Pork rinds, melted butter, salt, cinnamon.
We are calling it Skin-a-mon Toast Crunch.
#grownostr #porkstr #butter #foodstr
I then turned it into a grilled cheese sandwich:
#grownostr #dinner
#parenting #homeschooling #kidstr
I've been feeding it cow and pig poop.
The "main" output is biogas, but the other output is this effluent rich in microbes (in the 5 gallon bucket), which goes into the worm bin for production of worms and castings.
I'm hauling the effluent to the worms by hand every couple days, but I set up the anerobic digester purposefully uphill of the worms so eventually I can gravity feed the effluent to the worms automatically.
#grownostr #permaculture #biogas #vermiculture #worms
About a month ago, I planted some 1' OP-367 Hybrid Poplars.
Here they are planted into some landscape fabric to keep down the weeds, about a month ago:
Now here they are 1 month later, I'd say average 2 stems, each 18" to 2' tall:
Here are some Silky Willows (Steamco) I planted last Thursday. Already putting on growth. Planted in 3' wide landscape fabric with drip irrigation under the fabric.
That's a black walnut in the background. Printing more trees via propagation from nuts.
Now let's look at the economics. 1 month in I have 4x'ed my cutting length on the poplars, which I bought for $2.50. In the fall if they grow no taller than they are now, I have $10 worth of cuttings.
This is the 2nd year for those basket willows. I cut them down to the ground in March and they've put on 7-8' of growth already on conservatively 30 stems on each plant. Say conservatively we have 210, 1' cuttings. So now I have $500 worth of cuttings per year possible from that one plant.
Let's say we pot them up and sell them like "fastgrowingtrees.com" does for $86.95 a plant! Now we have our single "parent" plant making us $15,000+.
At this point it's a marketing game.
Or all you chicken and duck farmers, use these plants in your chicken and duck yard for cover for your birds as well as to soak up the nitrogen in their poop. The birds will weed the trees for you and help them grow faster. Stack functions in your businesses and life.
Also as an aside.... these cuttings should go in the ground earlier than July! But they still work. Pretty forgiving.
#permaculture #grownostr #propagation #nursery #business #plantstr #garden
What we are looking for is a medium that drains easily, yet retains moisture. The cost is also a factor.
Since we pot mostly perennials, I also am looking for a fungally dominant potting mix vs. bacterially dominant as you'd have with fresh compost.
Wood chips around here are easy to get by the truckload, and I use well rotted ones for the basis of my compost mix. And by "rotted" I mean "rotted": They look like soil and are completely broken down by fungus, it takes about 2-3 years.
On top of the wood chips I add about 5% by volume charged biochar. About half of this is sifted to 1/4" + and the other half of the biochar is right out of the leaf vacuum I use to crush it up. The biochar is charged with azomite, sea minerals, worm casts, and effective microorganisms (EM-1). We make the biochar right here on the farm. It serves both to provide and retain nutrients and moisture as well as provide drainage:
Then worm castings sifted to 1/8" and finer at around 5% by volume. I also raise the worms for the casts, the current system involves growing them in 4'x8' Waste Management Bagsters:
Finally about 1 quart of activated EM-1. This is 1 oz Terraganix EM-1 mixed with 1 oz blackstrap molasses in 30 oz of water:
This all gets mixed up by hand, and then we use it to pot our plants.
I mix it in a gorilla cart which will provide enough for about 25-30 trade gallon pots.
#grownostr #permaculture #fungi #plantstr #garden
This device here takes the calcium ions in our water and carbonate ions in the water and combines them back together into a form of calcium carbonate crystals called vaterite, which is like talc powder when dried.
Since the ions are combined into the crystal and remain crystalized in the water, they won't bond with other ions in the water or soil.
This helps prevent a few things for us in the garden:
- the calcium and carbonate ions from bonding with other fertilizers, helping to lessen the amount of fertilizers needed and improving the efficiency of microbes in the soil getting needed nutrients to plants
- helps us from getting water spots on our plant leaves in the nursery and clogging irrigation parts with minerals. The vaterite will wash off in the rain rather than form crystals on the plant surfaces.
Incidentally we're using this to treat all the water in our house/farm since it's in-line with the line from the well. So this helps with clogged shower heads and sinks and water spots as well as making soap go farther.
Inside this device is a core which is coated with a catalyst to combine the calcium and carbonate ions into crystals. The rough surface helps add turbidity to the water to ensure the ions come in contact with the catalyst:
The core fits into a pipe which goes in-line with your water line, so it doesn't impeded the flow of water:
This gets cleaned out 2-3x per year with some CLR (Calcium-Lime-Rust) solvent just to clean up the catalyst. There are no filters or consumables other than the CLR cleaner.
Here is the website for the company describing the science behind it:
Here's a closeup of the bag. Looks like the cardboard is starting to break down in here.
Not ideal that the tree isn't in the ground yet, but if you need to preserve some plants until you have time to plant them, this works pretty well for me.
I can share some other resources on Effective Microorganisms (EM) if you're interested.
The other thing cool about EM-1 was discovered after the Fukashima nuclear plant accident. At a nursery in Japan, they were testing the crops after the fallout to make sure that there were not radioactive elements present in the food.
One of the fruit nurseries does a soil drench and foliar application of EM-1 to build up the biology in the soil and on the leaves.
They found that the fruit from this nursery had very little or no contamination from the radioactive elements.
My understanding is the EM-1 helps establish good fungal and bacterial presence in the soil and on the leaves which forms a sort of protection from the radioactive elements. Instead of taking in the raw element as ions, the fungi is preventing the plant from taking them in as the plants are relying on the fungi to provide them with what nutrients they need, and not just taking them from the soil.
#grownostr #permaculture #gardening #plantstr
If you look closely you will see 2 kinds of canes: The 2 older looking, taller, darker canes, and then a small plant that looks like it's sprouting from the base.
Those canes are from last year are called the "floricanes", and will bear this year's fruit. It's forming now, here's a zoomed in picture.
The canes from this year are the "primocanes". They will grow this year and will become floricanes next year. Here is a different angle so you can see the primocane forming at the base:
The plant spreads underground and will pop up new primocanes further and further from the parent plant. Some of my patches now are 20' long and thick with plants produced by only 3 parent plants. after about 4 or 5 years.
To propagate this type of raspberry, in the spring, I will dig up the plant around the floricanes coming into their second year and pot them up. The root base from that plant will then send out roots which will sprout into primocanes and continue the plant.
You may also see "bare root" raspberries, those are plants that have been dug up as I describe and sold prior to the plant putting on any growth. They are cheaper, but, as some of my customers have mentioned, when you get them, they "look like sticks" and so are not as attractive for retail customers.
#grownostr #gardening #permaculture #fruit #plantstr
The long term plan is to get completely away from the commercial fertilizer by fertilizing with compost tea, but I'm not there yet.
The more I interact with people, the more I realize what I'd consider common knowledge, is not common. Specifically worm castings, I sold some blackberries yesterday and mentioned that I had just top dressed them with worm castings, and the customer had never heard of using worm castings as a fertilizer, or even what they were.
Other things to teach is the seasonality of fruits, and that different varieties of the same fruit produce at different times. For instance, I have 4 different varieties of red raspberries that, when planted out, should produce most of the summer up to the frost. But people don't know that so you have to mention it.
Final thing to mention is this little garden scooter that I got a few months ago from AM Leonard. This thing is a back saver and puts you right where you need to be at eye level with the plants.
#permaculture #gardening #wormcastings #propagation
We have a landscape trailer, 10.5' long by 5' wide. I can fit about 180 to 200 plants in trade 1 gallon pots onto that trailer.
After we load, and this is KEY, I cover the plants up with a shade cloth tarp to prevent the wind from ripping all the leaves off while we are driving.
At the event, we've either set up the plants on low tables or on the ground. I have information sheets with me (DM me and I'll send you the PDFs!) as well as setting up a sign with our offerings.
My goal the more I do this is to create a more exciting and inviting booth. As I look at the pictures of our set up booth, I can see we need more color (as in flowering plants) as well as more abundance and variety of leaf shapes, plants, etc. So we are going to branch out a bit into things like lilacs, daylillies, hydrangea, etc.
#permaculture #gardening #propagation #grownostr
