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magnamentis

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #700 on: June 29, 2019, 07:01:48 PM »
Some of my garlic has some kind of second clove above the ground. Is this normal ? Never heard of it.

that's a siamese garlic [JK]

etienne

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #701 on: June 29, 2019, 08:42:08 PM »
I found a description of my garlic saying that there can be external cloves.
http://plant-certifie-ail.org/en/pages/fiche_variete.php?id=4
So this is absolutely normal.
The ground being quite hard right now, maybe this helps the external cloves to grow.
Thanks,
Etienne

P.S. they have a good taste.

sidd

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #702 on: June 29, 2019, 10:38:08 PM »
That "secondary clove" above ground will become the seeds. You can plant them when mature. I have a garlic landrace from hungary that does precisely this.

sidd

etienne

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #703 on: July 04, 2019, 04:29:36 PM »
The garlic for this year. It was the easiest thing I ever planted.

silkman

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #704 on: July 05, 2019, 10:31:28 PM »
Impressive! :)

Neven

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #705 on: July 05, 2019, 11:08:27 PM »
Yes, very nice, Etienne. Garlic is indeed so easy to plant, and if made my wife really enthusiastic last year. She planted as much as she could this year, so we might have enough until next year.
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Re: Gardening
« Reply #706 on: July 05, 2019, 11:57:59 PM »
I tried planting the 'secondary cloves' but they didn't do as well as a the nice big cloves we save from the year before. Now we fry them gently, quite fresh, whole in the skins. It saves trying to peel them later.

ghoti

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #707 on: July 06, 2019, 02:20:41 AM »
Quote
so we might have enough until next year.
This is the first year we will make it to harvest this year's garlic before running out of last year's harvest. It is a very satisfying milestone. :)

etienne

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #708 on: July 06, 2019, 04:06:26 PM »
My problem is always to keep things. With pumpkins it worked well, but not with potatoes or carrots.

Bruce Steele

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #709 on: July 06, 2019, 08:33:42 PM »
Half way through canning. 35 pints apricot 20 pints  Mirabelle plums.  One more apricot tree to pick and then some peaches. Orchard I planted twenty years ago, trees showing age so I have started planting replacements.
 One acre of oil seed pumpkins looking good . Another large area of beans . Shallots are finishing up with plenty to get me to next season. Potatoes were doing OK until some insects skeletonized the leaves and stems. Harvested little potatoes, very tasty but only 2 or 3 gallons. Will need to buy seed potatoes next year for planting.

sidd

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #710 on: July 07, 2019, 06:22:58 AM »
Re: oil seed pumpkins

do tell ?

sidd


Bruce Steele

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #711 on: July 07, 2019, 07:18:13 AM »
Sidd, Styrian pumpkins have a hulless seed used to press oil. Roasted salted seeds are eaten as snack
called pepitas. Seeds are very nutritious and store well after drying. 

https://www.northamericanherbandspice.com/do-you-know-the-difference-between-styrian-and-commercial-pumpkins/

sidd

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #712 on: July 07, 2019, 08:28:01 AM »
Excellent. Might have to grow a few acres of those ... or get someone else to. What does the flesh taste like ?

sidd

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #713 on: July 07, 2019, 08:32:30 AM »
Over here (I live in Styria), they leave the pumpkins to rot, I believe. Or feed them to the pigs.
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Re: Gardening
« Reply #714 on: July 07, 2019, 08:56:04 AM »
My problem is always to keep things. With pumpkins it worked well, but not with potatoes or carrots.

As for carrots, my soultion is simple: I leave them in the ground but cover them with 15-30 cm of leaves at the end of November when we start to get more serious freezes (-5 C). This way I can dig them up well into the winter (our winter minimums are around minus 10-16 C).

2: oilseed pumpkin: we have them those in Hungary, they press oil from the seeds (and use it for cooking) and use the flesh to make strudel with poppyseed&pumpkin with the leftover pumpkin flesh. They also make jam out of the flesh or feed it to the animals.

Tor Bejnar

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #715 on: July 07, 2019, 03:34:01 PM »
You've reminded me of a quail hunting outing I did with my father about 1970 (unrelated, but I became a vegetarian 8 years later).  The Texan farmer was walking us across a field to get us toward the hunting grounds and asked my dad if he recognized the 30-cm-tall (young) crop growing under our feet.  My dad studied the leaves for a moment, and 'didn't'.  The farmer said something very close to, "It's a newly developed cover crop called 'soy beans'; it's not good to eat but makes great silage for the cows and fixes nitrogen."  We'd never heard of 'soy beans' before, and, of course, much later discovered they are 'good to eat' and are not 'new'.
Quote
Soybeans originated in Southeast Asia and were first domesticated by Chinese farmers around 1100 BC. By the first century AD, soybeans were grown in Japan and many other countries. Soybean seed from China was planted by a colonist in the British colony of Georgia in 1765.
reference
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etienne

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #716 on: July 07, 2019, 07:23:33 PM »
I have a neighbour who also leaves her potatoes in the ground. She just cuts the leaves like 5 cm of the ground.

Bruce Steele

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #717 on: July 07, 2019, 07:51:24 PM »
Sidd, The pigs will eat Styrian pumpkin meat but it is not very tasty for humans, even pigs prefer other squash if given the option. There are new cultivars available that have both eatable hulless seeds and eatable flesh like Naked Bear.
https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/pumpkins/specialty-pumpkins/naked-bear-f1-pumpkin-seed-3387.html
I know one farmer who does the farmers markets and he grows Styrian Pumpkins, dries and salts the seeds that he sells for snacks . There are lots of people who go to farmers markets that buy and eat them as they walk around the market but otherwise don't buy much. Seeds are more nutritious raw but they are often roasted.
 If you'd like to try some check out StoneyBrook Farms.
https://store.wholeheartedfoods.com/product/roasted-pumpkin-seed-oil-12-7-oz/
 Preservation of vegetable , fruit and nut crops is one of the challenges of gardening. Some crops are easier to preserve than others . I try to grow crops I can easily preserve, field corn ( dried ) winter squash and pumpkins ( will last months in cool dry conditions ) beans ( dried )and  acorns.  We usually have good drying conditions but some crops like acorns take months to properly dry so a special drying shed helps. A rodent proof shed that has good air circulation works well for storing tonnage for well dried seeds and nuts.


El Cid

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #718 on: July 08, 2019, 08:30:35 AM »
We usually have good drying conditions but some crops like acorns take months to properly dry...

Acorns? is that pigfeed? or?

Bruce Steele

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #719 on: July 08, 2019, 08:58:01 AM »
El Cid, Well both but mostly for the pigs. I always keep a few pounds around for baking( human food )  after the pigs finish up the 1000 lbs. I collect annually for them.
 Another contributor to the forum and I ate lots of acorns in an experiment a couple years ago. My wife and I have gone as long as 3 months eatting exclusively foods produced on my farm or foraged nearby.



Re: Zero-Carbon Farming and Living via the Acorn Path
« Reply #21 on: January 04, 2017, 10:10:24 PM »
OrganicSU, I am finding the flour from different types of oaks (acorns) has a lot of variability in flavor color and taste. I was using cork oak acorns with good flavor results in various recipes , crepes, pancakes, cakes , lobster bisque, a bacon cheese soufflé, and acorn tea. I tried a batch of valley oak flour in a soup recipe I had used before but the results ended up in the feed trough for the pigs.
Terrible.  The  "Chumash Ethnobotany "book says the Chumash didn't like  Valley Oaks much either. I have several batches of holm oak in different stages of processing and will try holm oak flour in several of the tested recipes.

El Cid

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #720 on: July 08, 2019, 10:31:07 AM »
That's great Bruce! I know that acorn-flour was a food for humans here as well but only in times of need.
I like beechnut very much, it tastes superb when raw, I like it better than other nuts, my only problem is that they are way too small, but there is plenty under the beech trees.

TerryM

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #721 on: July 09, 2019, 06:44:43 PM »
Acorns were a staple in So. Nevada, but when pine nuts were harvested the scattered families gathered together, swapped everything from wives to tall tales and held their annual festival. These were living so close to the edge that I'm unsure that taste was of much concern.
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uniquorn

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #722 on: July 15, 2019, 08:14:15 PM »
Someone recommended purslane upthread so we tried it yesterday. It grows everywhere here but is particularly nice from the polytunnel where it gets regular water. I usually leave it as cover because it's easy to weed. Today I made vege sausages (for the first time) with last years fava beans, lots of purslane, garlic, onion and a mixture of herbs and spices. They taste good.

Bruce Steele

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #723 on: July 15, 2019, 09:26:59 PM »
Uniquorn, I like to use Green Gene and his " Eat the Weeds " website. Here is his page on Purslane.

http://www.eattheweeds.com/purslane-omega-3-fatty-weed/
 
Or another on filaree ,a weed I like because it is available during the winter and early spring when not much else is.

http://www.eattheweeds.com/erodium-circutarium-geranium-carolinianum-two-bills-you-want-to-get-2/

Other weeds I harvest are, pigweed ( amaranth ) lambs quarter, sow thistle , filaree and purslane. All for spring greens but seeds can also be collected and eaten from some of these later in the year.

uniquorn

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #724 on: July 16, 2019, 12:26:46 AM »
Thanks for that bruce. Apparently I have made some pretty mighty sausages.
If I might go back to acorns; we are surrounded by chestnut and oak woodland. Can you give me a few links to oak identification for best acorns and a step by step to processing?
Sorry if this is off topic, I can start an acorn thread if necessary.

Bruce Steele

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #725 on: July 16, 2019, 01:25:45 AM »
Uniquorn , The best oak to collect acorns from is the Holm Oak.

https://www.arborday.org/trees/treeguide/TreeDetail.cfm?ItemID=1094

You can read through " Re. Carbon free farming and living via the acorn path "  in the walking the walk thread. Back in Dec. 2016

Basic leaching.  Collect and sort acorns, throw out cracked acorns or acorns with a small holes . Indicates worm damage.  Let acorns dry for several months. Crack acorns and again sort out black or off colored meats. Put dried ,sorted acorn meats into water and soak them overnight. Put hydrated nuts into a blender ( about one cup acorns and three cups water ) blend until nuts are cornmeal consistency.
Pour blended nuts ( one cup per jar ) into one quart canning jars and fill with cold water. Let sit overnight in refigerator . Pour off water and refill jars daily. Be careful to not pour off the white acorn starch that floats above the ground nut meats. Repeat for 7-10 days. Water will clear as you progress.
Pour water, starch and nut meats into a strainer . Save the liquid and let the acorn starch settle.
Take the leached nut meats spread on a cookie sheet and dry them in the sun. Grind in a flour mill when dried. You can check for bitterness by tasting at any time but finished product should not be bitter.

uniquorn

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #726 on: July 18, 2019, 08:22:16 PM »
ok, I don't think I've seen Holm Oak but we have many other varieties to try out later in the year though it's been difficult for us to keep things dry over winter. Too humid. Meanwhile, the plums are just starting to ripen. It's going to be a good year.
btw we don't fry them. That was breakfast :)

Bruce Steele

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #727 on: July 18, 2019, 09:20:52 PM »
Uniquorn, I saw wild plums in Hungary when I visited. They were either red or yellow. I think they were harvested to make Palinka. I have small red plums like the ones in your picture and also yellow ones I call Mirabelle . I make jam with them , how do you use them ? So the little plums you show are a bit of a novelty around here . If you might supply a recipe ?
 Holm Oaks are also called Hollyoaks sometimes because their leaves look alike. Holm Oaks are also evergreen so that narrows identification.
  Drying crops like field corn, beans and grains is largely or exclusively done in the field so harvest date and weather play a large roll in success. Any crop planted late like much of the current US corn and soya crops run the risk of wet fall conditions or even early freezes. Acorns are a fall crop for sure but in a pinch they can be harvested and dried in your house like the local Native Americans did.  Careful though because if you get a bloom of moths your wife will quickly shut your experiment down. Hat tip to Terry.
 The purpose of drying the acorns is to get the meat to separate from the shell. I give them a long dry time for storage purposes but for the purpose of cracking them you can get by with shorter drying times.
 It is still planting season around here so I gotta get outside.

El Cid

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #728 on: July 18, 2019, 09:31:28 PM »
Bruce,

Mirabelle plums: yes they do grow here in Hungary wild, and you can eat them :) We also eat rose-hips (you need to wait until the frost softens them and then you can push out the sweet flesh with your fingers). They are really delicious.

Uniquorn,

This acorn business is difficult :) I suggest you pick the triangular shaped nuts from under the beech tree in the autumn (beechnut). No treatment is needed, they taste great raw,  better than most nuts even! They are small though, half a centimeter, at most one, but they can be opened easily by hand and there is plenty


uniquorn

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #729 on: July 18, 2019, 09:55:39 PM »
We also have mirabelle though I suspect these red ones are a cross or throw back as they seeded themselves. It took me a few hours to get the stones out then we made jam (just added sugar) and a nice tart with creme patisserie. No special recipe. We'll probably do the same again tomorrow. Damaged fruit goes in the wine bucket ;)

Regarding the acorns, a very interesting read but I think I'll collect them for the sheep as usual and concentrate more on sweet chestnuts which are plentiful here. We've only roasted them up to now but a flour is possible.
Not so many beeches around but we have one struggling amongst oaks. I've never noticed nuts on it though.

etienne

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #730 on: July 19, 2019, 08:05:41 PM »
Plums jam taste better if you don't cook it too fast. Jam is ready when enough water has evaporated. When water % goes down, so does temperature goes up. When a sufficient temperature is reached, the sugar can cook to produce jam. Some jams like strawberries can be cooked quite fast to keep vitamins, but plums need some time to get the best taste out of it.

El Cid

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #731 on: July 19, 2019, 08:52:29 PM »

Not so many beeches around but we have one struggling amongst oaks. I've never noticed nuts on it though.

Don't look at the trees, you will find them under the trees when they are ripe (aug-sept-oct depending on the climate). There is often so much that you can literally sweep them up! They look like small piramids and their color is similar to chestnuts but a little lighter

uniquorn

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #732 on: July 19, 2019, 09:35:29 PM »
Thanks Etienne, you made us laugh. None of our summer heat sources can cook fast jam :)
El Cid, this year I will look downwards.

etienne

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #733 on: July 19, 2019, 10:17:39 PM »
Hello Uniquorn. Do you have a solar cooker that can be used for jam? Or do you do it with firewood?

uniquorn

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #734 on: July 20, 2019, 08:48:54 PM »
Briefly off topic for gardening - We keep open flame outside to a minimum now everything is so dry so we are currently using a 2400W electric hotplate to get the jam bubbling. Eventually, if it doesn't reach 105C we give it a few minutes on a gas hob inside.
There's enough PV to run the hot plate. I'll make a solar cooker if the worst comes.
edit: Ma femme described today's jam cooking speed as 'glacial' :)
« Last Edit: July 21, 2019, 06:28:47 PM by uniquorn »

Aporia_filia

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #735 on: July 22, 2019, 02:32:01 PM »
A pick showing the remnants of a thrush's feast (Turdus philomelos). You can see the stone used to break the shell of the snails.

Invite the Turdus to your gardens!

etienne

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #736 on: July 30, 2019, 11:24:24 PM »
Hello,
I have around my garden a quite long beech hedge that I cut once a year during the summer. I didn't do it yet this summer because of the heatwave, I always heard that trees don't support too well to be cut during heat waves.
Well, when pruning (is it the right verb) these beeches, I get a lot of biomass that I can't use. It makes jams in the crusher (too many leaves), it's too much work to crush it manually, I tried to put it directly in the compost but it reacted like a silo (which means that after a few months, the leaves where still green and in a good shape). So I bring it to the recycling center.
Any Idea before I start this yearly work ?
Thanks, best regards,
Etienne
Well, I also tried to burn it, but it is forbidden and makes a lot of smoke (not discreet at all). I know somebody doing it at night but I have neighbours (he doesn't), and I don't want to annoy them too much.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2019, 11:29:43 PM by etienne »

vox_mundi

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« Last Edit: July 30, 2019, 11:54:29 PM by vox_mundi »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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DrTskoul

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #738 on: July 31, 2019, 12:30:51 AM »
Don’t you need a rather large land footprint for that?

wili

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #739 on: July 31, 2019, 12:49:14 AM »
Good idea, vox. But Etienne will have to be sure it's dead before putting it into hugelkultur, or you'll have the same problem you did with putting it in the compost.

DrT...I'm not sure what you mean by a large land footprint in this case. The trees are already there. If you need he may need extra land to let the cut branches dry and die, I would have to agree.
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

DrTskoul

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #740 on: July 31, 2019, 01:16:44 AM »
I would have to shred the tree and compost/mulch it because I dont have the land to dig and cover the stumps. It takes as much land length as the height of the tree.

wili

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #741 on: July 31, 2019, 01:24:03 AM »
Well, it sounds like he's talking about branches that he is trimming from trees. You don't need an entire tree to do hugelkultur, as I understand it, though it's nice to have rather big pieces as the foundation, so to speak.

It sounds like your situation is different, but I've done versions of hugelkultur in very small areas. The basic principles can be used at pretty much any scale, again, as far as I understand it (being no expert).
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

vox_mundi

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #742 on: July 31, 2019, 01:28:13 AM »
It really doesn't take that much room. I've turned a full size fruit tree into a 4×3×8 ft mound - about 2 cubic meters.

It's easier in the spring or fall - cooler to.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

DrTskoul

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #743 on: July 31, 2019, 01:48:43 AM »
Thanks !  I recently built a 64 cu.ft. compost bin but it's a cube. I took down 6 trees and I have a lot of left over trunk pieces. How long does it usually take?

vox_mundi

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #744 on: July 31, 2019, 02:28:34 AM »
Thanks !  I recently built a 64 cu.ft. compost bin but it's a cube. I took down 6 trees and I have a lot of left over trunk pieces. How long does it usually take?
Not sure I understand your question.

Your essentially burying a stack of branches and short sections of logs along with grass clippings and leaves under a layer of soil. It will breakdown over time (months to years), but the mound can be used as a planting surface immediately. This isn't a compost heap that requires maintenance - its a garden feature.

The height of the mound will reduce by 50% over 2-3 years

The first link I posted has a very good explanation of the process further down the page.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

etienne

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #745 on: July 31, 2019, 07:26:50 AM »
what I do is cutting the branches so that the hedge keeps more or less the same size over the years. The hugelkultur suggestion is more or less what I did last year (pieces of wood are much smaller than on the pictures) because I wanted to inctrease the surface dedicated to vegetables, but it is not a solution for every year.
I have read about feeding cows with it, but I don't have any.

El Cid

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #746 on: July 31, 2019, 08:27:49 PM »
Hügelkultur was popularized by Sepp Holzer of Austria (he uses heavy machinery to create these mounds though!!!) and overpopularized as a miracle-solution to just about everything by the permaculture movement (most of whose members could not even grow 1/10th of their food and are by and large -except for a few- eager amateurs).

Creatin hügelkultur is very hard work without machinery (i know by experience), and you should never overdo the woody part, you need much more "greens" and soil than wood. And then, planting into those mounds is not very easy: a flat surface is much better in my view...

/Read Holzer's books, they are nice but not very practical, more like giving you a perspective/

etienne

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #747 on: July 31, 2019, 10:03:26 PM »
Hügelkultur was popularized by Sepp Holzer of Austria (he uses heavy machinery to create these mounds though!!!) and overpopularized as a miracle-solution to just about everything by the permaculture movement (most of whose members could not even grow 1/10th of their food and are by and large -except for a few- eager amateurs).

Creatin hügelkultur is very hard work without machinery (i know by experience), and you should never overdo the woody part, you need much more "greens" and soil than wood. And then, planting into those mounds is not very easy: a flat surface is much better in my view...

/Read Holzer's books, they are nice but not very practical, more like giving you a perspective/

Many people support the round form instead of the flat one. You get more planting surface compared to the ground surface. In Le Bec Hellouin in France, if I understood well, they seem to say that the round form is better for planted out vegetables (hope it's the right word, when you do the germination in one place, then put the plant in another place to let it grow). But for all things that are directly planted in the final spot like carrots, potatoes... they seem to prefer flat surfaces.

El Cid

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #748 on: July 31, 2019, 10:51:08 PM »
Oh yes, if you transplant, then the mounds are OK, otherwise -in my experience- just a pain in the a**

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Re: Gardening
« Reply #749 on: August 06, 2019, 08:16:40 PM »
a long post about my experiences (I know most of you already know this, but it is superimportant, so sorry if it is a bit boring):

The most important thing about gardening - and I am not saying anything that many generations of gardeners have not known:

SOIL. SOIL. THE PERFECT SOIL!

You need to create the perfect soil. If you can do that, everything elsw will be easy. That is my experience.

I have grown the same plants 20-100 meters from each other (at various locations): one in (sometimes raised) compost-beds (always growing something in the beds, no disturbance, no digging, no herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, etc) and one in the native soil and the experience is always the same. The ones that have good soil (and mind you, creating good soil takes years but you can speed up the process!) grew big, healthy, the taste was wonderful, usually very few problems, bugs and no need to do anything else than sowing, watering and harvesting; while the others grew much smaller, had less taste, got "sick" easily.

I have come to the conclusion that the best way to grow vegetables is in beds made of compost (good, quality compost is key!) - and you can grow big amounts of food in a surprisingly small area. You need to mulch the beds sometimes (depending on the climate) with grass/leaves etc; you need to grow something in them always, nonstop, even during winter, so that the biology in the soil gets fed, you must not disturb the soil (no digging or anything like that, and if it is not a rootveg you should even leave the root in the ground untouched-it keeps the good microbes and small things in the soil alive). If you can do this, you will have wonderful soil in a short time. These are now wellknown principles but we must never forget the basic rules:
- no disturbance
- no monocultures: as many types of plants as possible
- no bare soil
- always keep growing something: roots in the soil all the time

and if you can create your own compost, that is the best (fall leaves are bagged here and I can get as much I need for free, but you can also get plenty of stuff other people do not need, like coffee grounds, spoilt hay, fruit pomace, stable-bedding whatever.

If you have great soil, you already won and gardening will be easy
 
SIDENOTE: Fruit trees grow in many more types of soils quite well, but they also do much better if you strive to create good soil for them: grow a mix of cover crops around them (eg alfalfa, clovers, grasses, phacelia, even wildflowers, weeds, and cut this crop once - twice - thrice a year and mulch around the trees with it to keep them weedfree and fed. And that's it.