hater of industrial agriculture, lover of community-based subsistence food procurement, scavenging, and mutually beneficial relationships with other species ♥️ ethnobotanist that loves to forage and consume the "inedible"
In 2018, Justdiggit and the LEAD Foundation worked with the village to transform a barren 50-acre test site, digging a network of semi-circular bunds with a raised perimeter around a shallow trench, into which seeds were sown. The bunds, roughly five meters by two meters large, were laid in an overlapping fish scale pattern with their depression facing uphill to capture rainwater flowing off the land, slowing its movement and allowing it to penetrate the earth. (source)
The design and function is similar to swales and african planting pits
There are a lot of hacks for keeping tropical plants alive in cold weather/ seasons, most famously being stone walls
We are being told to eat local and seasonal food, either because other crops have been tranported over long distances, or because they are g
Giardini Panteschi are found only on the windswept island of Pantelleria.
but also the Italian American methods of burying or insulating fig trees
Even Russian fruit trenches are cool af
All of these methods got me thinking...
If you kept fruit trees (and even vines that you train into woody stalks, like the method for vite ad alberello) low to the ground
it'd be so easy to put a hot compost beneath or beside these plants (100% grass clippings piled up = easy hot compost), and/ or cover the plants with straw/ hay for protection from the cold weather.
You'd have to make sure the hot compost doesn't get too hot, & make sure there's enough air circulation via pruning, but other than that, you should be able to get away with growing tropical plants outdoors.
This is the same concept as chinampas, but has a different method of build. While chinampas are usually built directly into an existing body of water, waru waru systems create false bodies of waters through irrigation (from rainwater, or diverting rivers, or from groundwater). Both require frequent repairs and upkeep, but stand strong in times of drought.
The canals are created for water storage and irrigation, wide enough for canoes to slither in for getting around the garden.
Artificially creating water canals also opens up the possibility of raising various types of fish, whom will fertilize the crops with their excrements, and provide another source of food for people who consume fish.
Along with fish, water/ pond plants can be used to prevent soil erosion such as sedges, oxygenating plants such as hornwort, and floating plants like azolla that can be used as animal feed and fertilizer.
Blatticomposting is a new technique that uses cockroaches to convert human food wastes into compost.
Blatticomposting is a new technique that uses cockroaches to convert human food wastes into compost. Of the 4000 or so species of cockroaches, less than 15 are pests of human dwellings. Although vermicomposting, or using worms to compost, has been used to deal with human food wastes, it has several drawbacks.
Composting with cockroaches is easy since cockroaches eat pretty much anything (and do so quickly, so moldy fold wont become a problem), are hard to kill, and require very little maintenance.
Here's someone on permies talking about their cockroaches:
the eurblaberus or ivoryhead roach is the one recommended for this type of composting [blatticomposting] as they tolerate crowding , breed like crazy and eat even cardboard if nothing else is available! these are amazing insects! you only need to clean their tote maybe once or twice a year. if you have darkling beetles and sowbugs as cleaning crews, they eat even the cockroach frass so you never need to clean! [You don't need "cleaner" insects though, you can use their poop as fertilizer]
Similarly created like chinampas of Mexico, the Sorjan system (developed by indonesian farmers) is created by making artifically raised beds in shallow water for agriculture.
(i know the quality of the pic sucks im sorry)
One particular practice that differs is the trellis for vines (such as squashes and gourds) over the channel of water.
Tree Fodder Free Poultry & Livestock Food Traditional Forages and their History
'Air meadows' is the beautiful description for a multi millennial old tradition of feeding European livestock. How do we know this? Well because in this form of silviculture, the standard way of growing trees for an optimum harvest was to pollard them and thus create a yearly plethora of thickly growing, thin leafy branches above browse height. Evidence of whole stands of trees pruned this way have been discovered dating from the Neolithic Period all over the continent and there still exist examples of ancient pollarded trees in parks common land and pre-Enclose Act hedgerows. It is very interesting to note that up until the beginning of the 20th century more tree hay, was cut, dried and stored for use in Europe than conventional (grass) hay. Furthermore, air meadows didn't just provide food, sheep in particular are known to self-medicate for internal parasites by using the tannins and other phenolic compounds found in leaves. So for free food and medicine, look to the sky.
Pollarding is similar to coppicing- the difference being the former is done above grazing level, cutting branches close to the trunk rather than cutting the entire tree down to a stump.
Only certain tree species can be cut in this way without dying, such as willow and hazel. Pollarding starts when the tree is young (cutting mature trees in this way is calling topping, and usually doesn't heal well), and requires cutting back the new shoots every 2-5 years. This usually results in the swollen knobs pollards are know for!
Usually 5 or so branches are used for pollarding (the rest being chopped down to the trunk competely), but you can cut all branches off too.
A similar technique is used to create tree-like grape vines (Vite ad Alberello, which I've talked about in this post)!
Farmers stack several compact layers of aquatic weeds like water hyacinth, duckweed or paddy stubs – the stubble of what remains after the rice grain has been harvested. The weeds are allowed to rot, and then mixed usually with cow dung and silt. Crop seeds are placed in small balls called tema that are made out of peat soil, and wrapped in coconut fibre.
After a week, when seedlings are about 15cm high, they are transplanted to the floating garden beds. Traditionally, seeds of leafy vegetables, like red amaranth, are sown directly on the floating beds. They [the floating beds] are then anchored with bamboo poles, so that they don’t drift away.
Both men and women work to make these organic floating beds, which last for around five to six months. Besides vegetables, rice seedlings can sometimes be grown. During the monsoon, farmers use small boats to navigate between these small islands.
Fish are grown in the water, too, which fertilizes the water for the plants, and prevents mosquitoes from breeding.
Got more water than land available to you? No problem, you can just make floating gardens~
If you're not familiar with the concept, it probably seems foolish to think you can create a floating garden, but Marsh Arabs and Uro people prove you can live on water (and not in boats like pirates or Vikings or A'a Sama). Through the creation and use of artifical islands (usually made from reed beds, but sometimes mud), they can live on floting islands of decaying material.
Floating gardens can be made from a variety of materials; bamboo, reed beds, compacted coconut shells, plastic bottles, etc boyant materials.
On top of the boyant (and usually, netted so it doesnt come apart) material, soil is added, or some type of natural growing medium, such as aged manure.
Unlike chinampas and waru waru systems, floating gardens are not usually firmly placed or stable in the water, so it's important to enclose them, or keep them otherwise tied down to their spot. This can be done with anchors, fencing, or using a rope extending to land (like you would do with a boat in water).
I was originally introduced to the idea of slash-and-char when I went to the Museo Etnografico del Friuli; there are painted depictions of how Udine was created centuries ago, and a part of that process was clearing the land by slashing and charring plant matter, rather than doing a slash-and-burn.
For agricultural purposes, slash-and-char methods have been used in the Amazon rainforest, and are currently by Loma and Mende people in Western Africa; a highly productive and restorative indigenous practice. Rice husk charcoal was also used to amend soil in Japan! Primarily, it is used to fertilize and moisten the soil, but it also allows soil to act as a carbon sponge, reducing carbon emissions over time.
Along with the use of other organic materials (such as manure and food scraps), the soil becomes self-fertilizing; like a starfish regrowing a cut limb, the microbes in the soil can regrow when tampered with. It becomes a resilient life form!
West African farmers are transforming nutrient-poor rainforest land in to fertile soil and their crops are thriving. It might be the solutio
But the benefits don't stop there- charcoal-treated soil surpress heavy metal absorption in plants, opening up more areas for agricultural purposes.
Heavy metal contamination of agricultural soils is of worldwide concern. Unfortunately, there are currently no efficient and sustainable app
Slash-and-char with contaminated soil:
How the resulting charcoal can be used:
Slash and Char: An Alternative to Slash and Burn Practiced in the Amazon Basin
1. The residues from charcoal production are mainly used as an amendment in planting holes. Mainly bananas (or other fruit trees) are planted in such holes. Typically, the holes are about 30cm wide and 50 cm deep. These planting holes are filled with chicken manure, charcoal, and soil.
2. The slash and char farmers produce a kind of charcoal compost. Around the charcoal kilns they dig holes in which the charcoal residues are deposited in layers alternating with organic matter, ashes, and soil. After 1 year of decomposition, the farmers use the created material as fertilizer applied on the soil surface.
3. Charcoal residues are used for vegetable and herb production in home gardens. These gardens are planted in elevated planters, and the crops aregrown about 1.5 m above the ground to avoid damages caused by domestic animals. These planters are filled with soil, charcoal residues, compost,chicken manure, and other forms of organic matter.
4. Charcoal residues are applied on the soil surface. Farmers report that this maintains soil moisture, especially during the dry season.
Scientists at Chongqing Jiaotong University have created a paste that’s made from the same substance found in plant cell walls.
One of the ways China is countering desertification is mixing sand with water and a type of cellulose; sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (SCC). It's a white powder on it's own (which you can see in the video below), and effectively turns sand into soil that retains water and nutrients well.
^ the application method from the study itself.
Sodium carboxymethyl cellulose is made by treating alkali cellulose with chloroacetic acid. Alkali cellulose is made by soaking cellulose (plant fibre) in a solution of sodium hydroxide and water, while chloroacetic acid can be made by chlorinating acetic acid in the presence of sunlight. Sounds complicated, but carboxymethyl cellulose is a non-toxic material that is used as a food additive.
This success story got me thinking- how would the application of cellulose gum, or other gums hold up in sand and soil?
Well, a few studies have been done with soil, and while their results may not be as dramatic as the application of SCC, the results of cellulose gum and other gums applied to soils have been extremely positive, with them retaining water better and reducing soil errosion.
If you live in a dry area that more conventional methods of water retention (swales, mulch, charcoal, coconut coir, etc) don't yield the results you want, you could try mixing in agar agar or xanthan gum into the soil.
I saw this biodegradable tree planter "cocoon" and just
Amazing, incredible, stunning. Requires much less water than planting tree sapplings straight into the ground, and improves their survival rate significantly!
You can also see that the design of the coccon uses string to draw water from the doughnut thingy into the soil in the centre.
Much like this:
I think we could diy it pretty easily using mycelium and natural wax rather than wood pulp.
Here's a simple guide to making a mycelium plant pot.
A very short, yet pretty thorough introduction to RPM (root production method)
The RPM system (Root Production Method) is a multistep production system of container tree production that places primary emphasis on the root system because the root system ultimately determines the tree's survival and performance in its outplanted environment. This particular container production system has been developed to facilitate volume production, in a high-quality tree with good height-caliper balance. Approximately 80% of our production consists of native trees, many of which present transplanting difficulties using conventional nursery growing systems.
It's basically a method of exposing sapling roots to the air to produce strong fibrous roots (this method is called air root pruning), combined with specified selections of seeds and the growing medium. The benefits are trees that grow extremely quickly!
With air-pruning, a plant’s roots come in contact with the air as they grow. It is a natural process where the individual root tip dries out and stops growing. The plant responds to this by producing even more fibrous lateral roots. What you end up with is a healthy plant with a dense fibrous root system, ready to take nutrients and water to your plant.
(source of the second pic)
Some excerpts from the original paper:
Superior trees growing on specific sites are selected for seed collection. Experience has taught us that most species have ecotypes that are site specific. We look towards the wetlands or floodplains as a prime seed source for native tree species that are found growing on both wetland and upland sites. Since they have evolved under stress we find they will consistently outperform their upland counterparts on virtually any site, particularly on highly stressed sites.
Our standard growing medium consists of 40% composted rice hulls, 40% pine bark, 20% sand plus slow release fertilizer, micronutrients, and a wetting agent. The medium is also inoculated with mycorrhizae spores.
Thank you to @cernoid-leporidae for introducing me to RPM and sending me excerpts from Farming the Woods
9:30ish a.m. saw this in a blog post about dogwood/ red osier (Cornus sericea)
looked up coronic acid
lol, ok that's not right. Let's look on pubmed
I also looked up cornine, cornin, cornic acid. Find this blog that references something
check it out, and ofc it didn't cite shit -_- it's just a list of references at the end of the book
Checked out all the references with the term "medicinal" in it (approx 10-15), none of them mention coronic acid and I'm too tired to go through the rest of them.
Web search begins again. Find this mentioned by Judson Carroll.
Same situation. The book Botany In A Day doesn't indicate the source of info.
Noon. Give up on the idea of finding the first mention of coronic acid (or it's name variants).
12:30 p.m. I cant stop thinking about it. Go to the ol reliable temperate.theferns.info.
My Man Moerman!
Can't find the book (Plants of Carrier Country) to read online, but I find this paper that references it. The authors interviewed Carrier/ Dakelh elders directly, and one of the co-authors is Nancy J. Turner (a respected ethnobotanist)
(temperate.theferns you missed the "warm" part of warm ashes. pretty sure it's supposed to be a hot compress, not a concoction. ah broken telephones)
1:00ish p.m. still not sure where "coronic acid" came from
Hello, I'm making personalized foraging guides again! You tell me your ecoregion, and what you're looking for (tasty recipes? spiritual practice with plants? bug-hunting guide? identify rare native species? etc!)
and I do the research!
I only work within the Northern Hemisphere, bc that's my area of study. I do not write about mushrooms, as I have no experience with them, but I know plenty about plants and edible insects.
It takes me approximately 3 hours per page, because I diligently read studies (if available) on drug interactions, allergies, toxicity, and general safety. You can set the price, but please take in account all the work that goes into this.
I can only do 10 pages per person at this time, but feel free to order again and join the waitlist!
Here are some pages I've done for previous clients~
origamiaround
kianamaiart
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
snowghoul
ellievsbear
