Gardening while looking at the big picture. ;) Permies: goofballs that are nuts about permaculture. Raised garden beds: hugelkultur instead of irrigation. Raised garden bed hugelkultur after one month raised garden bed hugelkultur after one year raised garden bed hugelkultur after two years raised garden bed hugelkultur after twenty years It's a german word and some people can say it all german-ish. I learned this high-falootin word at my permaculture training. Hugelkultur is nothing more than making raised garden beds filled with rotten wood. I do think there are some considerations to keep in mind. Another thing to keep in mind is that wood is high in carbon and will consume nitrogen to do the compost thing. Pine and fir will have some levels of tanins in them, but I'm guessing that most of that will be gone when the wood has been dead for a few years.
In the drawings at right, the artist is trying to show that while the wood decomposes and shrinks, the leaves, duff and accumulating organic matter from above will take it's place. Permaculture Magazine - Inspiration for Sustainable Living. Using What You’ve Got: Permaculture And Rain Barrels. Photo: Annie Corrigan/WFIU These are two of Steven Janowiecki's six rain barrels. In total, he can collect 300 gallons of rain water at one time. I’m Only Happy When It Rains Steven Janowiecki has gardening in his blood. In fact, a few weeks after he bought his house in Bloomington, Indiana, the first improvement he made was to build raised beds for his garden. The next step was to find an easy way to water his garden. So, this Indiana University astronomy graduate student purchased six, 55 gallon rain barrels for $5 each, constructed wooden frames to hold them four feet above ground, “and then just played with PVC pipe until it worked!”
This experiment in elementary engineering has resulted in a watering system for his garden that takes only five minutes to execute. More: Read more about rain barrels and see photos of Steven Janowiecki’s set-up. Happy And Healthy Soil Mary Lu Orr folds compostable items into her soil, like food and garden scraps and junk mail. Starting From Scratch Hog Heaven. There's No Such Thing As Waste: A (Surprisingly) Awesome Permaculture Song (Video) The Diverse Faces of Permaculture: 3 Awesome Films of Orlando Permaculturists (Video) Kinesis Films/Video screen capture From my friend Mike's chaotic urban permaculture allotment in England via a carefully planned campus-lawn-turned-forest-garden to the blossoming of a permaculture garden in the Jordanian desert, one of the things I love most about permaculture design is how there is no "permaculture standard". Every practitioner makes her or his own mark on the discipline. From the unique environmental factors of each specific location through cultural influences to the personal tastes and personality of the practitioner, each garden is the result of a myriad of different factors—all processed and applied through the lens of permaculture design principles and ethics.
Take this set of videos from Kinesis Films for example about permaculture in Orlando, Florida. The Permaculture Project LLC. Stelle Winter PDC: Snow, Rocket Stoves, Biochar, Guilds, Permaculture, Mexico, Etc, Et al…Snow. Posted on | February 7, 2011 | 1 Comment We are here at Stelle, Illinois (the home of Midwest Permaculture) for our winter farming course. After only two days we are full already. Take a look at these pictures that are worth a thousand words (each). Comments. Start a 1-Acre, Self-Sufficient Homestead - Modern Homesteading. Everyone will have a different approach to keeping a self-sufficient homestead, and it’s unlikely that any two 1-acre farms will follow the same plan or methods or agree completely on how to homestead.
Some people like cows; other people are afraid of them. Some people like goats; other people cannot keep them out of the garden. Some people will not slaughter animals and have to sell their surplus stock off to people who will kill them; others will not sell surplus stock off at all because they know that the animals will be killed; and still others will slaughter their own animals to provide their family with healthy meat.
For myself, on a 1-acre farm of good, well-drained land, I would keep a cow and a goat, a few pigs and maybe a dozen hens. The goat would provide me with milk when the cow was dry. I might keep two or more goats, in fact. Raising a Dairy Cow Cow or no cow? On the other hand, the food that you buy in for this family cow will cost you hundreds of dollars each year. Green Home Business Opportunities: How To Start a Permaculture Design Business. Permaculture is an approach to the design and maintenance of landscapes and communities that seeks to mimic the relationships found in natural ecosystems.
The permaculture system was developed in the 1970′s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, though elements of permaculture design have been used by different cultures around the world for thousands of years. Permaculture has always placed a strong emphasis on sustainability and environmental responsibility. The permaculture method has been used successfully around the world to restore degraded agricultural lands and ecosystems in ways that benefit humans, wildlife, and the environment. For example, in the following video Geoff Lawton, a protege of Bill Mollison and founder of the Permaculture Research Institute, demonstrates his conviction that “you can fix all the world’s problems in a garden” by turning a desolate plot of land in Jordan into a productive and self-sustaining “food forest”: Main Image Credit: sterlic.
Sharing Knowlege... Feeding Nations. Main Page. Clever Tunnel System Makes Chickens Do The Gardening (Video) Image credit: Ecofilms Australia We've already seen how one farmer trains her chickens to eat slugs, and the internet is full of examples of chicken tractors—portable coops that can be moved to allow hens to till, fertilize, and weed a plot while providing pest control in the process. (see also this overview of chicken tractors at Planet Green.) But one Australian permaculturist has taken this idea to the next level—designing an intricate system of "chook tunnels" that let him funnel his ladies into any part of his garden. The amount of work that these creatures can do is actually quite amazing. Of course many vegans will object to the idea of animals being used as "slave labor", but a system like this does go a large way toward answering the accusations of inefficiency so often leveled against animal husbandry.
More on Chickens in the GardenDIY Chicken TractorsChook Tractors Provide Mobile Chicken-LaborTraining Chickens to Eat Slugs.