permaculture

[ossi kakko <ossi@kulma.net>]

Hi,

"The Book of TEMPEH - A Super Soyfood from Indonesia"
by William Shurtleff & Akiko Aoyagi, at least in it's 
professional edition says that Velvet bean can be grown
on poor soils without irrigation. However, that's about
javanese climate. The book also says that during the 
70's it was main crop after soybean for tempeh preparation.
The plants were growing wild or semidomesticated. Toxins
were removed by keeping the boiled and peeled beans in 
flowing water for 22 hours before steaming, chopping and 
inoculation. 

I have no experience, as velvet bean cannot be grown here. 

Sincerely,

Ossi Kakko
Fennoscandia

ps. 

This says that vine is also widely grown in India:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/CropFactSheets/mucuna.html



On Sat, May 26, 2007 at 02:27:11PM -0500, Marjory Glowka wrote:
> Hi Charles,
> 
> I saw you mentioned the use of velvet bean to supress grass.  The reports 
> of 
> how much bio-mass he benn produces sounds fantastic.  I haven't found out 
> much about it's drought tolerance.  It was used the the SE part of the US 
> which is fairly moist.  Do you know how well it would do in a dryland 
> situation where we get little rains in the long hot summer?
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Marjory
> Red Rock, Texas
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Charles de Matas" <cdematas@hotmail.com>
> To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 12:51 PM
> Subject: [permaculture] grass in orchards
> 
> 
> > Rich Blaha wrote <<<<<<<<<<<<<<In the meantime, a couple of
> > rounds with the string trimmer per year keeps the fire danger down...I'm
> > not too worried about the cosmetics of it.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >
> > I'm thinking of buying one of these string trimmers myself to help reduce
> > risk of fire.  We had a prolonged dry season this year.  I had extensive
> > fire damage on my property.  Most of the people in our permaculture group
> > had fire damage to their property as well.  I am going to try many
> > strategies to reduce fire risk (including velvet beans to try to smother 
> > the
> > grass) but maybe the strimmer will help as well.  I'd really like to get a
> > scythe but I'm not keen right now to go through the problems of importing
> > stuff.
> >
> > Charles
> > Trinidad
> >