AZ Desert Botanical Garden sale this weekend. Plan on getting one palo verde and one ironwood for their pods.
I already have two mesquites, but not sure what kind. If I see a good deal on velevet mesquite I am getting that two.
Where I did my research….
Or at least off the web. I think I angered the spiders when I pruned and straightened the mesquite trees. I got webs showing up throughout the yard. Before I only had a couple of webs on two of the mesquite trees. The vastly increased mass of spider webs that I am now regularly encountering has me slightly disturbed. For some reason, spiders freak me out.
Update: I had a small fire and burnt creosote in the embers. We shall see how that works. I notice the cats are not coming back as fast at least. Creosote is known for all of the chemicals it has in it that insects do not like. It’s smoke be used to cleanse oneself if you had no option for water.
While I was trimming the mesquite trees this weekend I was stung by a bee. I have always been nervous about bees since I was stung as child and swelled up like Charlie Sheen’s head. Also, once in Oaxacca I ate a bunch of grasshoppers and woke up that night covered in hives, and sweating bullets. I figure if you are allergic to one type of insects, you should best avoid the whole bunch. But I did not swell after this bee sting, I did flick versus slap the bee at first hint of sting, which helped (thank you survivorman).
I debated using creosote to clean my wound. I decided against this as I wanted to see what happened with just the bee sting. I did, however, use creosote for another purpose. After prepping soil and getting seeds in the ground for tomatillos, squash, bush beans and the pole beans, the backyard had a lot of insects flying around. My guess is the liked the manure. So I started a smoky little fire with paper, cardboard, and creosote to run them off. It worked amazingly well and smelled kind of nice too.
I been studying desert trees because The Arizona Desert Botanical Garden is going to have their spring sale on March 18 and 19th, and I want to know what I should get to add to the backyard.
The Velvet Mesquite is the best type of mesquite tree to plant.
Pick the bean (or pod) from June through early August. There is a tight window because you want the bean to be dry (it should come off the tree easily) but before the monsoons hit.
Milling is a process to pulverize the bean into a protein rick powder similar to flour. The husks is where the flavor is and the protein is in the hard seed. Milling is done in fall. It takes that long for the moisture to get out of the pods. Store in a manner that the Bruchid beetles inside the pods can hatch and escape. The Bruchid beetle is harmless.
Desert Harvesters is a great site about harvesting food from Desert trees.
The Arizona Desert Botanical Garden is going to have their spring sale on March 18 and 19th. I am getting ready by figuring out what plants they will most likely have that would be good to have growing in the backyard for when civilization conks out.
Thanks to itsadisaster over at the American Preppers Network Forum, I found the great Desert Harvesters website. Along the left side of the Desert Harvesters site is the list of trees that provide food and also tons of great information.
I will be looking for..
shots from 4 years ago, trees purchased at last sale I went to.
