Free Republic

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won't be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn't asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

The Middle Eastern kingdom needs hay for its 170,000 cows. So, it's buying up farmland for the water-chugging crop in the drought-stricken American Southwest.Saudi Arabia's largest dairy company will soon be unable to farm alfalfa in its own parched country to feed its 170,000 cows. So it's turning to an unlikely place to grow the water-chugging crop — the drought-stricken American Southwest. Almarai Co. bought land in January that roughly doubled its holdings in California's Palo Verde Valley, an area that enjoys first dibs on water from the Colorado River. The company also acquired a large tract near Vicksburg, Arizona,...

If modern activist groups held sway in the mid-nineteenth century, countless multitudes would have died from typhoid fever and cholera. The “miasma” paradigm held that the diseases were caused by foul air arising from putrid matter – and only dogged scientific work by William Budd, John Snow and others finally convinced medical and health authorities that the agent was lethal organisms in drinking water. Ultimately, the investigators’ persistence led to discoveries of Vibrio and Salmonella bacteria, the use of chlorine-based disinfectants for drains, water purification and hand washing, programs that kept sewage away from drinking water supplies, and steady advances...

Workers left without a job when the state’s last sugar plantation closes this year will be able to get financial help. Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Co. employees who lose their jobs will be able to get money through a federal program to help replace lost wages, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, announced Monday. About 675 Maui residents work for Hawaii’s last sugar plantation, which plans to end sugar operations by the end of 2016. Under the federal program, workers could receive up to $2,000 a month for a year while they’re retrained for a new job. That’s in addition to...

While thousands of Americans continue to die each year from taking government-approved pharmaceutical drugs, the Food and Drug Administration is busy investigating actual bullsh*t. FDA officials announced last week that the agency isn’t so sure that fertilizing food crops with animal manure— something human beings have been doing since the advent of agriculture— is safe. “The FDA is planning to conduct a risk assessment to determine how much consumer health is put at risk by the use of raw manure as fertilizer in growing crops covered by the final [Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)] Produce Safety rule, and what can...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won't be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn't asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

Archaeologists working in the borderlands of northern Mexico have uncovered a camp used by ancient hunters as much as 10,500 years ago, revealing insights into some of the earliest human history in the Greater Southwest. On a ranch near the Santa Maria River in northern Chihuahua, researchers have unearthed more than 18,000 artifacts, including thousands of stone flakes, cores, and hammers, along with 370 projectile points, and a dozen stone ovens. But the most surprising find has been the grave of a teenage girl, who was interred among the rocks, alone and unadorned, some 3,200 years ago.

SIDNEY -- We've seen some truly eye-popping developments with 3D printers and medicine lately -- cells from an eye that were inkjet printed, for example; prosthetic ears that look real; complex silicon pathways used to stimulate nerves to grow and repair themselves -- just to name a few of the marvels. But medicine is not the only arena where 3D printing offers eye-popping possibility for the future. With the advent of cheaper and cheaper printers and better and better materials -- some of them approaching metallic strengths -- 3D printers could one day be as common a tool on the...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won't be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn't asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

The occupation of Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters finally ended - tragically, with Robert "LaVoy" Finnicum killed by police and other protesters arrested. Unlike in Eastern states, where federal lands total as little as 0.3% (New York), almost 53% of Oregon and 72% of Harney County (where the Hammonds live) is controlled by the federal government. It also administers and controls 30% (Montana) to 85% (Nevada) of all lands in 11 other Western states. The Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies increasingly interpret laws and enforce regulations to restrict, prohibit and eliminate timber, energy and...

Scientists say they have uncovered the remains of the earliest known massacre victims, dating from approximately 10,000 years ago. Archaeologists believe the victims were members of an extended family group of hunter-gatherers who were slaughtered by a rival group.

In 2017, the Japanese company Spread will open the world's first fully automated agricultural plant, with robots working the whole process: from seed to harvest. Spread, headquartered in Kyoto, explained that this plant will start operating regularly by mid-2017. Mechanization will allow it, among other things, to produce 30,000 heads of lettuce a day, as noted on their website. This figure falls short of the firm's expectations, as its goal is to produce half a million heads of lettuce a day within five years. Furthermore, the new automation technologies will reduce labour costs by 50% and energy use by 30%...

Wild tomatoes are better able to protect themselves against the destructive whitefly than our modern, commercial varieties, new research has shown. The study, published today in the academic journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development, shows that in our quest for larger redder, longer-lasting tomatoes we have inadvertently bred out key characteristics that help the plant defend itself against predators. Dual mode of resistance in wild tomatoes Led by Newcastle University, UK, the research shows that wild tomatoes have a dual line of defence against these voracious pests; an initial mechanism which discourages the whitefly from settling on the plant in the...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won't be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn't asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

200,000 fish bones discovered in and around a pit in Sweden suggest that the people living in the area more than 9000 years ago were more settled and cultured than we previously thought. Research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science suggests people were storing large amounts of fermented food much earlier than experts thought. The new paper reveals the earliest evidence of fermentation in Scandinavia, from the Early Mesolithic time period, about 9,200 years ago. The author of the study, from Lund University in Sweden, say the findings suggest that people who survived by foraging for food were actually...

DNA evidence lifted from the ancient bones and teeth of people who lived in Europe from the Late Pleistocene to the early Holocene -- spanning almost 30,000 years of European prehistory -- has offered some surprises, according to researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on Feb. 4, 2016. Perhaps most notably, the evidence shows a major shift in the population around 14,500 years ago, during a period of severe climatic instability... The researchers pieced this missing history together by reconstructing the mitochondrial genomes of 35 hunter-gatherer individuals who lived in Italy, Germany, Belgium, France,...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won't be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn't asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won't be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn't asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

The Japanese lettuce production company Spread believes the farmers of the future will be robots. So much so that Spread is creating the world's first farm manned entirely by robots. Instead of relying on human farmers, the indoor Vegetable Factory will employ robots that can harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce every day. Don't expect a bunch of humanoid robots to roam the halls, however; the robots look more like conveyor belts with arms. They'll plant seeds, water plants, and trim lettuce heads after harvest in the Kyoto, Japan farm. "The use of machines and technology has been improving agriculture in...

Today, the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill to authorize the farming, and production of industrial hemp in the state for commercial purposes, setting the foundation to nullify in practice the unconstitutional federal prohibition on the same. The vote was 98-0. Introduced by Del. Brenda Pogge (R-Norge), House Bill 699 (HB699) would amend current state law on hemp by removing a provision that authorized the licensing of hemp farming only upon approval of the federal government.