Site Discussions

Nice article, thank you.  Would you be willing to comment on using stumps for growing shiitake?  What time of year is best for felling trees and how long after for inoculation, how much stump should be left, inoculate from the top or from the sides through the bark .... ?

Wonderful, Michael. I’ll look forward to the pictures.

I was a young 20 year old when I was first invited to hunt with a group of older men. Now these older gents were very serious about hunting and how they went about it now they would not allow just anybody hunt with them from their camp. I felt very honored for that. After a long hard day of hunting it was so much fun sitting around talking and listening to their stories! Since then they have all past on.

The question I have is how would I find the person to contact about leasing a small chunk of Paper Company land to lease?

If I’m lucky I might have 20 years left to hunt and that time my goal is to try to start a little hunting club to be carried on.

This is an interesting topic. If you wanted to cover this hill and know the degree of slope, is there a conversion formula to convert from footprint (2 dimensional) to the actual surface area to be covered?

I too love dragonflies. I love watching them and it gladdens me when they chose me as a resting spot to eat their meal and I can see them up, close and personal.

I appreciate the information presented in Todd’s article though it concerns me about netting dragonflies. Their wings, though yes quite strong, are also fragile and I don’t agree that it is “safe” to net them - at least for the dragonfly. When I used to teach field ecology I would instruct the students not to catch insects in flight. A damaged wing is likely to mean death for the insect. Yes, we all meet our end sooner or later but we don’t need to “help” these beautiful creatures along the path to death by netting them and possibly damaging their ability to fly.

I have been a licensed forester for 20 years this month. Before that, I was a forest technician and worked on family Xmas tree farm (sold up to 10000 trees a year. Before that, I did TSI and thinned and pruned many, many plantations. I will send you some pictures of one plantation not far from here that my father (retired state forester) had planted in the 60s. I had thinned it and pruned it 30+ years ago. Pruned red pine again 20 years ago. The plantations have had one commercial thinning now.  Red pine were thinned and sold for saw timber (row thinning)in the 90s; the remaining 70% are going to be partially used for the pole market (the ones that make the grade).  The white spruce were thinned for the sawlog/pulp market.  Will send some pictures next time I am around there; probably next week late. Beautiful plantations; there are many around northern Maine; farmers planted trees when fields were no longer used or they quit farming.

The only time we get up close and personal with dragonflies is when they get caught in our bird netting. By this I mean the fine plastic mesh, designed for tossing over berry bushes to discourage birds from raiding, that I have hung over our large windows to stop bird impacts against the glass. (It works surprisingly well.) Inevitably, one or more dragonflies gets caught behind one of these loosely hung nets and we have to flap it open to rescue the thing. They are indeed beautiful and intriguing, and we get a good feeling when we help it back out into the wild.

Hi Edith,

The other berries were southern and northern arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum, V. recognitum, respectively), winterberry (Ilex verticillata), northern bayberry (Myrica pennsylvanica), black, purple, and red chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa, A. prunifolia, A. arbutifolia, respectively), American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), and American elderberry (Sambucus canadensis).

To find out more you’ll have to track down the original paper, which I don’t have at hand.

Besides Arrowwood Viburnum, what were the other 11 berries studied?  Have McWilliams and Seeram published the list with the percentage of antioxidants for the berries of each species?

Where does glyphosate actually come from? What is its breakup of elements down to its natural form (as a derivative of oil or an extract of a plant etc.)?

I grew up on Gardiner - on the east slope of the ridge - and I agree that this place is changing rapidly as fire has been mostly eliminated from its previously significant role.  The berries have been over-crowded by oak, mountain laurel, sassafras, and red maple.  Many of the escarpment areas of the Catskills share a similar history and forest succession as well.  After WWII, the USDA and NYS DEC literally declared war on fire, and the rest has been history.  However, the locals don’t call it the gunks Dave.  The climbers from the city do.

I had one get into my croquet shoes and bite me, it took a small chunk of flesh, about the size of the tip of a pencil lead. It bit me in my middle toe, it felt like I had been stung by a hornet or wasp. Within the first half hour my toe was double the size and red, within the hour my foot was 1.25 the normal size and feeling very swollen. I took a antihistamine and the following day the swelling started to go down

Fascinating, it’s always great to hear how generations have made their way on the land, for good or ill. Blueberries would seem to be for the good.

Erik

Good article on growing mushrooms, didn’t know that Perlite for mushrooms is used to cultivate it.

That’s a great history, social, and forest management, lesson!  Thanks for the article.

My question is…how do you get rid of them? Cornell Cooperative Extension identified them in our siding…don’t want them there!

I just wanted to mention that the flower in the picture appears to be Spotted Knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) This is an invasive plant species that has been really getting started in this area (Brownington, Vermont) over the last 5 years or so. It can really cut down on diversity in meadows if left unchecked and should be removed if possible.

I have 4 Viburnum lantanoides. How often should I water them in summer? Do I have to do anything for them before winter? They are in their second year since I planted them. They are almost 5 feet tall. Thanks.

I did this type of work for 7 years 1963-1970.

Anyone have any idea how this creature makes so much noise? I could hear the gnawing sound inside a dead spruce tree a hundred feet away from the tree. If it is actually thousands of the grubs, how do they keep in sync?