Permaculture at Home

[Gregg]

Awakenedsoul and I started a conversation in a different thread that I thought was cool, but way off topic there. I copied the beginnings here hoping some others have experience with developing a permaculture that they might share.

I know what you mean, Gregg. I have a 567 square foot cottage on a 7,400 square foot plot of land. This year I really applied myself to growing food. It's been exciting and very rewarding. I've always had fruit trees, and I mulch and compost the land every year. Once you get an organic system in place, it's very healthy. I see such an ecosystem back there now. Lizards everywhere, tons of birds, worms in the soil, and even a pair of falcons in my poplar tree. There are plenty of fresh vegetalbes every day. My diet is a bit repetitious, but it's worth it. I have enough to share with my neighbors, too.

I plan to invest in more fruit trees, vegetable seeds, and limit my consumption of meat and chicken. If I had to, I could raise chickens for food, but I don't like to butcher.

Wow awakenedsoul, you already have going what I'm aspiring to. We just bought a 874 sq.ft. house on a 7,370 sq.ft. lot. Looking at my plan right now. Most of the work right now is on the house so we can move in by the end of the year, but we're going to get things rolling with the big plants this fall. The plan has 3 dwarf fruit trees along with all the shade trees, some for privacy & wind screening and several varities of big bushes, berries and brambles. A friend is a landscape architect so he's helping us out. I gave him my copy of Gaia's Garden to get him into the permaculture mode (with only moderate success). We're planning a chicken coop with 6 or 8 laying hens. We love eggs! We'll see how it goes down the road when they reach the end of their laying days...

That's great, Gregg! I find this size lot is ideal. It's a challenge to keep the weeds down sometimes, but straw mulching helps. Another thing I wish I'd done was to plant all standard size fruit trees from the beginning. My dwarfs only give me a few pieces of fruit a year. I read on Dave Wilson's website that he recommends keeping standard trees trimmed to 10 feet high. I do it this way now, and my trees are loaded with fruit. They also have wide root systems, so I don't have the weeding problem. I'm still trying to work it out so I have things fruiting each month, if possible. I hope to grow a lot more melons next year.
With all those chickens, you'll have plenty of manure for your compost. I'm also interested in putting in more tropical fruit trees: cherimoya, guava, lychee, etc...The longer I garden, the more I choose food that I love. Fruit trees take a while, but once they take off, it's really exciting and rewarding! Keep me posted!
I have a 15 year old chicken who still lays eggs! My neighbor gave her to me...

Interesting idea about pruning the full size fruit trees. Some of the dwarf trees seem to do pretty well around here, but I will definitely check out Dave Wilson's site. The USDA bumped us up two zones recently, but we're still a long way from tropical. I'll trade you apples and walnuts for guava and lychee!

When I was a kid our garden was about an acre, maybe a little more. Space wasn't an issue. We almost never had to weed because my Dad was a firm believer in DEEP mulch. Once everything got going he would spread a layer of compost then a good 6" of straw. It worked great. The straw blocked the sunlight to the soil, kept it cooler and drastically slowed evaporation in addition to stunting any weeds that were trying to get started. At the end of the year the straw just becomes that much more organic matter for the soil. It does take more nitrogen to break down straw so it helps to rotate legumes or some other nitrogen fixing crop around the garden from season to season.

[Gregg]

Forgot to add... You have a 15 year old hen that still lays??? OMG! I didn't even know chickens could live that long! Although knowing DW I suspect our chickens will have a shot at it because they will be coddled at every opportunity.

[catherine]

Great topic! I am in the middle of an 11-week permaculture class, and it has been so much fun, and so eye-opening! I've always "felt" the permaculture principles in my bones, but had virtually NO hands-on experience. DH and I have sporadically planted our little veggie garden with the basic tomatoes, cucumbers, and herbs, but that's about it.

However, I've always felt that our lives are so inefficient from the point-of-view of avoiding plugging into nature's rhythms. Most of what we do makes no sense at all! So, now, I'm very motivated to get that hands-on experience. I've been reading Gaia's Garden with a highlighter, reading every line very carefully. I've also got Introduction to Permaculture, and a few other books my instructor recommended.

Our final class project is coming up with a permaculture design for a specific site. A lot of projects will be focused on urban needs, as the class is in NYC, but I'm definitely taking advantage of designing my own suburban permaculture plot. I'm planning on relocating the veggie garden based on sun exposure, "encouraging" a depression in my back yard to be a small pond or a rain garden (haven't decided which), cutting down on lawn with more garden, ground cover and stone/mulch pathways, and putting an arbor over our patio. For the front yard, I'm thinking of training Virginia creeper on the second story exterior front, where the paint tends to chip and peel much faster than the rest of the house because of the southern exposure. I'm also considering maybe a swale to catch the run-off into the street and encourage infiltration.

I love hearing all the ideas from you more experienced folks!

[pinkytoe]

I loved Gaia's Garden and also Earth User's Guide (Morrow) to understand basic principles. It just all feels like the right thing to do - kind of like simple living. I have little projects but nothing on a grand scale since I seem to have several obstacles: very long sustained hot climate, drought conditions, neighbors on either side whose lawns look like golf courses (they don't like the natural look) and most importantly lack of time to figure all this out. I am on 12000sf lot with a slight slope front to back with lots of large trees (oaks and pecans mostly) therefore too much shade to grow much food. The only fruit trees I have any luck with are pomegranates, loquats and figs. I am trying to leave several areas completely wild and in those I have cleared out invasives and introduced some native species. I do notice that my yard has far more birds than those around me so I guess I am on the right track there. So much to learn...

[puglogic]

Great thread! We're sort of permaculture-in-progress here. We bought a house with a 22000sf (gentle) south-sloping lot specifically with the intent of turning it into a permaculture paradise. I'm using a lot of techniques from Gaia's Garden, including building swales to catch water (we're arid), stone, sheet composting, companion planting and "guilds," and a lot more. I wish I had unlimited funds and time, because I could literally do this all day every day and be perfectly content! Among my dreams:

--year-round greenhouse a la Penn & Cord Parmenter: http://pennandcordsgarden.weebly.com/greenhouses.html
--orchard with resilient fruit trees for our climate
--water conservation through swales, hugelkultur, and catchment devices
--chickens (of course!)
--a medicine garden, growing all the things I currently take instead of manufactured pharmaceuticals
--things grown specifically for biomass and composting, like comfrey
etc etc etc

Our biggest challenges are the climate (late/early frosts, hail damage, sustained heat/drought), water, and wildlife. Gaia's Garden talks about keeping out wildlife with special hedges and planting, but that doesn't really work on a hungry 1000-pound elk bull or a bear. Still scratching our heads over that one.

One day at a time...... LOL

[peggy]

Oooo...a topic after my own heart! I am trying to establish a food forest, as I have the room. I do have a garden for tomatoes and some herbs and such, but I must confess I'm not really into 'vegetable' gardening as I can get really super veg's at the farmers market. But, I am interested in a food forest! And the food forest does provide veg's! So far I have plums (4, 2 varieties, want more) pears (7, 4 varieties) thorn-less blackberries (about 15 ft row), 1 fuju persimmon, 2 chestnuts, 1 apple, 1 grape, 2 redbud, a dozen huge shag-bark hickory, sasafrass, white oak, daylilies, cattails, mint, fish (bluegill, catfish, bass, crappie).

I want to plant more apples, little leaf linden, figs, hazelnuts, new jersey tea, mulberry, more grapes, english walnut...and for the understory, comfrey, amaranth, more daylilies, clover, other herbs, gooseberries (maybe)

I love this topic! I haven't read Gaia's Garden. I guess I need to check that out!

[Gregg]

Oh yea pug, I could also do this 24/7. When every one idea leads to ten more its awfully hard to take a break for things like work or food or sleep.

Water is a big deal in our design right now. That's mostly becuase our project is a blank slate, a sloping yard full of weeds and dead grass. It is also because we happen to be in a drought that is now classified as right on the borderline between 'extreme' and 'exceptional'. I lived through a few of those when I was growing up and remember full well how my Dad only watered our garden 1x or 2x a week where everyone else watered daily. Like I said above he used a THICK layer of mulch over the whole thing. That was the difference. We are using a combination of rainwater catchment, grey water, a swale, a network of trenches that are filled with gravel then buried into which rain and grey water will flow, heavy mulch, shade over a good part of the yard, etc. Our plant selections are native and/or drought tollerant to further reduce the need for supplemental water. The trenches will help insure some water is available for the trees and deep rooted shrubs.

As much as possible we're also using plants that attract bees, butterflies and humming birds. We figure that the other birds will come along for the ride, but will use a feeder or two as insurance. We will eventually have a water feature that will include a large rock shelf with very shallow water flowing over it that should be a big hit in the bird community. A variety of trees for shelter should round it out for the birds.

Does anyone have any advice on how to manage pests in your fruit trees? Other than drawing in as many birds as you can, that is. Around here its pretty standard issue to just spray the heck out of them. Kill everything that crawls and most that fly. Obviously we're not going to go that route and we may not even have a problem, but that is the one aspect of orcharding that I'm apprehensive about.

[peggy]

Try to pick fruits that can withstand the various buggies and diseases you have there. Then don't worry if some fruits get eaten. It happens. Just remember, one for the bugs, one for the birds, and two for you.
This is why I don't have blueberries or peaches. Both of those, here, need such special treatment, I simply refuse to grow anything that needs to be babied. I don't want anything that I have to spray every week for months on end, or constantly feed to change the acidity of my soil for a particular micro climate. I have a particular soil and a particular climate. Things must deal with it!

[peggy]

Have you all seen this? This is just about the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. Talk about permaculture! this system is designed to be completely self sufficient/ sustaining, even with power!

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/02...in-the-desert/

[awakenedsoul]

Thanks for starting a new thread, Gregg. Sorry I got off topic. I liked hearing about your Dad's thick mulch. I've been ordering straw mulch for the last 15 years, and I love it. I was keeping it at a $100.00 budget a year, but I think this year I'll splurge and make it thincker. I've got some stubborn Bermuda grass, and that would suffocate it. It also helps when we have heavy rains. My neighbors have all kinds of mud problems, and my straw mulch just soaks it up like a sponge!

The birds really help a lot. I have: hummingbirds, robins, woodpeckers, falcons. owls, sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, and gold finches. I even once saw a roadrunner in my back orchard! I have lots of bees and butterflies. They love the wild sunflowers. I'm going to plant a couple more citrus trees in my front yard. In the old days, all the homes in the Valley had orange trees growing in the front yards. They were beautiful!

Dave Wilson's trees have been a cut above for me. I read that all the professional fruit growers Los Angeles buy from him. I like his ideas about planting fruit trees closer together. I'm starting to add berries to my edible landscaping, and they grow like weeds here!