1

What species of mycorrhizal fungus do well with apple trees?

How do I innoculate a 3 year old tree with a mycorrhizal fungus?

These two questions were closed as off topic and pointed to Gardening.SE. However, these are permaculture questions. The question of encouraging fungal symbiosis is one that permaculturists deal with regularly, but conventional gardeners often aren't even aware of.

Almost every question on permaculture could easily and readily fit with in the scope of gardening. However, currently, there are 4 questions with in the permaculture tag. Askers of permaculture questions are likely to get a lot of very unpermaculture answers over there. I think permaculturists are much more likely to be attracted to a site focused only on sustainable answers to problems than they are to a generic gardening site. And thus, we should allow permaculture questions over here, where they will get more of the focus the asker is looking for.

That does mean allowing a lot of questions that on first glance would fit perfectly in Gardening.

3

2 Answers 2

5

By the way, neither of those particular questions are very good. Both need to be more specific by a long shot.

This is a problem. If you're "testing the waters", you really need to avoid "fake" questions - they make it very hard to build a good argument in favor of the topic.

Really, this is the same question found here: Where do we draw the line between sustainable living and gardening?

I tend to agree with Robert's answer, particularly his acid test:

"Is this question primarily related to the subject of 'Sustainable Living', or is the subject only coincidentally of interest to the audience who happens to frequent here?"

And determining this requires a lot more detail from the question. Am I interested in encouraging root fungus because I have a specific problem with my plants? Or because I heard about it on NPR one lazy afternoon? Or because I'm hoping to avoid specific problems in the future, and heard this was a useful technique? Or...

In other words, is there a specific, sustainability-related goal you're aiming for here, or do you just assume that folks interested in sustainable agriculture will also have knowledge of the topic you're interested in.

Without a real question, there's no way to apply that test.

1
  • The second question was actually alright, I think. The first one I have now fixed. I can make it more specific, by checking our varieties (requires going out into the cold, which I may do later), but I think I reworded it such that it no longer requires that level of specificity necessarily. Jan 31, 2013 at 20:50
2

Upon further consideration, I think I was too quick to dismiss these questions as merely "gardening". I see now that:

  • The Gardening.SE community doesn't understand these question, as they tend to be more conventional in their thinking, and haven't studied permaculture.

  • It's OK for Sustainability.SE and Gardening.SE to overlap.

With that in mind, I have voted to reopen these questions.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .