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Post by steev on Jun 9, 2017 21:51:32 GMT -5
No; would a Tech-9 do? I think that's one of the favored hole-making tools, here in Oakland, though beyond the budget of most who are into making holes; I have no expertise, of course, being solidly mainstream and not at all fringe-y.
I'll bet you could grind up those dowels to pack them into any size holes; mushroom-plug pate; might work; how did mushrooms work before we started coddling the little darlings?
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Post by mjc on Jun 9, 2017 22:28:13 GMT -5
I'll bet you could grind up those dowels to pack them into any size holes; mushroom-plug pate; might work; how did mushrooms work before we started coddling the little darlings? Could have just ordered sawdust spawn to begin with... Not sure, because there is evidence that 'we've' been messing with them/coddling them for quite a long time...a couple of thousand years. |
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Post by steev on Jun 9, 2017 22:53:25 GMT -5
As well we should have, such tasty little devils; commonly suspect to Northern Europeans, but highly valued by Southern Europeans; if I don't mis-remember, the 5000-year-old "Iceman" had some mushrooms in his kit.
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Post by mjc on Jun 9, 2017 23:33:11 GMT -5
He did...but if they were wild gathered/ cultivated is the big question.
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Post by steev on Jun 10, 2017 0:36:14 GMT -5
Right; people want "dependable", like not just foraged grains, but farmed; we're so focused on not sometimes starving and having to move away; really an uncommon characteristic among other life-forms; comes with the whole "settled-down" life-style, pretty unknown among vertebrates, although common among bivalves and corals, to their relatively recent disadvantage; whether it will be to ours remains an open question; myself, I intend to settle, grow a shell, and perhaps try to grow shaggy-manes, shiitake, blewits, honey-mushrooms, and shrooms (only for culinary use, I assure you, if I can find any recipes that call for them, lest I be forced to use them as best I can, that they not go to waste).
I need to continue expanding my cultivated/irrigated areas so that eventually I can split the riega into two separate programs, each having enough capacity that back-pressure doesn't flood the pump-house; as I expand, I may be able to program so that it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing; will I get this done before time to shut off the riega? Time will tell. Send your bets to me (cash or checks that clear); I am, of course, not to be swayed by whether yea or nay would be more personally profitable.
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Post by templeton on Jun 10, 2017 8:12:45 GMT -5
Despite a long-standing ban on any new kitchen items, with her away in Queensland, a hankering for sourdough, and my dodgy shoulders ruling out kneading, I got onto the local crime converts website, and picked up a bread maker for $25. Seems to do a great job on kneading, tho I suspect I won't trust it to cook. We will see after a second rising tomorrow...
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Post by 12540dumont on Jun 10, 2017 13:39:41 GMT -5
Templeton. I want a local crime converts website....
I can't find the basil seeds. Now, I have to empty the freezer. Drat. Nasty little homesteading activity.
In my dreams I have a 10x20 walk in freezer where I can SEE everything. Back to unloading. Brrr. My hands are frozen.
None of my plug mushrooms did well. However, the ones on the spawn in the fridge look completely white!
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Post by walt on Jun 12, 2017 21:43:14 GMT -5
For 4 years I've been working on a garden where i am now.
The first year I worked the Bermuda grass sod in the yard. The soil was deep, rich, friable and I carefully shook the grass out of every spadefull, I thought. The potatoes, corn, tomatoes, squash, and peppers grew up and looked wonderfull. But I couldn't keep up with the Bermuda grass. Finally I gave it up.
I think i would have won If I'd gone the herbicide route, and i thought about it. But i decided to move on to less green pasture. All I have left of that effort is about a dozen trifoiiate orange trees and a grape vine.
The next year I turned to an acre, more or less, that had been plant to brome grass, Bromus inermis. I don't know how long the land had been fallow, but there are many elm trees scattered around in it that are 2 to 3 inches diameter.
So I got my spade and started digging. i'd dig an area and go back and break up the clods and plant. Then I'd do another area the same for another crop. i planted corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, onions and peppers. But when I saw I was winning, I added some perennials and self-seeders; horse radish, chives, garlic chives.
The biggest problem in this new location was the 2 inches or more of old dry grass that covered it. I mixed it in as best I could, wgich wasn't very good. It used up the nitrogen and I ended up adding Miricle Gro weekly. By last year the old grass had broken down and the ground was easier to work and yields were better.
Last year I borrowed a good old Troy Built Horse and rototilled some more ground. But someone had power of attorny for the old man who loaned it to me and he sent the police to get the tiller.
I had gone over an area twice and the old grass was well mixed into the tp 2 or 3 inches of soil. that hekped a lot. But it was too shallow, and still not as much area as I wanted. But about then I finally found a replacement for Matilda, my long lost heavy eye hoe, Matilda (2) and I worked the tilled ground deeper and worked more sod.
This year I have about 250 sqare meters in crops. I think this about enough. I've added strawberries, sweet potatoes,sorghum, hulless barley, hulless oats, and sunflowers. Beans will soon go in. Iris and liies have their space, and purple poppy mallows.
While I eat from this garden, it is mostly for breeding. I have written about ASAP corn and hardy citrus, I am also wanting to cross Nanking cherry x sweet cherry, Nana beach plum x apricot, heat and drought tolerant tomatoes, domestic peppers with chiltipines, and small great flavored melons adapted for my area.
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Post by steev on Jun 12, 2017 23:32:20 GMT -5
Sorry if I find the notion of the cops coming to stop your use of the tiller funny, but damn! Adverse possession of a tiller? People get weird when there's inheritance involved (I have stories!).
Matilda 2 is how Italians (also those of them who were immigrants to the USA) worked the soil for many years, a line of workers moving across a field, more or less in unison; she, a grape hoe, is also what helped me trench to put much irrigation-pipe to my planted acres; really amazing how much that work stressed the muscles below my ribs, though not my arms/shoulders.
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Post by mskrieger on Jun 13, 2017 15:32:54 GMT -5
Harvested strawberries with the kids for breakfast. Their first homegrown strawberries; they were amazed at the taste. The first fruits from our ongoing project to turn the hedgerows overgrown with ornamental inedibles into productive orchard strips. A small step for homesteading, but very, very satisfying.
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Post by steev on Jun 13, 2017 18:13:11 GMT -5
Having been one, I can attest to the lasting value for children in learning how food can happen.
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Post by prairiegardens on Jun 14, 2017 11:53:29 GMT -5
Just had a discussion about kids in school only getting 20 minutes to eat lunch and how disrespectful that is toward food, when they are waiting in line to get it for some or much of the time.
There's a wonderful Ted Talk about a grade 5 teacher in the worst area of the Bronx with the worst off kids in the school dramatically turning things around for his kids. He starting with growing greens in the classroom. The kids were involved every step of the way (and could go eat whenever they wanted from the beds). One thing led to another, absenteeism vanished, they learned how to build and maintain both living walls and living roofs, they learned to cook and served the other students in the school, sold plants and produce, donated food to the elderly and needy in the area. They even got contracts to build living roofs inBoston and places around New York. Quite an amazing teacher, apparently the first cohort of the program all graduated and several went on to college. All a result of growing food in the school and an imaginative, energetic, highly dedicated teacher.
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Post by steev on Jun 14, 2017 17:32:21 GMT -5
There may yet be hope for us.
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Post by steev on Jun 14, 2017 18:32:29 GMT -5
Monday went back to the irrigation store with the valve, but we couldn't find a solenoid that fit; they've also changed the controllers (two AA, instead of two 9v, batteries; two wires, instead of three, to connect); they said I should come back when the expert is in, so I did that today; he said I'm SOL; any given controller/valve array must be wholly converted, no mix-and-match possible; however, he did manage to scare up one last solenoid of the old model, which he gifted me, on the grounds that it was just luck that he hadn't thrown it away when he was re-organizing the parts-room.
So I'll replace entire arrays as necessary, scavenging parts to maintain the originals, until I'll be running tours for school-kids, with the last old-model array existing; I'll be all "See, chillun; this is how we ran the riega when dinosaurs roamed the Earth", and they'll go: "You were here then!?"; and I'll be all "It's so kind of you, to imply that I don't look that old."
So hot on the farm, I braided my beard, just to get some air on my neck; nothing fancy, just Saxon/Norse, though I doubt they'd have had a rubber-band; we've progressed so far! My landlady thinks I should just cut it: I don't give her advice on her appearance; she keeps telling me that I'd look good if I trimmed it; I keep telling her that I feel I should give less-fortunate men a chance; I think she's worried about her property-values.
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Post by 12540dumont on Jun 22, 2017 14:04:36 GMT -5
Steev, Leo says, "Don't cut, it's a gift from God". He was so told by the Sikh down the street from us.....
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