Featured coment: rice pests

Yolanda on rice pests:

[T]he real subsidy to biological control in irrigated rice comes from the water! The timing of all of it is also quite remarkable. The flooding cues the aquatic insects to molt into adults. This results in a outward migration of adults that emerge out of the water. The spiders use the rice plants as fishing places, trying to capture as much of the emerging aquatic insects.

Fascinating discussion.

Featured comment: citrus

Onkel Bob on Show Yourself (not that it has any relevance to that):

Why didn’t Turks create the same garden scheme as the Persians? Is it their pastoral roots? One would think they would want citrus fruits in their winter pastures. Even after settling in Anatolia, (what we currently call Turkey) the Seljuks and subsequent Turkish migrations never developed the garden schemes we see in SW Asia/Levant.

Featured comment: self-sufficiency

Yvonne, on The Food Crisis: Déjà Vu:

In these times, when desertification, civil unrest, natural disasters and other crises, force groups or families from traditional or stationary plots of ground, they can still feed themselves IF we provide a growing structure that does not REQUIRE that plot of land.

Of course, there’s a bit more to it than that, but still …