|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 23, 2016 10:44:52 GMT -5
If you wanted thorns then you could try the black locust which is a wonderful honey tree and shares most other characteristics of the honey locust, but those thorns are pretty lethal as well...and both honey locust and black locust have the reputation of volunteering sometimes more vigorously than would be wanted.
Synergy, did you ever get any honey locust seed? I am ordering some this spring, I have some but it's several years old and I want a lot, planning on planting them as coppicewood for firewood if nothing else. It's a tad iffy if they are entirely hardy in this climate so planning on planting lots in different areas to maximize survival rates. Anyway, if you didnt' find any seed I could send you some when the fresh batch gets here but it wouldn't be for a couple months, likely. I haven't ordered it yet, still trying to sort out wishes vs budget, but those are on the A list. If you don't want to wait, you can get them from J L Hudson ..I had very good germination from the ones I got from him before.
The ones I am getting are thornless btw, forgot to mention that. And something else I read recently is that they co-exist happily with black walnut but wouldn't warranty that
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 18, 2016 10:33:13 GMT -5
One thing to note is that these are small fields and as such are significant for the majority of farmers in less developed countries who tend to have small plots of land, unlike the US or Canada with these several thousand acres owned by one family... or company. Scale is important and this system may well be absolutely impractical for huge farms..but that's only a bad thing for a very few; the alternative is a bad thing for the vast majority. (not even taking into consideration the environmental, health and social costs of industrial ag.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 18, 2016 10:26:50 GMT -5
I couldn't find the same article but this deals with the story about record yields in India. It seems as though it isn't strictly the same as biodynamic but it is definitely not big ag type of farming, and as such another article I found said it was meeting with derision and disbelief by all the university and company researchers..so what else is new. Nevertheless it seems to be growing in acceptance.. YAY for the internet when such information can be moved into the wider world! ourworld.unu.edu/en/how-millions-of-farmers-are-advancing-agriculture-for-themselves
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 17, 2016 19:59:13 GMT -5
A lot of people think those multicoloured rosette cabbagea sold as an ornamentals are inedble. I imagine a lot of the vivid and differently shaped leaf lettuces would also be assumed to be ornamentals by people used to seeing the usual iceberg butterhead and romaine sorts. I've seen some plantings that it would be a shame to cut anything and disrupt the pattern in the bed, very attractive. Oops sorry they are not perennials although some sorts of lettuce self seed happilly, no idea about the cabbage.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 17, 2016 19:47:59 GMT -5
A couple of years ago the grocery store was clearing out chestnuts for pennies after Christmas so I threw 5 of them in pots in the house just to see what would happen, They all came up within 10 days, grew like crazy all summer but the winter finished them off. No idea where they originated or what sort they were. It was fun to fantasize about having some chestnut trees around the property while it lasted though.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 12, 2016 14:51:57 GMT -5
Steev, if you can get rid of the mice, even temporarilly, then pouring a thin trail of bleach around the outside of the building is used as a way to keep mice out of temporary camps ( temporary in that they are on skids rather than foundations, some move almost daily others stay in the same spot for years.) I've used it around my rather bedraggled old house and it's apparently been effective, have had no mice since. Might be worth a try.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 12, 2016 14:42:30 GMT -5
The variety that got tossed was Tanya's Purple Pod. To be fair, I got the seed in a swap so it may well have been old seed and was just beyond the ability or interest to cope with things. The idea with the Scarlet Runners wasn't to use them as a house plant, really, I honestly didn't think they would germinate. If you want a houseplant that will grow 6 feet high in a week or so go for it. Light for that sort of growth outside of a greenhouse is a bit scarce, especially with our short days in winter, so they were a bit scrawny stretching for the light until I could make better arrangements.
Never learn though, last winter tried to start 3 sweet potatoes to see if it was as easy as advertised and THEY ended up trying to take over, turned into a set of monsters. I was eating the leaves and shoots ( could have done that with the beans too, but didn't know it at the time) and still having a hard time keeping up, one potato gave at least 20 slips and showed no sign of slowing down.They took up a whole lot of space under the growlights (at least learned THAT much from the beans fiasco!) that had been intended for other things. Unfortunately they all got nailed by a late hard week long frost the second week in June when I was out of town so I lost them, which was a bit upsetting as at least one was a bush sweet potato and I really really wanted to keep that one going. Getting named sweet potato slips is a challenge in Canada and expensive when you do find them, starting them from a tuber is so quick and easy it's hard to justify the hassle of doing it otherwise.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 12, 2016 13:45:02 GMT -5
Discussing the topic the other day and someone said they were mixing non edibles in with the edibles including some fairly drastic ones such as castor bean, but not poison hemlock or anything like that. ( Castor bean might make adults only severely sick but they are said to be deadly to children, so that might end up having worse consequences than intended.) Admittedly they had been robbed recently (which is how the topic came up) and were not full of the milk of human kindness but I wondered if anyone else was mixing things up just to make intruders think twice about trying something they don't know.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 11, 2016 21:32:41 GMT -5
fantastic! It's fairly easy to find, just hadn't thought about using it as a sweet corn. Thank you.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 11, 2016 19:50:44 GMT -5
I'm looking for corn that doesn't have to have cozy warm soil before it can be planted, is short season, healthy, excellent flavor and consistently at least two decent sized cobs per plant.
One supplier ( from whom I have bought seed before and found so far to be accurate) says Fishers Earliest can tolerate frost after it's been planted, tillers enthusiastically and the tillers tend to produce an ear on their own, so can produce anywhere up to 5 cobs per plant. They also say they tried removing the tillers and the plants were less happy than those allowed to retain tillers. Several other suppliers say it produces ONE cob per plant and nothing whatever about cold soil tolerance or frost resistance. Both agree very good flavor and 70 days, which is beginning to slide into midseason here, but if the first description is accurate, then it would be worth while playing with. There seem to be two descriptions and everyone is just repeating one or the other. Could the difference simply be that often growers remove the tillers?
Anyone have any first hand knowledge of this variety? Or any others worth looking at? I'm planning on trying Yukon Supreme and Orchard baby this year... had considered Blue Jade but ran across a couple of reviews which were rather less than enthusiastic. I already have a couple Canadian types for the 65-70 day mark which have better sized cobs than those two are likely to have, but more cobs per plant other than popcorn is very intriguing.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 11, 2016 15:55:15 GMT -5
Another possible source is at Strictly Medicinal Seeds (formerly Horizon Herbs) but it might not be the same either. They do mention using it for beads but also say it's a "tasty raw chew" and that it's ground and made into tea, so at least a nod to the food potential. (I'm not deliberately tracking these down, I've ordered from these people in the past so get their catalogs, just in case you are beginning to feel a little haunted).
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 11, 2016 15:32:33 GMT -5
What are they trying to prove? Against my better judgement I bought a gooseberry from a chain store and two days after I got it home and before I got it planted a whole lot of little worms showed up on it.( and ONLY on it). So what good the so called "inspection"?
In the meantime I just got an invitation to ask for a catalog from One Green World, I got on their mailing list because I asked last year if they shipped to Canada. They said no, the paperwork was too expensive to bother with for small orders. So now they are inadvertently adding insult to injury by showing me all those luscious plants forever out of reach...
Everything too expensive now anyway with the ridiculous exchange.. even seed packets can be counted on to end up pretty much at least twice the price by the time everything is figured out. So of course, prices on this side of the border are also rising... So much for "free trade". Humbug.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 5, 2016 17:36:25 GMT -5
One Green World...unfortunately is in the States and they don't ship to Canada, or at least they didn't a couple of years ago when I tried to order some stuff from them.The paperwork - phytosanitary certificates and such, apparently makes it too much hassle for the return.. same as Oikos. Very frustrating. Seeds are not a problem so far ..although postal costs have gone through the roof..but plants are a huge hassle and we aren't a big enough market to make it worth while.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 5, 2016 0:28:08 GMT -5
Has anyone had any experience with Whiffletree Farm and Nursery in Ontario? I'd never heard of them before this afternoon but they have a couple of things I haven't seen anywhere else including shipova trees. They also have goumi that I thought someone was looking for. They are a BBB member so guessing they're probably ok.. I've sent for a catalog anyway, but it would be nice to hear of any personal experiences with them.
|
|
|
Post by prairiegarden on Jan 5, 2016 0:15:35 GMT -5
I THINK but wouldn't absolutely swear to it, that that was the method used by 4 Indian farmers who posted record yields this past fall. I'll try to find the link. It came up as a follow up item to a story about crop failures with GMO seed (also last fall), and those farmers beating up a Monsanto rep who tried to tell them the failure was their fault. A nice juxtaposition.
|
|