Amerindian Magic, Japanese Genius, and Mother Nature.

I might have read about permaculture years ago, I'm not sure, what I do know is that permaculture is the clarity of many concepts that have been knocking on the inside of my skull for about a decade.

One difference between man and nature, is that man likes order, and nature likes chaos. But upon examining 'natures' chaos, one finds order. Much as we influence our environment to suit ourselves, could it be possible that other creatures, and even plants, microbes and fungi do the same? When we examine nature we will find a complex network of interactions functioning with efficiencies human engineers and accountants dream of.

The real difference between man and nature is our lack of efficiencies and our lack of ability to alter things in a manner symbiotic to our environment. We forget we have 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells in our body, that the mitochondria we house are ancestors to one of the first known symbiogenesis events. Mitochondria have survived over geological time spans and are now present in virtually all of life.

To ensure our survival, we need to become symbionts with our environment.

Symbiosis is a better recipe for success than doing it alone. Plants house mitochondria and chloroplasts, they utilise bacteria, algae, fungi, insects and animals to their own ends and, with the exception of various extremophile communities, support the lives of everything else on the planet.

There is much that man can learn from plants. Another difference between man and nature is our intellect. We 'think therefore we think we know what we are doing'.

If plants are the providers for all of life, we should be planting them, and learning to help them, not altering them genetically, chopping them down and turning them into chriscoes catalogues.

Symbiosis, and the understanding of plant symbiosis, can really help a lazy gardener do a good job of less work in the future. It's armchair gardening once again, pull up a book or a webpage, and learn about bugs and microbes and animals and plants. Meanwhile, the garden grows and teaches you things, I guess I always had trouble observing properly till I better understood the community nature of nature, probably still miss the obvious daily.

When we know the multiple functions of some of the things in our garden and their interactions with each other we begin to get an idea of how to go about being a steward, rather than slave, to the land.

Pretty baked, didn't talk about gardening at all, another time hehe.

More Midnight Rambling.

More Midnight Rambling.

Making a lot of compost out of free materials to put on horrid compacted land, tilling it once, this was a lot better than any of my previous methods for getting food out of the garden.

Permaculture provides all new insights into laziness - but also points out how very little I know!

Farm implements for permaculture.

Compacted soils are cut with special implements to get long rooted perrenial grass seed and water to new depths, after the grass shoots a while it is then mown, mulched, and recut. The second cut goes deeper, and perhaps the soil needs a third. A thin disc cuts initially with a blade that follows creating a furrow underground. The soil retains much more moisture, roots are invading 5 or more times the depth and the land becomes enriched. It is a non invasive process adding seed and water yet barely lifiting any soil from the existing turf allowing existing pasture to grow on as well. A scientist has made a device for making impressions in the dustbowl surface that trap seed and nutrient particles like poo etc and when it rains it retains 14 x the water there. This guy is rehabilitating prairie in a one step, one off process.

Back home without the farm implements I look at my compact clay and wonder if it is possible to make a hand implement to cut some contour furrows in the land before mulching over the top. I asses how the water flows on the land, and how I can keep some of it there to help my gardens.

I've started some contoured beds, with paths cut deeper than the topsoil providing roomy porous garden rows with more compacted water holding furrows (paths) between to slow water runoff and let it soak slowly in the land. Between furrows is of course the raised beds with lots of plants to use the water and mulch to keep it in. The contours follow the land, so if the rain runs off in one direction, the contours are perpendicular to that, and follow the curves of the slope effectively slowing the waters movement over the land. One furrow ends and a small rise is there leading to the next down the slope, which then cuts across the land... so any overflow goes into the next furrow, across, then to the next... This way the beds will not flood and plants etc will not be washed away in the event of torrential rain but everything gets loads of water.

Out front is a strip of land that gets no water as rain just never comes in that way. I found the bath outlet conveniently close. By rigging the bath and shower water to flow onto this strip it becomes viable without having to schlep water out there and it recycles some greywater. Likewise the laundry water. It now waters a strip that has strawberries, guavas, tree tomatoes, tomatoes, basil, peppers, flowers and more emerging in it.

Set and forget. I really like this permaculture thinking. The house roof, well, I'd love to put it to use. But it requires more permanent measures than the landlord would tolerate as the pipes are continuous. Got guttering for the greenhouse roof, 1000 litre tank and overflow into the garden furrow system.

So I'm still building soil on top of crap. But now I'm mounding it to contour (more work) to keep the water on the land (less work, less water rates), and create wee havens for plants veg and soil by adding plant variety and mulch mulch mulch. Mulch is easier than composting even. I like mulch. It's slow permanent composting processes appeal to me in a no till environment. Not tilling, and adding back everything to the soil, is building topsoil. Some spots of the yard, having been treated with the compost heap method, and are now furrowed and mulched, and look positively glowing with health.

Far cry from everything dead and dying, with every pest imaginable, which was my first garden here.

Other spots will be experimental. Can I throw old carpet down, cut holes and plant potatoes in it, add a mulch for the potatoes to grow in, and get a spud crop no till while loosening the soil underneath? - worth a try.

I love dock weeds! They grow so much leaf matter when they get big I tear it all off for mulch and they're back in a week.

Terra Preta really excited me the first time I saw it. It still does. I searched around a bit and found out about the site that had needed no inputs for 40 years continuous cropping. This is the dream isn't it, this is what every farmer wants, this is what the planet needs. No fertiliser, max outputs, carbon sequestering soil building, just f'n brilliant!

My humble fumblings with charcoal began in pots and has progressed to a bed with 16 cubic feet of soil in it and 5% approximately char. This is minimal but it seems very effective. Over several years of treating this soil with all manner of organic ingredients it hasn't needed any inputs for 2 entire grows (it's got 4 weeks to go on the second but those girls lack for nothing cept a real sun). I'm quietly confident I wont need anything on the third run either, and hopefully it'll just carry on, me adding mulch, and the soil and all it hosts doing the work.

It's so simple I stumbled past it and around it as it stared me in the face. Build a yard of soil like my bed, it cost me nothing (much). If I had a yard of that stuff, my garden would be off the charts.

To build the soil in that bed... over time it got allsorts.

I used clay (plenty of that around), char (from my tree prunings), minerals (rockdusts scrounged and found), pumice (cheap here, but more char would be a multifaceted replacement for this as it's for porosity and drainage), lots of compost and castings (free) teas (tiny bits of spendy stuff like good molasses fulvic acid and liquid kelp), and dolomite, and blood and bone. 200 ml EJ bloom over the 3 years. 100 ml ish EJ microblast, Meta K and grow. No longer using these.

So... Not a lot of inputs that cost anything and could avoid all those costs with a bit of thinking. I loaded the soil up first run and then kept using less and less addbacks as I went. I think a higher percentage of char would bring soil to a point of not needing nutes faster, or make it a more permanent feature of the soil eg: longer till it does need anything, or both.

Slash and char, mulch the small stuff, char the big stuff, scrounge up mulch and compost from the weeds and trees and neighbours etc, feed the worms and make teas. Plant and then plant myself in a deckchair. For 40 years one might hope, 40 years... and counting.

Couple of questions I've asked over the years.

This Terra Preta patch that's kept on keeping on growing crops for forty plus yrs, how does it work?

There's plenty of research on this but the answer remains unclear to my knowledge.

Nature itself provides abundance without the need for inputs. Nitrogen, carbon, water and phosphorus all cycle through the ecosystem and as the litter of pioneer plant species is lain down and soil is built more and more biomass is supported. This in turn provides more microhabitats for more species - diversity is enriched as well.

Terra Preta soils sidetrack the time scale required for nature to build a large reservoir of phosphate, nitrogen, carbon and organic matter in a disturbed environment.

After all that, how does this soil just keep going?

Plants continue to fix atmospheric carbon and shed roots in the soil increasing soil carbon, microbes cycle nitrogenous matter in and out of the system also from an atmospheric (one might say infinite) source. Humus creation aided by the chars high CEC and the added organic matter leads to bound phosphate keeping it local - this is then absorbed and delivered to plants via fungi and the excretions of other organisms. Insects and animals also carry nutients into and out of the system. Left alone the biomass will actually increase - to a point. Crop from it and there will be a sustainable amount the soil can just continue to produce where the total soil mass and biomass remains relatively the same. Will this soil they keep cropping go indefinately, no. The char will degrade eventually. See below.

Potassium? It is not volatilised till temps of 700 - 800 C so will be present in char if it is in the initial materials used. S starts to go at 375, keep the temps down. THe N starts going over 200 degrees hence the need to re-amend the char with it. Interestingly, char increases nitrogen fixation in the end, makes up for it's own shortcoming. Micronutrients? If you are scrounging and composting everything you can get your hands on you shouldn't have any need for these. To be sure compost some seaweed and get some rockdust.

The locals from some Terra Preta sites sell the soil, and it regrows at 1 cm a year. How does this happen?

My best guess is worms. Worms proliferate with charcoal in the ground. Darwin observed worms build a soil up disproving that rocks in an area were sinking - which was one train of thought at the time... It was the worms building the soil up making it appear the rocks (and ruins he found buried) were sinking. He found they could build up pasture at the rate of 1 cm per year. This was when the world was free of chemical ferts pesticides fungicides etc ad nauseum.

How long will the char remain in the soil?

Estimates from dating global char soils range between a few centuries to close on two thousand years according to climate, particle size, organisms present, etc.

A small window

fista, do you have a pic of the weed you were referring to in post 20?

No, but I'll put it on the list for next time I borrow a camera. It's probably common as muck I never did learn many 'weeds' till recently.

Some of post 24 is inaccurate, too busy to figure it out now but will be getting edited.

WATER - the limiting factor in nearly every outdoor garden is water. Keeping water on my section, which is a reasonably steep clay capped ex rubbish tip, was not so easy. I just found out it used to be a tip. after 8 years residence here struggling with the soil...

At almost any given point in the section I could dig down to only 4 or more inches and encouter dry dusty soil or impermeable clay. Action was called for.

Swales are a means of keeping water on your land. At first I thought I could not use this technology on such a small section but I was wrong once again. By cutting into the hill on the high side and mounding the dirt (not compacting it) on the low side you create a reservoir for water that will only go one way - soaking into your land.


How I made my swales using handtools and oldschool technology.

A swale should be made level and running with the contour of your land. What this means is that a swale runs along the hill, not up and down it. First you pick out on the landscape a series of areas where you would like a) garden beds and b) paths.

The paths are where your swales go.

1. Make a bunch of stakes and peg them about 1 metre apart along where the top edge of your swale will go.

2. Get a clear hose at least as long as the path you are making. I used an ordinary hose and fixed clear pieces to the end. You need to get ALL the bubbles out of this hose when you fill it with water. One end gets fixed on the stake on one end of the swale the other on the other end's stake. The water in the clear pieces will settle and you then have a level.

3. Measure the distance to the ground from the water level on both stakes. Subtract the distance of lowest level from the highest level. That is how much you need to dig down on the stake with the lowest level to make the ground level.

4. Repeat steps two and three along your line of stakes till you have cut a divot out from each base giving you a clear indication of how much to dig out to get a level trench.

5. Join the divots up into one continuous spade width trench placing all earth on the lower side of the swale.

6. Cut another spade width out, to make a path width.

7. Angle the top edge of the swale so it does not erode easily, around a 45 degree angle, cut the spare earth away from this face, deposit on other face. Cut down so you are about two-three inches below the level of the trench on the high side.

8. Coming from the low side, shave dirt in at around 30 degrees to meet the cut you made on the high side in step 7. This leaves an angular trench with a 45 high side and a 30 degree low side

9. Run water into the swale. Check and mark high points by using a stick and testing the depth along the length of the swale. Let it drain, cut out the high points, then stomp it down (very muddy) as hard as you can along the length, then run water in it again, and repeat.

10. Put gravel in the swale and turn it into a path.

11. Repeat on the next level down. The top swale will drain from a point once it is filled into the second swale, and so forth. The trick is to fill the top one and then the overflow goes to the next.

Never line your swale overflows up in a single line - the rain will work out the path of least resistance and turn the series into one stream. alternate your outflows.

I've rigged up the greenhouse guttering so the rain goes into a gravel filled container then flows out into the swale system. One more swale to build now I'm extremely happy with my efforts. Half of the houses rainwater can be redirected into this system too - the next job.

Some swale videos might be found on youtube for a bit of a practical overview before taking on the task. It's well worth the effort to get this job done, and get it done right.

nice tutorial fista. you can also use an A-frame level to make the swale level. it also works for terraces and keeping drainage channels shallow so water doesn't rush too fast.

like this guy
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3241/2970650878_35eca3e210.jpg?v=0

and these guys

http://ip.cals.cornell.edu/courses/...p/photos_02/herforth/a-frame_yamaranguila.jpg

How do they work?

gravity always points down. as long as your line is centered its leveled.

http://www.askthebuilder.com/B126_Make_a_Simple_A_-_Frame_Level.shtml

Aaaah! So simple and elegant, you can make a big one, a small one, perhaps even an adjustable one (move onto a known level piece and widen/narrow A frame and get centre), all from sticks and string. Genius.

Gotta love gravity.

On the overflow from swale to swale. I set up the first one today and found a diagonal flow worked better. The flow was not as fast diagonally so less erosion and it flows into the next swale along the swale instead of against the side. I will make the overflow twice the size I need for expected flow rate and fill it with scoria (50% displacement).

It is just a narrow diagonal cut in the ground that runs at an angle (45 or 135 degrees) between the two swales. The exit from the top swale is very gentle and packed with gravel to stop erosion deepening it.

yup i have 3, one big, one real big and one regular. makes terracing/swales easy as pie.

i like the scoria in the overflows to keep the water speed down.

They're neat all right. I made one today for the third swale but it'll take a back seat for a few days while I get aquaponic and chicken stuff sorted.

I've realised I'm going about the greenhouse conversion backwards. I was going to build a coop and runs outside the back of the greenhouse meanwhile schlepping clay out and dirt compost etc into the greenhouse to get 2/3rds of it running as tropical garden.

It's just occured to me I can house the chickens in the greenhouse over summer with a big run out front of it just as easily. I just put a second skin on the roof out there and it's rather pleasant of an evening. They'll have a fan in the day and open access to lots of outdoor area and shade. Having chickens living in there summer nights will enrich it no doubt. So now I'd really value your thoughts:

The soil in there is hardpacked clay. The beds will only raise 6 inches above the present surface. I planned to cut out 4 inches and cart it out then compost lots of stuff in there to make soil. Now I'm thinking I might get away with just cutting grooves in and wetting the soil and adding EM and then lots of straw and compost and food scraps and a bunch of chickens to turn it all over for me. There's about 10m2 garden space they'll have to do their chickeny things in there and around 150 m2 outside.

What would you do as in how would you set it up so the end result is a great soil to grow things in? I'm a chicken noob. How long should i let them live in there before it might get a bit rich. It'll be 8 bantams or 4 orpingtons or largish type birds most likely. I'll do all feeding on the greenhouse site but they will of course graze outdoors. I can access wood mulch, straw, good rich seeded hay, char, oystershell, garden and kitchen scraps, various seeds like sunflower and flax, fishy treats if they're allowed? Let them make a big mess but keep adding EM and fresh hay or straw. Seeds don't bother me, chickens will eat them and seedlings and when they've moved on to a coop and new runs mulch will suppress the stragglers left behind. Will they eat a bit of seaweed?

i wouldnt fill the beds all at once if you want to do the chicken thing. i would..

- get the bed walls ready( stable and strong)
- loosen the soil beneath if possible
- add a pile of scraps, leaves, veggies, weeds( not seeded) and so on in the center. but once again dont fill it.
- let the chickens in, they will flatten the pile, scratching it, adding poop, and aerating it.
- when leveled for the most part, toss a layer of soil then repeat the process again and again until the bed is full.
- wait a few weeks to a month before planting.

---add EM and ACT often if you would like.

this will give you deep layers of rich organic matter that will make your plants explode

oh yea dont forget the char either.

Thanks Jay, that simplifies it down and puts it in easily manageable lots as well. Just got to hook up my runs and it's time for some chickens.

While searching for the right size log for a job today I discovered a forgotten old gift, a cast iron barbeque, that a friend had given. It is a tiny impractical thing with a bowl belly that spreads out at the top for supporting a grill. Much like the shape of a large urn or vase but in cast iron.

So I take this out to and look at the base plate I was to rest my internal char chamber on, and it fits it perfectly. Now I have a char container that will last a very long time.

The plate this rests on (upside down) is supported above the fire. The char chamber will have fire around, above, and below it, all nicely controlled with air intake and flue. Just need the big top plate to make it practical, I could probably find a huge cooking pot that would fit it - but a cooking plate is the aim.

A lot of things are fallling in my lap lately. I think it is directly related to the energy I am putting into several projects at once - this is returning all sorts of recycling efficiencies of materials and exposing me to various forgotten stashes of things around the place. In conjunction with this being on good neighbourly terms they see the efforts and make suggestions and offer stuff they have lying around. Then there's asking for help from others. Energy in -> things starting to align - cool. Not always that way, perhaps I'm on the right track.

Great having the water systems going in on the section. Water can be so time consuming and expensive when you rely on town supply. Irrigation saves the time but is spendy for automated systems and you're still stuck on town water. Yay for rain collection in tanks, swales, ponds, whatever you can.

I will have daily chores for fish, poultry, food collection etc and so switching on a pump to put pond water round the greenhouse is not a problem. Or opening a tap on a tank to dump loads of water into the swales.

I've usd recycled aquaponic gear to make irrigation and a new streamlined aquaponic system. I've used old gravel aqua beds and sweat to make gravel paths that are swales. I've used the old concrete flooring to make retaining walls and borders. I've used my treeline to make mulch and charring materials, and lattices for climbing fruits. Old timber framing from beds will become path framing in the greenhouse and a chicken tractor. Been working part time for a good couple of weeks now in the yard. The old washing copper and bbq become a new char making bbq, an old 4 metre sink wound up becoming a guppie pond for duckweed production with large rocks in it to provide shallows so it now doubles as a birdbath. The hedge overhanging this gets shaken and the guppies are fed. Free insects bird waste and nitrogen from the bacteria that live in the duckweed. No need for adding to this system now it will just produce and produce. I still haven't spent a cent yet it seems I have more timber more soil more bits more space more gardens more variety more resources and more beauty than ever before.

I spent over ten thousand dollars designing an aquaponic system once and it resembled a piece of furniture with a square herb garden on top. What an inefficient overly expensive piece of crap. Cool, but for fuck's sake, ten thousand dollars to develop that!

Permaculture is the real deal, fast progress and an amazing array of options. Watch and read permaculture religiously for a while like I have and things might start fallling in your lap too.

you might like this fista, i recently came across this from a friend. im only a few lectures in ( you can skip the first two and possibly the first half of the third. but im told from someone who has seen them all it gets better after the first few. thirty six one hour lecutres on permaculture. its a class at a college that was taped.

http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,63781.75.html

Brilliant thanks Jay, downloading now, will get the geeks next door to resolve if there's trouble playing them.

BBQ is loaded with fuel just waiting on a plate.

hello, thanks for sharing your projects.

I just completed a 3 month permaculture apprenticeship on a site that has a 3,000 gallon rainharvest system. they filter it all into an aquaponics system that includes constructed wetlands and a DWC greenhouse with an integrated chicken coop (chickens roost above the water). Wish I had pictures to share...anyways, I'm here to read along and throw out questions/suggestions when I can. I'll try to go back and read more thoroughly to see what I can offer.

peace
and blessings

Hi floral faction. Welcome. I'm keen on feedback. I'm plowing through the lectures, will not have Holmgren/Mollison/Gaia's Garden books for a few months yet but plenty of other good reading in the interim (plant biology, mycelium running, mushroom cultivators guide, biology aotearoa (local), amongst others).

Chickens above water huh. Like the first chinese aquaponics practitioner feeding ducks above the water - and subsequently carp, catfish and rice paddies. Laziness is the mother of all decent invention. I don't mind the hard work up front, but comes a time a man wants to sit and admire himself and his works hehehe.