point, lol.  I tend to be a voracious reader and, since I am tied a desk job, it is a way that I dream a bit between development projects.  :)  I will certainly check out the videos and I can report back on the books too.  Wrapping up The Year-Round Solar Greenhouse right now.  It's pretty fantastic for someone who knows NOTHING about the process.

If I remember correctly we were going to make a storage building and thought the domes were cute.

That dome never got built as we just keep trying to figure out how to do it.

THIS.  I am afraid that I am going to end up in this pattern of putting a ton of thought into it but never quite executing it.  

It sounds like you are in the process of building a home.  That would also make a good project thread.

Really?  Somehow the thought never occurred to me.  I'll think it over see about putting some time into it.  That could be fun!

Jenny Jones wrote:Are you really grossed out when women fart around you?

Had to respond to this one.  In a word, no.

To expand a bit.  As gross as it could sound, my wife and I are completely childish about this and delight in our methane powered giggle manufactories.  A well timed fart or an attempt at a dutch oven in the middle of the night, can have us in tears (for a variety of reasons).  We feel that anything that the body produces gas, hair, etc. is natural.  In our journey, we have attempted to remove social programming in this and... just enjoy all aspects of that without shame.

FWIW, my wife has stopped shaving her underarms and I love that as well.  They are named Helga and Tribble.  

I am in the process of building up the homestead and, currently, I am planning to build 2 greenhouses.  One will be a smaller greenhouse located very near the house and attached to the side of our garage/extra apartment.  A larger one will be out in our back field but within permaculture zone 2.  In the larger one, I am still planning the ultimate purpose and it may be a traditional greenhouse for my zone OR I may go crazy and make it a butterfly garden / more tropical greenhouse.

Anyway, I am looking for a good resource on the science of greenhouses.  I can find a TON of stuff in how to build one DIY in various formats or some aspects of attaining sustainable maintenance.  However, I am hoping that there is a book out there that walking through how to plan a greenhouse,  maintain a greenhouse, and how to plan / manage the ideal conditions for it to operate.  Also, I would like to overlay permaculture principles.  As I know everyone here can appreciate, I want to make a TON of mistakes on paper while I have the time versus buying a "kit" or the like.  I live in TN, which is hardiness zone 7.  My favorite form of learning is by sitting down with a dense book but I'll take anything you all got!  

In my research, these come up a lot.  I have not read any of these YET but they are sitting in my amazon wish list currently.  :)  I'd be interested in any feedback on these (outside of the amazon reviews):

Greenhouse Gardener's Companion by Shane Smith

The Greenhouse Gardener's Manual by Roger Marshall

The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener by Niki Jabbour - This one seems to be a bit more about cold framing than large GH.

The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower's Handbook by Andrew Mefferd

The Forest Garden Greenhouse by Jerome Osentoswski

As a bonus, my wife has dreamed of owning a dome home for a very long time.  Due to the tyranny of pragmatism, we are building a more conventional home (aiming for net-zero!).  As a fallback plan for the dream, I thought the larger greenhouse could be a dome like this:

 

I'd be interested in feedback in that approach.  My main issue with this approach is that it seems like rainwater capture would be much more complicated.  Otherwise, I feel like I could make it work.  The water passive heater is interesting in the video (approx 8 mins).

EDIT:  Right after posting this, I found this thread!!  https://permies.com/t/95121/Growing-Spaces-Growing-Dome

Anyway, I am still thinking out loud here.  Would you have any resources that you would nudge me to?  Any greehouse mastery courses / videos that I could consider?

Thanks so much!

paul wheaton wrote:I wonder ...  for every kickstarter we do all new stuff for the earlybird.  Maybe there are people that have joined our community since the better world book kickstarter and they would like some of the earlybird goodies from that?  (a link to those goodies)

Having only recently found permies, I think this is a great idea.  :)  Also, I endlessly tell people about these crazy ideas and either annoy them to the point of surrender OR get them interested as well.  For those who already have these perks, would there be a way to allow them to be gifted to their friends / people they equally annoy?

Agreed as well!  

Done!

Hey all,

This is my first post as a registered user though I have been skulking on the forums for over a year now.  You all are awesome and the wealth of information in here is staggering sometimes.    

So, we are on the journey of building up our homestead of 23.3 acres.  I would like to share the dream / vision with you all.  Before I do that - I have a simple question that I would love advice on.  

Can you offer advice on the best software / methodology / etc. on building your homestead sitemap?  I really want to build something robust to allow for us to plan the site in terms of areas of development.  Also, I want to be able to layer in that information as we go to show everything from succession planning, field rotations, etc.  I tend to be a very visual person and I feel like this would be an enormous tool for us to use.

Looking online, I see a ton of option (many suggested here on permies).  Online tools / CAD-like software like SketchUp have some benefits.  Also, I am rather adept at Photoshop - which could make the layering process much simpler.  I really, really want to make something that looks like this
.  This image is sourced from https://www.overhillgardens.com/landscaping.html (not advertising, just attributing).  

Right now, the plan is to do the following:

1.  Using Google maps, get a working image / scale of our site that I can use to begin to overlay information.
2.  Using geopositioning, start to work out landmarks / information for the base sitemap.  (Cellphones can be accurate up to 10 feet)  
3.  Find a good asset library to import
4.  Combine all elements using Photoshope.

Anyway, anyone have suggestions on best process for creating a living sitemap?  Are there great asset libraries to tap into or ways best processes to use?  Am I going overboard here?!?!