hedging bets
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please comment your predicted outcome…
outcome #1 – no loss
outcome #2 – loss of ataulfo branch
outcome #3 – loss of palmer branch
outcome #4 – loss of ataulfo rootstock
outcome #5 – loss of palmer rootstock
outcome #6 – loss of ataulfo entirely
outcome #7 – loss of ataulfo branch and palmer rootstock
outcome #8 – loss of palmer entirely
outcome #9 – loss of palmer branch and ataulfo rootstock
outcome #10 – total loss
since total loss is entirely possible, i hedged my bets…
in the bucket…
1. aeonium – seedling culls
2. banana – 1 namwa pup from @kevinthegarden
3. dragon fruit – 1 yellow cutting
4. elaeagnus latifolia – 3 cuttings
5. elaeagnus pungens – 1 cutting
6. epiphyllum – 1 seedling from large fruited mother
7. fig – 1 panache seedling
8. inga sp – 1 seedling
9. jackfruit – 2 sad seedlings
10. mango – 2 conjoined seedlings, ataulfo and palmer
11. moringa – 1 seedling
12. pereskia aculeata – 1 cutting
13. pereskia grandifolia – 1 cutting
14. pereskia grandifolia ssp. violacea – 1 cutting
15. pitanga – 1 seedling
after a short walk to the fledging food forest, i crawled on my hands and knees for like 10 minutes dragging the bucket and a shovel until i found a decent spot to dig a big hole…
i dug down in the hard wet clay nearly 2′, scooping the mud out with my hands, until i started seeing water. unfortunately i had to chop some roots in the process. then i strategically placed all the plants in the hole…
anyone care to predict the outcome? fortunately there’s no spodic layer to worry about. but around 50 feet away there’s a drainage ditch that always has at least a trickle of water runoff from the adjacent community’s landscaping irrigation. it’s enough water to support more than a dozen full grown willow trees, several large palm trees, one medium size chinese elm tree, and a bunch of other weeds. it’s basically a ghetto oasis. right now i don’t have any plans to water anything that i’ve planted in the past couple months, but that might change.
it’s reasonable to think that all the plants in the hole will compete with each other. for sure there will be considerable competition, but it’s important to appreciate the fact that plants can trade resources with each other, thanks to fungi. the less distance between the plants the easier it is for them to trade. more trade means more productivity and growth. it’s basically a market. every permaculture “guild” is a market. so far i’ve created more than a dozen markets in the food forest. as the plants in each market grow and their roots expand, there will be more and more trading between markets. this will result in even greater productivity and growth.
sooner rather than later all the people in florida will be green with envy over socal’s very own fruit and spice park. well, there wouldn’t be any mowing, so perhaps “park” wouldn’t be the best word. some background…
SoCal Public Park For Subtropical Fruits And Nuts? – 2022
list of fruit trees in los angeles parks – 2023
in addition to the ghetto oasis that i’ve been planting in, across the street are two more. so there’s plenty of room for thirstier fruiting plants, but there’s way more room for less thirsty fruiting plants. recently i ordered seeds from raindance seeds…
diospyros californica (baja chocolate persimmon/sapote)
passiflora pentaschista (desert passionfruit)
prosopis pubescens (screwbean mesquite)
ziziphus parryi (desert jujube)
i didn’t sow all the seeds from each species in its own pot. that would have been putting all my eggs in one basket. instead, i hedged my bets. here’s what i put into each pot, more or less…
starting from the upper left hand corner…
1. noid nitrogen fixer
2. diospyros californica
3. ziziphus parryi
4. noid nitrogen fixer
5. cyrtocarpa edulis
6. davidsonia pruriens
7. noid nitrogen fixer
8. arrayan (psidium sartorianum)
9. passiflora phoenicea (pollinated with caerulea)
10. noid nitrogen fixer
11. noid nitrogen fixer
12. psidium myrtoides
13. noid nitrogen fixer
14. mangave
15. psidium friedrichsthalianum
16. noid nitrogen fixer
17. chipiln (crotalaria longirostrata) – nitrogen fixer
18. passiflora palmeri
19. screwbean mesquite – nitrogen fixer
20. passiflora arida
today your mission is to say “chipiln” to someone.
ideally the food forest will have all the relatively drought tolerant fruiting plants in the world! with the goal being to hybridize them and facilitate their distribution. come taste the fruit, keep the seeds, take a reasonable amount of cuttings and volunteers. define “reasonable”?
last night i watched this documentary on dudleya poaching. i commented…
sure, the phalaenopsis on your table wasn’t poached, but its ancestors certainly were. the figs you enjoy? poached from the wild more than 10,000 years ago. loquat? kiwi? poached from china perhaps more than 100 years ago. the achacha you still haven’t enjoyed? poached from bolivia maybe a couple decades ago. not to mention all the veggies that have been poached, like potatoes. thank goodness for humanity that it’s only just recently that our society has become so stupid, as a result of lowest common denominator places like youtube, that laws against poaching have been enacted and enforced with taxpayer dollars that could have been spent on things that are actually useful, like public food forests.
define “useful”? on ourfigs it’s possible to tag people and subscribe to threads. these functions are certainly useful, to me. but just how useful are they, to us? one way to answer the question is via donations to this forum. donate to this forum to credibly communicate how useful it is to be able to tag people. donate to my food forest to credibly communicate how useful garcinias are.
can food forests and forums and countries grow in the most beneficial direction without your specific sacrificial input? nope. maximally beneficial growth is only possible with markets. this is equally true for plants, people and plant people.
in the new and completely different conditions in which the conjoined mango seedlings now find themselves, i can only guess their needs. instead of giving them a handful of slow release fertilizer, i hedged my bets by providing them with a market. this will give the mango the opportunity to credibly communicate its needs to the dozen or so other plants in the market. admittedly, it’s entirely possible that i’m overestimating the usefulness of markets. incorrectly estimating the usefulness of things is very easy. after all, we’re only human. but the alternative is for you to decide for the mango how much potassium it needs. to do this requires assuming that you’re a superhuman of sorts that is magically error free. i’m highly skeptical of such assumptions. with this in mind, i look forward to reading your predictions regarding the mango’s outcome.
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