There is a lot of black locust along the bike trail i go down and the spikes are nasty. I think the honey? don’t have them or maybe i just haven’t noticed. Excellent wood for building outdoor furniture if you can find it.
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I’m very disappointed. Why was my comment deleted? Was it because the information was upsetting to some? It was not meant to be. I was simply providing information pertaining to the thread. Unfortunately not all information is easy to hear. If we prohibit info from being shared because it can be upsetting, then we hinder the ability to remedy the negative…
This thread is in regards to growing more food in preparation for more food shortages. I provided a link to an article pertaining to avoiding upcoming climate lock downs ( which is a buzzword in mainstream media now) and what they will entail. The article was written by the organization that holds a significant role in designing and proposing such policies. ( the same way proposals and simulations were provided for the p word ) According to them, part of what will constitute climates lockdown would be the banning of red meat and significant restrictions on vehicle use and fossil fuel production, which will impact all of the food supply.
I offered no opinion or comment on it, only provided the link.
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Please send the link to my private messages. 
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I deleted your post. Your post was flagged because of political commentary, I agreed with the flag and deleted it.
Political commentary involves not only comments made by members, but also links to articles with political commentary.
This is a excellent definition of political discussion, which is off-limits on the fruit forum.
Whether one agrees with climate change or not, it is a political football in today’s times. Articles discussing policies of locking down countries’ economies because of climate change are extremely political in today’s political climate and will only result in lots of heated political debate on this forum.
Btw, I not only deleted your post, but deleted several political posts with opposing views. Political posts on the forum are not deleted because they are “upsetting” to some. Either side can make that claim. Rather political posts are deleted because they are political.
It’s rather taxing to hear complaints of censorship from both parties on opposite sides of an issue, but I plod along.
Feel free to share political thoughts with other members who would like to discuss it with you via PMs.
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To clarify, it is considered prohibited political discussion if it is in regards to a legislative policy proposal, rather than arguing political sides, despite if a legislation / policy is proposed that directly impacts agriculture and growing fruit / vegetables? For example, if there were to be a proposal to prohibit home gardens, or prohibit the sale of fruit trees to non-commercial entities, etc. it is then against the rules to post on that because it is a legislatively enforced policy which will effect everyone and is therefore political? It would be okay to create a topic pointing out that farmers markets are closing, but prohibited to point of that it was legislation being the major role in the closings?
I do not mean to derail the thread, but choose to ask here, rather than pm, for everyone’s clarification on approved topics.
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One of those comments was talking about lynching politicians. Is that a legitimate opposing view?
Originally when I started this thread my intentions were not that anyone would stray so far from the topic. Bringing this up as the topic seems to be moving in a different direction than my intentions of growing more food which I think is important. My suggestion to everyone is to be kind and respectful to one another and remember as you post your views about controversial topics they may differ greatly from someone else’s. Why not go back to discussing growing more food? This is not the place for Political discussions. I removed a post that was disrespectful to some members.
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That is a fair question, and I appreciate your intent for public clarification.
To answer this question, I need to offer some insight into how forum policy has been decided in the past.
As most members know, Scott created this forum as an alternative to a popular fruit forum, which made major changes and had become largely commercialized. Few people oppose a little commercialization on a free forum, but the previous fruit forum was over-the-top commercialization for a lot of folks.
Most of the “regulars” on the previous fruit forum followed Scott over to his new forum because it was a better alternative. So the forum “community” was essentially preserved on the new forum.
At the same time, Scott seemed to offer some of the more knowledgeable and interested members administrators for the new forum. Alan (previously Harvestman) has an orchard care business he has built over decades. Fruitnut (Steve) has high academic credentials in horticulture, nuts and fruit. Currently Clark has a deep enthusiasm and interest in pears. Tippy although, grows on a small acreage, is one of the sharpest backyard growers out there and has been more of an enthusiast of this forum (and the last one) than anyone I can think of. I think she has read more posts than any other forum member, certainly more than any other admin (currently read 17,400 topics, which is mind boggling to me). Scott of course is one of the most well versed backyard growers, in varieties, low spray, and BYOC, you could find. And he’s a nerdy computer professor and a prestigious university, so that’s a good fit.
From the very first Scott had a more hands off approach, with minimal rules. Almost all the rules we have on the forum (and there are still few, imo) came about because of problems/issues, which had to be addressed.
When an obvious problem has arisen, an admin, or Scott would bring it up in a staff topic. After lots of discussion, Scott would make the final decision. In every case I recall, his decision reflected the majority opinion of the admin/staff team. So he has really chosen to govern his forum as a democracy, among the administrators.
Freedom of speech has been a significant goal, where possible, balanced with the goal of the forum, which is to provide a rich discussion and community among fruit enthusiasts.
So forum policy has evolved as “hands off” approach, as much as possible. New rules are really only a response to new problems/issues which arise and threaten to compromise the enjoyment learning of most folks of the forum.
So, my point in mentioning this background is that admins have not discussed every hypothetical, or the hypotheticals you mention. There are hundreds of hypotheticals which we haven’t discussed because the forum is really kind of a friendly forum providing a service, not a corporate venture.
For example, currently the forum is set up so that if two level 3 members flag a post, that post is automatically hidden. What if, hypothetically speaking, two members colluded to unfairly flag a topic they didn’t like. If that happened, that would be a new problem/issue that the admins and Scott would have to deal with. There are hundreds of things which could happen like that, which admins have never discussed.
So, unfortunately, it’s impossible for me to answer all you hypothetical scenarios. I can say with some degree of confidence, that if the government banned home gardens (to use your example) it would cause such universal ire among members, we would probably allow rants and discussions of that topic. Although I suspect, if the government truly had that much power, I suspect it would be unwise to rant against it.
Honestly, that’s where it becomes a gray area. There are lots of gray areas where things drift or brush against the political. For example, organic vs. conventional fruit growing can brush up against the political, but so far that topic is so close to fruit growing, we haven’t "banned it (although it has been discussed in admin topics).
Another hard one is how much profanity to allow on the forum? Certainly, it’s upsetting to some, but what decides a profane word? Why is “sh*t” a profane word, but “poop” is not. Just exactly how profane a word must be (think of slang words for various sexual acts) before it is prohibited on the forum because we want to provide a minimum level of decency for members on the forum. This something we’ve actually discussed (because it came up as an issue) on admin threads.
What I’m trying to say, is that as admins, we are charged with setting forum policy (for the benefit of all members) but some areas are gray. We try to do the best we can to offer the most freedom of speech, while maintaining a friendly environment for fruit enthusiasts.
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I think a great option for growing more food over the winter months is micro-greens. Some types of seeds can get pricey, but they offer a very nutritionally dense harvest in often under a week so it is easy to scale up or down what you need week by week. You also don’t need particularly sophisticated lighting setups for them since you actually want them to get leggy compared to tomato or other seedlings.
Things like Austrian winter peas or daikon radish that are used for cover crops or black oil sunflower seeds that are sold for bird food can be had relatively cheaply and 25lb sacks of seed will remain viable for several years for these as well. The smaller seeded types (brocolli, cabbage, etc.) can be grown on paper towels in a pinch, but for the larger seeded things like peas a soil less mix like ProMix is best so that is a definite cost. Still $2-$3 for a tray of pea shoots is a very good deal.
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Hoosierbanana,
This is a long thread. I think I’ve read every post, but just in case, I searched this thread using lynching or politicians, and couldn’t find the post you referred to.
Earlier in the thread I posted a plea to stop posting political content. There was some political content before that, that I did not delete as an example to what I was referring to, but I couldn’t find lynching politicians in that. Did I miss something?
I think some politicians deserved to be lynched (just kidding of course) but I could only find the term in your post in this thread. I probably missed the post, but that’s the way it goes when you have humans administrating a forum. It’s not perfect. Maybe we could develop an algorithm (I’m joking again.)
I think the best thing to do is to keep to the topic above as Clark suggests and as zendog demonstrated above. I only interjected these posts because of serious questions of how the forum was administrated.
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It was one of the posts you said you deleted.
They said something akin to “find themselves hanging from a tree”.
Aside from whether you agree with the definition of lynching, you could still answer my question.
Posting an article that is political is not in the same ballpark as that, imo.
Yes, I deleted that post.
Part of the phrase was, “politicians implementing it would be hanging from a short piece of rope from a tall tree.”
That is political, as is introducing highly politicized article links in a backdoor way to introduce political opinion/views on the forum.
This is not a new policy.
There are plenty of forums which discuss political policy. And it is free to discuss in PMs here. We tried open discussion of politics here and it simply didn’t work. Many members wanted it banned. If fueled a lot of hostility. I understand many members wanted to continue to discuss politics. It wasn’t without a lot of discussion among members and admins that the decision was made.
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I do not consider the article that I shared as political, in terms of arguing sides. It effects everyone. It can only be considered political because it was published by a (non-elected) policy-making body involved in making those policies. It was simulation / proposal of what the future lock downs will encompass, which directly impacts the food supply, which highlights the importance of growing your own food for continued shortages as this thread pertains. It is simply information outlining what the recent mainstream buzzwords would actually mean when implemented, from those who design the policies, as is frequently alluded to.
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I never thought your post political, but at least a couple other people must have.
Be that as it may, growing more food is surely smart…for there will be more shortages/empty shelves in the days and years going forward. I’d put money on it if there were odds and I was into betting!
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This has been an odd discussion.
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Well…I looked at the link you posted again because a few folks here say it’s not political. Just to demonstrate the objectivity I try to maintain (even though I hold fairly strong political views). Here is how the article starts out.
"As COVID-19 spread earlier this year, governments introduced lockdowns in order to prevent a public-health emergency from spinning out of control. In the near future, the world may need to resort to lockdowns again – this time to tackle a climate emergency.
Shifting Arctic ice, raging wildfires in western US states and elsewhere, and methane leaks in the North Sea are all warning signs that we are approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilization will require dramatic interventions.
Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently."
Here’s more, “Addressing this triple crisis requires reorienting corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems toward a green economic transformation. To achieve this, three obstacles must be removed: business that is shareholder-driven instead of stakeholder-driven, finance that is used in inadequate and inappropriate ways, and government that is based on outdated economic thinking and faulty assumptions.”
Sheesh folks, am I really being unfair in censoring this material from a forum designed to discuss fruit? Is this really not political material?
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For me that looks more analitical than political, but the main point is: we are here on this forum to talk and read about growing fruits, gardening, etc. I don’t have problem with people discussing politics, but somehow those discussions quite often become a cat’s fight when people do not “agree to disagree”. We all have our opinion about many things that are happening around us, but that is not the reason we are here on this forum I think.
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How do sunflower microgreens work out for you? Do the shells fall off? Most microgreen seeds add a little crunchy, but sunflower seeds would be inedible!
They mostly fall off, but I sweep my hand over the top several times a day for the last couple of days before harvest to knock as many off as possible. It is important to soak them well before seeding since that softens the shell a lot. That also is important for getting them to germinate at once instead of over time. I do usually have some stuck, but they are big enough that it isn’t a big deal to pluck the few stuck ones off before eating.
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Looks like I will be ordering some to play with! I grow a lot of radish microgreens for my work.