The 2nd day at the conference started early. I had gone to my camp to stay the night which is an hour and 1/2 from State College. The water pump had frozen solid so I wasn't able to shower or any thing. Got to the conference at about 7:30 so you know I was up before the chickens. The 1st talk I heard was on growing Organic Apples. Pennsylvania is the 2nd largest apple state behind Washington St. Washington St has about 6 times the acerage we do in apples, but oh well, we are number 2.
The young woman who spoke had grown up on the farm and was running it now with other family members. Her 1st advise was to pick new varietys that are resistant. I planted apples 25 to 30 years ago, so much for that advise. 2nd she felt spacing and trimming were extremally important to allow air flow and light to enter. 3rd was thinning the apples once they had set fruit, leave only one to allow air to get all around it. 4th pick up all the leaves and dead fruit that falls. Scab winters over in the leaves. 5th spray with only approved organic spays, and yes they did spray, and yes there are organic sprays. You fruit will still not look like the store bought pretty fruit that you see, but it will be pesticide free. They made apple sauce and cider out of the apples that had blemishes on them that couldn't be sold as fresh fruit. She gave us some cider, it was excillent. The next talk after the awards and the 2nd key note speaker was about growing shitauke mushrooms. The speaker who was to speak couldn't make it so a guy was found on short notice to fill in. He was a unique individual, wore a knitted skull cap, braded beard several feet long, dread locks down to the middle of his back. He and his wife and child were part of some sort of religious sect that tried to grow as much of their own food as possible, and they were vegitarians. He was about 3000 logs inoculated with mushroom spore and he was selling the tools needed to incoculate logs as well as the actual logs at the conference. He did sort of know his stuff. He recomender cutting oak logs in winter if possible. He lives in the city, so any time he can get an oak log, summer, winter, doesn't matter to him, but oak is the best. Maple will work, but oak is the best. You buy the spore mixed with saw dust for about $25 for a goodly amount. you drill small holes in your logs sort of spacing them in alternating rows 2" apart with the holes 6" apart. He goes all around the log with the holes. The logs can be any size, but smaller logs, maybe 4" to 6" produce mushrooms much quicker. It can take a years or more to get the 1st mushroom. Once the holes are drilled you take a tool [ which he sold ] that was the same size as the holes in diameter and filled it with spore and inserted it into the logs and pushed a plunger so that the spores filled the holes. Then you covered the holes with hot wax with a special dobber [ which he also sold ] Once the log starts to produce muchrooms it can produce them for a long time, maybe as much as 3 years untill the log rots way to nothing. If my math is right for about $50 you could buy the special drill bit, plunger thing to fill the holes, spores and dobber to get started. Cut your own logs and you have mushrooms apleanty for some years to come. Compare that to the $30 price tag for one log already done for you [ which he also sold
] and you can see that doing it youself was much cheaper. The last talk I picked was about growing Garlic and winter onions. I have grown garlic for many years but never tried winter onions. Turn out you treat then the same, plant them the same, winter onions can be picked earlier than garlic and you should use the larger ones with larger stems 1st because they don't keep well at all. She talked about treatments for some garlic problems [ which she never had ] showed how they store them to dry. She felt you need to get them out of the sun right away. She storted them in a shed all tied together in large bunches. They planted several types of galic because some stores better tham others. She said the soft neck white skin varietys store the best, but the hard neck are larger and easier to peel. Take your pick. Plant garlic 2" to 4" deep. The depth depends on how far north you are and how cold your winters are. The colder the winter the deeper you plant. That is about what I took away from her talk.
Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.