Permaculture, Regrarians, etc. 2017

[Amiga]

Hi, all, let's see what develops on this thread. We have some interest, training and experience with Permaculture among members.

I included regrarian topics (regenerative agrarian) since it's so closely related to Permaculture.

I earned my Permaculture Design Certificate from Geoff Lawton in 2014. Online course. This makes me no better than anyone! It did really cement much of my prior education and experience into a better whole, though, Filled in some gaps, updated some knowledge, confirmed some hunches.

I have been doing permie kinds of things for nearly twenty years now. Redoing the design for my little place this year. And starting to permify (making up words now) the inside of my house.

Not sure if folks want a post on definitions. They exist, and there are some variations on the theme. I am guessing that many members are well on their way to living the Permaculture life. I don't care much what we call it, if we call it anything. It's living a life that is sensible, that keeps improving the land, improving the abundant yield, improving our health and human connections as well.

 

[freemotion]

I'm particularly interested in heavy-mulch permanent-bed gardening. We have 1/5 acre veggie garden done with traditional rototilling and it's a weedy disaster every year. Kind of amazing to pull any produce out of that garden when the weeds are waist-high!

I am trying to figure this out on small scale before trying to convert DH. I have some small garden beds near the house to play with. Strawberries, perennial onion, garlic in them. My biggest problem is keeping the chickens out. (Hah!)

I've done this for 4 years now. I will never go back! I just had a detailed soil test done on my gardens and another one done on my pastures. Keep in mind that my gardens were made in the middle of my pastures when I tell you that the soil test for the gardens came out pretty close to perfect and I've not really added much for amendments over the years. Lots of compost for my animals and lots of ramial wood chips. The pastures were so out of balance that the guy who did the test ask the lab to retest the samples.

My weeding time dropped dramatically in the first year. What weeds there are pull out very easily. I do a little extra weeding in the spring when things are growing rapidly (a few hours in the first month of spring along with refreshing some mulch) but then I can keep a quarter acre weeded in about an hour a month for the rest of the season.

This is important because the yield is so much higher. For example, I put in 25 feet of raspberries a few years ago. I got them from a farmer friend next door. I dug up some shoots in the spring. That first harvest I picked both my raspberries and his because they were new and he wasn't selling them and would tell me occasionally that I could pick for the day. I literally got four times the amount of berries from my row compared to his. The difference was that I made a hugelculture row with deadfall logs and lots of compost and then after the raspberries were planted I mulched it heavily with ramial wood chips.

 

[Amiga]

Food, fuel, medicine, fiber. Some basic needs.

Coppice and pollard are two methods for yielding fuel. Rather than cutting down huge trees with (nonexistent) chainsaws, my ancestors cut four inch saplings a few inches above the soil, or at breast height.

The former is coppice, the latter is pollard.

Then they let the branches grow to the size needed, for baskets, handles, posts, polls, or firewood....

There were entire groves of these coppiced trees. The word copse comes from this practice. And the old song, Down By The Sally Gardens refers to the Sally, or coppiced willow,that is so useful.

Coppicing helps trees stay young, in a way. There are ancient coppiced trees alive today.

Gonna also mention pleaching, another practice of my ancestors. It is a skill of bending branches and tying them together so that the branches form a living bond, even sharing water and nutrients, even between separate shrubs or trees.

But I digress...

 

[lcertuche]

And then there are the berries that make a fabulous dye for light- colored natural fiber, just add vinegar.

Soak fabric in vinegar in a jar in the sun for a day.
Soak fabric in poke berries and vinegar in the sun for four days.
Hang to dry.
Rinse in cold water till it runs clean.

I still remember how my sister and I painted my 2 year old brother with poke berries. From the top of his head to his toes. I will never forget how mad Mama was. My sister was 4 and I was 5 at the time. Even his hair was colored. DB was a lovely maroon color for a few days.

 

[Denim Deb]

I'm attempting a BTE / low-profile hugelkulture to make new soil over blacktop. DH thinks I'm completely crazy! I've been putting layers of dry leaves, wet grass clippings, sticks from pruning, and straw sheep bedding. Just started it this spring, so I have a long wait-and-see ahead.

I don't always have the time to clean out my truck bed after getting wood, so I'll have all kinds of bark, small pieces of wood, etc. in there. Then I'll go to the hay auction and get hay and not clean it out. By the end of the summer, I normally have hay growing in the bed of my pickup. You might be surprised by how soon you'll be able to grow stuff on there.

 

[Amiga]

@Beekissed - I can give a try for definitions... Permaculture is a design discipline based on science and ethics. Three primary goals are meeting people's basic needs, improving the health of the ecosystem, and redistrbuting surplus (sharing, expanding the system, etc,). Many different elements and methods can be used to accomplish these goals, also called ethics.

 

[Amiga]

This year we are making a little extra push to establish more perennial vegetables and small fruit trees. An increasing need we have is to reduce effort for producing food. Somwe now have wine cap mushrooms, sea kale, Korean celery, mintroot, and Turkish rocket in additin to kiwi, raspberries, blackberries, and other berries. We grow garlic - takes a few days' labor a year! I use loads of mulch (used duck bedding) and it is a blessing.

Regenerative agriculture is a combination of using land for production of food, in such a way that the land gets healthier and healthier from the methods used.

 

[freemotion]

Right now I have apples, pears, raspberries, grapes, gooseberries, currants, peaches, strawberries, plums, rhubarb, spearmint, peppermint, scallions, walking onions, potatoes, parsnips, radishes, oregano, wormwood, comfrey, lemon balm, catnip, feverfew, chives, black walnuts, goji berries, sage, leaf lettuce, black cherries, wine cap mushrooms, and shiitake mushrooms although those need to be refreshed. Yes, a few of those are annuals but I'm counting them as permaculture because they come back every year by design. There are probably more, but that's what I could think of by doing a walking tour in my head.

I have schizandra berries and lingonberries on order. I regularly forage for elderberries, Autumn berries, and grapes.

All of the above are planted in no-till methods and come back every year without any work other than some occasional thinning. All of my garden are now no till and mulched heavily with wood chips.

I think most if not all of that qualifies as permaculture with the exception of the main vegetable garden that is planted each year.

 

[Amiga]

And then there are the berries that make a fabulous dye for light- colored natural fiber, just add vinegar.

Soak fabric in vinegar in a jar in the sun for a day.
Soak fabric in poke berries and vinegar in the sun for four days.
Hang to dry.
Rinse in cold water till it runs clean.

 

[freemotion]

One of the Permaculture principles is that each element - each part of the system - has more than one role. Ducks provide manure, eggs, meat (for some), eat slugs, snails, and weeds.

Another principle is that more than one element does the same job. Ducks eat weeds, I eat some, and the compost eats some.

A principle that is so vital and for many so challenging (I know we will get there), is that there is no waste. Everything coming out of an element provides something to other elements.

Based on this definition, my entire property and life qualifies as permaculture! Yay! I thought it was more about the word "permanent," as in not replanting, etc., and setting up companion planting to mimic the wild. I'm probably combining hugelculture with permaculture, though, since I was doing the reading for both around the same time.

The above definition simply describes the way my grandparents lived and how I strive to live. Joel Salatin does this successfully for a living and writes and lectures and teaches worldwide.