Saturday, October 23, 2010

Worksharing, One State At A Time, or How to Make Jobs

Worksharing, as done in Germany, is the practice of shortening the forty hour work week to thirty two hours for as long as the recession holds, and making up most of the difference in take-home pay by issuing under-employment insurance. This would create jobs, especially for minorities, and help ease the load on welfare, etc., while protecting our communities from the desperate attempts at survival at other's cost that the unemployed will be forced to without help during this recession.
Worksharing can be done on a state-by-state basis, legislatively, and could be paid for in Massachusetts by merely extending the sales tax to real estate sales, which is only fair anyhow.
With more people able to afford staying in their homes, home values won't fall as much, which will benefit every homeowner, and less people will be stuck in overcrowded homeless shelters.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Vetch emergence rate low

Most of the Bigflower Vetch seed has not emerged. Emergence:#sown is very low, less than 1:10.
I don't know whether this is due to seedling death, poor germination or germination delay due to seed dormancy. Maybe I'll do a little digging in the sown rows and see what I find.
If this is due to inherited dormancy, I could select for no dormancy by just saving seed from these early sprouters - If recessive, then all their offspring will be early sprouters, if dominant, then some percentage of intercrossed offspring would also be early sprouters.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Further News of Leguminous Winter Cover Crops




Here are 'Woodford' Bigflower Vetch and 'Hope' White Lupin on Oct. 3rd.
The penny is for scale.