Jeff Hodgins

I think the key is taking into consideration the light requirements of the different plants when you're doing your planning. So in my case I'm in a tropical climate so I'll just give you an example of some of the consortium or polycultures that I am working with. So you could have a row of taller emergent tree species and then next to that row or even in the same row you can have your bananas because they have a lower light requirement. Then close to your bananas you could have pigeon peas and then farther from the trees you could have sugar cane and underneath the sugar cane you could have pineapples and underneath all of that you could have sweet potatoes.  A professional chili pepper grower once told me that habanero pepper plants that are planted in the shade take longer to produce but in the end they live for longer they produce a larger plant and the fruits are larger. So it might be a good idea to experiment with different types of chili peppers in the shade.

In syntropic agriculture they say that one man can usually take care of about one hectare which is 2.4 acres using syntropic methods which can be a little bit more labor intensive. And that's if you're working on it full time. But that's also an average if you're a hard worker I think you could handle a lot more than that I have been maintaining approximately one hectare but I don't work everyday. I probably work one day of 10. I'm working in a tropical environment which I think in the long run is less work because you have increased stratification more shade tolerant plants and it can really become a stable system. Of course initially in a warm environment with lots of moisture it will be difficult to maintain things. My advice would be to start on a small area and once those plants are well established and they can handle a little bit of neglect then move on to establishing more areas. If you're in a temperate area I would definitely recommend raspberries is one of your understory crops and some species of Dioscorea depending on your latitude. Another really great plant for maintaining the understory of an orchard is the Canna edulus these plants can take crazy amounts of shade and they can produce a carbohydrate rich tuber. Another plant that can take a lot of shade is capsicum pubescence but it is a long season crop and does not take Frost. Basically the more shade tolerant crops you have the easier it will be to maintain if you're trying to maintain the orchard while letting in crazy amounts of light then weeds will be harder to maintain. The best thing to do is to fill up those areas, block that light and also create competition for nutrients.

Light, striking the water's surface where air and water meet, can break water molecules away and float them into the air, causing evaporation in the absence of any source of heat. The astonishing new discovery could have a wide range of significant implications.

I read that science has recently proven what they call "the photomolecular effect". So what they have proven is that water molecules can be excited by a photon and can evaporate at temperatures that are well below the recognized evaporation temperature.
  This can help gardeners to understand the importance of keeping the sun off of soil. It's just another reason to do closed canopy cropping use stratification and use mulch.
 Here is an article but it's stating a hypothesis. I couldn't find the original article that said to have proven the effect.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2312751120

If anyone has experience with growing climbing plants on bananas please comment because I have not tried this yet. One of the main problems with bananas is that when your banana is almost ripe it has a tendency to fall over before the bananas are mature enough. This problem is made even worse if you have a dry spell and then you get a lot of rain. So my idea is that possibly by growing vines up and twining around they could tie a number of banana plants together and if the plant wants to fall over it would kind of be held there by the vines. Trees can work for this as well I had one banana plant that started to fall over but luckily it had a small pine tree beside it and it landed in the branches of the pine tree. That reminds me that rack is probably ready by now. There must be some other species that would be ideal for this like maybe cacao or some of the smaller citrus would make a good banana catcher. Anyway if anyone has any experience with using other plants to catch a falling banana rack please let me know.

Shawn Foster wrote:Looks really great! I was surprised to see thyme growing so well; I would not have thought it was suited for a more tropical climate. Always good to learn something new.

I know right I was surprised that the tyme grew too. It has been very much trial and error. In the beginning I planted like 1000 chili peppers, they did quite poorly and I was so sure they would do well.
  The temperature mostly stays below 30°C accept for about 2 or 3 months in spring and the low temperature goes as low as 15°C at night. Peppers like it even hotter I guess.

Timothy Norton wrote:

Jay Angler wrote: My question would be, does the onion and garlic have to be fresh, rather than cooked?

This has been bugging me (pun intended) so I did a bit of research into the mechanics of alliums and sweat. It appears that the compound 'allicin' can be released from the body after consuming garlic. This compound is strongest in raw garlic as the cooking process destroys it.

I might make an attempt at fermented honey garlic to see if that preserves the allicin. I believe it will still reduce it but might be more palatable than just raw cloves.

Even just grinding the garlic and leaving it on the counter for a while will make it much more palatable but as you said that is because some of the compounds in the garlic are breaking down. Salt will accelerate the process.

One thing I know that works it's not so much what you eat but what you don't eat and it doesn't really stop them from biting you I don't think but it stops you from having a reaction. It's sugar. Eat plenty of protein fats and green leaves and you will have less of a reaction. This also applies to bee stings. When my son was little he became allergic to bees and I told him you're eating too much sugar so you have a high level of oxidization stress in your body that's why the poison is affecting you he changed his diet after much ridicule and he is no longer allergic to bees.