Agriculture | Revolutionary science: proper dirt

[Mr. Perfect]

I have no tomatoes. Nothing to do with dirt and everything to do with racoons.

Cats dogs fences and cages, that's pretty much the only options.

[noddy]

dogs didnt help with our apple tree, bastards became part of the problem.

the parrots took the top 40%, the dogs took the bottom 40% and we have a small band in between of partially nibbled fruit for ourselves.

luckily, its just a tree for us and not a life and death requirement so id rather feed the natives than get too fussed about it - simple enough to net it if and when I ever did want all the fruit.

[Mr. Perfect]

Add netting and shotguns to the list as well. I started shotgunning this year, worked great.

Feral cats are very reliable in their job, dogs not so much. You need to be selective.

However the long term goal is to be able to grow enough food to feed your dog and your family, dogs get worse food than Americans.

[Mr. Perfect]

This guy has some great ideas. Don't agree with his soil building and cultivar selection but some of his management practices are amazing. Don't ever grow hybrids.

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[Doc]

Perennial farming:
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In the early 90s, Mark and Jen Shepard bought a degraded corn farm in Viola, Wisconsin, and began to slowly convert it from row-crops back to a native oak savanna that would become one of the most productive perennial farms in the country.

After 8 years of homesteading in Alaska (arriving just as the Homestead Act was expiring) where they had been forced by low-paying jobs to discover “which trees, shrubs, bushes, and vines we could get food from”, they arrived in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin ready to apply their knowledge of permaculture (“permanent agriculture”).

Over the past nearly three decades, Mark has planted an estimated 250,000 trees on the 106-acre farm. The main agroforestry crops are chestnuts, hazelnuts, and apples, followed by walnut, hickory, cherry, and pine (for the nuts). For short-term income, the couple planted annual crops, like grains and asparagus, in alleys between the fruit-and-nut-bearing trees. Cattle, pigs, lambs, turkeys, and chickens act as pest control and free composters as they roam the savannas of the farm.

Not content to rely on commercially-produced seeds, Mark does his own breeding to find the best-adapted trees to his region using the method he’s dubbed STUN (Sheer Total Utter Neglect). He plants trees at a higher density than recommended and with as much diversity as possible (at one point they were farming 219 varieties of apples) and then lets pests and disease run their course. He fells diseased trees or those that don’t bear enough, or early enough, fruit. The result is orchards hardy enough to survive even Chestnut Blight.

As more and more of the alley crops have been replaced with trees and pocket ponds to help manage water on the farm, the land here has returned to the native savannas where the mastodon once grazed 12,000 years ago (in 1898 bones were discovered 5 miles down the road).

New Forest Farm has inspired many other perennial farms, especially chestnut farmers in the region, and Mark hopes that every schoolchild will plant their own apple seeds (and perhaps subject them to STUN) and that every family can plant a backyard food forest.

[Mr. Perfect]

Here is some nice visuals if inspiration is needed.

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[Doc]

Here is some nice visuals if inspiration is needed.

0TEOiloP64I

You might like this one Mr. P:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPTDYD3K-Ks

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[Mr. Perfect]

Wow that guy is like my twin brother

Although my main concern is food quality, over financial self reliance. I got over that some time ago.

[Typhoon]

Modern Farmer | Sri Lanka’s Organic Experiment Went Very, Very Wrong

Last year, the country implemented a countrywide ban on agrochemicals and fertilizers. It backfired—big time

Samantha Power who was UN Ambassador during the Obama era and is now leading the US Agency for International Development under President Biden. This week she stated:

“As a result, we’re working with countries to think about natural solutions like manure and compost. And this may hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway.”

[noddy]

Sri Lanka has a collapsed economy and did this to avoid spending money on imports it couldnt afford - so no disputing the outcomes, but the ideology was deseperate pragmatism rather than empowered foolishness.

[Nonc Hilaire]

The big grain farms use ammonia for fertilizer. The manufactured fertilizer is just for fruits, vegetables and other flowering plants that need phosphorus.