How much land does one person need to sustain themselves?

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by Spartacus, Dec 29, 2006.

  1. Paul Cereghino

    Paul Cereghino Junior Member

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    To my understanding corn and soybean are the big stock feed in the US.

    Biodynamics farmers (back to europe again..) integrate cow and grain systems elegantly. Sounds like that anti-wheat thing is primarily tropical in origin :) For temperate agriculture it seems like a reasonable plant. Winter wheat can avoid drought. ... An all nut diet has too much fat. I can't grow cassava, yam, breadfuit or the rest, (though running around half naked on a polynesian beach sure could help with the clothing issues, as well as the light deprivation induced mood swings). For laboring I want some nice clean complex carbohydrates. For famine I'd want something that stores well.

    Much of the mechanization for processing grains occured pre-internal combustion engine. There is a great book called 'The Scythe Book' that has some nice history and some neat gadgets to rebuild -- automatic threshing and winnowing machines.

    Can polyculture be temporal as well as spatial?

    I'm guessing that the big challange with grain will be Phosphorus, which is mostly derived from rock phosphate, which as a non-renewable resource has increasing energy and geopolitical costs. Thus grain needs ranging phosphorus concentrators (read: animals) to be viable.
     
  2. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Cheers Richard, I didn't know that you could make a good textile out of bamboo.

    I'm not sure what other products can be made from bamboo, but the list for hemp is enormous.

    Most of the world's paper (both filtering and writing) was once made from recycled hemp ropes, clothes, rags and sails...hemp paper is much better quality than tree based paper (much longer fibre strands), can be whitened with hydrogen peroxide which is infinitely less damaging than chlorine bleaching and contains no dioxins...and the paper is perfectly usable untreated in any way.

    You can make concrete which is lighter and far more durable from it...plus the first Model T Ford prototype was made from lightweight hemp fibreglass and Henry Ford was extremely disappointed that government and legal pressure at the time (beginning of serious prohibition) prevented him from making all his future cars from hemp fibreglass. There's some great old film footage of him hitting the prototype with a fully swung sledgehammer and it doesn't even leave a mark, let alone dent it. We should have been growing renewable, much better quality plastics and fibreglasses all these years using hemp cellulose. The loss to construction and manufacturing through prohibition is incalculable.

    Hemp seed as a food is really high in essential minerals and protein and can be used for flour, used for oil (it is nearly all unsaturated and unlike nearly all other oils it has all the essential fatty acids in perfect balance for humans) or toasted as a crunchy snack. Hemp is also highly useful for liquid fuel, gas, methanol, machine lubrication and non-toxic paint manufacturing.

    Hemp has great weed supressing ability, can be used to make charcoal, and its deep, soil conditioning roots combined with rapid, almost bullet proof growth are ideal for erosion control (incidentally, Bangladesh had virtually no trouble from flooding and erosion until the US stipulated that its vast hillsides of hemp [Bang - Hemp, La - Land, Desh - People) would need to be removed in order to get any formal trading relationship with the US...they sent in the army with flamethrowers and torched the whole country...then send a few million bucks every year in 'charity' when Bangladesh floods and becomes a giant toxic muddy river as entire unstabilised hillsides wash into the sea... :evil:). It's an ideal beneficial companion crop for a wide range of other different annuals and perennials.

    One quite amusing fact is that every time 'incense' is mentioned in ancient texts (including the bible), it is actually hemp flowers. No wonder religion and hanging out at the temple was so much more popular in those days. ;-)

    Then of course, there's the wide range of medicinal uses...I could go on forever really and have already left out quite a bit. There isn't a single facet of human production where hemp isn't a vital and better solution than what we currently use.

    It was criminalised largely thanks to the racism and commercial interests of Hurst the US media magnate (targeting and marginalising non-white minority communites as 'evil marijuana users' through his media empire with a massive and almost entirely false propaganda bombardment), and Du Pont, who rightly saw that there was little use for his nylon patent when everything nylon could do, hemp could do much better, much cheaper - same goes for a huge chunk of the chemical industry. Apart from a minor hiccup when the US govt re-legalised hemp growing for a short period during WWII (the 'Hemp For Victory' campaign...they used flamethrowers on the crops straight after the war finished and recriminalised), the US has successfully pushed worldwide prohibition by refusing to trade or interact with countries who do not prohibit hemp growing - there has been some relatively recent minor change in this area with some countries reintroducing very small, industrial use only hemp strains for commercial production.

    I agree completely that in the main, perennials are much more preferable to annuals...but hemp (which self sows beautifully) is in a category all on its own. It's the ultimate Permaculture/sustainability plant...and we are presently denied its legal use because of the lies, distortion and corruption of a handful of very evil men.

    The US driven prohibition of hemp, IMO, outweighs every other crime against humanity ever committed. It's not just the denial of its use during most of the 20C and beyond...it's so much more...all the trillions of tons of chemical polluted water to replace hemp products with inferior, environmentally damaging products...the deforestation of the planet using trees for what hemp does so much better...the extra oil burned for our heavier than hemp fibreglass vehicles...the loss of so much hemp oriented knowledge...but perhaps worst of all, the denial of its contribution to scientific research during a period which may well be seen in hindsight as the last and arguably only 'golden age' of intensive technological research (afforded by our once-only fossil fuel inheritance).

    On top of all that, it wouldn't be hard to make a strong case for our current major Climate change problems being directly linked back to hemp prohibition.

    All the above uses of hemp pre-date the automobile...we will never know what else could have been achieved in the field of hemp oriented research if it hadn't been criminalised.

    Sorry to post a long rant, but there's few things I feel more strongly about than this...and so few people know even part of the story. :(
     
  3. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Hi Jez,

    All good points about hemp/marijuana/racism, etc. If marijuana and alcohol were compared, marijuana would be found to be less damaging than alcohol to the users and society. Ya ever see a stoned fist fight?

    Just one note, the image you talk about is Ford knocking on a car body made from paper and soy resin (the paper may have been hemp derived, but I can't find that). Henry Ford was a big believer in soy...

    https://media.ford.com/newsroom/feature_display.cfm?release=18754

    Anyway, just wanted to mention the soy based composite plastic...

    C
     
  4. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Jez, please, no apologies! Really interesting posts, as usual!
    I hadn't heard about the hemp fibreglass cars. That is sort of tragically funny.
    I think most of the applications on your list could be done with bamboo, and I bet you would get more material per area. After all, many bamboo's will grow 100 feet tall and will grow in quite poor soils...
    The main point where hemp would beat bamboo I guess is in food value. You can eat bamboo shoots, but they aren't nearly as nutritious as hemp seed. Bamboo seed is pretty nutritious but most species only do it every 20 or more years.
    So there's no doubt room for both!
    Anyway, here's that article I mentioned before. He makes great points about forestry management as much as he does dis da hemp!
    https://www.holmgren.com.au/DLFiles/PDFs/17Hemp&Trees.pdf

    Christopher, I don't know where the bamboo shirt came from, actually. It was a gift from a neighbour who sells "yoga clothes". The shirt was a sample from one of his suppliers. Probably India or China I would guess...
     
  5. Spartacus

    Spartacus Junior Member

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    Aha! This is exactly the kind of thing I have been designing in.
    My plans change and evolve but so far the places to grow the fibrous plants for clothes/ paper and lumber are nearby the settlement- teh workshops and such are also close by. The majority of vegetable/ fruit/ nut based food for the family unit is grown on the family plot aswell as maybe some chickens for eggs maybe some geese or something (if/when the time is ready these can be taken to teh farm to be culled for meat. where there home is and all is at hand. (Plus neighbours can help eachother out IF desired in terms of physical labour) Next there is a farm unit on each road at the end within short walking distance which is where the aquaculture is set up (needs greater land mass) plus maybe a couple of cattle and pigs ect.

    I also believe that there should be a large greenhouse area designed to grow tropical fruit.
    I think that it is important NOT to import much if any food as tis screws up the natural population control. This has been shown to have an effect.
     
  6. Anastasia

    Anastasia Junior Member

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    Ah, bamboo and hemp. Bamboo is SO SOFT, heaps softer than hemp. You can get cloth nappies made from bamboo and hemp, they are heaps better than the traditional cotton nappies, and good to bring up when people start saying the crud about cloth being worse for the environment because cotton is so bad for the environment (funny how people don't wear disposable clothes). I think most bamboo and hemp fabric comes from overseas at the moment but there is some Australian hemp fabric available I think.

    I think bamboo might be harder to manufacture though. I did a little research into the process and realised it was beyond me!

    This is a great topic I might come back when I have more time. Just had to add to the bamboo thing hehe.
     
  7. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    :lol:

    You know, I really did know a bicycle courier that used to buy a new pair of socks every day. He'd wear them once and throw them away. He wasn't even that good of a courier, I don't know how he afforded it!

    I bet your baby loved the bamboo nappies. We had ours in cotton and I don't think she liked them that much!
    But still, even toxic cotton nappies have to have less impact than disposables? Some people are just idiots! Disposable nappies are so gross!

    Yeh, I don't think I will be making any bamboo clothes in my backyard anytime soon, but I reckon it would be possible in the future on a bioregional sort of scale, you know. A factory in a town in a bamboo growing region. Once the people in the developing world are paid fair wages for the clothes they make, or it becomes too expensive to ship that stuff around the planet...
    You know, bamboo in general is pretty labour intensive... but it is such awesome stuff - for me it is a labour of love!
     
  8. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Not that I can recall without alcohol being involved Chris. I believe all 'drugs' are mostly amplifiers of personality and the feelings a person has at the moment when they take them (unless of course a person is allergic to the substance [chemicals in beer for example] which does produce uncharacteristic behaviour)...I've seen a lot of consistently happy drunks and a lot of consistently bad drunks...same for cannabis and other things.

    For this reason I've always thought it was wise that substance use was much more widely limited to ceremonies and celebrations in most indigenous societies...reserved for happy and/or religious occasions.


    I have to wonder about that Chris, because I've read it in a lot of places...perhaps Ford is playing revisionist on this point and disowning its past?

    The viability of hemp as a composite material was demonstrated over fifty years ago by Henry Ford. In 1941, after twelve years of research, his Ford Motor Co. unveiled an experimental car made of cellulosic fibres including hemp, flax, wheat straw and sisal plus 30% resin binders, molded under a hydraulic pressure of 1,500 p.s.i. (Popular Mechanics, 1941, pp1-3; Robinson, 1996, p138).

    Ford's prototype car was reported to have ten times the impact resistance of steel, and weighed 1,000lbs less than a comparable steel car (Popular Mechanics, 1941, pp1-3).


    Hemp Architecture - 1997 Catalyst Conference at the Univesity of Canberra


    The Ford motor company, after years of research produced an automobile with a plastic body. Its tough body used a mixture of 70% cellulose fibres from Hemp. The plastic withstood blows 10 times as great as steel could without denting! Its weight was also 2/3 that of a regular car, producing better economy.

    Ecofibre Industries - Facts About Hemp


    In 1941 Henry Ford built a hemp fueled and fabricated automobile that weighed only two/thirds the amount of a steel car and could resist blows 10 times as great without denting.

    Permaculture TV News - Hemp for Houses Conference

    There's hundreds of other sources out there which claim the same thing...I think I first heard it on a BBC doco. I'm not saying you're wrong mate...it just doesn't gel with what so many sources I've read have stated. If you do a search for hemp on the Ford site you come up with zero references...yet the first quote above is directly taken from a best selling technical magazine from the time when Ford was doing it...so maybe now they just prefer not to acknowledge it these days?

    But as you say, maybe the reference to 'paper' in the Ford link actually means 70% hemp cellulose used in the construction, as the Eco-Fibre industries link suggests?
     
  9. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Ok mate, sorry about that. :wink:

    I do tend to rave on...


    Yep, no doubt.

    I don't know as much as I'd like to about bamboo, but I have to wonder whether you would actually get more material per area. A good fibre hemp strain in a sub-tropical or tropical area with average soil can produce at least three if not closer to four 12-14' crops a year...can any of the bamboo strains put on nearly half their hundred foot growth in just a year? I realise height is just one factor as opposed to density...but still.

    Another factor to consider would be ease of processing...from what I know, the few blokes around here who grow bamboo have a really hard time finding anywhere near the amount of labour they need at harvest times for the various uses.

    One other point I would add on the annual vs perennial debate, is that while perennials hold many advantages, in a natural disaster scenario it is fast growing annuals which do the majority of the help towards rebuilding. If a person's house and most/all their perennials were smashed in a cyclone, leveled and twisted in an earthquake, burnt up in a bushfire or carried away in a flood...it would be annuals doing the feeding, clothing and rebuilding infrastructure until the perennials recover - some of which would take decades if an area was badly affected.


    Thanks mate, it's an interesting article with some good points (as we expect from David).

    I think it's worth noting that he's arguing largely against broadscale hemp farming for fibre, not aguing against hemp integrated into sensibly planned and balanced systems. I found that a little disappointing because I think it was an opportunity to encourage 'hemp advocating Environmentalists' to think in a more Permaculture fashion (by writing of applying Permaculture principles to hemp as well as a managed Permaculture forest system), rather than with a broadscale 'green solution' mindset.

    It seems to me that hemp is a perfect fit as a Zone III crop with less inputs and more benefit than all other Zone III crops, and for intercropping in Zone IV (my Forestry work in Tassie confirms that unlike most useful crops, hemp grows mighty well in the thick of an established dry sclerophyl eucalypt or acacia forest. :lol:).

    David argues that because paper has such a short life, it would be unwise to grow annual crops to produce it. I would argue that hemp paper is vastly superior in terms of lifespan (the only reason we have many ancient documents still is that they were printed on hemp paper - contrasted to a cheap wood based paperback novel) and easy recycling potential. As I mentioned earlier, hemp paper was largely made from ropes, sails, clothes etc which had already had a long useful life elsewhere. We can't say the same for timber based paper - not to mention all the chemicals etc which go into producing wood based paper...with dead river systems as the end result (there are a number of them in Tassie).

    He also argues that useable euc's, pines and wattles can be grown on poor, infertile and difficult to access land. I would add - poorly and at significantly greater cost. They don't grow anywhere near as well in poor soil (and I've seen that many times in many places with my own eyes) and difficult access means more expensive and difficult harvesting (hello cable logging!) and management (thinning, weed control etc), plus much greater all round land disturbance at harvest time. All of which pretty much makes agroforestry on poor soil with difficult access add up to the same equation as those conditions do for hemp - not a completely different one.

    On the issue of thinning providing employment mentioned...thinning on a scale beyond small owner managed plots is a very expensive business. In the late 80's in Tassie, a four man contract paid around $180K with vehicles and some equipment supplied...and a fair chunk of that cash and manhours was eaten up in travelling long distances in petro-fueled vehicles. I'm sure the cost would be closer to $300K if not more these days...that means you've got to exploit a lot of timber to break even (which Forestry Tas never has I might add, at the expense of the taxpayer). If you have mass agroforestry on relatively poor soil in areas not conducive to growing anything but trees, then getting people (and timber) in an out is a major negative IMO...it's not sustainable at all.

    We could argue that smaller, more accessible agroforestry grown on smaller diverse plots is much more preferable...but I think the same applies to hemp. Neither should be broadscale farmed nor grown as monocultures.

    I'm sure a hemp/poultry edible legume intercropping rotated with free range poultry and similar concepts would be of great value to a Permaculture system.
     
  10. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Jez,

    Well, my experience with ganja is that %99.99999 of the people who smoke it are melloooooow, and while I know there are happy drunks, most of the people I see drinking are Maya, and all native peoples in the Americas, from Alaska to Tierrra Del Fueago have problems with alcohol. We have house burnings, chopping (with machetes), shootings, brothers fighting brothers, etc, et, etc because of alcohol, and, further marijuana is not pharmacologically toxic: you smoke too much, you go to sleep, no worries of dieing. Alcohol can kill you (in extreme cases, etc). I would much prefer to have pothead neighbors!

    Ford foresaw a time when ethanol would be an important source of fuel for cars, but he was also a soy bean fanatic. My friend from St. Lucia is also a soybean fanatic, and he has reams of information about Henry Fords soy car.

    I don't thing Ford is doing revisionist history. For one thing they are experimenting with hemp right now and talk about it: https://www.fordcomsearch.ford.com/...qc&col=credit&col=rental&col=race&col=mccol1I think some of the "ganja-will-save-the-world-man" crowd have inflated the amount of hemp he did use, overstated its imprtance as a single component, and wish to see hemp as the universal answer. I think, in reflex, that I understated its importance.

    He did use hemp in prototype cars, but they were %70 FIBER, not %70 hemp, with hemp fibers mixed along with sisal and wheat. The resin used was soy based, and I got that info from an excellent National Geographic article on the soybean as well as one of my soy-is-the-answer-to-all-the-worlds-problems friends....

    Ford was very interested in ethanol from hemp, too.

    Anyway, while I see a place for hemp in the world, despite what some claims say, hemp is a very heavy feeder, and it is not the panaceae that some feel it is (IMO).

    Single species solutions are problems! All of my hemp-is-the-answer friends smoke entirely too much of it to think straight about the cost to the soil of a hemp monoculture, which is the model that will take off if hemp gets the universal acceptance people want it to... The cost of a hemp monoculture will be high, just as the cost of a soy monoculture is high (or corn, wheat, insert plant of choice here..)

    Just my thoughts. Sorry, but I get fidgety when hemp is promoted as the answer, because, unless it is part of a diversified system, it is not... (again, IMO)

    C
     
  11. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Jez, here is where I get to blow your mind!

    Each bamboo shoot reaches its ultimate height in, wait for it, at most, about 3 or 4 months! Most clumps in most locations will shoot every year, sometimes more than once a year.

    After reaching its full height the pole gradually puts out branches and leaves over the next year or two, and is basically absorbing energy from the rest of the plant and is still quite tender, full of sugars and starch. Some time around the 3-4 year mark it becomes more woody than watery and begins to return energy back into the newer generations of culms (poles).

    So, in an established clump of bamboo, each year you will get new shoots, and each year there will be mature poles ready for harvest. The ideal age to harvest poles depends on your usage - if you want "timber" that may be different from if you want pulp.

    Clump management regimes will probably be diffferent for different applications. A clump managed for shoots looks a lot different than a clump managed for timber for instance, although a timber clump will yield a few shoots for eating as a side product of maintenance...

    So, take the largest clumping bamboo in the world, Dendrocalamus brandisii. In ideal conditions it can grow to 120 feet tall, and has an maximum culm diameter of 8 inches. Say, you manage your clump to have 10 new poles each year... that's a lot of material! :D
     
  12. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Point well taken Chris...I'd have to agree that European descended people's tolerance to alcohol is different to indigenous people in my experience also.


    Quite possibly as to the inflation of importance Chris, but at the same time, is it possible your 'soy-is-the-answer-to-all-the-worlds-problems' friend *may* be doing the same as the 'hemp-is-the-answer-to-all-the-worlds-problems' people? I could understand 'hemp advocates' being a bit fast and loose with the truth...but Popular Mechanics, the BBC (Billion Dollar Crop) and other sources who have nothing to gain?

    It's a shame Ford doesn't give a specific list of materials and amounts Henry used. For all we know, that 70% could be 68% hemp and 1% each of sisal and wheat. Or hemp could be a tiny addition in comparison to the sisal and wheat.

    I searched their site and couldn't find any reference to 'hemp' - did you use an additional or different search term?


    I couldn't agree more Chris...I don't think it's the answer to all problems...just a better solution - properly managed with no bad practice inherent to monoculture broadscale farming - to many of the polluting and far less sustainable alternatives we've replaced it with.

    We're on exactly the same wavelength I think - diversity and good management is the key to its reintroduction being of most value.

    -------------------------

    Wow Richard, that did blow my mind! :lol:

    I had this link and some others for basic info, plus this one for making some purchases in the near future...but neither of them mentioned they reach their full height so soon!

    Even if they're not useable for a few years, what you've told me is still such valuable information, as I'll be using them partly as wind/sun breaks during initial establishment along our prevailing wind boundary (which also happens to be the primary ground runoff point - though the slope is very gentle).

    I had picked out Dendrocalamus latiflorus, Gigantochloa albociliata and Gigantochloa atter as the likely species for use in my design for the new place, but I may have a crack at either Dendrocalamus brandisii or Dendrocalamus giganteus...I had a lot more work to do in determining which would suit the conditions best before final ordering.

    It's way beyond my area of anything resembling expertise...which has made the research a lot of fun! :lol:

    Any suggestions you have would be much appreciated as always.
     
  13. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Jez,

    Have you had a look at any of the guaduas? Guadua anugustifolia is widely used in Columbia as a building timber. Houses there have survived earthquakes that leveled concrete and rebar. Its sad, too, because they new standard is the concrete and rebar, thats what everyone wants...

    We have some here, but it hasn't grown well....

    C
     
  14. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    BTW, Jez, my soybean friend has a big time bias, too, absolutely, which I was trying to point out! My reactionary-ism with the whole ganja-will-solve-all-the-worlds-problems-man,-lets-roll-another-spliff paradigm has more to do with my objection to the simple minded hemp as the universal solution... just me sick of stoned fuzzy thinking in favour of monoculture, and no reflection on you. I feel the same way about soy zealots, all of my tofu-will-solve-all-the-worlds-hunger-problems-man friends have an interesting lack of perspective created by their love of soy, and they refuse to see that soy is not the universal cure all for the world.

    I think everyone has a tendency to see things through lenses tinted by their experience and interests. My experiences made me be a knee jerk reactionary... apologies!

    Of course, we all know that cacao is the worlds answer to everything. It will solve all ills, from global warming and habitat loss to poor nutrition and constipation....






























    :lol:
     
  15. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Just to clarify about the bamboo, each individiual culm will reach its individual ultimate height in its first year, but if you are taking a little propagule of a plant in a 2 gallon pot and putting it in the ground, it might take 5 years before it starts putting on shoots that are full size. Don't want to give you false expectations. Having said that, give a young bamboo lots of fertiliser and water and the right soil conditions, and they will establish pretty fast.

    You are looking at some nice species there, Jez. I think generally speaking, the Gigantachloa's "look better" in more situations... They are probably easier to manage too, they are perhaps not quite as hairy as the Dendro's or some of the Bambusa's (the hairs don't bother me, some people are irritated by them). Brandisii is quite a handful. Even after maturity it will persistently put out low side branches which you have take off just in order to get the poles out of the clump... I haven't actually worked on fully mature brandisii yet, but from what I have seen...
    Brandisii and Latiflorus both have fairly large leaves, so they may not be ideal choices for really arid and/or windy locations. They are canopy rainforest plants really. Although they will grow in exposed locations, they will just have a bit of a hard time... Unless I am imagining your new place incorrectly, you might be better going with some of the smaller leafed species.

    You are moving to the gulf area somewhere right? So you'll be having a long dry and a big wet? That may well suit a lot of bamboo's, since the most important time for them to get lots of water is in their shooting season, but it might be worth researching that aspect too - which ones are the most drought tolerant too. I know that Dendrocalamus strictus (while not the most attractive plant in my opinion, is very widely used in places like northern India because of its ability to cope with drought.)
    Different species have widely different characteristics of course. Some have very thick walls to the point of being almost solid (makes good timber usually) whereas others are very thin walled and have long internodes (better for splitting and weaving), some have very tasty edible shoots (one species from Papua New Guinea, Nastus Elatus can even be eaten raw, while some others are poisonous or too bitter to be eaten), others have the right fibre properties to be good for the textile/fibre applications that brought bamboo into this thread! - I think that having a variety of different species well suited to the local environment that together possess a range of the characteristics that are most likely to be useful to you is the way to go.
    One point about bamboo worth remembering is that some species flower gregariously, so when they flower, all plants of that species everywhere in the world will go to flower (and hopefully produce seed). Often the existing plants will all completely die off. So, it probably isn't prudent to have all your eggs in one species of bamboo basket, if you are counting on an uninterrupted supply of bamboo! (this is relatively rare, most species that do this do it once in a human lifetime sort of thing)

    Some other good bamboo sites that I refer to sometimes:

    https://bamboonursery.com
    https://www.bamboo.org.au
    https://www.inbar.int

    Christopher, sorry to hear that your Guadua isn't doing so well. You only got it last year right? They take a while sometimes to really get going. Microclimate can obviously make a huge difference too. I have seen plants here in Huelo of similar ages looking almost like different species. Up on a ridge as a windbreak they are kind of olive green, with 2" poles, whereas down in the fertile gulch bottoms surrounded by trees they are deep, dark green with 4 or 5" poles and that amazing natural spacing that Guadua can get.
    Even here at our place, with plants I put in under two years ago I am seeing the difference a little microclimate can make. I have a few clumps planted in the lee of a couple of Java Plums and an Acacia formosa, with some Scheflera here and there, and those plants, though I have hardly given them any attention at all are twice the size of the ones that I religiously weed and mulch and fret over but which are more exposed (where I need them to get up and be windbreakers!).
     
  16. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Chris, I assume you misspelt with Guadua anugustifolia above - the links I have list it as Guadua angustifolia, but a google search brings up some hits for Guadua augustifolia...any idea which is actually correct? I ask more for anyone following this discussion than for myself...I already had a resource to back check with...someone C&Ping and googling it might think there was no info available.

    I think I just did my head in writing the above paragraph complete with manually adding the formatting! :lol:

    Thanks for the tip, I will put it on the evaluation list. The thing which put me off it a bit was that the culms are bare for the first 3-5 metres...which made me question its ability to be an effective screen and windbreak in the lower part - two of my biggest priorities. We already have an all steel structure for a house (basically a large extended shed made really comfortable) on the property, so construction quality culms are not a huge priority - though I'm sure I'll find a use for them! 8)

    No need to apologise or feel in any way bad for your comments regarding monocultures and 'solve all' plants...as I said, I couldn't agree more and I'm sure we're on the same wavelength regarding diversity in plantings being the right way to go. I guess it's hard to do a PDC and not come away with that overriding outlook huh? :D


    Richard, thanks for that clarification re. height.

    Yes, our new location and the place I intend to devote to bamboo will be both exposed to fairly strong winds and quite arid for a good portion of the year, with a fair amount of heavy rain over the wet season. The soil tends towards sandy loam, so that will be a factor as well.

    I hope to use it along the south eastern boundary, to protect the budding Zone II and III areas from prevailing winds (though I'll also be interplanting leguminous nurse species), with the orchard swales partially diverting any excess runoff to the bamboo in wet season. There's also a triple bay roofed carport/workshop which I'll be collecting water off and converting into an Aquaponics area...so hopefully this collection point can serve for both topping up the Aquaponics system and provide some water storage to help the bamboo along in the drier times. Ideally I'd also find one sort of bamboo which could serve as part of the aerial irrigation process of the Aquaponics - being replaced when needed.

    Another big factor is man-eating termites...:D...though I'm led to believe by my preliminary research that properly tended clumps should be quite resistant.

    I'm sure I can find the right blend of species to suit...I guess I've just been doing some preliminary research thus far so I can get cracking soon after the move (hopefully before the end of wet season!).

    Thanks for the references and advice - much appreciated.
     
  17. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Jez,

    Guadua angyiiulfolia! Thats the name!

    My botanist wife, who pays closer attentioin to this sort of thing assures me it is augustifolia, which iw ahat I was trying to type, but... my typing is so bad...

    C
     
  18. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    au·gust
    adj.
    1. Inspiring awe or admiration; majestic

    a descriptor for that particular bamboo, it works for me! :D
     
  19. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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  20. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Yeah that's a cool site, Mike? I love the animated instructions for the different jointing techniques. I would like to set up a treatment facility along those lines on this place eventually if things pan out in that direction.
     

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