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It’s Not a Fairytale: Seattle to Build Nation’s First Food Forest

It’s Not a Fairytale: Seattle to Build Nation’s First Food Forest
Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest. “This is totally innovative, and has never been done before in a public park,” Margarett Harrison, lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest project, tells TakePart. The concept of a food forest certainly pushes the envelope on urban agriculture and is grounded in the concept of permaculture, which means it will be perennial and self-sustaining, like a forest is in the wild. That the plan came together at all is remarkable on its own. MORE: Amazing Apple Powered Lamp Related:  Food Forest

Mediterranean Understory & *Guild Plants for Food Forests – Part 1 « Green Bean Connection December 9, 2011 by Cerena Childress This is a great time to install native plants and fruit trees, so see if any of this info affects where and how you place them. A food forest can be anchored by a south opening ‘U’ shaped planting of trees that captures heat for growing veggies in its center area. *Guild plants are plants that grow well together. I am in hopes you will talk this up to your apartment owner, install it on your own property, model your veggie garden after it, share it with every gardener anywhere, of any kind that you know. It’s economical. Our list [SEE IT!] Linda’s List is intended for a Mediterranean climate like coastal Southern California has, one of only 5 in the world. SEE PART 2, the List! Like this: Like Loading...

Interview with Kultivator, an experimental cooperation of organic farming and visual art practice Images Kultivator from the series Wedding between art and agriculture I discovered KULTIVATOR a couple of years ago at Pixelache in Helsinki. The collective was founded in 2005 by 3 artists and 2 organic farmers in the village Dyestad, on the Swedish island of Öland. This cooperation of farming and visual art practice involves an organic farm with where pigs are raised, cows are milked, potatoes are harvested and linseed oil is pressed. But KULTIVATOR is also a space for artist residencies, exhibitions, performances, installations and screenings. And in between are activities that draw in both the artist and the farming community. Malin Vrijman, one of the founding members of Kultivator, was kind enough to answer my many questions: Wedding masquerade Dyestad farm pig In an interview for publik.dk, you said that there are many similarities between the way you live and work as artists and how an organic farmer live and work. But even more interestingly, what did you bring to each other?

Food Forests: All-You-Can-Eat and Coming to a City Near You Consider it a modern take on the legendary tale of Johnny Appleseed. Vancouver, B.C., has announced plans to plant food forests, with over 150,000 fruit and nut trees on city streets, in parks, and on city-owned lands in the next eight years, reports the Vancouver Sun . At the moment, the city has about 600 fruit and nut trees on city streets, and another 425 can be found in the city's parks, community gardens, and pocket orchards. "Street trees play an important role in helping Vancouver adapt to climate change, manage stormwater run-off, support biodiversity, and even provide food," Mayor Gregor Robertson said in a statement about the food forests to the city's council last week. It's that last factor that matters to hunger advocates: Fruit and nut trees are basically free food forests. Food banks are practically synonymous with processed, prepackaged food—and for good reason: It doesn't spoil; it's easy to transport, and it's cheap to buy. Related Stories on TakePart:

Food Forest Open Source Hub Intentional earth stewardship by creating an abundant and productive food forest is, in our opinion, essential to comprehensive food sustainability and self-sufficiency. It is also foundational to regenerating our planet and One Community’s Highest Good of All philosophy. For this reason, we are including teaching, demonstrating, and open source sharing food forest creation and development as key components of our open source botanical garden, Highest Good food infrastructure, and model for self-replicating and self-sufficient teacher/demonstration communities, villages, and cities to be built around the world. As a species we have the ability to truly live in harmony and mutual support with nature and One Community will be an ongoing demonstration of exactly how personally and globally beneficial this can be. This page includes the following sections: A food forest is, as the name implies, a forest of food. Here’s a 7-minute video showing 7 years of growth: (Bb) = BAMBOO (Tp) = TROPICALS

Natural farming Natural farming Natural farming, also known as Do-nothing farming or No-till farming was popularised by Masanobu Fukuoka, starting in the 1940s in Japan. The most essential aspect of natural farming is to let nature play a dominant role to the maximum extent possible. Hence, no-till, farm biodiversity, integration and symbiotic farm components and protection of soil cover all have a place in this method of farming. The seed ball technique for sowing has also been given importance by Fukuoka. The immense importance placed on no-tillage has led to natural farming also being referred to as No-till farming. In Japan, Fukuoka achieved yields similar to those of chemical agriculture. Related link on this website : Natural farming succeeds in Indian village To know more about Do Nothing farming and Masanobu Fukuoka, you may follow these links : You may also like to read on this website : Top

Bottle Drip Irrigation | I prefer to have the bottle standing right-way-up as I think it looks nicer and it keeps debris out of the bottle thus keeping the holes from blocking. The materials: * 2 litre plastic soft-drink bottle or water bottle * Sharp small screwdriver, pointed hole-maker or drill This can be used in container gardening, raised bed gardens and open vegetable gardens. Using your pocket knife, make 2 small slits in the bottom of your bottle. Dig a hole next to your tomato plant. This will slowly deep-water your tomato plants and most other vegetable plants. You can learn more about this on another website. Only two very small holes are needed at the lowest place on the bottle. I prefer to leave the lids off. Place bamboo stakes next to each bottle. Here I am making another hole slightly higher up the bottle. However, if I remove the lid, water will come out this hole as well as the holes in the base. You can make larger holes, and partly fill the bottle with coarse-sand or soil to slow the flow.

Living Forest Farm Food Forest Open Source Hub :: What | Why | How As a species we have the ability to truly live in harmony and mutual support with nature. This open source hub (and all the associated pages) will continue to evolve indefinitely as an ongoing demonstration of how to do that through food forest creation. It includes the following sections: A food forest is, as the name implies, a forest of food. The goal of this gardening and land management system is to mimic a woodland ecosystem with companion planting of edible trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals grown in a succession of layers. Fruit and nut trees are usually the canopy/overstory, while below is the understory of berry shrubs and edible ground plantings. Food forests mimic nature, are outstanding examples of earth stewardship, and arguably the most natural and sustainable food production method available. Creating the One Community food forest will begin in the first year and continue indefinitely through a process we will share in complete detail here. (Bb) = BAMBOO (Tr) – TREES

Russia to become an eco-village nation From the February 2008 Idaho Observer: Russia to become an eco-village nation? By William Klotke Putin has indicated full support of Dimitri Medvedev for the post of President of the Russian Federation. Medvedev, who is presently First Deputy Prime Minister has indicated enthusiastic support for the concept of eco-villages. Medvedev expressed his support of the concept of eco-villages in a March 5, 2007 online conference organized by the newspaper Izvestia and the internet portal Yandex and broadcast by TV channel "Vesti-24." The host stated that the question of eco-villages was brought up because he had received 5,000 emails from supporters of the "Kin Domains" concept before the show asking about the plan to give each Russian family a hectare of public land to create a Kin Domain and the allowance for them to be organized into eco-villages. Land offered "Thus the idea of Kin’s Domains in this regard is absolutely positive and it is related to the idea of low-rise construction. William H.

Farmers Go Wild by Abby Quillen Going beyond organic, a new generation of farmers is nurturing nature as well as crops. posted Feb 06, 2012 Jack Gray of Winter Green Farm outside of Eugene, Ore., is committed to farming without harming surrounding wildlife and natural ecosystems. “Frogs are an indicator species,” Jack Gray explains, leaning over a small, muddy pond to look for tadpoles. Here on the 170-acre Winter Green Farm, 20 miles west of Eugene, Ore., Gray has raised cattle and grown vegetables and berries for 30 years. It’s a sunny April day, but water pools in the pastures, evidence of the rains this part of Oregon is known for. Gray is in his mid-50s and agile from decades of working outside. They envision a landscape where farms meld into the environment and mimic the natural processes that surround them. Cows graze in a field behind him; wind whispers through a stand of cattails, and two mallards lift off. Gray, his wife, Mary Jo, and two other families co-own Winter Green Farm. The Mountain Lion and the Lamb

Street Orchards for Community Security Permaculture Research Institute - Permaculture Forums, Courses, Information & News © Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com My view of public streets was radically changed when I heard ecovillage designer Max Lindigger tell a story of an insightful walk he took with his grandfather. “Look there,” said his grandfather, pointing to condominiums being built on the once forested slopes above his village in the Swiss Alps. “That’s where we grew and gathered food during the war. The forests were common land, a reserve of community resources. I then looked at my Sonoran desert city of Tucson, Arizona and asked myself, “Where are my community’s forests, our commons? Over 450 native food plants grow wild in the intact areas of the Sonoran Desert.1 The velvet mesquite tree is one of the keystone species producing a reliable crop of diabetes-deterring, naturally sweet, protein and carbohydrate—rich seeds and seedpods in both wet years and drought.2 Thus it used to be a staple of the indigenous people’s diets. Planting community roots The harvest Milling and enjoying mesquite

Grow a 100-Year-Old Self-Sustainable Food Forest in Your Backyard in Just 10 Years Do you dream of a mini-forest in your backyard? What would you need? A minimum of 100 sq. m. plot. Most of the world we live in today was once forest, our natural habitat for millions of years. Now surrounded by cities and agriculture, humans are no longer living in their “natural” habitat, argues a forest-building engineer named Shubhendu Sharma. But we can recreate little chunks of that habitat in just ten years our own backyards, workplaces and public spaces, he explains in the Ted Talk below: Shubhendu Sharma was an industrial engineer for Toyota hired to offset some of the carbon emissions of the company’s factories. His solution was to plant mini forests right next door. Sharma’s forests grow 10 times faster, are 100 times more biodiverse and 30 times more lush than typical reforestation projects. He used his model for manufacturing as many cars as possible per square feet of factory space and applied it to growing trees. “We start with soil. You can follow us on Instagram HERE

Hakka walled village A Hakka walled village is a large multi-family communal living structure that is designed to be easily defensible. This building style is unique to the Hakka people found in southern China (Hakka is "Kè-jiā" 客家 in Mandarin Chinese). Walled villages are typically designed for defensive purposes and consist of one entrance and no windows at the ground level. History[edit] The Hakka were originally immigrants from northern China who settled in the southern provinces. From the 17th century onwards, population pressures drove them more and more into conflict with their neighbours (called punti in Cantonese). Features[edit] An interior view Hakka walled villages can be constructed from brick, stone, or rammed earth, with the last being the most common. The architectural style of Hakka forts is unique in China and around the world. Tu lou[edit] Guangdong[edit] A hakka complex of houses Jiangxi[edit] See also[edit] Notes[edit] References[edit] External links[edit]

The transformative power of Permablitz At the Permaculture Design Course we just finished in Sydney, Adam Grubb got everyone truly inspired about the power of Permablitz. A good permablitz is an valuable opportunity to participate in design, community, digging, growing and learning, all in one day. Following on from Adam’s excellent ‘How to run a Permablitz really well’ talk that he gave during his visit (video of the talk is below), there’s been a few videos come to light that really help understand just why a permablitz is so darn cool. So I thought I’d share them with you… A great timelapse from a November 2011 permablitz in Brunswick, Melbourne: The ‘How to run a Permablitz’ Talk that Adam Grubb gave in Sydney recently: And a great Permablitz at Angel Street Community Garden, Newtown, Sydney, in 2008: A lovely slideshow of a blitz in a small backyard at Reservoir, Melbourne, in 2009 For more info on how and why to run a permablitz, start at

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