Let's Permaculture

An exploration of permaculture, appropriate tech, herbalism, and indigenous knowledge as they relate to the past, present, and future of our world. A special focus on Northern California, where the blog curator is based.

[biodiverseed]

These are our 3 week-old Indian runner ducks. We are teaching them to eat the slugs in the garden, and also to associate us with food.

Indian runners are upright-standing ducks that are prodigious foragers: they are often used for biological pest control in agriculture. Originating in Southeast Asia over 2000 years ago, this breed is frequently seen eating pests in rice paddies.

My partner @oz7am is the one holding the ducks in the video, and I’m the one who keeps giving them slugs that I collected in the garden!

We only got them a week ago, and they are without their mother, so they are still a little uneasy around us: food has really helped them warm to us in the last few days.

[plantyhamchuk]

Oh wow so many questions!! About how long do you think it will be until they warm up to y’all? Where do they live normally, outside? Do they live in the duck house type thing in the pond you made? Are they scared of the dog? Language-wise, is he basically just encouraging them to eat or are there other things being communicated? Do they prefer slugs or are you just trying to encourage them to eat them?

[biodiverseed]

I’ll answer these in order:

They will probably never warm up to us entirely, and that’s ok. They aren’t really pets, and they will have a totally free-range life. They are actually a gift for a farmer in the family who has a beautiful pond and a major slug problem, so we only have them for about a month.

They live in an old hen-house we have, and we built a run for them as well. When I am home on the weekends I work on the computer outside, and they have full range of the garden. In theory, they don’t actually need an enclosure because they will never be able to fly, and they don’t go out of range of home and water. Like cats, they will stay where it is comfortable and where they know food is.

They have a cautious relationship with the dog, which is just as well because our Papillon looks like a fox, so I’d prefer they are a little scared of things that look like him.

In the video, he’s basically just telling them to eat up. They can kind of be conditioned early in like to preferentially forage for certain things over other, so we try and encourage them to eat invasive spanish slugs and ground elder.

They love the pond, swales, and other earthworks I have built. Right now they are eating strawberries and currants over in berryland.

[biodiverseed]

Two Years of Mining Black Gold

Or how I ran out of garbage when I learned to love compost

Here in the Nordic Countries, there is a huge emphasis on recycling and generating sustainable energy, especially with waste. Neighbouring Sweden recycles 99% of it’s garbage, Norway imports UK garbage for incineration, and here in Denmark, I live on a large human-engineered stormwater-filtering wetland, which leads to a biogas fermentation complex, attached to a wind farm. Since it is so difficult to store wind power, Danish utilities sometimes even have to pay other EU nations to take excess energy.

As the sciences that deal with energy and waste both develop, they become more integrated, which makes the whole process more efficient. My local area is a good example of that.

I’ve taken these lessons in waste and energy from both engineering and ecology, and applied them to how I manage my food forest space: only to find that I needed more biological waste than four people could generate in order to build and sustain my system. Waste is, in some sense, a scarce resource.

My composting system: food waste goes in the sealed composters, and yard waste is turned between the two larger units over the course of a season. Only one of the composters is close to being full, as the biomass compresses considerably when water drains.

I integrate household waste directly into the construction of many spaces in my garden: newspaper and cardboard are vital resources for sheet mulching, whereas woody yard waste is essential for hügelkultur and “chop and drop” or chip mulches. Many of my projects move at an artificially slow pace, precisely because our consumption does not equal my rate of construction.

These composters were each filled with 1.5m³ of composted grass clippings, collected over 15 years. Three years after moving in, and I have emptied 15 years worth of compost.

I have had to integrate the production of biomass and green manure crops, and regenerative practices like coppicing and pollarding into my repertoire in order to generate the biological waste I need to provide my food forest crops with adequate nutrition and soil integrity, without the use of synthesised chemical inputs.

I could start turning the waste of all of my immediate neighbours into a resource as well, or working with pee-cycling and humanure, if such things were not legal and regulatory minefields. There are a number of simpler energy-generating compost systems I would like to try, like home biogas fermentation, or even just a simple biomeiler, but If I were to work with those systems, I would need to be producing more garbage! 

Ideally, I would like to create a test site here where almost 90+% of day-to-day waste is managed in-house, and this goal becomes more realistic the more food and biomass resources I am able to extract from this small patch of land. In a well-designed system, cycles of production and waste can be cyclical, instead of linear.

[strigiforma]

Plant Blogs?

So I have a sideblog where I’m posting my planty adventures and shit whilst I’m starting to get back into gardening so I’d like to follow some plant/naturey/green blogs, preferably not the ones which post xo~follow for more soft nature~ox in an edgy font and format after every post.

Soo I’d like to follow people who post:

Botany

pretty plants, weird plants, creepy plants

Plant/gardening ideas

especially for rooms and/or apartments

tips

pollinating bugs because they’re neato

fungi

…??

Idk, like this post? Reblog it so more plant people can see it? Tag planty plant blogs so I can find many plant blogs 

[misadventured-piteous-overthrows]

Hello! @plantyhamchuk @kihaku-gato @rooted-and-reaching @tropicalhomestead and a whole bunch of others

[rooted-and-reaching]

Thanks for the recommendation! @palettegarden @pacificnorthwestdoodles @phytomaniacs are three more off the top of my head (Also what’s your sideblog? I’d like to follow it!)

[pacificnorthwestdoodles]

You should actually follow my plant blog @pnwgardenbuddiesneoly if you want JUST gardening. <3 I accept asks and submissions as long as folks are off anon.

Suggested Blogs (the ones I follow)

@pnwbotany: Botany and Plant ID for Pacific Northwest Plants

@patlikesplants: Plants of Oregon/Gardening in Oregon

@accessible-gardens: new blog focusing on making gardening accessible with a focus on chronic pain

@theorchidgarden: plant appreciation with a focus on Orchids

@cactus-and-succulents: Plant appreciation with a focus on Cactus and Succulents

@cactguy: Cacti and cacti photography

@brilliantbotany: Plant appreciation, plant chat, all around plant bloggin’

@libellengarten: Garden bloggin’, garden photos

@theblueridgemycophile: Mycology, fungi, fun

@masutakeko: Mushroom blog/mushroom appreciation

@bromeliace: Plant appreciation with a focus on Bromeliads

@seedkeeping: All about seed keeping/seed saving. Accepts Asks

@thesmallgarden: Garden and Houseplant blogging

@bloem-kool: Balcony gardening, plant photos

@ediblegardensla: Edible Gardens in LA, garden photos

@uswildflowers: Wildflowers of the US, Gardening, home gardening

@greenthumbgg: Gardening group for gardeners and landscapers

@succulentsalive: Plant appreciation with a focus on Succulents

@bumblebeeinthecity: Plant and Bee blogging, a Tumblr companion for their Wordpress Blog

@pragmaculture: Gardening, vegetable growing in the Southern Hemisphere

@hellyeahsucculents: Plant appreciation blog for succulents and cacti

@planthoardersanonymous: Plant appreciation blog for plant hoarders. Dare I say, plant hoarding encouragement blog? ;)

@greenlook-garden: Gardening blog with progress photos. Text is in both Spanish and English (which I appreciate, since I can read both!)

@robinshomeandgarden: Garden blog, plant growing in the Pacific Northwest. they’re always looking for more garden buddies.

@phytomaniacs: Plant blogging, plant appreciation, plant photos with a focus on succulents

@herbologymajor: Plant and Garden blogging with recipes too. Also general blogging, but with a heavy plant focus.

@jillraggett: Plant photography

@the-songsontheradioareokay: Plant appreciation with a focus on flowers

@foodforestsforever: Garden blogging with a focus on Food Forests

@thehopefulbotanymajor: Plant appreciation: photos, scans, archival images

@backyardharvest: Gardening and Home Farming with progress photos

@theherbarium: Plant appreciation: photos, scans, archival images

@plant-rant: Gardening, vegetable growing, progress photos, gardening in Australia

@photographic-farmer: Gardening blog, progress photos, photo documentation of home farming

@awkwardbotany: plant appreciation, plant blogging, archival images, photos, and more

@pluvilis: Gardening, photos, and plant appreciation in the UK

@explodinggirl: Gardening, plant growing, chicken raising in zone 5b

@misadventured-piteous-overthrows: Gardening, garden blogging, plant photos, progress photos

@plantyhamchuk: Gardening blog, seed saving, and science. Zone 6

@hqcreations: Gardening, garden blogging

@kihaku-gato: Gardening, garden blogging, plant photos

@biodiverseed: Gardening, Permaculture, Home farming, and many, many tutorials

Other things on Tumblr

NPS Park Cultural Landscapes Program

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

Royal Ontario Museum (kid’s corner)

American Museum of Natural History

The Peary-MacMillian Arctic Museum

Boyce Thompson Arboretum

Umass Permaculture: Umass Permaculture Initiative 

San Francisco Botanical Garden

Bird and Moon: A science comic

SciTeachers: a resource for Science Teachers

Vivian Ng: Illustrator and animator who posts several plant illustrations. She’s also on Twitter.

National Science Foundation

Science Friday

_______________

This is less than half of the relevant folks I follow. I’m sure folks will add themselves! I know I missed a good deal of you!

[hqcreations]

thank you doing for all this hardwork!

[indiaincredible]

Step-wells in India by Victoria Lautman

[npr]

Citrus In The Snow: Geothermal Greenhouses Grow Local Produce In Winter

Greenhouses could make local fruits and vegetables more available year-round, but they're energy intense. In the Midwest, some growers tap into the Earth's internal heat to warm the structures.

[biodiverseed]

Channelling Spring Stormwater: Success!

I’ve written quite a bit about this project, because it was the main challenge in making this corner of the garden workable.

Every year, the grass plane pictured would be flooded in late winter and early spring, which made me afraid to plant too many trees in this side of the garden. Beyond pears, there aren’t a lot of fruit trees that tolerate standing water.

As such, I’ve done a lot of work with hügelkultured bioswales, and made a semi-permeable (ie. “leaky”) pond. It’s turned out that together, these two additions have the capacity to hold the entirety of the spring runoff.

Swales

You can read about the swales in this archive. They are far from finished, because work on lining them stopped when the wet winter set in, but nonetheless, they hold a huge amount of water.

This is what they look like in summer:

Once I finally finish them up, all the water from around the house will be piped into them via a french drain.

Pond

Most of the posts about the pond are here. It looks small, but it’s very deep. I’m allowing it to grow more or less “wild” in order to encourage mallards to move in.

This is what it looks like in summer:

It’s surrounded by trees, and planted with a whole mess of different semi-aquatic irises (1, 2), so hopefully the ducks that scope out the yard every year actually move in to the nesting box we have built for them.

They were swimming in it before it was finished.

Their ducklings should be nice and sheltered, and also have a place to swim and dabble.

I’m actually surprised to see that a few simple landscape fixes could fix such an enormous problem. I honestly thought I would have to do more digging to make this work.

Now, this entire side of the yard is open for tree-planting, whereas before I had only been planting the perimeter, and on little elevated hügelkultur “islands.”

More trees will further improve water permeation and groundwater recharge, as their roots make drainage channels through the clay subsoil. In a few years, even the worst rainfall likely won’t flood this space for more than a few days.

[biodiverseed]

Stratification / Wet Storage Seed Envelopes

Just a reminder for those of you looking to germinate finicky seeds this year: I’ve added an option with my seed saving envelopes for “ziploc + fabric” sealable interior envelopes, which allow you to cold-stratify seeds in the fridge, or store seeds that cannot dry out (like citrus).

There is space for you to write notes on the front, and planting data on the back.

[thebraveandthebroiled]

Incorporating Disability Access and Therapeutic Spaces in Permaculture Design

When working in various gardens for community usage I found we often needed to consider access for gardeners of a range of abilities without compromising the overall function of the design. I want to outline some things I have found useful to make spaces disability-friendly whilst also maintaining the permaculture principles of multiple use values and productive landscapes. Access issues you may need to consider include wheelchair movement, limited bending, blindness, unstable gait from stroke or acquired brain injury.

[hidekiryuga]

[gifnews]

[pollyguo]

'Because when he saw nature, he didn't see waste. He saw everything had a purpose and everything had a usefulness. Everything could be used again and again and recycled back and forth. And so before we have the R's (before we have recycle, reuse, reduce) that was him. He was organic pre-organic.

When people go “what is important in black history?” they don’t think about the fact that we were up front in saying we cannot have all these chemicals in our food. We don’t get credit for that. Just like we don’t get credit for many things.’ 

- Elandria Williams of the Highlander Research and Education Center

[muchymozzarella]

I learned about George Washington Carver at school, but not that he was black, gay, or that he found so many uses for so many crops. 

[bemusedlybespectacled]

I knew he was black and had invented 300+ uses for peanuts, but I didn’t know he was gay, or why he invented all those uses for peanuts. I just thought he really liked peanuts.

[markoftheasphodel]

I saw a traveling exhibit that was created by the Field Musuem and Tuskegee Institute and didn’t *learn* he was gay. They danced around the topic so you could connect a few dots and come away thinking ‘yup, gay’ but that was it. But you also could come away with other ideas entirely.

[hyggehaven-deactivated20200904]

[rollership]

Chinampa (Nahuatl: chināmitl [tʃiˈnaːmitɬ]) is a method of ancient Mesoamerican agriculture which used small, rectangular areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico.

Photographer: Te Papa

[verticaltheory]

A Saltwater Greenhouse Grows Vegetables In Places Vegetables Won’t Grow

"Water is likely to be a big problem as the world tries to meet future demand for food. By 2050, we could need 60% more calories than we produce today. And yet, many parts of the world are already running short of freshwater necessary to grow crops (70% of all freshwater goes to agriculture).

That’s what makes the Sahara Forest Project interesting. Its saltwater greenhouse uses half as much freshwater as conventional greenhouses, and it could allow water-poor countries to grow food more sustainably while reducing the need for food imports. It could even help re-vegetate deserts in some countries.”

via FastCo.Exist

[rhamphotheca]

Fishy Vocabulary:

Can you say Anadromous, Catadromous, Amphidromous, Oceanodromous, or Potamodromous?

by Patrick Cooney

Many fishes migrate long distances to spawn. In order to better understand these movements, scientists have classified these migrations into several categories.

Although these different types of migration classifications may be difficult to pronounce, they are important to understand in order to help maintain connectivity between critical habitats…

(read more: The Fisheries Blog)

[lastrealindians-deactivated2015]

Nettles: Generations of Traditional Knowledge by Longhouse Media

“We call the plants the First People. They were the first created in our oral tradition before the animals, before the fish, before the birds, and their duty was to hold the earth together and live their life as a teaching for...

[biodiverseed]

Hello, I was wondering if you have any advice for getting started with a pemaculture garden. I have look for videos on youtube(don't have any money to buy books) and can't find anything that helps a really, really green beginner. Any help would be very appreciated

“Permaculture" is a portmanteau of "permanent agriculture," or "permanent culture." It can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. It is much more than a style of garden: it’s a holistic philosophy about land management and sustainability.

Personally, I have never taken a course or a certification in it, and I have also never belonged to any permaculture groups or organisations, but I would still call myself a “permaculturist,” even though I am self-taught.

All of the best free educational tools I have found are archived in the #resources, #videos, #DIY and #garden hacks archives.

I have been writing a series called #Edible Forest Gardening 101, which starts off rather simple, but gets more complex. If you are looking to try the forest garden model, that might be a good place to start. I have additional resources in the general #forest gardening archives. My practices also overlap quite a bit with the ideas of #edible landscaping, and #agroforestry, so you might also find useful information there.

If you are just getting started, I would recommend you learn about some basic topics. I try to archive everything I write and reblog so it’s like an accessible in-site library:

SOIL: #soil #soil science #soil depletion #no-till farming

FERTILISER: #fertiliser #nitrogen #phosphorus #potassium

MULCH: #mulch #sheet mulching #lasagna gardening

COMPOST: #compost #vermicompost #hugelkultur #bokashi

WATER: #rainwater harvesting #swales #rain gardens

SEEDS: #seed morphology #germination #stratification #scarification #seed sellers

CLONING: #cloning #cuttings #propagation

TREE MAINTENANCE: #pruning #espalier #coppicing

FUNGI and BENEFICIAL ORGANISMS: #mycelium #nitrogen-fixation #micro-organisms

COMMON PERMACULTURE SMALL GARDEN TYPOLOGIES: #raised beds #container gardening #hydroponics #aquaponics #vertical gardening #potager #herb spiral

The first thing you need to really think about before you start your garden is your local biome. Living in accordance with your local ecology limits the amount of work you will have to do, and resources you will have to use in maintaining your space. this is called bioregionalism.

You should figure out:

Your USDA hardiness zone and AHS heat zone. When you are shopping for plants, this information will let you know what you can grow. Most greenhouses will mark their plants with a minimum temperature they can tolerate: if not, you can find this on the internet. Other things to consider are soil pH, light exposure, and water.

Your local natural biome type: is it Shortgrass Prairie? Riparian? Deciduous Forest? Tropical? Alpine? Arid? This information should also inform the kinds of plants you try to grow.

Your local laws and zoning ordinances; those bastards in municipal government can be real dicks about things like keeping chickens or planting trees. On a practical note, you should map out where your utilities are buried (call before you dig!)

For your first garden, I would recommend a permaculture classic that is very useful and fulfilling: this the the herb spiral. It can be easily built with salvaged materials, and provides you with all of the culinary herbs you need. It’s a good way to get your hands dirty, and to start learning about the different needs different plants have. Have a look through the archive and see if you find a design that is inspiring!

The point of permaculture is to derive the most abundance possible, with the least amount of work and disturbance of the environment. You will have a much easier time if you learn to work with nature than against her. Embrace things like birds and bugs snacking on your plants, and embrace the fact that plants die — everything has a place.

I run this blog to help people and get them excited about working with plants, so you can always write if you have a question!

[biodiverseed]

I couldn’t believe my luck today when I found a fruit bearing-sized Redlove ‘Circe’ Apple tree (roughly 2 metres tall and well-branched) on sale for 50 kroner (about $10 CAD, or 7€).

Since the 1830s there have been several red-fleshed cultivars on market (such as ‘Surprise,’ or ‘Pink Pearl’), but there have been few that have had an acceptable flavour and texture, combined with exceptional disease resistance. Many are achieved by back-crossing cultivars of the Domestic Apple (Malus domestica, which includes large apples and crabapples), and older wild species from Siberia, Iran and the Caucasus, such as Malus sieversii or Malus niedzwetskyana.

I found this new cultivar in the supermarket, of all places, and reduced in price by 82.5%! The label didn’t show the flesh of the apple, so in a way I was lucky that people did not know what they were looking at when they passed this one over.

WInter is a great time to be buying outdoor plants (especially larger trees and shrubs), because most people are not thinking of planting, and dealers and nurseries are trying to clear out that last of the year’s stock.

This red-fleshed cultivar, developed in 2010—after 20 painstaking years of work by Swiss breeder Markus Kobert—contains 30-40% more antioxidant anthocyanin pigments than white-fleshed cultivars. It is also virtually immune to apple scab, and the flesh doesn’t brown as much as that of other apples when oxidised. Unfortunately, the germplasm is also patented.

Since it is a grafted tree of a reasonable size, I can expect there to be a decent crop on it next summer!

Previously: A Brief History of the Apple, Italian Apple Diversity on Display at Perduti, Guastalla, Apple Biodiversity Display at the Chicago Botanic Garden, Planting seeds from a ‘Pink Lady’ Apple, Soil Remedial Plant Guild for a ‘Hadlock Reinette’ Apple

#Malus #fruit trees #plant breeding

[unconsumption]

Peru is home to some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, from tropical rainforests to sandy beaches. Yet it is also home to one of the world’s largest waste problems.

Canadian entrepreneur David Katz plans to turn this plastic litter into usable currency.

Piles of plastic, from bottles to bags and packaging, is a growing problem seen on Peru’s streets and also its natural landscape. Plastic Bank is set to change all that.

The idea behind Plastic Banks is to collect plastic waste and exchange it for something useful, with innovative suggestions currently ranging from services to money to 3D printed items, depending on what people most need.

The combination of recycled plastic and 3D printing has been termed ‘Social Plastic™’, with the emphasis being on how recycling waste can help poorer communities.

[unconsumption]

(via Peru’s ‘Plastic Banks’ Turn Waste Into Currency — Pop-Up City)