Announcing the official opening of project Eat Your Sand
After two grueling years of college, I have finally emerged. Hopefully the headaches will be over, and I will have more time to do the things that I love to do, like teach the little ones about nature and growing plants. I have also been cultivating a minimalist lifestyle, and this spring I have been potting and propagating, in hopes to find other permits to trade with, or just interested gardeners. Its not about selling plants and rabbits, its about sharing, getting, and producing bounty. Care of people and all.
So this spring I have more growies than I know what to do with. It has inspired me to create a trading page with a listing of everything that I have a lot of success with, including rabbits and premium plants. Come check it out EatYourSand
Don't hesitate to shoot me an email or use the form to contact me. I love to trade! Eat Your Sand will be updated frequently with what is currently being offered, and I am willing to travel to trade.
How to ghetto-tastically make a manure brewer. (Say that 5 times fast!)
The first step: Get your hands on a blue barrel. This is probably the hardest part, but they are out there if you really want them. There are many sources, I ghetto-tastically just asked someone who wasn't using theirs.
Then, using a saw, slice in half in the middle. This is the best time to clean the inside out really good.
If it had a cap or plug on the top, take it off. Get a large piece of old screen to more than cover the cap area.
In the base, drill a hole and install a spigot. This will need to be glued and caulked very well so there are no leakage problems.
Then invert the top onto the bottom, so the top acts as a cup for the raw manure. It should be open to the air so rain can come in.
This one isn't so attractive. Yours can be better.
Then fill the whole top with all the rabbit manure, waste hay, other manure, and small bits of kitchen waste, like eggshells. If you find any worms in your garden, add them as well.
How to use the manure brewer:
Dump water in the open top
Open the spigot and drain manure water into your watering can or bucket.
Take the watering can or bucket to your hungry plants, water slowly so more nutrition is absorbed.
Uses: Edible, Forage, Legumes, Xeriscaping. Native to: West Africa
A true survival food, the cowpea is grown for its edible beans and leaves. It's a nitrogen-fixing legume, which allows it to grow in extremely poor soils. In addition, it's one of the best fodder plants for the deep south.
Not only do cowpeas grow very well in this area, it seems that wildlife has very little interest in them. This can be a boon when squirrels and birds frequently do their best to defeat even the most resilient of gardeners.
Plant cowpeas in the early spring, around the beginning of March if no additional freezes are reported. Plant them again at the end of September. They are a short-season annual that only needs about 3-4 months to produce a whole crop of beans. The beans germinate faster if soaked in clean water for 2-4 hours before planting. If desired, innoculate with additional nitrogen-fixing bacteria, but this step is not necessary in order to get good results. Grows very well in the full sun provided they plants have enough moisture to prevent wilting.
Cowpeas have also been shown to be an excellent green manure and annual cover crop, as they grow in poor soil and have a short growing season. Supposedly they arrived in the US via the slave trade, and are still a New Years Day traditional holiday food in the south.
Mine are originally from the grocery store, and I have been growing them now successfully for a while. I'm attempting to hybridize some cowpeas that particularly enjoy our weather and soil, though I have been amending the soil with rabbit manure for some time as well. This variety is low-growing and bushy, and can be planted very closely together to maximize your growing space. They are very well-behaved little plants, and will stay where they are placed. At the end of their cycle the beans and plants politely die and dry right on the plant, making harvest very easy.
Uses: Edible, Fodder, Fertilizer. Native to: The Cretaceous Period, worldwide.
This floating water plant is actually a tiny, prehistoric fern with amazing properties. It fixes atmospheric nitrogen due to its symbiotic relationship with cyanobacteria, like an aquatic version of our more common legumes. Due to its nitrogen-fixation, it is also an extremely protein-rich plant, making it an excellent choice for home-grown fodder. In fact, there are very few land-based livestock animals that will not eat azolla, if any. Chickens, rabbits, goats, ducks, and cows are reported to gorge on this aquatic plant.
Historically it has been used as a wetland green manure crop in the warmer parts of Asia. In the spring when taro or rice is planted in the boglands, the azolla would be innoculated to the water's surface. There the little ferns would fix nitrogen and proliferate, crowding out any competing algae or weeds via shading. Since the rice and taro have most of their foliage above water-level, it does not hinder their growth. The azolla will thrive, then self-mulch, then die down when the cooler weather comes. The farmers harvest some and shelter it for next year's use. The green manure properties of azolla make it possibly the six most valuable ferns on the planet.
A close-up of the roots which hang into the water.
It's culture is simple - grow it in clean still or gentle water. Wind and water turbulence can fragment and destroy azolla, so sometimes floating beds are used. Like duckweed, under the right conditions it can become weedy if it escapes into waterways, so care should be taken to prevent escape. Since it provides it's own nitrogen, phosphorous can be a limiting factor to optimal growth. "The symptoms of phosphorous deficiency are red-coloured
fronds (due the presence of the pigment anthocyanin), decreased growth and curled
roots." A quick search of the webs reveals a superior organic source of high quality phosphorous can be made by burning animal bones at high temperatures to ashes. Never has a rocket mass heater in florida sounded more appealing! Azolla species can be used as a very nutritious survival food for humans, but it will need to be cooked to destroy any pathogens that might be living in the watery growing media. For animals, this compilated table shows it to have 16.5% crude protein and a bevy of other useful vitamins, like leucine and alanine. This Australian study lists many of the benefits of using azolla as a large-scale fodder source, but points out a simple drawback to commercial production - that contamination of the plantings by tiny freshwater shrimp can occur. This accidental animal protein renders the azolla illegal to sell as a feed source for ruminants in Australia, as they have strict legislation prohibiting animal proteins for ruminant consumption there. They also recommend the azolla be fed fresh or refrigerated, but within a week of harvest.
A very nice synopsis of azolla research here.
Some free aquatic snail contamination.
I don't speak this language, but the video is very informative even muted.
I didn't believe the claim that rabbit manure was garden gold, so I decided to prove it for myself. After all, if a five gallon bucket of this stuff can go for $10 or more, it must be great, right?
The patch above was the remains of the first pond hole, the hole that had the cable line running through it. I filled it with rabbit manure and planted some seeds, topped with a bit of mulch. (A sunken garden bed). With the watering and excellent spring weather, the squash plants quickly overgrew the beans and peanuts, with the cannas reaching outrageous proportions faster than the cannas elsewhere. I didn't even expect these squash to do much more than sprout, since I have had such dismal luck elsewhere in the yard. They are even larger than my dad's squash plants, and he's a gardening genius who's fond of fertilizer. It would be pretty nifty to get a squash out of this bed, but if I don't, the squash leaves are good rabbit eats.
Same squash plants planted at the same time lacking manure.
There are wild claims on the internet that rabbit manure is wonderful because it contains no weed seeds. That is true, but only if you feed your rabbits commercially prepared pellet diets and no other food. My rabbit manure has weed seeds from their favorite weeds, and seeds from some of their other foods like strawberries and blackberries. So they poop out more food to eat. Awesome.
An interesting, but unrelated paper about phosphate.
Uses : Forage, Cover Crop, Nitrogen Fixing, Xeriscaping, Ornamental. Native to : Coastal Southeast
(Desmodium lineatum/Desmodium incanum)
This beautiful little plant is much vilified by gardeners and mothers alike. An open mind is helpful when dealing with native plants, they were here first and aren't available at garden centers.
Beggar's Tick is a nitrogen-fixing legume. The natural bacteria that congregates around the roots of the plant fix atmospheric nitrogen and turn the nitrogen into a plant soluble form. When the plant dies the bacteria and plant roots decay and release nutrition.
Beggar's Tick loves growing in very poor soil and bare sand. Disbelieve the plant profile on Dave's Garden, which seems to be the same for every plant in existence. Beggar's Tick thrives in an acidic soil with low moisture and is a perennial
Beggar's Tick has amazing flowers. This little plant has bi-colored leaves and in late spring or early summer will shoot up a little stalk with almost orchid-like pink/purple flowers.
Beggar's Tick's taproot and diminutive size make it ideal for a small rock garden. The taproot will burrow into the rocky area, aerating. When the plant dies the organic matter will be left to improve the rocky area.
Beggar's Tick has evolved a unique method of spreading its seeds. It can't be a coincidence that they are frequently found near sidewalks and roadways.
Legumes are normal looking plants that have a special kind of bacteria around the roots which are very good at chemically fixing the free-floating nitrogen in the environment. This symbiosis provides nitrogen in form the plant can absorb. Many farmers innoculate legume seeds with beneficial bacteria to be assured off the nitrogen fixation properties, and frequently use legumes as a rotation/cover/forage plants.
Permaculturists use larger legumes for coppicing, a technique of top pruning a bush or tree to promote root die-back. The premise is that if you greatly reduce the photosynthesis capability of the top off the plant then the roots will die down as well as the plant struggles to remain alive. The dead roots and nitrogen fixing bacteria die off, releasing that nitrogen gathered from the environment. Most leguminous plants are survivors, and coppicing properly done rarely kills the plant. Nature naturally coppices here frequently as storms come through and reshape our forests.
There are plenty of native and non-native legumes that can be incorporated into the landscape. Following are a few.
Shy leaf (Aeschynomene viscidula), Leadplant (Amorpha fruticosa), Gray nicker (Caesalpinia crista), Partridge pea (Cassia chamaecrista), Bahama cassia (Cassia chapmanii), Sensitive plant (Cassia nictitans), Coffee senna (Cassia occidentalis), Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis), Rattlebox (Crotalaria pallida), Dalea (Dalea carnea), Globe headed prairie clover (Dalea feayi), Summer farewell (Dalea pinnata), White prairie clover (Dalea pinnata var. adenopoda), Beggar's tick (Desmodium lineatum), Coral bean (Erythrina herbacea), Florida milk pea (Galactia floridana), White milk pea (Galactia elliottii), Sky-blue lupine (Lupinus diffusus), Sundial lupine (Lupinus perennis), Lady lupine (Lupinus villosus), Wild tamarind (Lysiloma bahamense), White sweet clover (Melilotus alba), Sour sweet clover (Melilotus indica), Blackbead (Pithecellobium keyense), Cat claw (Pithecellobium unguis-cati), Necklace pod (Sophora tomentosa), Southern pencil flower (Stylosanthes hamata), Crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum), White clover (Trifolium repens), Vetch (Vicia acutifolia)
Some more native legumes : (Rhyncosia reniformis), (Petalostemon pinnatum), (Lespedeza augustifolia).
Useful for : Food Production. Edible Parts, Animal Forage. Native to : Central America
After careful consideration of what types of annuals might thrive in the harsh wet heat of the Florida summer, peanuts came up as an obvious choice. After some searching we were able to fine raw fresh peanuts, which were much cheaper than roasted. And taste kinda awful.
According to IFAS, the harvesting time for peanuts vary widely depending on what commercial purpose the peanuts are to be used for. Apparently they can be harvested in as little as 60 days for the boiling market or as long as 180 days for the roasting market. They are grown largely in north Florida and are a huge cash crop for farmers. Most diseases can be reduced by crop rotation, keeping peanuts in an area not more often than once every four years.
Of course, those recommendations are for monoculture farms. Nothing much is said for the home gardener or for polycultures. I suspect peanuts would do very well in a polyculture, where Tobacco Spotted Wilt Virus would be non-existant.
Another article from IFAS discusses a little about the techniques for growing peanuts on the farm, such as planting depth and row spacing. Peanuts should be planted no closer than six inches in rows and two inches deep in very loose, well-drained soil with a pH of 6 - 6.5. They should be planted after the last frost date and before the beginning of June in Florida. There is some discussion as to whether peanuts are perennial or not. In the northern part of the US they are for certain treated as annuals. Perennial peanut, an entirely different member of the peanut family, is a popular groundcover and forage in Florida. It also has little yellow flowers but does not form peanuts.
Come check it out
