research

For the past couple of days, ever since perusing Geoge's google reader and finding this, one thing led to another and now I'm back at companion planting. Yes, this is always where I end up when I start researching plants. In this neat video about a family that is experimenting with an annual plant lifestyle (seeing how much they can grow by saving their seeds and just palnting new in the spring) Scott McGuire shows how he is using crimson clover to fix nitrogen into the soil of his fruit trees. What else fixes nitrogen?

Jacob found this great video put out by the Japanese government, talking about how imported food affects the population and the economy. There was also some stuff about genetically modified grains... now that's a little bit more difficult one for me. On the one hand, I remember learning about gm grains being used because they have a higher yeild, on the other hand, this article points out that Monsanto has also been drastically raising prices on their seed corn. Making someone dependant on your seeds, especially if they can't harvest them themselves (is this the case with the Monsanto seeds?) and then raising the price seems like a scam to me.

The more I learn, the more there seems to be to learn. The relationships between plants and me and everyone else gets more complicated and I have an even greater sense of urgency about 'knowing it all'.

I found this site explaining some main principles of permaculture. Also, I realized, if there are grains that I already eat a lot of, why don't I plant some of those? I did try a little mungbean plant... I got two bean pods, they were delicious. But out of two bean pods, I got about 12 beans. That's enough for at least 8 more plants. And what about lima beans and pinto beans? I also love the idea of creating an environment for bugs so that they can balence themselves out between helpful and harmful. I've seen just in the past year that as my garden gets bigger and more established and has a bigger variety of plants, I seem to have less pests.

And how about permablitz? It looks great, very fun, like a party. Rally the community, make gardens, eat healthier, everyone be a little more earthy crunchy...

Remember the Dervaes family? The home grown revolution? Well they've started selling open pollinated non-Monsanto owned seeds. Sorry this doesn't really have any conclusion, my brain is inconclusive right now. Just lots of imformation that needs to be sorted for relevancy.