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Re: fava beans +

nonayobusiness wrote:
> 
> -- [ From: nonayobusiness * EMC.Ver #2.3 ] --
> 
> I wonder why everybody  wants to turn under fava beans?  I love to eat
> them!  The big  giant ones are really good!     Another green manure crop
> I've been wondering about is buckwheat.  This is such a good thing to eat!
> Has anybody here ever tried growing  it and harvesting the grain?  (It has
> gotten really expensive in the supermarket  -  right now you have to pay
> $2.29 for a measly little 10 ounce box!)
> 

I experimented with buckwheat as a grain crop in 1986.  I was keeping
bees at the time and was interested to see how it affected the honey. 
My mother is from NE PA where buckwheat honey is considered a prime
variety.

The heads do not ripen all at once so you have to choose when to
harvest.  I cut mine with my grandfather's old scythe and hand-threshed
it.  The small plot (150 sq m or about 1500 sq ft) of unfertilized soil
yielded about 13 lbs (6kg) of seed.  (Our native volcanic soils are rich
in some nutrients but *very* deficient in others.)  Buckwheat should
grow very well in your are.  Note that it is not frost-tolerant.

The problem I had with using it as green manure it that it became
somewhat weedy.  That wouldn't have been a problem but it seems to
supress grrowth in some plants, especially corn.  We couldn't figure out
what was wrong with the corn until we thouroughly weeded out all the
buckwheat.  Then it just sprang up. 

>         Another question:  where we live, we are plagued by  voracious woodchucks.
> My veg garden is fenced in with a sunken  fence that keeps most of them
> out.  We relocate a bunch each year.  I was wondering, with our limited

My grandfather's solution to the woodchuck problem was a 30-06 from the
front porch.  But that was another era.

---snip

Steve
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