I place a plastic container on top of a heated surface and soak the seeds in water for a day. Then I plant the seeds just below the surface of a perlite/vermiculite/peat medium. I reuse the plastic container with the lid to keep up high humidity. I keep the container heated until germination. I will try to use a sand/perlite mixture the next time and maybe a water/hydrogen peroxide solution and see the results. Heat is critical to speed up germination. D. giganteus seeds germinated in 3~4 days under heat and low light, while P. heteroclada germinated in weeks under good lighting at around 60 degrees. It might be a good idea to saok seeds for longer if they still float after a day. I just had a Moso seed germinate about 3 months after its buddies did.

I'd recommend Grumichama. Can handle about 28deg and bear a very good tasting cherry-like fruit. Plus the plant is absolutley gorgeous. You can prune it to size right after harvest.

A forest will choke out a thicket, I often recomend that fruit and nut trees be planted on purpose, so that we lock up carbon and produce food for ourselves, and chocke out the brush plants that are unpleasent to walk through. When you go on a hike along a tail it seems that you are always either bordered by clearing/lawn or by a thicket, but once you break through that thicket you can useually travle quite quickly and easily and have plenty of space to move about. The main reasonfor removing trees and brush historicly wasn't to make things more pleasent, it was to open up land for agricultural use. with a field we can grow staple cerial grains, or legumes, or use it as pasture for animals, while some trees may provide seasonal food for some critters it takes alot of work to survive off of them year round (and trust me when I say thing, willow does not taste that good) . Our modenr day lawns were not contrived from thin air, you need to look at were they came from to understand how they fit in. Lawns are popular mainly in the south (sure, lots of people like them, but in the south they are sick for them) the south had a large portion of its caucasian inhabitants come from scotland (the southern drawl is very closely related to the scots accent) in schotland they have huge green field that are kept down to a few inches all summer long, this is because there is alot of rain and people raise sheep. Now, in the south there isn't as much water in the summer, and there aren't as many sheep, but people still liked the look of home so a lawn with mowers and irrigation is what they came up with.

I would like to try alternating our focus ingredient, using the basic food groups as a guide, along with items like seasonings, spices and other flavorings (Misc) So one week we might do a vegetable, the next might be a Misc., the next fruit, the next Dairy, the next Grains, the next fats and sugars and the next Meats, Poultry and Fish. This would mean that meat/poultry/fish would only come up every 14 weeks. Since we have covered so many other ingredients in previous cookalongs, it would be nice to see a meat topic much more often than that.