Alessandro Frescura

Hi everyone,

I would really like to organize some seeds/scions exchange for EU people. I often find seed exchange groups but they are usually based in the USA or UK, so that sending propagation material could be quite hard or illegal.

I list below my own heirloom seeds/ fruit tree scions availability. I'm currently harvesting seeds as they mature on the plants, while I usually take dormant scions from prunings between January and March:

Heirloom seeds:

***Beans, many local varieties I obtained from elderly people in my village and which I've grown successfully since many years. I usually grow them together, so they are mixed. More         detailed infos on the single varieties if someone is interested.
***Local old variety of green-leafed Atriplex Hortensis (sorry, don't remember english name)
***Many corn varietis, adapted to mountain climate, cultivated successfully at high altitude. We usually use them for polenta (more details if interested)

Seeds (commercially available) of free-pollinated reproduceble varieties:

***Mixed unnamed pumpkins (Hokkaido-type)
***Red sunflower Velvet queen
***Yellow tall sunflower variety, used for green-manure or bees
***Orange marigold
***Purple poppy (Rouge du Jura)

Scions:

***Many old unnamed winter apple varieties obtained here in the Alps (descriptions if interested)
***Red-fleshed leaf-curl-tolerant peach variety "Sanguinella"

Other propagation material:

*** Egyptian walking onion rooted sprouts

all the listed stuff is cultivated without problems on the italian Alps at 1050 m a.s.l.

Maybe I forgot something interesting, but will edit in the future.

Thank you, have a nice evening!

Alessandro

Thank you everyone for your interesting contributions.

At the moment the piece of land I'm considering for this project is occupied by a green manure, which is approaching its end while autumn comes. The are still many sunflowers standing and in full bloom from which a hope to collect lots of seeds next month, while the ground is almost completely covered by smaller died/dying plants, like phacelia and buckwheat.

The fact that soil is well covered for the winter should be a nice thing, am I wright? I think I should avoid working the ground and leave it as it is until spring.

In the green manure mixtures there was also some perennial rye, which will come out again next spring and go to seed if I will not work the soil, so I'm wondering if the presence of this plant will be more a good thing for ground structure and health or a nuisance for me trying to establish the new forest garden and plant trees and shrubs

Thank you, have a nice day!

Hi everyone and thank you for your ideas.

The varieties I will try for this first attempt are blue and golden oyster and poplar mushrooms.

The fact that the mycelium seems to loose vigor along its growth process is very interesting.

My idea was to exploit someway the fact that, as I suppose, in natural conditions mushrooms would attempt to propagate themselves while growing, so why don't we make them to propagate inside some medium we can use to continue their cultivation in an easy way?

Eric, have you tried using old logs as a substitute for new plugs? That would be great if it actually works

Thank you again!

Hi!

I recently purchased some mycelium-inoculated plugs to start growing some mushroom varieties on logs.

I plan to inoculate these logs next week to get (hopefully) a first mushrooms harvest next spring.

This Is my first time trying this, so I needed the plugs to start with, but I was wandering if in the future I will be able to inoculate new logs from the existing ones (for example putting them close to already-colonized logs or something similar) or if I will need to by plugs again.

Any experience about this?

Thank you!

Hi!

Next spring I will start to convert a new plot into a small experimental forest garden. At the moment the area is planted with a green manure (sunflower, perennial rye, buckwheat, phacelia).
I also have cow manure available from September (a sufficient amount to eventually cover all the area).

I know the basic principales of forest gardening, but have no direct practicle experience about It.

Which tips would you give to a complete newby, based on your experience?

Thank you!

Hi everyone!

Here just to share my new Layens hive in the case someone is interested in the project.

I built it last winter based on infos and plans found into the well-known book "Keeping bees with a smile".

Since I also had the necessity to install a 100 W solar panel to keep a 120 Ah battery well charged, I put this on the front side of the hive roof. A charge regulator is placed in the empty space below the roof while the battery is located inside one of the old Dadant hives besides the Layens one.

This allowed me to save the material for one of the roof sides, while discouraging any theft of the panel thanks to the presence of the bees

Have a nice day!

Hi!

I know this post is a bit old, but I'm quite new to the forum.

I also started testing a Layens hive this year after 16 year of conventional beekeeping with Dadant hives. I built it during last winter and put bees into it in april. As a consequence I have no specific experience in the winter period, which maybe is one of the most important concerns and I'm also very curious about what will happen.

By now, I noticed that the familiy tends to become much larger that my standard Dadant hives. I treated it against varroa in july as I usually do since I'm quite cautious about any claim of an higher resitance to it and I want to test this aspect much more before risking my bees.

My hive can contain 24 deep frames, but this first year the family is limited to 11 frames. I noticed that bees are very happy to wander and gather also into the empty hive volume though, even if the occupied part is not so full of bees to justify a further expansion of the nest.

I'm also very curious about your experience so far, so please let me know!

I'll happy to share my experience on any other specific aspect, so feel free to ask

Have a nice day!

Hi!

August always remembers me that fall is coming and then the long boring winter will be here... Since a couple of years I've began to appreciate also colder months of the year in a permacuture perspective, finding some activities that can be done (and are better done) during these days, when I cannot grow anything or doing other interesting stuff. For example I love the period during which I can get new bare-root friut trees and plant them in late november/early december.

What are your favorite late fall/winter activities in the homestead?

Just to add something more to my anti-boring list ahah

Have a nice evening!

Hi!

I've been a beekeeper since 16 years now, but it's my first season trying and testing a horizontal Layens hive with extra-deep frames.
Since it is quite different with respect to standard Dadant hives I'm used to and I'm starting to prepear my bees for the winter season, I would like to ask more experienced people some advice about what they do on their Layens/horizontal hives before the cold season comes.

I noticed that in the last ten days my Layens bees completely sealed any gap into the hive with propolis: they basically glued all the frames top-bars togheter and the hive top to its main body. If I correctly understand this hive's philosophy, this probably means that I must not disturb the nest anymore, since they are setting it up for winter.

Am I wright? Forgetting something important?

Thank you!

Yeah, I mean systems used to take and save meteorological data and other related measurements, so they are not related to domotics but are devoted to actively monitoring these quantities on some piece of land.

They can be also easily used to control some actuators, for example to vent greenhouses, start irrigation automatically and so on, even thought I've not any direct experience about this last aspect.

This can be done to get useful patterns about climate on out land or any place of interest, and data can be collected and organized to any purposes, for example to identify the last expected frost date, rain amount during some period of the year etc.

For example, I realized this way that heavy rainfalls produce a rise in background radiation at ground level, due to radon decomposition byproducts brought down to the ground by rain itself.

This kind of systems are very cheap and easy to realize (I'm using Arduino clones to realize them) so I was wandering if someone else Is using them and which solutions have bene applied, to compare with my experience and maybe learn some different approach

Thank you, let me know!