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The Corroboree

vitex

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    22
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About vitex

  • Rank
    Day Tripper

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Country
    Auckland
  • Interests
    Entheogens, Ethnopharmacology, Plants, Trees, Permaculture, Shamanism

Previous Fields

  • Climate or location
    Tropsubical
  1. As I understand it acid treatment is just one way of scarifying seed. If its a hard-coated seed sulphuric acid works well - I've used it for thousands of seeds myself. If you want to avoid acid, you can sandpaper the seeds (put in a tin with sandpaper and shake). you can tell if you've broken the seed coat by soaking in water - the seeds swell up (imbibe). if they don't swell, rinse and repeat Even a nail file will break the seed coat enough
  2. vitex

    Acacia Seed Swelling

    There are various ways of making hard-coated seeds germinate. I think they've been covered pretty well above! I thought I'd summarise, and add a few bits. Sow 'em while they're still soft (but mature) straight out of the pod - this works really well for NZ natives like Kowhai (Sophora) Soak them in near-boiling water. Take out the ones that swell. Repeat for those that don't. Sandpaper them lightly, or shake in a tumbler lined with sandpaper, then soak. Take out the ones that swell. Repeat for those that don't. Chuck them in acid for a minute or two to etch the seed coat. Rinse. Soak in water. Sow the ones that swell. Otherwise repeat. I think most if not all Aussie Acacia / Racosperma is fire-evolved, i.e. the seedlings will do well in a bed that has ash / carbon in it. You can just chuck wood ash in your potting mix, or even use some activated charcoal. Apparently activated charcoal is the thing for cation exchange and so on. If you scrounge around on the forest / bush floor under the trees you want to grow you will probably find lots of seeds lying there in amongst the litter. Saves buying them.
  3. Some plants can bio-accumulate toxins - Willow is a great example - which makes me wonder whether we can develop plant based ways to treat environmental toxicity. Like a plant-based tea that would strip poisons from our blood. I guess you could always take a tablespoon full of activated charcoal every day Any other ideas?
  4. vitex

    The Great K-Hole of China

    I don't think we even begin to understand how much the drug trade runs the world. There's a school of thought that the UN is in Afghanistan just to protect the heroin trade, and cheap heroin is just flooding the world right now, like a wrecking ball. NZ has it's meth, South Africa has a real problem with meth, Now we have a bunch of K users in China. Mexico and the USA are deeply embroiled in the drug trade, which the CIA fights with one hand and encourages with the other. But don't worry folks, the War on Drugs contributes to GDP for both countries. Interestingly, I read that the British government was selling billions of dollars worth of opium to the chinese in the 1800s, so the drug trade has always been big business for all those old school rich bastards. Y'know, the ones with titles and Rothschild affiliations.
  5. vitex

    why do tree's rule?

    Trees cannot move, so in order to exert influence they have to wait. Trees are silent until the wind blows on them. Even as quiet and still as this, they still become kings of the forest. Trees overcome by enduring. Trees encapsulate decay, growing additional layers of structure around weaknesses and defects. If you want to put a positive spin on that, trees over time make mistakes and failures into part of their structure. But do we really have to understand? It's not for nothing that the druids used to worship trees, perhaps sensing how ancient they are.
  6. The original thread was about growing enough in a garden to feed you. Now I think that would be full-time job, were it possible, because it'd be one helluva intensive permaculture setup. There are people who have gotten close to this ideal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuogTqasSmU (very attractive urban farmer, but also shows what's possible) I reckon aquaponics is the way to go to produce enough protein - now just convince the biosecurity nazis that growing tilapia or perch is a goer in NZ or Australia... can't go past theurbanfarmingguys.com for a look at aquaponic setups
  7. http://www.weeds.org.au/WoNS/blackberry/docs/blackberry-control-manual-part-2.pdf This might be of use.
  8. vitex

    syria gas attack, who u think it was?

    I can't believe that Assad would use chemical weapons. The man is a doctor - he is clever enough to realise that using chem weapons would bring a shitstorm down on his head. So the only possibility (if you like elephants in rooms) is the 'opposition' (which is hardly organised enough) or the USA - false-flag style. I feel desperately sorry for the Syrian people who did nothing to bring this down on their heads. Mullar Omar banned the growing of opium in Afghanistan in 2000. In 2001 the entire UN showed up in Afghanistan. When you f&ck with Big Business, whole armies show up on your doorstep.
  9. If you ban enough things, you make everyone into a criminal. Makes you wonder if that isn't the objective all along. More grist to the prison industrial complex (well, for those who can't afford a lawyer)
  10. From what I've read Roundup does what it's supposed to do - i.e. kill plants - apparently by dicking around with the shikimate pathway. So far so good. Then you figure out that it also kills or denatures the gut flora in animals (the unfortunate pigs, the unfortunate cows that get "roundup ready" cottonseed and soya beans, and the unfortunate apex predators that eat them). And it's not just Roundup Ready GMOs that increase our exposure to glyphosate - Big Ag has dreamed up exotic ways to use this stuff. They use it to ripen wheat - and because the plants are becoming R-up resistant we use more of it than ever. And this great beeg food channel points straight to us - and by the time the glyphosate gets to us, it just about saturates everything on the supermarket shelves. I'm no scientist, but apparently the shikimate pathway is critical for plants to synthesize tryptophan (say what?). So I wonder if chronic exposure to background levels of glyphosate or glyphosate metabolites makes us depressed as well, by reducing the tryptophan content of everything?
  11. vitex

    Permaculture

    It's not all about the money I'm doing a permaculture design course too. Try this http://holmgren.com.au/essence-of-permaculture-free/#lightbox/0/ I reckon permaculture is a philosophy rather than a method. The twelve principles (see link) are helpful, because they make you think differently about growing things. I've been looking at permaculture since the mid 80s and there has been a change - a lot of people are now saying "where's your yield?" It's not just a system for rich yuppies - anyone can benefit from using the best bits of philosophy. I reckon the principles of permaculture can help us to transition away from tearing up the soil and then throwing chemicals at it (for one). You don't get more vegetables out of a neat garden than an untidy one, that's for sure. Another thing that permaculture does is to allow synergy - to grow plants closer together (like beans growing up corn stalks) so that they help each other. The ancient "three sisters" garden is arguably a permaculture setup. I think my exposure to permaculture has totally changed my thinking and I'll never go back to just buying stuff from the stupormarket without thinking about it
  12. Trouble is, Jesus and "Xtianity as practiced in the white western world" are not the same animal. I stop with "Unless a man loses his life he cannot save it - if he loses it for my sake he will save it" which is very similar to the "death-like" experience of the shaman
  13. vitex

    Scientists stop light for a minute.

    Whenever we seek to control any sort of energy, all sorts of unforseen consequences seem to arise
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