Vitor Bosshard

May Lotito wrote:If a pepper is trimmed down to a few stems, does it still need sunlight and good soil?

I overwintered some trimmed peppers plants a few years ago in a cool dark place and they didn't thrive the next spring. I think maybe the dormant stage is too long (5 months) and they have been too exhausted. I am trying again this year. Weather permitting, I will keep it outdoors as much as possible to catch more sunlight. It has dozens of fruits maturing, but signs of nutrient deficiency are showing. Should I thin the fruits and let it get ready for less growth in winter months or fertilize it now to make it stronger? BTW, it will only get natural light by a west side window but I may invest in a bigger grow light.

I don't have much experience (yet), but my feeling is that fertilizing your plants and triggering leaf growth while daily light is getting less and less just sets the plant up for failure. It will expend all its resources on leaves that don't provide a return for months to come. Trimming back the foliage and especially the flowers signals the plant to hunker down and save energy. This stored energy will provide vigor in the spring.

If you have to transplant, I think the plant will need good light for a while longer, so it can re-establish itself in the new soil. You want to send a healthy, happy plant into dormancy, not a stressed one. During dormancy, a low but steady amount of light should keep it alive.

This spring, I started fertilizing my pepper too early. It was a bit of a problem because the plant grew vigorously and started fruiting, but the light to support all that wasn't really there yet, so I ended up trimming it back and wasting some of that vigor. This time, I will try to go more with the flow of the seasons, and just give a bit of a boost to strengthen the effects that would have happened anyway. What do I mean by this? Plants only start reacting once they detect that it's sunny. They have a lot of "knowledge" about natural cycles encoded in their genes, but they don't have a brain capable of anticipating the immediate future. Their senses are restricted to reacting to things they're perceiving right now. But I, as the gardener, know a week in advance that the plant is going outside, to coincide with a nice weather forecast. I can fertilize it in anticipation, so it wakes up earlier and gains a headstart over what would have happened naturally.

Found some Zweikorn aka Emmer seeds in the store. This is one of the "ancestral" grains next to Einkorn. We have a cool charity here called Pro Specie Rara, which keeps old, obscure, traditional local varieties in circulation.

Growing these for wheatgrass.

got 3 nice peppers all prepared for winter. 1 baccatum, 1 chinensis, 1 annuum.

Also growing some random stuff around them, in this case onion greens. I have so little space that bare patches of soil always end up with something in them.

The first stage is pretty obvious. Soak them in water for a few hours, rinse and pick out all the fleshy bits, then dry them.

Where I'm struggling is the next step after this. I've tried roasting them without peeling, but the texture is like cardboard (good flavor though!). Another idea is to blend them into a powder and use them in soups and stews. This can be done with or without roasting I guess.

The option I would actually like is to peel the seeds to eat them raw. I've tried this with individual seeds and they're absolutely delicious. But it would be a huge pain to peel an entire batch of them by hand... Is there any trick to this that I'm missing?

I have no direct experience here, but from what I've been reading, cactus (in particular prickly pear) is a great support species for trees.

The idea is to put down a cactus pad to the south-west of your tree seed, so that it gives afternoon shade. You could adapt this idea to make mini wind shelters as well.

The cactus should be stuck in the ground upright, with the cut end facing to the side. It will take root on its own. In addition to mulch, it will eventually act as a tiny water reservoir.

See this thread for inspiration: https://permies.com/t/1160/14353/Reforestation-Growing-trees-arid-barren#2503469. The specific post I linked talks about a scientific paper on the subject.

Tom Mann wrote:

Rick Alexander wrote:Great post! Love this kind of stuff. I strongly believe that ancient civilizations were much more advanced and sophisticated in terms of living in harmony with nature, and retained the notion that their very survival was contingent upon them stewarding and regenerating natural ecosystem.

I also believe they had a much deeper understanding of water itself, a knowledge that only began to resurface in modernity with people like Viktor Schauberger. The concept of living water, and looking at everything in nature as cycles.

In permacukture, we all know the concept of succession and how natural plant death can lead to conditions perfect for the growth of a different, possibly more desirable species.

The ancients used this knowledge accross every domain of life. Very impressive people's lived back then.

Thank you for brining up Victor Schrauberger here. One of the thoughts I had was wouldn't these fields be prone to flooding? Large swales are fixtures in every modern day pastures and fields given rain will cause flooding. But holistically managed grazers report standing water no longer being an issue, rather, the deep roots create storage for water underground and natural reservoirs filling up and swales becoming unnecessary.

I've often seen earth works in the permie-sphere used mainly in managing elevation in sloping land. But these Celtic fields are found throughout in low-lying/flat regions like the Netherlands. One might start to consider that managed correctly, earthworks in flat zones slow the flow of water stop run-off and perhaps have some type of energizing effect on water as it percolates into the earth like Victor Schrauberger talks about. Could a sloping/hedge in these pool-shaped fields paradoxically manage water better than merely flat surfaces? Draining into swales accelerates water velocity taking with it the top soil. The undulating land being sort of a energizing effect where water circulates throughout the ground/plant complex rather than laying stagnant after a large rain event or sloping away creating a knock-on effect on later cycles of plant growth.

I'm not quite following everything you say here, but it seems to me you have a mistaken idea of how swales work. Swales are rather shallow, and they slow down water rather than accelerate it. Another counterintuitive fact is that on almost flat ground, you'll get way more bang for your buck with swales: the same amount of construction effort (volume of earth moved) holds back many more liters of water.

To give a perspective from people who are space limited, this year I grew 3.5 kg of various things (tomatoes, peppers, kohlrabi, beets, even some potatoes) on about 3 square meters of my balcony.

It brings me joy and builds my skills. And I get a few very delicious meals out of it.

Herbs are very easy and a lot of bang per square meter. I have a pot of mint, some cilantro, and small patches of other stuff planted between my veggies. Basil and arugula has all been pesto'd and is done for the year.

My fall crops are beetroots, fennels, carrots and various leafy greens (lamb's lettuce, winter spinach). Some tomatoes and peppers are still going. Right now is also the time to put garlic into the ground for overwintering.

I hear that strawberries can overwinter in pots, but it's the first year I'm trying this.

Potatoes also do ok in pots, though they do grow a bit out of control in a small space.

Watering is a constant headache with containers. You go from dry soil and drooping leaves to waterlogged in an instant. Get as large pots as you can manage. It's better to have many plants in one pot than a collection of tiny pots.

Jojo Cameron wrote:
I did go to A-n-E, but the waiting time was 12 hours, and I gave up after 6, because I had work to do, and they'd put me as 'Not very urgent'.  I took that as a good sign.  It also meant I could have been there indefinitely, because anybody in any of the three more-urgent categories would've been seen before me.

The problem is most likely a combination of too much caffeine/sugar, plus stress, plus the weakening effect of whatever it was I had last year.

I have a hawthorn twig I'm going to make tea with, because it seems it can't hurt.

I also spoke to a Polish healthfood shop owner, who said, "If it's the heart, it's probably stress-related.  If you're gonna die, you're gonna die, regardless of how many supplements you take, so stop making things worse by getting stressed, and appreciate the present moment!"  This was refreshing, and mildly shocking to hear from someone who makes a living selling supplements and healthfood!

Things are in flux a bit much to go to the doctor, but I will at some point.  In the meantime, I'll try some of the non-controversial herbal remedies, like hawthorn and St. John's wort.

Thanks for the tips!

Hi Jojo,

I sympathize with your situation. I have chronic heart disease, which was over-medicated for years, leading to side effects that are worse than the disease. I am definitely much more skeptical of mainstream medicine than I was a few years ago. There's nothing wrong with helping the heart mostly through stress reduction, healthy eating and so on. I'm doing all those things, while trying to find some minimal regimen of medications that work for my situation.

However... the symptoms you describe do sound worrying. Other than the obvious thing our minds jump to (heart attack), it could also be thyroid problems, pericarditis (an infection of the tissue around the heart), a lung infection, or some sort of post-viral syndrome (since you mentioned a flu-like episode a while back). I had a friend who noticed something weird going on with his heart and it turned out to be thyroid problems.

None of that is very likely. The most likely thing is that you're fine! But these conditions are serious enough that even a 5% chance of something like that merits a visit to the emergency room. I know things are tough in the UK right now with the NHS being understaffed. If not A&E, then maybe you have a family doctor who you can call?

Good to know that this works for several years. I also cut the plant back to just the stem with a few leaf nodes. The stem itself does a little bit of photosynthesis, so technically you don't need *any* leaves.