From: altamira (altamira@ecpi.com)
Date: Sun May 28 2000 - 20:59:59 MDT
Yes, I certainly learn characteristics of plants! And animals. And many
other things. Here are some things I learned today:
1. Guinea fowl are fond of eating green tomatoes and will put forth as much
effort to get at them as they will to get at ripe dew berries. This means I
either have to kill or contain the guineas or cage the tomatoes. I chose to
cage the tomatoes, because my neighbors all lose their gardens to
grasshoppers while I don't. I suspect that the guineas are one of the
reasons for this.
2. Javelinas (*Dicotyles tajacu* aka collared peccary) are more effectively
deterred from a corn patch by poultry wire than by heavier woven wire such
as hog wire. I think this is because the poultry wire tends to cut their
noses when they push against it. The javelinas are some of my favorite
animals, despite the fact that they sometimes make a mess in the garden and
can be dangerous. Something I learned about them earlier this year is that
they will kill for meat and that 2 or more of them will co-operate in making
the kill.
3. I have to lift and move heavy things from time to time, and since there's
usually no one here to help, I have to devise block & tackle systems or
rollers or whatever to get the job done. Today I was using cylindrical steel
pipes to move a stainless steel tank (72" x 23" x 18") up a gently sloping
hill. I found that 1.5" diameter pipe worked better than either 3/4" pipe
or 2" pipe. I have to think about this to decide why this would be the
case.
4. I've been selectively breeding field corn to come up with a variety
suited to my soil and climate. I live in an area which gets from 30" to 50"
of rain annually, but a large portion of the annual rainfall often occurs
over a short period of time and runs off. My soil is very sandy. As a
result, I have what you might call a semi-arid situation, despite the
relatively high amount of rainfall. This is the fourth year I've been
working on the corn. About half the stalks have begun to tassel out at a
height of only three and a half to four feet. I've been saving seed from
the best ears of corn, regardless of stalk height. We've had a severe
drought for two of the four years I've grown the corn, and a third year
which was fairly dry. I think I may be seeing some adaptation to the
climate in the shorter stalks. I'm not sure this should "count" as something
new learned, but it's very exciting. I've irrigated very little, and the
corn's doing well.
5. Algae will grow in Schedule 40 pvc water pipe. I would have thought
that no sunlight penetrates the pipe. Surely, there would be very low
levels of light. But there's algae growing in the pipes, enough to slow the
flow of the water.
6. I've also been selectively breeding tomato plants, and the first tomato
ripened today on one of the plants. I'd been eager to find out if the
tomato's flavor would be as excellent as its appearence, and it was.
I'm pretty sure I could think of more things, but my daughter's pestering me
to get off the computer and watch a video with her. Oh Yeah! Here's
something else: 7. Turkey vultures lay eggs that are a bit larger than
turkey eggs and pale green in color with dark red splotches. Something else
I've learned about vultures (but not today) is that they seem to locate
their food by smell.
Bonnie
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.com
[mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.com]On Behalf Of hal@finney.org
Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2000 6:02 PM
To: extropians@extropy.com
Subject: Re: Introduction
Bonnie writes:
> I live in a house I built from
> homemade adobe bricks. I've had great fun devising a water-delivery
system,
> electrical system, and so forth. I find the lifestyle to be quite
pleasant,
> and the garden, woods, and fields themselves are endless sources of wonder
> (as are city streets, alleys, and vacant lots, for that matter). I learn
at
> least 5 or 6 new things each day in the garden and many more from reading.
That's very interesting. What kinds of things do you learn in your
garden? Characteristics of plants? What five or six things did you
learn today, for example?
Hal
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