Search Results for: label/permaculture

62 results

Roundin’ up the Summer Urban Homesteading Disasters

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Food, Gardening, Mistakes, Vegetable Gardening
16 Comments
...r the ones that sprouted randomly in compacted soil? You guessed it, the ones that grew on their own. Moral: nature knows best when to start seeds and where to plant them than us homo sapiens. Maybe there is something to that permaculture thing . . .  Our Hameau de la Reine This summer the garden generally looked like hell. It thrives during our mild winter and spring then gets baked by the merciless Southern California sun at just about the ti...

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Rainwater Harvesting and Beyond

Mr. Homegrown
rainwater harvesting, Water and Power, Water Conservation
4 Comments
..., instead of uselessly sending it down the gutter. For those of you in Southern California, Lancaster will be delivering a free talk at the Santa Monica Public Library Monday September 15th at 6:30 p.m. More info via Westside Permaculture Gatherings. If you’re not in SoCal, you can get more information about Lancaster’s work and order a copy of one of his books on his website, www.harvestingrainwater.com....

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Beads and Roman Sandals Won’t Be Seen

Mr. Homegrown
Permaculture
RLeave a comment
...oncrete spiral functions as a path to pick the herbs which include thyme, sage, chives, garic chives, tarragon, and chamomile. Our design is a modification of the permacultural herb spiral which is essentially a mound. In the permaculture version the water hungry plants are placed at the bottom of the mound and the dry plants at the top, the idea being that the water collects towards the bottom of the mound shaped spiral. We didn’t do the m...

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Mistakes we have made . . .

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Permaculture, Thoughtstylings
13 Comments
...rred Rocks. If I had it do do all over again, I’d get four Barred Rocks. They’re dependable layers and don’t make much of a fuss. 3. Planting stuff that doesn’t grow in our Mediterranean climate As our permaculture friend David Khan likes to say, “work makes work.” Plants that need lots of tending and attention, nine times out of ten, end up unhappy. When they croak it leads to a downward spiral of disappointme...

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Grow the Soil

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
3 Comments
...ompost or manure, newspaper to hold in moisture, and a thick application of mulch consisting of hay, stable bedding, or other bulk materials. Full instructions here via Agroforestry.net. See Toby Hemenway’s introductory permaculture guide Gaia’s Garden for a similar sheet mulching technique. 2. Cover Crop An alternate soil building method would have been to simply give the beds a rest for a season and plant a nutrient-building and soi...

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How To Design a Garden Step IV: Clues to Care

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
6 Comments
.... If you can’t hide your compost pile around back, consider building a screen around it. So why not use clues to care to make native and edible landscaping more appealing to the general public? The central principles of permaculture according to David Holmgren, are “care for the earth, care for people and fair share.” I believe that the “care for people” portion of those three ethics should include our aesthetic need...

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Post Petroleum Lecture – a reminder

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
RLeave a comment
...o to www.sustainablehabitats.org Bates will be speaking at the Audubon Center at Debs Park on Saturday March 24th as part of the 2007 Sustainable Habitats Lecture Series. Here’s the announcement again: Albert Bates is a permaculture and appropriate technology instructor at the Eco village Training Center at The Farm community in Summertown, Tennessee, inventor of solar cars, pedal flour sifters and cylindrical tofu presses, and author of el...

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The Sami Way

Mr. Homegrown
Permaculture
2 Comments
...eak for themselves (though you won’t be able to taste the delicious reindeer meat Kuhmunen served). A wooden form of the traditional circular Sami hut. Kuhmunen speaking eloquently about what can only be called arctic permaculture, life in touch with the cycles of life and the importance of context specific design. And speaking of context, the smoke of the fire rising up through a hole in the roof. The dirt floor is insulated with a laye...

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Resources

...’re missing some classic titles here, but these books are on our shelves and we like them.) Backyard Medicine Herbal Antibiotics Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West Healing with Medicinal Plants of the West Permaculture Sustainable Habitats Plants for a Future Database The books of Masanobu Fukuoka  Rocket Stoves Rocket Mass Heaters by Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson Paul Wheaton article Larry Winiarski’s Rocket Stov...

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How To Design a Garden Step II: Using Google Earth to Draw Up a Plan

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
5 Comments
...nd use them to map out: your goals existing conditions such as trees and buildings future plantings where water flows when it rains sun and shade problem areas topography future paths (more on this in tomorrow’s post) permaculture zones For a more accurate and sizable plan you can also use Google’s free 3D modeling program SketchUp. The drawback with SketchUp is that it requires a couple of evenings to learn. If only we had taken...

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