Zero-Carbon Farming and Living via the Acorn Path

[Bruce Steele]

https://imgur.com/a/b4bdba0
Winter garden and cover crop being mowed.
Two years of above average rainfall. Warm winter with no hard freezes.
Jet ( black) barley, spring spelt, carrots, onions , garlic and onion sets.

[etienne]

I can only see one picture on the link, is it normal ?

[Bruce Steele]

Just one picture. The rows behind the artichokes are about 100ft long. Barley on left ,spelt on right and a row of carrots in between. There is a row with garlic, onions and beets you cant’t see in the photo. I also have 100ft row of potatoes I have been mounding up with oak leaf mold . There are field peas in the cover crop so I will leave some to dry and then try to thresh them on a tarp.
 Summer garden planting to start April 1, a tradition for me. Thinking of ten pound to fifty pound sacks of corn, grain, beans and dry stores. Still trying to prove up on how many calories of food crops I can produce with a small solar charged electric tractor. I know that’s repetitive . No fuel , add hand labor.
 I need to try and make sense to myself . And try to rationalize why I want to sack up 50 lb. sacks of spit peas. You can see the peas in the background . They will be in sacks but there is only so much split pea and ham hock soup any one person can eat. So at this point in time the solar and battery system works flawlessly, the tractor works well enough to produce thousands of pounds of vegetables and staples. The value of the crops isn’t much and nowhere near worth the labor invested because I still compete against ten calories of fossil fuel for every food calorie the competition produces.
 
 
 

[etienne]

Hello Bruce,

The hydrated lime seems to work against slugs, but my soil is already neutral regarding acidity, so I shouldn't use too much of it.

Do you know if the problem with rain is that it looses its efficiency, or that it is not regularly sprayed anymore ? You should use gloves when working with hydrated lime even if it is wet, so I wonder if wet hydrated lime would still help.

My aim is to reduce the slug pressure. I just planted some rocket salad and green peas in a non protected area, and it was completely eaten overnight. So I was thinking at spraying a regular thin layer of hydrated lime all over the vegetable garden just to reduce the pressure. I wonder if it could work.

I have given up putting seeds directly in the soil because I never see any germination, but I am always more convinced that plants are eaten by the slugs before I can see them.

What I wonder is that it seems to get worse every year. The theory is that after a while, predators should come over and help.

Regards,

Etienne

[Bruce Steele]

Etienne, Hydrated lime is very soluble so rain tends to wash it into the soil. I used it to protect strawberries from snails and slugs in a limited area that I could put a perimeter around using the split PVC pipe to hold it. I have also used hydrated lime when using a low pH input to a compost heap like pine needles. So , speculating here, you might be able to add both pine needles and hydrated lime to your soil surface and have them counteract the pH change either would produce by itself.
 I think the lime should work wet as long as it doesn’t wash away. What you want is a line the snail and slugs can’t cross. Maybe you could engineer some sort of small tent over the half pipe of lime so the rain doesn’t get to it?
 Are you sure it is just slugs killing your baby plants? Are you familiar with cutworms? They live in the soil and come up and cut the stem on newly germinated plants. Kinda hard to protect against other than growing starts up to a size that the cutworms can’t effectively cut off.

[etienne]

Hello Bruce,
Thanks for the Info.
Don't know about the cutworms, but the peas and the rocket salad were already over 1 inch tall. But it must be the slugs, they were everywhere.
Etienne

[etienne]

I have used wood for the hydrated lime, but I am also feeding something bigger.

[Bruce Steele]

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/i-reversed-my-diabetes-in-10-days-by-eating-wild-food-2763266

Nice to see someone taking “ the challenge “ and eating a foraged diet. Also nice to see a group of people who use their personal experience and surrounds to feed themselves for awhile.

My wife has been diagnosed diabetic so acorns, buckwheat, yacon syrup, and lots of vegetables are on the menu for a new reason around here. My wife can get by on lots of protein but my body needs carbs. Hard to put a meal together without pasta, potatoes , or rice. So soba noodles, acorns , and buckwheat crepes are the focus of meals now for a new reason.
 Buckwheat is my new gardening project his summer. I have twenty five lbs. of Japanese buckwheat to put into a half acre of cover crop. I will plant a couple other types of buckwheat, with white, red and pink blooming version seeds purchased. I bought some groats to make flour and it grinds very easily.I also opened the gap on the grain mill and put some buckwheat with shells thru. It worked very well and with a screen I separated out the groats/ flour and the black shells winnowed out easily.
 Russians out there might wonder why buckwheat is not a bigger part of our US diet . Other grain crops respond to nitrogen fertilizer but buckwheat doesn’t and extra nitrogen fertilizer won’t improve yield. So it has been replaced with profit driven objectives that in no way consider the health benefits of alternatives. When the endless supply of cheap fertilizer goes along with our cheap fossil fuels undemanding crops like buckwheat will gain some larger share of western diets.

[Florifulgurator]

Hydrated lime in PVC is absolutely disgusting, as it dissolves the plastic into microplastics and releases phthalate. If chlorine chemistry isn't disgusting enough, add some caustic stuff! (But Florifulgurator loves the wörd phthalate, even if the stuff is slightly cancerogenic... And then, you got worse sh# with all the agrochemicals and forever flouride chemicals...) -  Gardening with garbage is a widespread obsessive-compulsive disorder. I can't even talk the wannabe organic farmers out of it: Strawberries and mulch? Nah, we got those practical plastic fiber sheets...

One trick against slugs that I don't need (but observed elsewhere) would be feeding/diverting the snails with dyer's woad. It's their absolute favorite plant here in Germany, and they prefer it over any other sort of salad. Dyer's woad makes yummy smelly fertilizer juice, even better with snail cadavers fermented in.

[El Cid]

My wife loves buckwheat, I: not so much. But the question is: how do you shell it in a homegarden context (growing it is easy enough)?

[Bruce Steele]

Martin, Thanks , didn’t know hydrated lime did anything to plastic. Etienne is using scrap pieces of wood to hold the lime and I don’t have a slug or snail problem.  Twenty five years ago I used the lime in a plastic tray to protect strawberries. I usually avoid plastic but you gotta know almost all organic production uses plastic mulch for everything to save on the labor of weeding. Conventional ag just sprays the crap out of everything. Consumers take your choice. The pot farmers use plastic mulch and no it doesn’t trigger chemicals that would be detected in the toxic testing . I googled plastic / hydrated lime and couldn’t find anything spooky so maybe you could source your concern?  The sun breaks down plastic over time so ya it’s everywhere.
“My wife loves buckwheat, I: not so much. But the question is: how do you shell it in a homegarden context (growing it is easy enough)?”

El CID, I have a flour mill. It has a stone grinding wheel that you can adjust make a fine or coarse flour .I opened the gap enough that the buckwheat could go through . It was surprisingly easy . After one pass through the mill there wasn’t a single seed that didn’t crack. I sifted the small pieces of groats out leaving coarse groats and shell. Then I winnowed the shell which easily separated the course groats . Then the groats and flour go through the mill one more time for fine flour.

[etienne]

I am still in test phase, but it is sure that hydrated lime helps a lot. I have different strategies that I am trying. On wood planks, on wood chips and directly on the soil.

It's too early to provide any advice. On wood chips and directly on the soil, it's more like a repellent, on the planks it is more the fence concept. As repellent, I try to create a very thin layer because my soil doesn't need any lime to improve it. I don't know what an excess of lime would do.

Buckwheat is great for crèpes. I have a recipe where I mix for one person 1/4 kg flour (also works with wheat flour), 1/4 liter milk, 1 Egg, some salt, some vegetable oil (how much depend if you use oil when cooking, with a non stick pan, I use less oil if I mix it than if I add some regularly in the pan) and up to 1/4 liter water. It has to flow well, more than pancakes. you know that you have to turn it over when the dough is solid on all the surface. When you cook the second side, you can add precooked vegetables and cheese, I usually fold it in order to improve the melting of the cheese.

[Bruce Steele]

Etienne, To make pancakes I separate the egg and add the yoke to the batter. Then I whip the egg whites till they peak and fold them into the batter. Acorn and buckwheat flour don’t have glutens so pancakes, cakes, etc. tend to be heavy. Beating the egg whites helps.
 Making 100% buckwheat soba noodles sounds like a real cooking challenge.

[Bruce Steele]

https://thehistorybandits.com/2015/11/13/the-mill-creek-hoedown/
I have been trying to buy a mill creek chert hoe. If I can’t buy one I will try to knap one from local chert.
If I fail at my attempts at using electric tools for farming I may just go full Stone Age. I am enjoying my steel grubbing hoe but I wonder how well a chert one would perform.
 I used the electric tractor to mow down then till in a half acre of the cover crop. I used my electric mini bike to pull a makeshift rake to level the soil for a seedbed.  Spread the buckwheat seed with a push type spreader, then lightly tilled it with the tractor and raked it smooth again with the mini bike. The advantage to buckwheat as a cover crop is it can be rolled flat just before it seeds and it will smother out weeds. Some cover crops like oats will come back from their roots if you roll it down and even if you mow it. But buckwheat dies when rolled, supposedly,  I will find out soon enough.
I left about a quarter acre of fava, pea cover to go to seed. It is now overhead and still growing. Nothing like adequate rain with periods of drying between. 

[Alexander55]

I am still in test phase, but it is sure that hydrated lime helps a lot. I have different strategies that I am trying. On wood planks, on wood chips and directly on the soil.

It's too early to provide any advice. On wood chips and directly on the soil, it's more like a repellent, on the planks it is more the fence concept. As repellent, I try to create a very thin layer because my soil doesn't need any lime to improve it. I don't know what an excess of lime would do.

Buckwheat is great for crèpes. I have a recipe where I mix for one person 1/4 kg flour (also works with wheat flour), 1/4 liter milk, 1 Egg, some salt, some vegetable oil (how much depend if you use oil when cooking, with a non stick pan, I use less oil if I mix it than if I add some regularly in the pan) and up to 1/4 liter water. It has to flow well, more than pancakes. you know that you have to turn it over when the dough is solid on all the surface. When you cook the second side, you can add precooked vegetables and cheese, I usually fold it in order to improve the melting of the cheese.

A month ago i planted several kind of seeds. And all of them were gone ,they were  still very tiny. A few weeks ago i placed some wood ( brunches) on the land. To make the soil more healthy in the long term. And i planted some seeds in a tray, so they can get bigger before i plant them. But i also planted new seeds on the land. This time the wood was already on the land . And the slugs like to hide under the wood. So i take a look below the wood every day. And remove the slugs. And this time so far they did'nt manage to eat the seedlings . And they are already bigger as the first time. Basically you make a place for them where they like to hide. And you know where they are.  And already after a few days there is plenty life under the wood. Not just slugs. And i assume they do the same job as the bacteria and other micro life in your soil. Provide nutrients for your plants.

[Florifulgurator]

I googled plastic / hydrated lime and couldn’t find anything spooky so maybe you could source your concern?  The sun breaks down plastic over time so ya it’s everywhere.

I also googled quite a bit, but couldn't find anything. I'm not a chemist. Source is my practical outdoors observation with ashes, which I used for cleaning (makes steel pots shine like silver) and an elderly chemist who confirmed that strong bases can destroy polymers. (Hydrated lime is actually used in PVC stuff production to neutralize the hydrochloric acid that forms when heating PVC. My dad worked in a factory and was a PVC fetishist. Maybe that's why I hate it )

[etienne]

Etienne, To make pancakes I separate the egg and add the yoke to the batter. Then I whip the egg whites till they peak and fold them into the batter. Acorn and buckwheat flour don’t have glutens so pancakes, cakes, etc. tend to be heavy. Beating the egg whites helps.
 Making 100% buckwheat soba noodles sounds like a real cooking challenge.

Crepes are not pancakes. Here are some pictures.
https://www.ricardocuisine.com/recettes/8703-crepes-de-sarrasin-sans-gluten-aux-asperges-et-aux-champignons
I don't know with acorns, but with buckwheat,  the eggs hold everything together.
The linked recipe is similar to mine excepted that I don't add sugar, use 50% milk in the water and put the vegetable oil in the dough instead of butter in the pan. I proportionally use less fluid  (I use 200 ml for 100 gr flour)

[Bruce Steele]

Etienne, Crepes, yes I know they are different. 
I suppose people think recipes or how to prepare alternative food crops is mundane info.  How food tastes , texture and visual appeal are all important to daily acceptance of any food item. I suppose some people do very little cooking.
 I have been pursuing food with a goal to minimize energy costs. I am trying to do that with a goal towards scaling gardening up to small farm status. At a garden scale a shovel , a hoe and some  aged manure is all you need for a large summer garden.  Very little energy needed except muscles. To start putting in two or three acres of cover crop and producing enough compost/manure to spread everywhere is beyond the human labor of a shovel and a hoe.
 Small off the shelf electric tools are available , chainsaws, electric wheelbarrows, mini bikes, hedgers, mowers, etc.  But I haven’t seen examples of how all this newly available small electrics can enable the garden to small farm conversion. Very few if any tools are specific to the task.
 Farming technique can also favor lower energy costs. That is why I am trying to grow a cover crop I don’t need to till in. If I can grow a cover that only needs to be flattened to kill it will save energy and the need of larger horsepower tools.
 Anyway I finished seeding the buckwheat and got the  3” hand line sprinkler pipes in and the crop watered in.
 Next project, Oaxaca corn, limas, cassoulet beans, and a few types of squash will all go together in a three sisters summer planting. Easy to put in , very difficult to incorporate crop residues. My little electric tractor has a hard time brush hogging( chopping up )  the wet  six foot fava crop. Chopping up  fourteen foot dry corn stalks , bean plants, and squash vines is at the limit my little machine can muster. Might be something an electric chainsaw can drop and just let winter and time rot into the ground.

[vox_mundi]

A Leader In US Seaweed Farming Preaches, Teaches and Builds a Wider Network
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-leader-seaweed-farming-wider-network.html

Bren Smith and his GreenWave organization are helping lay the foundations for a generation of seaweed-growing farmers in the United States, while working to build a network of producers and buyers.

https://www.greenwave.org/

Seen from a boat, GreenWave's farm seems unimpressive—little more than lines of white and black buoys, a few hundred yards (meters) off the Connecticut coast.

But beneath the dark Atlantic waters, suspended from ropes tied between the buoys around six feet (two meters) down, seaweed in varying shades of brown undulates.

GreenWave, which uses no pesticides or herbicides, last year harvested more than 20 metric tons of kelp from this location and from another one a bit farther east.

While seaweed farming has been practiced for decades in Asia, such aquaculture is a relatively new phenomenon in the US.

Bren Smith, who is Canadian, worked in industrial fishing for years before turning to so-called regenerative aquaculture—cultivating marine resources while caring for their ecosystem and even helping it flourish.

GreenWave also cultivates mussels and oysters, which help purify surrounding seawater.

"We're training the next generation of ocean farmers," said Smith, author of the book "Eat Like a Fish: My Adventure as a Fisherman Turned Ocean Farmer."

To do so, GreenWave has developed a suite of training tools, from brochures to videos. Nearly 8,000 people have profited from the training.

GreenWave helped "connect me to other farms and farmers and disseminate the knowledge that our industry is building," said Ken Sparta, who has been growing seaweed on his Spartan Farms near Portland, Maine since 2019.

GreenWave also issues starter grants of up to $25,000 per project, thanks to a combination of private donations and public subsidies.

And it established the Seaweed Source platform, which brings producers together with buyers, with more than 65 companies now involved.

Crucially, GreenWave developed an inexpensive technique allowing harvested seaweed to be preserved for up to 10 months, whereas kelp generally begins deteriorating after only a few hours.

[etienne]

I was wondering what about yuca but checked how to prepare it, so I understand that it is a lot of work.

I just tried a recipe of pan de yuca with a mix that contained a lot of corn starch,  it was very good but I'll be more careful next time and will get yuca flour instead of a prepared mix.