Usnea (Old Man's Beard) lichen is so medicinal. Last fall, I happened upon tons of little clumps on some wood chips at a park.
I stored them in an open Ziploc bag with some moisture for a couple days. Then I took each clump, found the little piece of bark that had been its attachment point, and tucked it under cracks in the bark of 3 crabapple trees that had no usnea but which had a moss and another 2 lichen species. Now, this spring, I've seen usnea in little clumps all through those trees, even in spots where I hadn't tucked it in!! It's as if one or two of the 3 parts that makes a lichen was already in the tree, and the usnea brought in the missing part(s)!
I'm going to do it again, because I pruned those trees and now I think they'll let too much light in. Plus a lot of Usnea came out on the prunings. :(
It is so important to me that I can get perennial kale or spinach or tree collards growing. Perennially growing food of any kind contributes to a community's sense of food security.
The best cultivar of perennial kale/collards/spinach would be Taunton Deane perennial kale, because it's frost hardy, and it survives the winter beautifully. In fact, it tastes sweeter after a frost. However, Taunton Deane appears to be prohibited here in our very capitalist, disposable-oriented, cycling-GNP country. :( So I was stuck with what I could get, which were 2 green and 2 purple cuttings from the Tree Collard Project. (An excellent organization, worthy of donations, btw.)
Well, I potted my 4 healthy cuttings on Dec 14th. But last week (9 weeks after potting), I noticed the purple ones wilting and curling. I tugged on them. They came out easily--there were no roots! The ends were rotting, and one was even hollow and squishy at the rotting end.
Instead of throwing them out, I thought I'd try and save them. I cut off the rot. The new ends don't look great, but we'll see. The one on the left was hard to cut through, and the end looks like I should perhaps cut it shorter to get beyond the rotting... cambium(?). I wish I knew if you're supposed to do a nodal cutting, internodal cutting, or cut through a node.
I stuck them in water even though I'm pretty sure they rotted because of soggy, oxygen-deprived contitions in the soil. Hope they root. I read that it's possible for them to root in water. They're too short to do well in soil, so it's a fair gamble.
I tugged on the green ones in their pots but they seem to resist, as if there are some roots already, so they might be doing well.
One of the green ons shared a pot with a purple one so... maybe the problem was that the purple ones didn't like the soil? Or they're more finicky than the green? Conundrummed!!
I finally watched this video, and now I think the problem was a combination of too soggy, too little oxygen in the soil, and too cold.
She keeps saying how easy they are to propagate, which is like a knife in my heart each time. >>>:(
Hmm. I wonder if the local food bank has a location to grow these. I'm gonna find out.
Update: March 2nd--the purple cuttings off of which I cut the rotting ends did not survive. :( the green ones are still doing well.
I've been feeling the pressure to start seeds in flats. I had set up a rolling rack on the covered porch, but it's freaking cold out there. Plus the cats get through my clear plastic sides. I had considered setting it up in my basement office, but I'd still need warming pads, and I'd have to clean up and rearrange everything. I thought of putting them outside under row covers, and, well, maybe. Still might be too cold, but it would solve the light problem (if you grow your seedlings indoors in a window, they lean towards the light and are spindly from too few hours of light). If I grow them in my office I need more lights.
So with all this in mind (need more light, top-down light, warmth, cat-proof, I looked at our skylights today and realized they were prime real estate!!
Voila! Using the 3M Command Velcro Picture Hangers (18 pound capacity), I scavenged around the garage and found angle brackets, T brackets, and wood, and set up shelf space enough for 4 flats. I have a third skylight in the same location, and 2 each in 2 other locations (though one location might be wayyy too hot). Total number of possible flats: 14!! I'll just start with the 4 to see if it works. Next year, I might try a design with a pulley system. :D
Update: April 16th, 2020. There's moisture showing up in one of the three skylights. We think it's because there are 2 trays, so a LOT of water to evaporate. I'll have to fix that.
Today, our lawn guy came by to help. He was amazing!! He took my chainsaw and his machete and demolished ALL of the piles of branches so that they're in smaller pieces and flattened. They're ready to spread a little and then start dumping on the raw horse manure (to make them break down faster by balancing the carbon to nitrogen ratio).
While he did that, I worked on the last terrace row (marking it with wood), tidied up, laid out cardboard, and started dumping barrows of compost on the top-most terrace. I need it to be ready SOON!! It's gonna be my first annual veg bed. At the ends, I have 2 thornless blackberry, and will have a bunch of sunchokes (both perennials). I wanna do that to cap the ends. Once I get some perennial kales, I'll put them there too. I also need a nursery bed for all of my cuttings, but that can be any material (even raw manure), but deep enough for the pots.
I recently discovered that I could drive to the local compost maker (1 mile away), have them fill my trailer for $20, and bring it home to dump it at the top of the slope. It's laborious to unload it, and even more so to haul barrows to the beds, but MAN! It certainly is less labor-intensive than manually loading the trailer at the horse property (where I can't even park the trailer next to the compost bins--I have to toss shovel-fulls over a fence).
Here's a pic of the results of today. It looks SO TIDY and like it's coming together!!!
This is the 4th redesign of the terraces, and you know what? It was worth it. They're starting to look amazing.
I hope our lawn guy can come back and help soon. And maybe help with getting all of the horse poop. I want to rent a dump trailer and try to get all of the horse poop in one day, and perhaps even a couple loads of compost from the local maker. The compost makers double-cook their compost (hot then warm) and double-sieve. It's at least a year old by the time they sell it. They're awesome. So if I could get a dump trailer for a day, I could get one or two loads of compost without using any physical labor to get it to the top of the hill. The only labor would be in loading it at the horse property. I'm trying to convince the owner to dismantle a section of the fence so that we can get the trailer close. I don't think she can picture what I'm saying, so I'll see her on the weekend to explain it better.
Today we worked for 3.5 hours. I got the truck stuck in the ditch again, but eventually got it out by driving backwards down the hill while angling up to the road. :(
We laid out the wood for 3/4 of the second-lowest terrace. We unloaded a load of fresh poop, then got a half-trailer of composted poop and dumped it on plastic.
I was watching a course on Udemy.com, Seed Starting Simplified: Grow your own garden seedlings. The teacher gardens in Utah. He said that he couldn't start his seeds in natural light because they always, without fail, became leggy, and he had to turn them all the time to make sure they grew straight up. So he prefers a fluorescent light.
But in Charles Dowding's YouTube video, Propagation: germinate, grow and plant seedlings for a long season of bigger harvests, you can see that NONE of his seedlings are leggy, and no artificial light is used. However, as a parenthetical, Charles mentioned that some of his tomato seedlings (grown on his windowsill) were leggy, but that you could prick them out and bury the stem in a new cell or pot to correct the legginess. (WOW!)
Anyhoo, by seeing these two videos, I realized that natural light is fine if it's 180 degrees of exposure, not just 90 degrees. I mean, that's my guess. I posted the following comment on Charles Dowding's video:
Charles, around minute 12:30, you mention the legginess of starts grown in the windowsill. I was watching a video by someone in the US who said they always get leggy starts if they rely on natural light, and so they use a fluorescent light placed as close to the seedling as possible, raising the light as the seedling grows. But your starts in the greenhouse are not leggy! Is that because they get light on all sides? Or would it be the intensity of the light or the length of the day that makes the difference for you? I looked up the latitude of the US videocaster, and he's around 39.323742° N. You're at about 51.1477° N. Not sure what that means for light angle or length of day....
I hope he replies.
Update: He replied!! Why is that so rewarding? Anyhoo, he said:
At 51 latitude, our winter light levels are poor. Also it's a dull climate. Legginess is a separate issue, because windowsill seedlings in any climate/latitude will draw towards the light they need more of. Greenhouse plants are sturdy because light is all around. I prefer slower growth in the cooler greenhouse, or using the hotbed or any kind of warmth in there.
I replied, laying out my plan to try putting my starts under our skylights.
It's pouring rain. It's been rainy and dreary for days, and will be for days more. When I get out there, all I see is the mess I've made and the unfinished projects that give no indication of what they're supposed to look like. And with plant prices the way they are, it's gonna be years until the plants I want are all in.
It's really important, and really difficult, to keep that image in my mind--the image of what it will look like when all of the existing pieces are in place, and all of the stuff that I want gone is gone. That picture is the only thing keeping me from throwing in the towel. When I reach that point, all that will be left is bringing in the extra plants I want, as I can afford them.
Oh yeah, I was going to try to propagate everything, but I just don't have the expertise, nor access to the plants I want. I just had to come to terms with that and prioritize the market garden over the fedge and the food forest.
