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Hey yall,

I wanted to share my experience germinating these suckers. I live in Chicago, they’re native, and i’m excited to support local permaculture. I have read a LOT of “misinformation” about germinating these – but primarily, they do not need to be cold-stratified. Most information on the internet suggests that they do. I’m not sure why. Credit to prarie moon though, they did say to germinate in the heat, ~95f. I’ve even seen advice like “soak the seeds in orange juice.” Here’s what i did:

• “scarified” the seeds (clipped an edge with nail clippers, didn’t use pumpice)
• soaked them for 12 hours
• put them in paper towel on top of my grow light, in the dark (in a hat)

It worked great. I wanted to copy this comment from /u/Adventurous-Glass236 who had some great info and put me down the correct path.

prop spot: https://imgur.com/dhN91Qw germed seeds: https://imgur.com/a/VVRD4Qr

I stuck them in some soil, and i’m sure a lot are duds, but I should get plenty of plants. It was pretty easy. Wanted to share first-hand my experience, cuz there was so much conflicting info out there for passiflora incarnata. Hopefully they grow and I can send an update.

I’m doing an autumn prune in the orchard at the moment, and have a fair amount of fruit wood which I’d like to turn into wood chips to use in our smoker. I’m thinking of having a dedicated shredder/chipper for the purpose – it would only need to be smallish – but I’m concerned that a wood chipper would shred the timber too finely, and I’ll get mulch rather than chips. Am I going to have to process the wood by hand? I have arthritis so I’m hoping that’s not the case!

Does anyone have any suggestions for the best way for me to go about turning my prunings into chips? I’m in Australia, so brands of wood chippers here may be different from those available on the US, but I’d love some advice on what to look for if I do have to buy a machine.

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I am turning my front yard into a vegetable garden. There is an internal border of bricks about 18inchs from the fence that has been mortered in place. In the soil of the brick border are a lot of gravel rocks. Should I sift them out or is it okay to leave it. Next year I plan on building raised beds on top of it. I am also buying some compost/soil to put on top of the area anyway.

I’ve been trying to take better care of my plants this year, and one of the hardest things for me has always been figuring out when to water — especially on those in-between days where it’s hot but also kind of humid or maybe it rained overnight.

I made it mostly for myself, but figured I’d share it here in case anyone else finds it helpful:
shouldiwatertoday.com