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 Q&A – and New Show Format

I’m going to try a new show format and see how you guys like it. I think this might make my job a whole lot easier, and gets you more interesting and helpful things in each episode. So let me know what you think about this format and maybe I’ll keep it up.

I want to be able to share some news every show with you guys, let you know what’s happening on my homestead, what is coming up, so I’ll have a short news segment.

Next I want to be able to share something interesting with you like a plant of the week for instance. Some cool plant, what you can do with it, how to use it, how to grow it, and how to propagate it. I thought most of you listening would find that fun and interesting. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to come up with new plants that we’ve not covered before, but hey, there’s a lot out there to talk about so I figure it’ll take us quite a long time before we run out of em.

Next I want to cover briefly something I’ve learned, or a tip, trick or homestead hack. Gardening tips, construction tips, skills I’m working on. Again, something brief, more of an introduction to a skill or way of thinking about a problem differently. I thought this might be helpful and beneficial for a lot of homesteaders and aspirants.

Then we can get into the topic of the day whatever that is. It might be questions and answers, could be an interview, or a topic I want to teach you about. Or like we did more recently it could be a story about something that happened to me and the lessons I took away from it.

So there ya go, it lays out like this.

1. News
2. Plant of the week
3. Interesting Stuff
4. And of course the topic of the day

Whadda ya think? I think it sounds fun, and a little more interesting than what I have been doing. If you hate the idea, let me know in the show response on the blog, or on facebook. If you love the idea, also let me know either on the blog or facebook. I love to get feedback from you guys! So without further ado, let’s get into the news!

News

Last week I said we hadn’t lost any tomatoes. Apparently I lied. We have lost at least 4, but the good thing is that we have enough in reserve to replace the lost ones! That’s why I always suggest you start 2 or 3 times as many plants in the spring as you actually need to plant your garden. That way if you plant too early or have an unseasonable frost, then you can re-plant with your reserves. And of course whatever you have left over you can either sell to help cover the cost of your habit uh, I mean your gardening, or you have some that you can give away to friends and family.

During my recent consulting tour through Oklahoma and Texas, I stopped in at my friend Jack’s homestead, had some awesome homebrew mead and cider with him, shared some plants and he sent me home with a couple hundred black locust seedlings I’ll be getting planted where they can block out our line of sight into the neighboring property and help to block out some of the noise from that area. During the summer the people that visit the park can get super loud so I’m looking forward to getting those trees established to cut down on that annoyance as soon as possible.

Plant of the Week

Comfrey: It’s one of my favorite plants ever, and has huge benefits. I’ll keep this short so I may go into comfrey in more depth in the future but real quick, it used to be used as a broken bone poultice, and to heal wounds. In fact it is supposed to heal your skin so quickly that experts advise against using it on deep cuts because it will heal the cut faster from the outside in, and could trap infection under your skin. It is a fantastic plant for livestock making leaves up to 30% protein, it grows fast but doesn’t spread fast unless you specifically do things to cause it to spread. It likes constantly moist soils and lots of nitrogen. So put it somewhere you have nutrients leaving your property, and around animal structures and let it suck up those nutrients to be harvested and put back into the animals. That’s the first way I’m using it on my homestead. It’s easy to propagate from cuttings, simply cut the roots into pieces, any size from an inch on up will produce another plant, and you can even get smaller pieces to produce a new plant but I like to suggest people cut roots into 3 inch sections, plant horizontally and cover it up with an inch or two of soil. Let it grow the first year and pinch off the flowers when it tries to bloom, you want it putting all it’s energy into roots and leaves. After the first year, you can cut it up to 6 times a year for your animals, or you can pinch off leaves more often than that for a continual harvest all through the growing season.

Interesting Stuff

Last week when I was at Jack’s place, I asked him if I could get some cuttings of some of his trees, he has some weeping willows and I’ve always wanted a weeping willow. I remember this kid’s book about someone who had a treehouse in a weeping willow. I loved that book, I can’t remember what it’s called, but ever since then I always wanted a treehouse in a weeping willow. Maybe I’ll find the book for my boys and plant a weeping willow to put a treehouse in for them. Anyways, I cut these 4’ long whips from last year’s growth, you couldn’t even tell I took a cutting from the tree, I got two cuttings, stuck them in a half gallon of water in my truck, the leaves started yellowing and falling off, but they rooted in the water. I didn’t think they would root that easy but guys, if you’ve been on the fence or intimidated by plant propagation, just try putting a cutting in some water. You might be surprised at how easy it is.

Topic of the Day: Q&A

I’ve pulled out several questions from the audience and I’ll just read the question or paraphrase it for the sake of brevity because I always try to keep things short and to the point for you guys.

What can I do to make my earthworms happy with a brand new earthworm bin?

Well when I kept worms in the past, I would always add some manure, leaves, cardboard and shredded paper. Table scraps from veggies and fruit were first on the list of things going into the bin.

Make sure you keep the worm bin somewhere it can stay relatively cool, full shade is a must. Make sure when you put the bedding material in the bin that you make it moist, not wet. I give a great illustration for what that looks like in Episode 0003: Starting Seeds for My Garden

Bedding materials are things like potting soil, peat moss, manure, and adding a couple handfuls of sand is also good for the worms. A couple things I always made sure to have on hand were leaves, corn meal, bone meal and sawdust from untreated materials only. The reason for the sawdust is for absorbing extra moisture if something unexpected happens and you need to dry out the bedding material quickly.  A light sprinkling of bone meal and corn meal are often a good idea for the worms. Gives them tons of minerals and carbohydrates to work with.

Another cool thing that you might want to include would be to lightly sprinkle biochar or pulverized lump charcoal. After it passes through the gut of the earthworm, it will be turbocharged and make for some of the best type of soil amendment that I know of.

Our First Call-In Question from Edie

Next we have a pretty cool question that came in as an audio recording. And if you would like to be on the show like this young lady, just use your smart phone to record your question, I’d suggest writing down specifically what your question is, then giving details. Then you can email it to me nick@homegrownliberty.com and you might make it on the air the next time I do a Q&A show.

So without further ado, here’s our first caller. (But you’ll have to listen to the episode to hear her question)  🙂

Edie is 10, and she came to the fall Earthworks Workshop here in Saline, LA. She’s starting a plant propagating business and she wants to know what supplies she needs, what plants I suggest she sells, and she wants to know how much effort it takes to propagate plants. And she really really wants me to do another workshop, I think she really liked the barter blanket we did at the last one.

Well Edie, we don’t know if a workshop is in the cards this Spring, but we will definitely be doing one in the Fall, probably at the end of October, to the beginning of November. If I had to guess, I’d likely be scheduling it for the last weekend of October or the first weekend of November. But I suppose if enough people demanded a Spring workshop I might be able to put one together, so if you guys in the audience are interested in a Spring workshop, shoot me an email or let me know some other way if you’re interested.

As for starting to propagate plants, I think it’s best to start with simple and easy to root plants and go with cuttings. Things like mint, other culinary herbs, and things that moms will like to buy like flowering bushes that are easy to propagate from cuttings. Hydrangeas, willows, butterfly bushes are some of the ones that come to mind that are super easy to root, and will probably sell well to lots of people. But I’ll have a long list of 20 or 30 shrubs that are easy to propagate with cuttings and are pretty. So that is going to be the best kind of things to try and propagate, things that are pretty that people want to buy. And that brings me to the next thing, you should definitely try and make sure you know who you are going to sell your plants to before you start making a bunch of plants, because you need to know what those people will want to buy, cause there’s no sense in making plants to sell if nobody wants to buy them right? So find out who you are going to sell to and ask them what things on your list of things that you can grow, are things they will want to plant in their yard. Then what you can do is just keep putting a check mark next to every thing that people want to grow, and pretty soon you will have a great list full of plants with check marks next to the ones you should grow, and the more check marks are next to a plant, the more of that kind of plant you should be growing. And that’s what we call market research! So whenever you are going to start a business selling something, make sure you do some market research or else you might find out later on that you wasted a lot of time and money when nobody wants what you made!

So now let’s talk about the materials. You will want small pots, no larger than what nursery workers call 1 gallon pots. Make sure the pots you get are black or plain, no writing on them. The pots with writing on them are copyrighted and you can get in trouble selling plants in those pots. A great place to get free pots is a landscaping business or nursery. They will normally have a huge pile of pots in the back of their property just sitting there, ask if you can have some 1 gallon pots and 4 inch pots. Most businesses will let you have them for free, and free is a great price I think. Next, you will want some potting soil. You can also talk to the nursery people and ask for bulk potting mix, they can scoop a huge bucket full and fill the back of your daddy’s pickup truck for $20 or $30. And that will fill up a lot of pots.

Here’s a link for an OSU PDF that teaches you how to find out how much mix you need to any number of pots, there’s a lot of math in it and it might be a little confusing but it’s a great thing to learn and I bet your parents can help you figure it out.  http://osufacts.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1119/HLA-6706web.pdf

Here’s a link to a website called Grower’s Supply where you can buy brand new pots, and this link takes you to their 1 gallon pot size. At the time of this show, they are $.67 per pot.  http://www.growerssupply.com/farm/supplies/prod1;gs_growing_supplies-gs_pots_trays_containers;pg109632_109633.html

And of course you will need plants to take cuttings from. So any plant on the list will have new growth in the spring that you can put in a mist bed, or in a glass of water, or in some moist potting soil with a white trash bag over it to make it moist and humid inside. One thing you need to make sure of is that the plants you are propagating are not patented. Some of them will be, but most won’t. Plant sellers will have labels on the plant or the pot with the patent number and will tell you almost all the time that the plant is patented. Some of them will just trademark a name. So if it’s a trademarked name you can still propagate and sell it, but you can’t use the trademarked name. If it’s patented, you can’t propagate it at all. But if it’s not trademarked or patented, then you can propagate it and sell it all you want!

Easy-to-root plants for Edie:

• Beautyberry (Callicarpa japonica)
• Beautybush (Kolkwitzia amabilis)
• Burning bush (Euonymus alatus)
• Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii)
• Crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica)
• Deciduous azaleas (Rhododendron cvs.)
• Elderberry (Sambucus spp.)
• Forsythia (Forsythia spp.)
• Honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.)
• Hydrangea (Hydrangea spp.)
• Lilac (Syringa vulgaris)
• Magnolia (Magnolia spp.)
• Redtwig dogwood (Cornus alba and sericea)
• Rugosa rose (Rosa rugosa)
• Smoke tree (Cotinus coggygria)
• Spirea (Spiraea spp.)
• Viburnum (Viburnum x burkwoodii and carlesii)
• Weigela (Weigela spp.)
• Willow (Salix spp.)
• Witch hazel (Hamamelis spp.)

Chris asks:

Hey Nick – love the show and am learning a great deal. Next time you do a “Q&A” section, I’d love to hear your thoughts on dealing with Chinese Privet. Sadly, goats are not an option currently. I’ve got a weed-wrench that has helped with some of it but there is more than I can manage by pulling it up. I was thinking about having the area bush-hogged and then spot treating with herbicide (as I know that cutting the stuff down just makes it mad!) to kill it. Have about 2.5 acres I’d love to turn back into pasture but gotta get the privet out first. I don’t want to do herbicide as a general rule, but frankly, it might be the right tool for the job now with intent to manage it manually (as well as out compete it over time) in the future. Thanks in advance!

Alright, well I see a spectrum of ways to deal with this so I’ll start with the worst way and go from there.

And a lot of these methods can be stacked together for more effective control and easier cleanup. So you will just have to pick and choose depending on what you can afford financially and with your time and effort.

You can like you said bush-hog the whole area and paint or spray an herbicide on the stumps, that will take care of the majority of the problem off the bat. If you can fence the area, you could bush-hog the whole area to start with and put some livestock in there to eat the shoots as they pop back up, but you said goats are not an option. Or you could bush-hog the whole area every month to physically cut them all down and keep mowing them until they give up and all die. So depending on what resources you have available, if your neighbor is willing to come over and bush-hog it all every month or every two weeks, that will probably get it put back into mostly grass in a year or so. I really don’t like the usage of herbicides, but I am ok with limited use in specific situations when more repair will be happening after the use, and more soil life will be built after that use. So that’s kind of what I would do if you have a tractor or a friend or neighbor who can mow it for you every few weeks to a month. The constant mowing will deplete the energy stored in the roots and will turn it into dirt.

Christian emailed with a concern:

Hi Nick…love your podcast..I Just wanted to mention that when I heard you talk about the attached greenhouse/aquaponic idea that I have had similar ideas about doing this in the past and remember red flags coming up in my research about this method and that it can create conditions favorable for mold growth …just wanted to throw that out there…I’m sure ventilation is important…lots of it.,…plant transpiration plus evaporation of the aquaponic water can create alot of moisture….. just sayin. ….

Thanks for the awesome podcasts!

Well Christian, I agree 100% that we need to be careful of high humidity when it comes to attaching greenhouses to our living structures especially with normal North American building methods. Being aware and informed about acceptable moisture levels in your house will help to avoid toxic mold issues a lot. The client we are talking about has a brick home, so moisture penetrating the outside of the home is not an issue any more than it would be in a rainstorm or a humid day. Where you would get into trouble is if you are venting the greenhouse into the house without reducing the humidity level in the greenhouse first. So absolutely I agree, we need to keep the humidity levels in check and to be careful about that. As far as building it against the house, if it’s a brick house, you are still going to have some major advantages both during the summer and winter even if you don’t vent into the house. You will keep that outside wall warmer in the winter and reduce heating costs, as well as to keep that southern wall of the house much cooler during summer months, reducing cooling costs. And I think just those two benefits are amazing and well worth it.

We went a little long today, I had to trim a couple questions to keep it as short as I have, but if you want to get on the next Q&A show, please email a show question with Homegrown Liberty Question in the email subject line or use the same method to email me a recorded audio question. Thanks so much for listening!

You can reach me at nick@homegrownliberty.com, and you can sign up for my mailing list on the webpage if you want to be notified the next time I am planning a consulting tour. And trust me, you will save a bunch of money by catching me on a tour rather than having me come out to your place individually.

Until next week

I hope you have a wonderful day, God Bless. And as always “Go Do Good Things”