Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

Watercress can be found almost everywhere in the wild here but it will also 
grow happily in our garden. Another indication of high moisture. Land 
cresses are reliably good too in winter and garden cress in summer (maca 
from the Andes is in this family and does perform poorly).
And we do have a lot of nettles that are good to eat when young. Once they 
start flowering they contain a lot of calcium oxalate which can give you 
kidney stones. But by then our goats really love them and can get through 
huge amounts and it does improve the milk in quantity and quality.
In a good year, but that is quite a while ago, we can have huge masses of 
field mushrooms outside. And in the tunnels we usually have good quantities 
of parasols. Other than that it is generally too cold for high value 
mushrooms. Never managed to grow oysters or even wood bluewit. Sometimes 
huge amounts of dangerous species and people have been known to die from 
them.
John

> Hi John,
>  How about watercress? Maybe in trenched channels. Here, great in
> winters low light. I biked through Eire and feasted on Nettles. That's
> what kept Europe alive trough the war. Maybe mushrooms are your nitche.
>
> Quoting John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net>:
>
> > Just 52 N latitude Paul. But it is a rather special climate. Any
> > storm from the West, the Atlantic ocean, and we get salt water
> > dumped on us, six miles inland. The average monthly temperature
> > differs only 9 degrees C between the warmest and the coldest. But
> > differences can be much higher in any single day. I mean you can get
> >  up in the morning and find everything frozen stiff and half an hour
> >  later it can be 20 C  which we would consider warm. Many crops
> > can't  take these fast changes.
> > We had 3 weeks in June this year that the temperature broke records
> > at 32 degrees C, about 6 degrees warmer than anything we had
> > experienced here before. One more sign that things are changing.
> >
> > We used to cut turf/peat here in Spring but in the last ten years
> > there was not one year that we would have been able to dry this
> > turf. In 2011 we never saw the sun two days in a row before
> > September. In 2012 we had constant rain and all our land flooded 6
> > times. This year the Spring was too cold (temperature never moving
> > above 6C), too wet or too dry. From one extreme to the other and
> > crops just sat there without growing much. It seems to be getting
> > worse from year to year and it is only because we have a huge
> > variety of crops that we did not have a complete failure yet.
> >
> > One extra disadvantage of low light intensities and plenty of
> > moisture is that greenhouses and poly tunnels develop a green algae
> > cover every few weeks.
> >
> > And what  I see more of every year too are "chemtrails". Most people
> >  here are still convinced this is a conspiracy theory but I am
> > inclined to belief the evidence in front of my eyes. Yesterday we
> > started with a beautiful blue sky and then I noticed three planes at
> >  high altitude flying on parallel courses but staggered at about 10
> > plane lengths. The "contrails " they left after them stayed and
> > turned into what looked like a mile wide white band with sharp edges
> >  and as long as the eye could see. An hour later this white band was
> >  still there but by then there were other lines at 90 degrees to
> > this  first one. And soon afterwards all the blue was gone from the
> > sky.  Today we had the normal dark cloud cover all day with a little
> >  drizzle. It would make one SAD.
> >
> > John
> >   Now that's a hard climate, John. You're around 53 N latitude? I'm about 
> > 35.
> >
> >   On 12/4/2013 4:57 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> >
> >     Same here and with a little bit of good weather we grow good
> > crops. Living under a constant cloud for 6 months and never seeing
> > the sun or the moon crops are not so good.
> >     John
> >       speaking of anecdoal, plenty of old timers swear by planting
> > by the moon, and I don't dismiss it. But for us it's just
> > impractical. We have to do jobs when they need doing and dodge the
> > weather also. There's a time when the beds are more workable but not
> >  too damp or dry for transplants. Most of all succession planting
> > and  scheduling harvests for markets just doesn't leave much wiggle
> > room.
> >
> >       On 12/4/2013 5:57 AM, Pete Vukovich wrote:
> >
> >
> >         Hope the light bulbs work out well. A lot of stuff is
> > anecdotal, true of life in general I think (was that a meta
> > anecdote?) . Some of the extremes I've seen or read over the years
> > have been more amusing than others.
> >         I have friends who have rituals they follow religiously
> > without ever having done a control or doing any fundamental
> > research. A good part of the world thrives on rumor otherwise there
> > wouldn't be a stock market.
> >
> >         My ego used to have a bigger investment in things,
> > apparently it shrinks with age like everything else. I don't know
> > that much and never have, but I have spent some time experimenting,
> > reading, and even growing on my own. So I thought I knew important
> > stuff (yeah right).
> >
> >         Now I'm just happy when people are interested in something
> > other than sports, politics, cars, college, or the latest fashion.
> > I'm content just to help somebody plant a garden and decimate some
> > imported ornamentals (I have been promoted to a work animal, a 2
> > legged draft horse or perhaps an ox). I'm happy to watch them make
> > their own choices, I believe making their own choices (even poor
> > ones) makes them happier (feel powerful or something) .
> >         I like the fact that I don't inject my opinion as often, and
> >  ask more questions. I rely heavily on the phrase 'it depends' when
> > someone asks me a question.
> >
> >
> >         Good morning,
> >         pete
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >         On Tuesday, December 3, 2013 9:09 PM, tradingpost
> > <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:
> >
> >         I'm all for new ideas in growing, and I use some myself, some 
> > from
> >         successful growers like Eliot Coleman/Barbara Damrosch (Four 
> > Seasons
> >         Harvest book). But we need to hear how some trending systems 
> > actually
> >         work out in practice - minus the hype about them. Like community
> >         gardens, how many participants stayed with it to harvest anything
> >         worthwhile. And biochar - where's the scientific analysis of
> >  inputs and
> >         effects? Organic hydroponics - but don't they find the
> > organic solutions
> >         need changing too often? How about aquaponics? Do startup
> > costs doom any
> >         hope of profitable outputs? Or not?
> >
> >         What almost all wannabe experts skip over is the basic
> > principles of how
> >         to grow sustainably and profitably, whether for home use or
> > market. Not
> >         surprising if they just don't know how themselves. It's
> > called getting
> >         the cart before the horse. Like anyone else we've had to refine
> >         marketing strategy for ourselves, little good advice out there to 
> > be
> >         had. I have a whole library on growing and see endless
> > articles online,
> >         but only a very few turn out to be very useful for my own
> > work. Top two
> >         techniques for us: growing in permanent beds, from Jeavons,
> > and covering
> >         winter beds (with plastic sheeting) INside a greenhouse, from 
> > Eliot
> >         Coleman. I've added one trick of my own just now, light bulbs 
> > under
> >         cover to add a little heat at low cost to inside beds. So far the
> >         spinach, kale, arugula and Asian greens look luscious. Test
> > comes this
> >         week when outside hits single digits (or lower by New Years).
> >
> >         paul tradingpost@lobo.net
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
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