Andy Ze

You have some great photos here. Especially the drying screens, like somebody already said. 😎

jim loggin wrote:Had to use my 12 cup perculator during a outage this week.

Had to. I get that.

People are deep frying coffee these days. Although I haven't seen anybody microwave it yet.

I think I've tried all the suggestions that I can do indoors, even buying a second seed packet. Oh well, I'll try something else. Thanks for the hints.

It seems like you guys spend a lot of time on that fencing. Could you not run twine or something instead? At least it would keep the deer out.

I like to snack on the calyxes like popcorn. Nice and tart. From what I've read, the whole plant is edible.

I'm at the end of my rope here. I've read everything I could find online and tried a few different things but my Roselle seeds still don't germinate. Anybody have hints? Maybe I need to buy a new packet of seeds? The goal is to turn this into a side hustle so I can sell a few plants a week. Here's what I tried, for a total of about one month now--

- Put the seeds in potting soil in an indoor greenhouse
- Put a heat mat under it and consistently kept the temp between 75-86F (~26.5-30C)
- Watered at least once a day to keep the soil moist
- Gave up on the potting soil, tried coconut husk "starting soil" instead
- Tried turning the grow light on and off. I don't think it does anything except add more heat, which I don't really need
- Tried nicking the seeds and soaking them overnight
- Tried folding the seeds in paper towel and spraying it twice a day. I think the paper towel dries out too fast

Google says 35 inches of rain a year. But getting hotter and dryer in recent years. Our 2 rain barrels prob collect about 200 gallons a year or something. Not much, just barely enough for the little garden.

Lazy Miyawaki forest update. I planted 13 more trees this weekend so we have about 25 now, spread over 50m^2 or so. It's not as dense as a true Miyawaki forest and not as large but I hope it will work. I'm done for now, maybe I'll add more next year.

Funny story, my wife is enrolled in this Amazon program where she can bid on items that get returned to Amazon warehouses. Well, nobody else bid on these coconut husk bricks that were imported from Australia, so she won a bunch at $3 each. When you put the coconut brick in water, it swells up to 6X in size or something. So now our little trees are mulched in imported coconut and Starbucks grounds, among other things.

We harvested the sunchokes so it's time for the annual calorie tally yet again. The sunchokes were a little disappointing but I think it's because we planted too many per 5 gallon bucket. Next year I'll only plant 3 or so per bucket.

Type	2023	2024	2025	Calories per
blueberries	145	379	82	1
bell peppers	15	22	0	1
squash	7	2	8	5
figs	5	70	109	30
calamondin	18	0	0	1
okra	9	90	0	2
hibiscus(C)	0	0	10	28
sunchokes(C)	0	0	5	109
total calories	363,	2691,	4217,	-

Another side project... Putting a plastic box under our water spigot to capture the drippage. I planted rosemary, basil, and mulberry here. Very focused on food production.