guildfordcycads

As the title says! Last year me and my partner got a piece of land in tropical Asia. It was a rice paddy reconverted to cow pasture so you can imagine how hard it’s been with all the compacted clay.

The last few months it’s been a battle against elements. First it was way too much water, now it’s too little water because dry season approaching. Wind and sun were both one direction, now with the season change it goes the other way.

I’m no expert, everything is self taught and the only experience I had was from owning a small garden in Spain with composting and few plants. This is on a different scale but it feels very rewarding although frustrating sometimes.

My recommendation to everyone, take it chill, sometimes its ok to take few days break to get renewed energy and don’t fight nature, work with it!

Ask me anything! 🙂

I read that red clover acts as a nutritional fertilizer snack for soil when grown and then tilled into the earth- The clover is thriving along with my herbs and tomatoes etc… should I have planted the clover in the fall instead of spring? I think I might have missed the point, or, timed this wrong… dare I just pluck it out? Or turn it into the soil now? Or let it grow?

I’m trying to recover very neglected beds at new house. Hand pulled + tarped it last year, but still dealing with it. Should I remove some soil, so I can add enough new soil on top of the cardboard? How many inches? Any other recommendations?

Picture 1: After
Picture 2: Before
Removed 2 species of running bamboo and English ivy. Added 100 cubic yards of organic material – mostly wood chips by weight, 27 cubic yards was compost, several yards was my attempt at biochar. Solid clay soil, dug a pond, coated with bentonite clay powder, planted cattails and native lilies, aerator, fountain. Vermiculture running, teas using aerator and pump. Planted clover, wildflowers under 6 inches mature, planted over 200 species of plants and fungi. At least 100 species of edibles.

Hey all I’m trying to develop plan and map of a sustainable agroforestry system 45mins north of Ann Arbor Michigan. I am trying to come up with a plan and map so that I can sell the idea to my parents that will moving to the property in a few years. It’s my grandparents property and it’s beautiful with varying hilly terrain and slopes down to the shallower part of a small finger lake on the northern property boundary. On the western property boundary there’s a narrow wetland with cattails and tamarack trees that stretches from the road in the south all the way towards the lake in the north. I have a general sense for the topography of the land and it’s different habitats but I’d like to map out the micro topography in more detail so that I can incorporate it into a more comprehensive map so that I can more easily convince my parents to implement some sort of sustainable agro-forestry system there. I would greatly appreciate any advice anyone has to offer the property is about 20 acres. I was just thinking how awesome it would be to have an app on my phone I could just open up and slip in my pocket and then just walk across the property over the course of a day or two all while it’s recording elevation data that I could then use to make mthe topo map, so if anything like that exists I’d be eternally grateful for some enlightenment. Thanks!

I’ve been messing around with hypothetical food forest diets on cronometer.com. Cronometer is a useful website because, unlike other nutrition trackers, it breaks “protein” down into its constituent essential amino acids usind USDA and NCCDB data.

With sunchoke, chestnuts, hazelnuts, collards (stand in for perennial brassica), and prunes (stand in for assorted preserved fruits) we can hit the target for just about every nutrient except lysine. In my domesticated diet, I get more than enough lysine just eating beans. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any practical perennial bean crops (yet!), though perhaps someone will one day make one using lupines, thicket beans, siberian pea shrubs, etc.

Are there any alternative sources of perennial lysine that you can think of? I guess I could always grow more nuts, which have a fair amount, but it would be nice to diversify a bit more.

Also regarding the cronometer images, don’t be overly concerned about the red manganese stat – supposedly manganese toxicity has not been observed from dietary sources.
Also disregard the lack of carbohydrates; another question for another time. I’m experimenting with american groundnut, but I could not find nutritional information for this tuber. Sunchokes are yummy but not very caloric – you would need to eat like 6 lbs a day to stay alive