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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 10, 2014 19:12:50 GMT -5
I took an Intro to Permaculture course a couple years ago. Been exploring it ever since. Always changing and adapting methods to suit my cold climate. Would love to have my own quarter-section to work on a large / long term scale with it. I'm always pushing the envelope of what can be grown here. Somethings work. Sometimes it takes a couple tries to get it right. Sometimes… you just gotta cut your losses. Deb: Welcome to the forum. Can you tell us more about your permaculture adventures? Anyone else have permaculture stories to share?
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DebTheFarmer
grub
Market Gardener, Heirloom Veg Lover, Novice Permaculturist, Future Vegetable Breeder.
Posts: 70
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Post by DebTheFarmer on Feb 10, 2014 20:17:54 GMT -5
Deb: Welcome to the forum. Can you tell us more about your permaculture adventures? Thanks Joseph Hugelkulture beds are awesome! Every gardener should be utilizing them. They warm up faster in the spring (which is a big bonus for my short-season) and they store water. My strawberries love it! Haven't used them for annual vegetables yet. I think cucumbers, melons and squash would really well on the south side of a mound. We have a lot of clay 6" to 12" below our topsoil (perfect for cob ovens and rock stove benches) so I dig down before piling old logs. I like to think that the logs are soaking up the extra moisture that collects on top of the clay layer. I'm right on the edge of Alberta's Boreal Forest (drive an hour North before you're truly in it) and there's lots of felled poplar in the bush from the tent caterpillar infestation from 20ish years ago. There's quite a bit of material for me to work with. The pieces that were leaning up against trees are still pretty solid and easily moved. Anything sitting on the ground is too decomposed to work with. I let the bugs and fungi keep those ones. I've been watching Geoff Lawton's video series. Really inspired by his swale systems and Ben Falk growing rice in NE USA! Awesome! Our passive-solar greenhouse didn't go up last fall as planned, but it is being built as soon as we can clear the snow away from our building area this March. We're using recycled windows and lining them with bubble wrap in the winter for extra insulation. A rocket stove is being put in to heat it year-round (just to keep around 5C in the dead of winter. I want to try growing cool things not meant for my climate) and a root cellar/cold room is going off the North wall for storage (our basement cold room isn't big enough). I'm lucky enough to have a Journeyman Carpenter for a friend who's doing up the design to make sure it has enough ventilation and won't fall down on us. He does design work for his job so I'm confident in his skills. When I move to our -hopefully- permanent farm in the next year or so I'm starting a food forest. Of course, I've already started tracking down seeds, seedlings, cuttings, etc of the plants I want I'm lucky enough to have a reliable source for wild edibles… high bush cranberry, low bush cranberry, wild blueberry, wild hazelnuts, wild raspberries, buffalo berries, wild roses (for rose hips and petals)… they all already grow in the bush at my parents/sisters/grandmothers farms! So, while I could probably keep Zone5 alive over winter here with some extra work, I haven't experimented with anything over Zone4. There's no permanent cold frames set up yet (I really want to extend our greens season), but I use low tunnels in the garden for melons, peppers and eggplants, and black planter boxes/grow bags for sweet potatoes. Makes a HUGE difference! And there's our compost pile, straw/shavings/manure from our livestock, cover crops, etc that is all pretty standard. My goal for this year is to learn to make/use compost or manure tea for our veggies. And save more seeds. I'm pretty good with beans and corn. I want to expand to tomatoes, peppers, eggplants. The problem is getting them to mature enough in the field for viable seed and enough of them to maintain genetic diversity. One step at a time though
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VicJ
gopher
Posts: 6
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Post by VicJ on Feb 19, 2014 16:58:51 GMT -5
Hugelkultur has been a real boon to me here in Fairbanks...we have short summers and cold soils, and it helps with both. I built one bed a couple seasons ago, and it was so successful that I built another last fall and expect to put in more. The first year I got some 2.5# spuds, which were probably more than twice as big as the biggest I've ever grown. Beans and tomatoes ripened just as well as they do in the bathtubs I usually grow them in, without the issue of so much pathogen buildup in the soil. Now I need to get some locally adapted seed going...no commercial entities are concerned with developing anything for us and we have to settle for stuff from Canada and other parts of the deep south.
I'm interested in a permaculture approach. The blank canvas is a 48 acre wooded hollow that I'd like to transform into a paradise. I just think that there are many possibilities up here that haven't been explored, and I've elected myself to try them.
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Post by nicollas on Feb 20, 2014 4:14:51 GMT -5
What kind of stories you're interested in Joseph ? Can you share if you didnt already what do you think of permaculture, if and how you use it at your farm ? Thanks.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 20, 2014 9:17:05 GMT -5
What kind of stories you're interested in Joseph ? Can you share if you didnt already what do you think of permaculture, if and how you use it at your farm ? Thanks. What works for y'all? What failed? How would y'all do things differently if just starting out? It seems to me like there are different types of permaculture. There's the trademarked variety which is too full of rules and formulas for my liking. There's the religious variety which is too full of idealism for me to fit in well. There's the traditionalist approach of "Nothing new to see here, that's how people have been growing since time immemorial." I fall into the traditionalist camp. Shrubs grow under trees. Forbs and grasses grow under shrubs. Vines grow on trees. Watch what's happening in the garden. If something thrives plant more of it, if something fails don't keep beating yourself up over it. Where appropriate modify the slope of the land for better moisture management. My kitchen garden is a permaculture garden. We started planting it about 30 years ago. I think that it was a mistake to plant lilacs instead of something more useful like hazelnuts. The river alder is way out of it's comfort zone in the desert on a steep slope. Using the lilacs as a trellis for grapes is way clever. I sure love the huge amounts of food and medicine that are produced whether or not I actively care for it. The raspberries never would grow where I planted them. But a volunteer planted itself and is thriving, and has taken over all suitable habitat in the garden. The grapes have likewise replanted themselves far from their original sites: Some as seedlings and some as clones. A year ago I made a video tour of my food forest. The one change I aughta make is to add some bunds/swales, and dump the water from the roof onto the highest point in the garden. That'd make it less dependent on the irrigation system. The cherry tree is hollow, so before long it's likely to break apart during a wind or snowstorm. Mushrooms are the most recent addition to the garden. I've planted 4 species and had harvests from 3 of them so far. There is one more species that I want to plant.
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Post by synergy on Sept 21, 2014 4:05:23 GMT -5
Joseph, I am going to use your idea of setting out the concrete blocks to see if I can encourage the squirrels to fill them so I can steal some from them. I have a very small intensively used 4 acres since we have two families full time and host my parents a bit sheltering their motorhome here in our barn which also hosts everything from show horses to goats to a rabbitry to meat chickens. We raised goats and muscovy ducks, quail, turkey, guinea fowl... some partridge and pheasant and peacocks... in addition to our meat and laying chicken flocks and rabbitry this year. Our barn boasts exercise equipment for a workout in the loft, ample storage and hay storage of course . Planted islands of blueberries in the riding ring, integrated an orchard on the slopes where the fruit and nut trees are protected with pallets from grazers and part of the layout is to accomodate training jumping horses through a chute of jumps lined with fruit trees, that area seperates the two stallion pastures. I was so busy when my kids were young that I planted multiples of grapes, kiwi, figs, raspberry between the house and the barn so I could graze without coming indoors . Then we added multiples of apples, pears, cherries, persimmon, peaches, plums , apricot and nectarine , crab apples, hazelnut, walnuts, chestnuts,mulberry trees and figs and lots of berry bushes from honeyberry to gooseberry to saskatoon berry and my favourite is about 30 blueberry bushes lived despite my horses best efforts to destroy them year after year ( I am sure I have planted over 75 over the years ) . We have had plenty of damage and loss over the years to voles, horses and teenage boys and grandfather serving as well meaning helpers : ) Trees have come down in hurricane force winds and lost one roof off our house one winter to high winds , had a flood or two as well. We had a plethora of edible weeds in our garden we fed the rabbits who in turn gave us manure for all the plantings. three gardens on the go, one is on the south side of a large tractor /bedding/storage barn and we have been salvaging trampoline frames to rig a greenhouse ( extending the season in Canada is a big plus for us) We have incorporated lots of salvaged materials to make things from cold frames and coops made with wood bed frames, benches made of bed head and footers. And we have bee hives . We breed horses and have two other revenue sources off our farm and also have hosted the odd upstart business like my sons summer painting company . We have small starts adding to some solar water heating, but haven't sunk money into solar panels yet . We have a pump house with concrete basins to fill with cold water for storing anything from vats of milk to veggies, tool sheds, workshop, covered parking for a variety of vehicles we pretty much pool and share and we ride share with neighbours too and have a fleet of bikes . Permaculture is how you live and we have 3 generations here off and on , plus tenants, woodstoves, trees planted for coppicing , trees planted to start perimeter hedgerows(and a nursery area of little starts to grow and plant out ) , herbs, food plants . I have started a 50 foot long hugelkulture bed that is 8 feet wide at the base and now almost 4 feet high but I want to make it a higher berm before i plant it as it serves to give privacy and block noise from the road as in true permie fashion we make many things work for more than one function. The work is never ending but I raised my two lads single handedly working on this patch for our livelihood and we are still here and the food production improves each year, I am getting plumper and older but my lads are just about young adults. This winter I will insulate off a segment of the basement as a cool room for canning, I have the shelves partially built . We do a lot of experimenting like rotating the feeding and filling a small bath for ducks out in the orchard and dumping the dirty water each night on the base of a different tree to give it a little fertilizer and water to soak in. Never sprayed in 19 years and I keep learning new ways to use weeds and even to use the ornamentals I have planted. Slowly it is looking like a little farm set in a garden and is a very livable lifestyle . Still lots to do to make it sustainable but that may never end in my lifetime. Alternative energy systems are a big step we have not gotten to yet but I have been pretty much the only adult doing things most of the time over the years and the only breadwinner so I have been tackling things really just a little at a time building up on a shoestring budget. I would say it started as dabbling and is starting to snowball.
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Post by MikeH on Sept 23, 2014 11:02:27 GMT -5
Anyone else have permaculture stories to share? We have a couple of designs using perennial Dutch white clover that are showing a great deal of promise. Part of our property is former cow pasture and might have been in cultivation 40 or 50 years ago. If we disturb the soil, we get a bountiful plenty of thistles, dock, etc. A constant companion are all kinds of grasses, particularly quack grass. Last year as part of our orchard conversion, we planted Dutch white clover on a small berm downhill of the orchard and just downhill of a row of basket willows that we plan to coppice for wood chips for the orchard. We wanted a living mulch that would provide nitrogen to the willows. That was the first design system although clover wasn't the dominant player. We were so impressed with the weed suppressing characteristics of the clover that we lightly rototilled two areas late last year. In both cases this year, the Dutch white clover has overwhelmed the dormant seed bed growth and the grasses that were there. It was a wettish summer so it remains to be seen how the clover will do in a dry summer. In one case we planted comfrey plants into the clover. While the deep comfrey roots mine a lot of micro-nutrients, the plant is a nitrogen feeder. So I run the mower down each side of the comfrey row to cut the clover and release the nitrogen in the roots to the comfrey. It seems to have worked well. The comfrey has no weed competition and the plants have grown tremendously from their very small crowns that were planted in October last year. The other seeding was a rectangular patch. The idea was to plant perennial grains into the clover and have weed suppression and nitrogen available to the grain. Here's a test rye plant. Again the clover overwhelmed the dock, lamb's quarters, etc and grasses. And we've just finished planting another plot. We have no plans for it but we figure that we'll continue to improve the soil by periodic cutting to release nitrogen. As the clover roots die, they'll increase soil organic matter. And honey bees and bumble bees love Dutch white clover flowers. Now if I can just figure out how to harvest Dutch white clover seed, we'd have a completely self-contained, regenerative system.
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Post by synergy on Sept 23, 2014 11:39:29 GMT -5
Could you run a rabbit tractor over the clover area and use rabbit manure to subsequently seed more clover or release the nitrogen ?
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Post by steev on Sept 23, 2014 18:59:18 GMT -5
Or a chicken tractor?
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