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Post by MikeH on Sept 1, 2013 8:18:41 GMT -5
'I like that term 'vegan compost',not sure my compost would qualify given the amount of egg shells that are added. Did you plant the Queens Anne Lace Mike or had it been there already?,ive set myself a 2km limit where if i see any on the sides of the road i grub it out,i dont want it anywhere near my place I use the term a bit more loosely - no animal manure. Here, we are a got-a-medical-problem-take-a-pill culture. This even extends to animals. I'd be loathe to use animal compost from any commercial operation and I don't even take it now from a friend's hobby farm. One of her horses was doing poorly and the vet prescribed some kind of antibiotic. Using the precautionary approach, I decided not to use any animal manure regardless of source. I can screw things up easily enough without outside help so I now stick closer to home for my fertility. I'd bet that Queen Anne's Lace came over on the Mayflower and was first off the boat at Plymouth Rock in 1620. It's everywhere although it tends to cycle a bit because it's biennial. Some years are much worse that others. This is a very heavy year. Trying to eradicate it on our property isn't on my tilting at windmills list. And I'm much less predisposed to going after it or most weeds now because of what we've seen happen in the orchard this year. It has a long taproot which is a good thing for aerating the soil. The root is edible in a pinch and would be much more edible if the pinch started to hurt. We just want to see if we can reduce whatever immediate seed drop there might be in the orchard so that other plants have a chance to establish with less competition. I don't know whether Dutch White Clover is smotherable with mulch but peas certainly are. When bringing a new bed into cultivation, I've sown peas thickly then dumped a layer of straw on top when they were about 15cm high. It worked well. I'll be watching with interest to see what happens with you clover experiment Mike. Just about everything is here. A thing enough mat of densely packed material in the fall combined with snow cover for moisture in the spring and things rot quickly. We saw that last year when we mulched freshly planted heartnuts with 6 foot rings of grass clippings. By the fall, when I checked there were the rotted remains of dock, goldenrod, and twitchgrass. Whether white clover roots behave like twitchgrass roots will be the test. Twitchgrass roots seem to lie dormant in the soil undisturbed and then return with a vengeance. |
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Post by steev on Sept 3, 2013 0:18:33 GMT -5
I never wander around the farm without my clippers on my belt; whether it has any real benefit or not, it makes me feel better to clip off any damned weed before it can go to seed. I think it works fine for big, obtrusive weeds like wild lettuce and Queen Anne's Lace. If my ancestors brought that on the Mayflower, I regret it, though it would be not untypical of my ancestors to have done something so self-defeating.
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Post by Earl on Dec 21, 2013 19:51:58 GMT -5
IF you define Prepper as one who prepares...guess I am one. Since 1999 and the computer scare I made my mind to collect things hand powered, solar, etc. Wood heat in garage with loft or trapper cabin would mean leaving the house but...a cut natural gas line or an accident on a major hwy could impact THE grocery store in town in 48 hours....being 25 miles plus from sources of cheap supplies adds an element. We are in the woods and can trap, hunt, snare...but it would be a change in lifestyle. Most friends tell me they would "bug-out" to come here...LOL and laugh when I show them a bug out bag. Next year means greenhouse, raised beds, chickens and hopefully a mini-cow. Getting prepared without being paranoid...yet  |
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Post by steev on Dec 23, 2013 1:19:33 GMT -5
Well, paranoia is just freaking out; being prepared is just common sense.
It's nice to be able to depend on the larger society, but it's wise to be able to depend on yourself.
I don't personally promote the notion of individual or familial self-sufficiency; I am committed to community self-sufficiency; I realize that tends to restrict the operative community to a relatively small size, but there it is.
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Post by synergy on Dec 25, 2013 16:05:16 GMT -5
I try to be prepared but I definitely am paranoid about fukushima impacts on the west coast here and climate change and all its implications . Taking three university courses on climate change just confirmed why I should be concerned . The more I study the more convinced I am , perhaps actually informed and reasonably concerned ? I think you need to start with preparing yourself and your family but you need a resilient community .
Hmmm, I keep thinking my community might be on the North Island of New Zealand .
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coppice
gardener
gardening curmudgeon
Posts: 149
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Post by coppice on Dec 26, 2013 14:45:48 GMT -5
My favorite xenophobic (and racist) gardening forums has a problem. The house is packed with folks too ready by far to hate their way to perdition.
Learning how to feed yourself and how to get on with your neighbors, almost never involves pushing my shotgun into my neighbors mouth.
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Post by templeton on Jan 10, 2014 20:13:47 GMT -5
My favorite xenophobic (and racist) gardening forums has a problem. A specifically racist and xenophobic gardening forum? Boy,(oops, I meant 'wow') thats a specialist interest group! So, no discusions of rusSian kale, black tomatoes, all the asian vegetables,asiatic lilies,hmmm, depending where you are, that might severely limit discussion...  T |
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coppice
gardener
gardening curmudgeon
Posts: 149
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Post by coppice on Jan 15, 2014 10:33:59 GMT -5
Little enough for those guys to eat. Plenty of gun waving and rino blasting.
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Post by freeholder on Jan 19, 2014 19:02:03 GMT -5
I just read through the whole thread -- some interesting discussions going on!
On guns, I don't see what the big deal is. Like Joseph, I was raised in an environment where all the adults (even my mother and grandmothers) had guns and used them for hunting or to defend the property (my mother shot a bear that was trying to get into our cabin when I was small; she was six months pregnant with my twin sisters. Her younger sister, my aunt, has shot several bears in their yard when they got too close to the house, walked on top of their car, or got between my then-small cousins and the house -- before anyone protests the shooting of bears, these were not tame ones, they were Alaskan grizzlies.). When the family got together, the men talked about guns, hunting, and mechanics, mostly. Dad started teaching my brothers and me to shoot when we were about six, seven, and eight years old. So, like I said, no big deal. Most people who own guns aren't loonies, they are just ordinary people. I know several people here who open-carry, and many more who carry concealed, and all are quite sane.
One thing was missing from the list of things to prep for -- wild-fires. Since it's dry in the summer, most of the West (USA and probably Canada, too) has regular issues with fires during the dry season; for the most part, we all know how to deal with that when it happens. This year is likely to be especially bad, though, given the extreme drought conditions we are having. This is a good time to look around your property and see what you can do to fire-proof it, in case a fire does get too close. Also make sure you know your evacuation routes, and keep a list of things to pack and take with you if you do have to evacuate. (No heroics here -- a fire would likely take out the power supply, which would leave us with no water from the well to fight a fire.) Also make sure you have a working vehicle and fuel in it -- a few years ago when they were having those bad fires in East Texas, I was concerned about a friend there as I knew her health issues had forced her to give up driving. Thankfully, neighbors were aware of the situation and would have helped her get out if it had become necessary (the fires came close, but she didn't need to evacuate). If you have livestock, plan ahead and make sure you'll be able to get them out, too, if necessary.
I'm rather inclined to think a somewhat slow decline at an accelerating pace is the most likely scenario for the future, but there are likely to be (and usually are) sudden events hitting various places. We need to be prepared as well as we can manage for both. Also, people I know have said that their stored food and other supplies were what got them through when they had an unexpected job loss or serious health problem and couldn't work for a while. So it doesn't have to be an 'end of the world' thing, just a major change in YOUR world!
I would be gardening and keeping chickens and dairy goats even if the world was ticking along just fine, but since it isn't ticking along just fine, I'm awfully thankful for the garden and the livestock!
Kathleen
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Post by flowerweaver on Jan 24, 2014 14:04:00 GMT -5
As those Texas wildfires were raging around us, our well had been dry for six months, after eleven months without rain. It was undoubtedly the most stressful time I've ever lived through. For the first time we put together an evacuation plan for our many animals, including arranging out-of-state farm stops and stays, which we fortunately never had to implement.
Water wrangling became my full time job. Our fruit trees died, but I dug up all the seed tomatoes and put them into pots in kiddie pools which I filled with buckets of river water as needed. When the river went dry I quickly learned the most generous people were ones I didn't know or like, who graciously allowed us some from their wells. Our friends were too worried their wells would go dry (yet didn't). I've seen community come together during floods, too. Community is the most important resource.
I choose to make my life as sustainable as possible out of respect for the earth and all other beings, not out of fear of societal collapse. I save seed because it's not only practical, but it is also an act of defiance against large scale agricultural practice. I'm much more concerned about developing landraces that can withstand our extreme weather. I know if things get truly bad people will probably be coming to me for knowledge and seeds, which I freely share, not to rob me of my kale at gun point. I could even house and apprentice a couple of bewildered and displaced city folks in necessary.
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Post by steev on Jan 24, 2014 22:00:09 GMT -5
Just so! The truly rapacious will have no idea about crops, and will be after a meal, not a means to grow one; I think I've dealt with this in an earlier thread, and don't want to reiterate it. Amanita phalloides, yummy flavor; kill the bastards!
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