Food Prices, Shortages & Inflation - The Trash Index

[k0xxx]

And for your reading enjoyment...

World moves closer to food price shock

With oil trading near $100 (Brent crude closed at $98.43, up 25% in the last year), the price of food will be driven even higher. We won't even get into discussing major oil industry players predicting $150 to $200 oil within the next 12 months and what that will do to the price of everything, including food.

Time to expand the garden again, me thinks...

 

[Wifezilla]

Your link isn't working. Is this the story you were looking at?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2aa510a-1e89-11e0-87d2-00144feab49a.html#axzz1AtBjOZq5

 

[tamlynn]

I planted potatoes today- in my front yard flower bed. I bet no one in my neighborhood would even recognize them for what they are.

I was looking at duckweed growing the other day. How much water do you need?

 

[Wifezilla]

Not sure. I have a preformed pond liner. It grows well in that. People who use it to feed their reptiles raise it in aquariums.

 

[patandchickens]

I was looking at duckweed growing the other day. How much water do you need?

Very little. Just a couple inches' depth, potentially. You just have to keep it from drying out and getting crispy (it will not kill all the duckweed but will ruin your 'crop').

I speak from mucho experience at trying NOT to grow duckweed, having in my past life as a biologist done innumerable outdoor experiments involving using various containers (kiddie pools, stock tanks, etc) as experimental ponds and being very FRUSTRATED when they would get colonized by duckweed which would then require me to swear prodigiously and rip the whole thing apart and start over.

I =loathe= duckweed. The only thing worse is watermeal, it is a duckweed type thing but in tiny coarse-cornmeal granules instead of round flat leaflets. I did not have so much trouble with it invading experiments, as it is less ubiquitous in nature, but I tell you what, after you've fallen into a couple of (natural) ponds blanketed by watermeal and spent the next week or more picking little bits of it out of your ears, scalp, fingernails, and so forth, you develop a certain *attitude* towards watermeal. (I have no idea how it'd be as a duckfood crop and am not recommending it, I am just rambling )

I think my basic point here is: if you have enough water that there is always water THERE, and some reasonable nutrient content in the water i.e. not pure rainwater, it is very difficult NOT to grow duckweed

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[k0xxx]

Your link isn't working. Is this the story you were looking at?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2aa510a-1e89-11e0-87d2-00144feab49a.html#axzz1AtBjOZq5

Yep, that's the link. I usually check the links, but I must have gotten careless. Thank you for catching that!

 

[Wifezilla]

LOL

Yeah Pat, I have fallen in to a pond or two loaded with duckweed and watermeal

I have actually had problems growing it. Turned out by buying it over the internet I was getting indoor grown stuff. I then was taking it out in to high altitude sunshine. I cooked a few batches before I figured it out.

Now I just go down to the pond at a local park and grab a scoop in a ziplock bag.

Then the only trick is to keep the @$&^@^@# ducks out of it until it can get established.

 

[hillfarm]

 

[BarredBuff]

WZ, I was down at the coop and a hen was laying and I got her number. So my culling program is working very good! She is now exempt...from the cull.

 

[Wifezilla]

Survivor: Chicken Coop

She made it through Tribal Council

Hillfarm, that is Lexi and two of her foster babies. She and Shelley, another welsh Harlequin, are escape artists. They will squeeze through very small areas despite their fat fluffy butts to get out of the run and get to the duckweed. I still have those 2 babies and they are all grown now. Good thing mom tough them where the snacks are huh?