coffe - the most important food group

To add, I intend once I get home to raise tea bushes. Camellia sinensis grows in the southeast as a perennial, for whatever reason it's not common. However, I could easily grow it in Florida, with a bit of care. That would give me all the caffeine I need, with some to sell for barter.

a reply to: Bedlam


Pensecola is a 9 growing zone just a hair outside teas comfort zone of 8. East pensecolas an 8 though. So its advisable to
look for a guy already growing them close to the pensecola area. And then, buy cuttings or clones off him. That way you guarantee the cultivar is already adapted to floridas pan handle.

If not, and youre growing from seed all bets are off and youll have to ensure the equivalent of about 50 inches of rain water gets to them yearly for good growth. Not sure the panhandle gets 50+ rainfall a year. If not theres always irrigation.

If you dont fell like digging trenches, sawing and glueing pvc and running irrigation lines ill do it for a small fee. I actually enjoy that sorta work.

But with tea they are prolific seeders. They produce a ton of seeds for the following year every fall so youll always have that. Granted only a quarter of the seeds will have the same allele combination as the parents. Who knows the quality of the rest of the seeds. Find a bush that has both the phenotypes and genotypes you want. And keep them seperate from the patch. Breed a batch to use as mother plants for cuttings to ensure each year has the same quality cultivars.

Also last bit of advice. Tea likes a highly acidic loamy soil. If you got a clearing set back a few feet from a creek or brook and you dont have clay soil that should be a nice loamy spot. Make sure you either collect from around your property or purchase a bunch of peat or spanish moss and till into the soil to adjust PH down.

The more acidic soil will help in the details too like the color and flavor profile of the tea. Plus ot prevent nutrient lock out in acidic loving tropicals.

And finally if you got or can get mycorrhyzae, absolutely mix that in with the soil around the roots. Those tea bushes will survive the worst seasons with a proper microbial environment.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
That way you guarantee the cultivar is already adapted to floridas pan handle.

I've heard that there are Florida-acculturated tea plants. I am sort of hoping that they will thrive in my locale.

For one, I think it would be sweet to have my own tea plucked off my own shrubs. And there's nothing like being caffeine-independent.

Not sure the panhandle gets 50+ rainfall a year. If not theres always irrigation.

It rains its ass off there. The problem is more making sure there's adequate runoff and the roots don't soak.

But, I do have an ag well and a sprinkler system where there used to be citrus. It's nawt but scrub now.

Tea likes a highly acidic loamy soil. If you got a clearing set back a few feet from a creek or brook and you dont have clay soil that should be a nice loamy spot. Make sure you either collect from around your property or purchase a bunch of peat or spanish moss and till into the soil to adjust PH down.

I'm hoping to do blueberries there. The sandy soil is acidic, but I intend to till in some topsoil and I'll need to add in some acidifiers for the berries, aluminum sulfate is the usual suspect but I'd like to use something else.

a reply to: Bedlam

Well if citrus was growing there before your ph should be 6ish which is good. Youll wawanto get it down to 5 flat though. Or more.

Id still collect a bunch of peat moss or spanish moss heck even pine needles and amend the topsoil with it. Tea likes a deep topsoil layer of about 20 inches if im thinking correctly. And the organic nature of the moss will help with soul structure. Its gotta drain fast though. Add sand from somewhere if not loamy enough.

Blueberries will do just fine there too. The more acidic the better.

Also another tip. The soil has to start out acidic before you plant. Not get it acidic once plants are in. They wont like that.

So id recommend prepping the plot a week earlier to get the ph and water table right. Want to thoroughly soak the soil so theres no dry bubbles of soil that will shunt off water and screw over root growth or the bushes symmetry. You want the soil like moist chocolate cake. Not wet but damp enough to clump up on your hand when squeezed. Add more amendment in the direction you want to go. And again if you can find powderized mycorrhzae to add to the plot do it. Youll be thanking me for years. Your tea plot will resemble jurrasic park in growth rates.

Just make sure the soil is totally prepped a good time before hand.

Also raspberries, black berries and goji will all do very well growing alongside the tea.

Of your irrigating B1 is cheap and can be fed into the irrigation and be helpful in mitigating stress during dry or cold seasons.

I swear by B1. No need for superthrive or anything exoensive just get a gallon of liquinox brand on the cheap. Its just b1.

And also harvest seaweed especially kelp from the local beaches and create a compost out of it. Its high in potassium which acts like a gateway nutrient for all the other nutrients. (Ie no potassium then plants cant easily assimilate the nitrogen phosphorous and assorted micronutrients.) I swear by kelp as a fertilizer. Swear by it.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

Hell, I'm one of the few acolytes of crop rotation left in the free world. The old man (and a long list of forebears) were into crop rotation as tilth conservation back on the Bedlam Freehold. We've been rotating and replowing nitrogen fixers and casting worms since my fifth great grandpa.

I'd love to recover my new place. It's been fertilized and bug sprayed nearly into sterility. I've got it full of alfalfa, clover, beans and peas while I'm not using it at the moment. Soon it'll be washed clean and I'll start trying to reworm it. The fire ants are an issue. I've tried to get phorids from the state but they're muley about it.

a reply to: Cinrad

I've drank a thousand gallons of that in the middle-east.
Great stuff !!

Sitting in Bedouin chief's tent on pillows.
Or standing around a fire with my Golanis up on the heights.

As far as regular coffee goes, back in the old days, the TOCs had 125 cup peculators and every ash tray was filled with butts.
I really miss it.

Buck

a reply to: Bedlam

Yeah till under the soy and alfalfa this winter. Milos good growing for that too.

Add some peat and your mostly good to go.

Im so into worm castings that i keep the left over nightcrawlers when going fishing and throw them in the soil where i think theyll be needed. I also used to harvest them when theyd surface after the rain and put them in choice spots.

Go to a hydroponics shop and get a root inoculate. A liter of tgexstiff is luke 50 bucks but so worth getting the microbs to establish a proper soil culture. Again youll be thanking me. The tea might even grow unmanagably stout in size due to it.

a reply to: Bedlam

With phorids they are a little too close to fruit flies for my liking but honestly nothings better than them for killing ants.

I swear we have a ton of phorid taking iver santa monica. I see them everywhere. They run on surfaces more so than fly around loke true fruit flies so im pretty sure we got a bunch of phorid that got loose. So i could see them being sketchy on letting you use them.

I usually never venture past ladybugs and mantids since my pest problems are more like aphids and other critters neem oil doesnt seem to repel.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR

Im so into worm castings that i keep the left over nightcrawlers when going fishing and throw them in the soil where i think theyll be needed. I also used to harvest them when theyd surface after the rain and put them in choice spots.

We have worm beds on trailers at the homestead and trundle them out to the fields, dump their squirmy asses into the soil every spring. If you can't get worms to grow in your fields there's something wrong with the soil, my forebears always said. If you do a lot of bug spraying or fertilizing, they die off. It's a good indicator of soil health. We do use SOME spray but you can get by with so little if you're careful of what you do and plant, and if you rotate so that the bugs don't colonize, and so you don't over use the soil.

It's not possible to do that in a factory farm, I understand. But for small family plots, you can compost, use chicken #, cow # and rotate. I've got 65 acres now, and the family place is several hundred acres, and you can get amazing things out of the dirt with just a tad of chemicals, a lot of work and goats. And worms. And bees. And work. More work. And a tractor. I can't imagine doing it with mules.

eta: although you have age or compost the chicken and cow #, or it'll burn most crops right up. But it's just fine for your fallow plots, alfalfa loves #.

a reply to: Bedlam

Yeah its the high nitrogen that burns and kills. Need it for leaves obviously but a smidge too much and its like agent orange.

So yep yoir paps was dead right. People always seem to go overboard on the nitrogen. Ive even seen people kill fast growing stuff like bamboo with it. Ive burnt heliconia with it. And heluconia is like the plant from little shop of horrors always hungry.

I use fish emyksuon for nitrogen when i have to feed. Its gentler that mammal poo.

But yeah get lots of nitrogen into that alfalfa. Let it die an shrivle up over the winter and then till under.

A warning though. Make sure the alfalfa is brown and good n dead (no green on it) before tilling it under. Ive found that like attracts like and with green compost the nitrogen inside the green leaves will wick the nitrogen already in the soil out and back into the decomposing leaves. Once fully composted it will re release that stolen nitrogen back into the soil but during that breakdown time where its still green it will actually leech the nitrogen out and starve your saplings or seedlings. Countrintuitive but thats my experience. So make sure the alfalfa is good n dead before tilling or do that tilling way early to give it time to breakdown further before planting the tea.

originally posted by: butcherguy

originally posted by: 123143
a reply to: butcherguy

I'm leery of any source written by a reenactor.

Since you are leery, I will direct you to the 1861 US Army revised Regulations, where you will find the exact list in the previous link:
University of Michigan
To save you time looking, check section 244 first. It will relieve you of the boredom of checking through regulations pertaining to the rations of hay for mules vs horses.

I think he thought you were a FARB.

BASSPLYR,

Excellent informative posts in this thread. Great contribution.

I love coffee but it is indeed addictive. We used to have a guy at work who would get extremely irritable, stressed and even aggressive if there's no more coffee available, especially if it's first thing in the morning and he's not had one yet.

I noticed that I was feeling lethargic on the weekends and finally realised that it was because I drank a lot of coffee at work but at home I never used to at all. It's definitely a good idea to regulate your intake. I read some studies a while ago as well which concluded that 1 - 3 cups a day had a positive effect on health but that anything more begins to negatively effect the body.

I know most people love coffee because it gives you that extra little boost but eating more carbohydrates like wholewheat pastas/breads, sweet potato, brown rice etc will give you a much more consistent supply of energy. White bread, rice and pasta etc are more sugary carbs that just give a short boost of energy like coffee does. Coffee is a nice treat or used as a boost before a workout or to aid in concentration but too many of us are dependent on it rather than improving our diet.

a reply to: clintbigdelicious

I once passed my annual physical, push-ups, sit-ups, 2-mile run, only because I'd had a quad espresso.

Caffeine saved my career on more than one occasion. I was on-call 24/7/365 for 25 years.

originally posted by: Restricted

originally posted by: butcherguy

originally posted by: 123143
a reply to: butcherguy

I'm leery of any source written by a reenactor.

Since you are leery, I will direct you to the 1861 US Army revised Regulations, where you will find the exact list in the previous link:
University of Michigan
To save you time looking, check section 244 first. It will relieve you of the boredom of checking through regulations pertaining to the rations of hay for mules vs horses.

I think he thought you were a FARB.

I had to look that one up.
I had no idea.
Now I have learned what a farb is.
Thank you for that.

originally posted by: butcherguy

originally posted by: Restricted

originally posted by: butcherguy

originally posted by: 123143
a reply to: butcherguy

I'm leery of any source written by a reenactor.

Since you are leery, I will direct you to the 1861 US Army revised Regulations, where you will find the exact list in the previous link:
University of Michigan
To save you time looking, check section 244 first. It will relieve you of the boredom of checking through regulations pertaining to the rations of hay for mules vs horses.

I think he thought you were a FARB.

I had to look that one up.
I had no idea.
Now I have learned what a farb is.
Thank you for that.

Not sure which definition you found. There's a couple. The one I'm most familiar with, an oldie but a goodie, is Fake-A**-Repro-B**tard.

It's a thread-counter thing.

thanks for all the replies folks - learn a lot - even the inevitable thread drift proved educational

i am going to give the aeropress a try - it seems to offer an acceptable mix of fast quality coffe and low weight

and i am sure i can fix the log term durability issue that was highlighted

i already have a stainless double walled " french press " - thats what i was reffering too as my " indestructible steel caffetiere " - it is good - and with the piston disssasembled - it allows kit to be stored inside it [ i has removed the handle to save wight and volume - cos the outer walls dont get hot anyways ]

appologies to the " back to basics " suggestors - but my first criteria is QUALITY so i shall not be taking raw beans into the wild or bashing roast beans with a rock

so - have fun - and may your coffee be hot and tasty - wherever you find yourself

i may put up a review // compare of my various coffee making options soon

so watch this space

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
thanks for all the replies folks - learn a lot - even the inevitable thread drift proved educational

i am going to give the aeropress a try - it seems to offer an acceptable mix of fast quality coffe and low weight

and i am sure i can fix the log term durability issue that was highlighted

i already have a stainless double walled " french press " - thats what i was reffering too as my " indestructible steel caffetiere " - it is good - and with the piston disssasembled - it allows kit to be stored inside it [ i has removed the handle to save wight and volume - cos the outer walls dont get hot anyways ]

appologies to the " back to basics " suggestors - but my first criteria is QUALITY so i shall not be taking raw beans into the wild or bashing roast beans with a rock

so - have fun - and may your coffee be hot and tasty - wherever you find yourself

i may put up a review // compare of my various coffee making options soon

so watch this space

You get the best brew if you use it upside down.

originally posted by: Restricted

originally posted by: butcherguy

originally posted by: Restricted

originally posted by: butcherguy

originally posted by: 123143
a reply to: butcherguy

I'm leery of any source written by a reenactor.

Since you are leery, I will direct you to the 1861 US Army revised Regulations, where you will find the exact list in the previous link:
University of Michigan
To save you time looking, check section 244 first. It will relieve you of the boredom of checking through regulations pertaining to the rations of hay for mules vs horses.

I think he thought you were a FARB.

I had to look that one up.
I had no idea.
Now I have learned what a farb is.
Thank you for that.

Not sure which definition you found. There's a couple. The one I'm most familiar with, an oldie but a goodie, is Fake-A**-Repro-B**tard.

It's a thread-counter thing.

That is the definition that I found.

For hunting & camping I use a "granny ware" enameled steel percolator.

The positives include:

-It is unharmed by direct flames from a campfire
-tough enough to last for decades
-serves 6-8 people
-


Negatives include:
-requires water to boil in the pot; this takes time and a hot campfire. Not exactly low profile
-coffee tastes a little flatter, even burned if over cooked