Mike Benjamin

Su Ba wrote:
…the need to give up eating certain things.
…being willing to be flexible .

I think that this is key. It's easier to grow a larger portion of your own food if you eat a larger portion of that which is easy to produce in your area/at the particular time of year.

I'd like to grow a patch of different strains of jungle peanut and start saving seed from the ones that do well. Peanuts have a low out crossing rate, but I would save seed and hopefully find some new genetic combinations that do well in my area. I also grow a lot of perennial peanut as ground cover, though. It's all over my property. Perennial peanut grows edible flowers. If I get a cross between jungle peanuts and perennial peanut, and it grows nuts, how could I tell if they are safe to eat?

I'll probably buy 0 items of clothing and if I do, unless it's socks or underwear, it will be used. If it weren't for my wife pointing out how ripped up my shirts were, I'd probably never notice.

Anne Miller wrote:Plant bracken ferns and mushrooms along with wildflowers/flowers for a year or so until the soil has been cleaned up by the ferns and mushrooms.

This is at least of use for soil that you have to do something with.

Thanks Anne. I will give it a go.

Tereza Okava wrote:sure!
to preface: i do bokashi in buckets. when the bucket is full, it has to be mixed with dirt for a few weeks to become fully broken down (at which point it's basically compost). I do that in a worm barrel, also throwing in whatever else i have around (rabbit bedding, stuff I've run through the chipper, etc). And by worm barrel I just mean a trash barrel with holes drilled in the sides and bottom, that never gets fully emptied and has an endless colony of worms in it. I don't ever fully empty it, they've probably developed their own civilization by now.
I usually try to have 1 part bokashi: 1 part dirt: 1 part extra roughage kind of stuff. The dirt I use is "bad"- spent dirt from planters, seed starting, etc, I usually have a few large pots that need to be disposed of. Any questionable dirt I have usually goes straight into that.


Occasionally I'm lazy and will just throw it in the garden in a trench, or just on the ground with some dirt over it (extra lazy option). But I occasionally will dig out a bed to add organic matter (hugelbed) and any questionable dirt will go in there, as it will all get broken down and improved.

Thanks for sharing this. This is a good system for someone like me (i.e., lazy with lots of crap laying around tat I need to find something to do with, haha).

Tereza Okava wrote:personally i'd take that soil and use it for composting/hugeling/worm farming, if i had the space. then after that, into the beds.

Thanks all. Tereza - can you clarify this point for me, as I'm highly interested. I get composting (add it to compost). I suppose for worm farming you would incorporate the soil into the bedding? And then after composted or processed through the worms, it would go into bed? But what about hugeling before going into beds?

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:You might consider myco remediation. Do your soil test. Grow mushrooms on n the soil, harvest and dispose of mushrooms. Perhaps do this in your now decorative beds too. Do a soil test. Improvements to an acceptable level? Grow food.

I have not done this. This guy from Fungi For the People sounds like he knows what he's doing. This link does not include the full experiment.

Thanks. I heard paul discuss something similar to this on a recent podcast episode. It seems like a good idea. Thanks so much. And it works out at this bed is in a shade place (and is a hugel with a huge oak log in it).