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Post by prairiegarden on Jan 5, 2016 0:04:16 GMT -5
Hmm hadn't thought to worry about nitrogen fertilizer because well. because they are beans. I started some very old Scarlet Runners a couple of years ago to see if the seed was still viable and they tried to take over the house as I started them way too early to be able to put them in the garden. Dumb, obviously, but was pretty sure they wouldn't still be viable, they were probably at least 10 years old and had been in less than optimum storage. They didn't get any fertilizer at all. I ended up giving them away to anyone who would give them house room, and as far as I know they all grew like gangbusters, and eventually moved into various gardens without a hiccup.
At least these ones were bush beans... Anyway, I threw them out, they didn't look as though they were ever going to pay their way. I was just curious if there was any point in trying to develop resistance to whatever by letting them struggle. Since apparently not, out they go. Too many choices to put up with a veggie prima donna.
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Post by prairiegarden on Jan 4, 2016 23:30:29 GMT -5
I have a very healthy black currant which easily shrugs off the worst weather Saskatchewan has thrown at it..several days of -45C + windchill a couple of years ago, although that was unusually unpleasant and considerably colder than normal, at least for the past ten years or so. I have an unidentified grape, possibly a wild grape as it has small and somewhat seedy (but addictive) fruit which didn't seem to notice the weather either and also pumped out the usual harvest. Anything that needs to be hardier than that... maybe that sort of weather kills off the nasties for a few years.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 29, 2015 13:18:31 GMT -5
Ah I was trying to see if I could find any sources in California and you are sort of limited there, it seems to bring anything into California they do the phytosanitary certificate thing which gets to be expensive; and most of the reforestation trees there are grown to contract. So good luck - it seems as though it may not be a simple solution for you as it possibly is for people elsewhere in the country. Otoh, if you might consider seeds.. I was just wandering through the JL Hudson seed catalog, thinking of trying some of the edible seeded pine. They have all sorts of interesting stuff in there, most of which won't survive a normal prairie winter but would work well for you. There is also www.treeshrubseeds.com/index I've had great service and success with stuff from Hudson, haven't yet tried Schumacher. Tree seeds are pretty cheap but of course there's the time element..
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 19, 2015 18:32:55 GMT -5
If you're going to buy them consider contacting the people who sell wholesale.. I can get aronia ( admittedly unnamed so probaly the wild not the improved ones, and a good deal smaller) for $1.25 if I buy 25 of them, the few places I've found them for sale otherwise are up to $20 each. Same for Black locust. Some places will sell as few as one plant ( not many!) some have a minumum of 100 and one had a minimum of $5000 worth of product but if you keep looking I bet you'd find some, and in the States they MIGHT even ship for free.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 17, 2015 23:21:09 GMT -5
Never mind, Steev, Google is trundling "no driver" cars around the countryside already. It's rumored that they keep getting into accidents, but Google claims that's usually the fault of drivers in other cars. A news report the other day said it got a ticket for going too slow. Another news item was a driver of a hit and run got turned in by her car..it was programmed to report to someone..GPS? if it was involved in an accident, so it did and the police nailed the driver. Not that anyone should get away with hit and run, but to me there's something a bit uncomfortable about that scenario. Anyway, sorry if that Adlay is another blind alley, had been all excited to have found a source! Ah well, the intention was good even if the result not useful.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 17, 2015 10:11:43 GMT -5
Just remembered a site I found and forgot a few years back as it is in the States and at that time they weren't selling seed, only plants so of no use to me in Canada. Checked it out and found that now they are selling seed. It's a fascinating site as their original interests..still actively being pursued, were trees but they have all sorts of interesting other stuff as well. They are maybe working with corn as they have teosinte for sale, but they also have a perennial wheat and all sorts of interesting other things as well; some plants only, others the seed. Well worth checking out oikostreecrops.com/products/seeds/
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 17, 2015 10:02:00 GMT -5
I just remembered a really interesting site, and am going to post the link on the landrace seeds thread as well, they sell Adlay seed as a grain crop, not as an ornamental. They also have perennial wheat ( in the grass lawn Yucca category)though that may be only per plant rather than seed..my computer is not cooperating this morning. They have lots of other interesting goodies although their focus has been on developing landrace tree crops. I'd forgotton about them..a few years ago I had contacted them but then they were not selling seed, (an individual can't realistically import plants into Canada) it seems that now they are. Very much worth checking out. oikostreecrops.com/products/seeds/
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 17, 2015 9:43:36 GMT -5
Cool! I had looked at what I found on the internet and none of the deficiencies described the symptoms..I wondered if somehow the soil had got contaminated as it's been sitting outside for a year (in the bag but the bag was ripped). But I transplanted a pepper into the same soil as an experiment and it's thriving so that seems not to be the case. What bean did you grow and how did they produce? This patient of mine is pretty feeble, it's only got about 4 pods it's trying to grow out..I think I am going to put it out of its misery. I use a seaweed fertilizer, well diluted. Smells horrible.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 16, 2015 15:38:01 GMT -5
that's interesting! so would probably be better to eat the beans then than to save seed and see if the babies do better..at least unless I can keep them well isolated as it is now. It's curious that this one is apparently recovering though, none of the new leaves so far are showing any sign of infection.Maybe it is a different virus..or maybe it just hits leaves once they get a certain size..I'm not up on bean diseases.
If that's the case then, not a lot of point in hanging on with it.. will toss it and start over with fresh seed in fresh soil in a clean pot, Thank you
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 16, 2015 13:51:23 GMT -5
Will plants develop resistance to diseases and if so if a plant survives an attack of a virus, for example, will resistance be passed on to their offspring? Sort of like vaccination in people? It seems as though whenever a plant gets zapped, the usual response is either to pull it out or to spray it with something. I am trying to grow a bush bean under lights this winter and the plant came down with something that is probably some form of bean mosaic, there wasn't anything chewing at or eating it. I've been watching it as it struggled to put out beans ANYWAY and now new growth is happening, new healthy leaves are sprouting all over the plant. I'm wondering if the bean seed matures, if it will have a resistance to whatever it was that attacked it.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 16, 2015 13:32:51 GMT -5
Right..water retention is about the best plan possible and organic soil with some plants or cover will hold onto it better than anything else. Tamara at least had seasonal rains to fill the lake they built.
We have the same thing happening here with farmers thinking that bare soil is the best strategy for weed control and paying no attention to what is happening to their topsoil. Here, they are also busy ripping out hedgerows of trees that farmers PLANTED to get OUT of the Dust Bowl. I was astonished when I learned..as an adult!.. it had reached all the way up well into Canada and that some of the programs that got us out of it had been maintained since the 1930s.
Then the last( and thankfully ex) Prime Minister abandoned the program which had reserved thousands of acres of vulnerable land for pasture and trees only, and sold it all off to whomever wanted to do whatever to it, and dismantled a tree nursery which had given shelterbelt trees to anyone with more than 10 acres. Amazing how people with so little intelligence for anything but how to get elected actually do get elected.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 15, 2015 21:10:57 GMT -5
I can't find the original video which detailed the Tamara project in Portugal where Sepp Holtzer took an area of Portugal which was rapidly desertifying, even the cork trees were dying, and created a huge lake with only earthworks, no concrete, no pond liners. The owners of the land had been told by all sorts of engineers that it couldn't be done, but he not only did it, it has brought back springs and is now rejuvenating the land beyond Tamara.
Both Sepp Holtzer and Geoff Lawton specialize in how to manage water so as to make it stay in the landscape in a useful form as long as possible, recharging aquifers and moving back and forth with swales and ponds. but it always depends on reading the land and understanding what it has to say about how to go about it. Sepp's home in Austria is on a steep mountainside but he has something like 40 ponds,most if not all interconnected. There are You Tube videos of his property. It isn't that big but it IS amazing..the abundance and diversity (including thriving citrus trees NOT in a greenhouse!)it supports is enviable.
Geoff Lawton brought heavilly salted sterile soil 10 miles from the Dead Sea back into production..figs producing in 4 months from being planted. I strongly recommend researching what they have to say about managing water.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 15, 2015 20:13:37 GMT -5
I THINK that the latest was a sort of 2-4D cocktail and it was rejected by the USDA as "possibly affecting more than the target crop" or some such apologetic comment.
RpR, if you want to sterilize your soil so nothing will grow, vinegar is said to be difficult for plants to handle, especially the stronger concentrations such as pickling vinegar. Or undiluted urine in sufficient quantities will certainly do it, at least for a while, especially if dosed regularly for a few days. At least it's worked to get rid of the quackgrass snuggled under and around the concrete steps, although quackgrass being what it is, it will likely need to be repeated each year. A lot cheaper and doesn't have negative impact on the rest of the environment or on your health.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 15, 2015 2:33:48 GMT -5
One light in the darkness though, is the recent refusal of the USDA or FDA to allow the use of the next nasty that the chem ag people had in mind. So perhaps finally someone is starting to take a look instead of simply rubber stamping whatever the chem ag people put in front of them.
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Post by prairiegarden on Dec 15, 2015 2:26:21 GMT -5
Heard an ad last summer aimed at farmers, and had to wonder if anyone is actually thinking about what they are saying..or on the other hand what they are being told. Included in the ad was something along the lines of "you've seen that ABC isn't stopping this problem any more, but now you can use this new chemical XYZ " Do they realize what they are admitting? and do farmers really not THINK about what they are being told and where that has to lead? I saw a clip where the Monsanto people swore in the original hearing for permission to use GMOs and the attendant chemicals(glyphosates) that this system of ag would not, could not, ever lead to superbugs or superweeds, that it would never happen. Since that statement denies evolution, I've often been a bit bemused by the claim that people who are anti GMO are anti science. Apparently thousands of acres in the US are now out of production because of a wild amaranth which just LOVES glyphosates...one plant, which grows faster than the crop and cannot be combined because of the woody stems and branches, can produce a million seeds, according to one government site I read, which said that at the moment the only sure method of dealing with it was pulling it out by hand. (!!) An Ag official in Saskatchewan told producers not to worry , we don't have it in Saskatchewan ( yet). As far as glyphosate toxicity.. www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/roundup-weedkiller-linked-global-epidemic-fatal-kidney-disease . Salvador banned it and immediately was threatened with the loss of all foreign aid unless they changed their mind; Salvador started to publicize what was going down and Obama backed off. Later he tried the same thing in India and Sri Lanka, I have no idea how it played out there.
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