mike mclellan wrote:This is not original but I liked it when I heard on Will Hooker's permaculture NCSU videocast: "Permaculture is revolution disguised as gardening."
I think that's definitely something worth looking into if you have a knack for this sort of thing, I can remember a numbers of years ago looking into google adwords and doing little adds on the right hand side of a google search, you set it up so it would advertise a given things and everytime someone clicked on your add it chargers you, but your add diverted them to a webiste offering what they were searching for and if they bought on that site clicking from your add you got money.
there was a whole sight with companies you could affiliate for and some of them were offering big money if you got someone to fill out a questionnaire from there sight.
you can experience this now if you try to watch a film on the internet you will get a whole bunch of sites that say you can watch any film after you fill out a questionnaire which is lengthy and gives everyone you details, to bombard you with junk , the people get a pay day and it crashes right after your questionnaire is finished so you dont even get a film.
When I gave it a go I just used google adwords, so there was no scam, but i was that terrible that i got charge more in clicks than i made from questionnaires, infact I never got any done and made no money LOL.
I was a teenager when I gave that ago and I would bother now I would sooner chase goats around through a busy town dressed as a chicken
hubert cumberdale wrote:i like to tell people its farming with style. but what really gets people going is just seeing my forest garden. after that they are hooked.
Farming with style is good but I dont have the forest garden to back it up, Hey Hubert would you do a video of your forest garden and post it as a walk through on here, I would really love to see that , I want a forest garden but have no space, you could describe the plants you have ands there functions, for us noobs.
Nancy --- "Edible Landscaping crossed with Biomimicry, brilliantly designed for optimum efficiency" is nothing short of genius well done for that I will remember that one.
Isaac-- Holistic design system where diversity, multi-functionality and mutually beneficial relationships are emphasized, rooted in the mimicry of natural cycles and systems. I really like this its short and precise and accurately describes what is needed but I think if it was aimed at a sceptic or someone who had
never heard of it before it mind sound a bit flowery. hey I had an idea.
The conversation sparks up and someone asks what you are doing.
You could say, "Edible landscaping crossed with biomimicry, designed for optimum efficiency" (hook)
they say say "that sounds interesting, how does that work?"
you say "We us a Holistic design system where diversity, multi-functionality and mutually beneficial relationships are emphasized, rooted in the mimicry of natural cycles and systems. (ready Hubert) Its like farming with style!!"
"step into my forest garden and be assimilated resistance is futile" he he he he
Ok all snow is gone for now, all rants are over (I put it down to winter rage!!).
So I have done a few more layers to my hugel and its nearly there. I have added the 3 tree branches standing up which I am going to attach bird food, hopefully this will encourage them to poo on my bed and eat insects. I hoping they will also just start to use them as regular perches.
You might also notice in the middle a new Worm composting house.
I have drilled 1 1/2 inches holes all the way around in two layers aswell as the bottom. I going to use this as a feature of my system as a way of desposing of myexcess vegetable matter, to one stop pollution and two feed my plants with ultra nutritious worm castings. Hooray.
This is aimed at Paul, but anyone please feel free to answer.
In one of Pauls posts about income he mentions receiving an income from links to Amazon and E-bay, I wondered if you can tell my how is this done, and also can every or anybody do this?
Sepp says to put them at a slight diagonal goign down the hill so the water all doesnt get held up in the first bed, Dont forget there designed as sponges so if you are doing any number they will very quickly suck up the water.
if your only having one them I dont spose it will matter aslong as your not trying to gather any amount of water below.
in the picture in his book he has them at almost a 40 degree angle stagered going down the hill.
and jay thats amazing nothing like that happens in engand,
its hard to imagine, i can see why people would come to see that sort of nature. It must be very much like a wilderessthere or atleast thats what i imagine it to be
LOL thanks for your understanding Mike, The truth is I dont really mind straight lines and actually as a BrickLayer I notice them all the time, I think the problem I have is when it is forced on us for the sake of looking in "Order" and tidy.
So I went to the alotment today and the south eastern side of the bed had no snow at all on it. I put more branches and sticks on ready for chopping and collected more horse poo then called it a day when I couldnt feel my fingers and toes.
Im excited about getting it finished. Roll on some nice weather.
Yeah I designed it for shits and giggles, was funny how it turned out a flower, it started with just circles, you could wrap that around most pieces of land even on a hill , it isnt meant for flat pieces of land, because you really want to harvest the water to keep the swales with a small amount of water for the animals to drink, plus on a hill apparently the flies have a hard time flying around and botheirng the cows, especially at the top. you just would have to measure well, it isnt even absolutely essential for all the paddocks to be symetrical, just roughly the same size in metre square so you can get the timing between moving them right, there are plenty of variables you could do from that.
I havent read the Introduction to permaculture by bill yet, I just watched most of the PDC, the problem I have, is my brain is a manic one, and I have to take information in really fast or I lose it and my concentration with it, when Bill does a lesson quite oftenly he will go off on a tangent and tell a story, and ALL of the stories are normally really educational and funny, but for some reason it disrupts my train of thought and some times sends me to sleep because He has a really warm voice and its like being read a bed time story, and because I watch the pdc last thing at night eek. On Geoff Lawtons lesson I bing awake because the info comes in just right. Saying that I wouldnt have them stories moved because they are just gold and I know once I have done a PDC that I will look through that to old bill just for the stories.
back to cows and apples, essentially you could still use the principles and the feeding in any field, planting ash and other things they eat for the barrier, fruit and nuts in the field and Lots and Lots of different grasses and ground plants they like. I wonder if the beef would taste better?
that old rotten Oak sounds perfect, it willalready be quite sponge and have some of the things in it to help the breaking down of it.
Jean, I must admit with regards to the Allotment Politics, I have been lucky with regard to the allotment i am on, It IS quite relaxed, for example, people keep chickens ducks and one guy even has a turkey!!! this on alot of allotment would not be allowed, also people have made there own sheds type shacks and even sit up there in an evening having a beer and eating produce cooked on a fire, which as i understand it would also be a bit of a no no on most places.
Also one guy has made his own green house out of a pvc conservatory he had taken down as he runs his own building business, he has sat it on bricks and mortor but there is no foundations. Actually it looks pretty cool and works extremely well.
So I could see from the start the it would be more achiveable here, One of the reason I thought I could get away with it really, so on that score im lucky. but to be honest, apart from planting "weeds" that might spread on others allotment I cant see why any old busy body would have an issue, it is all about how you explain it.
For example: when I presented it to the allotment manager when asked, I said that It was important to me that after a year that my allotment was totally sustainble only being watered from what water I get from the allotment, that I use no organic and chemical fertilizer. Then after he had laughed and said Id like to see how you do that, thats when I said with nitrogen fixing plants, which ofc most people have heard of but only as far as crop rotation on a small allotment scale not a permanant resident. I didnt to begin with come out with all the different species, of plant I let the seeds I planted in his brain germinate to the point where he wants to se how this is done regardless of my clover.
I Also explained hugelkultur using the surface area as an argument, saying its 5 feet wide, so when i raise it 6 feet it will be about 5 feet or more tall on either side therefor doubling my surface area and growing space. I explained the composting action giving longer growing times, and also something i heard on this guy called mike who is a permaculture guru, he said for every 5 degrees the bed tilts its equivalant to that plant be 150 miles south. on top of that I added after a year it should hold enough water to see itself through each summer. I had made some pretty outlandish claims to this that has sparked so much curiosity that they dont really care about the 2 tonnes of timber I just buried.
Also what a result to find a place where I can have chickens!!!
on the other hand, my neighbour who is a mate, has an allotment on the otherside of town, it has to look immaculate, all produce has to be in neat equal lines, only one small greenhouse per plot and one small shed for tool storage.
Honestly it makes me want to vomit, how humans can be sooo anal, and neat as they walk themselves to oblivion, "come on lads nice equal neat lines so when the tax offcie decide they want to tax us for the plants we grow they can count accurately" how long until they want us to measure the rain water we harvest and pay for that!!!
So guys I decided to design a rotation system for people wanting to keep cows or other animals like sheep, goats whatever.
I started by doing the same size circles in a circle surrounding a circle, then I made the inner circle smaller as its role was purely to move the animals from one paddock to another. then when I started to connect the circles something really funny happened, the pattern resembled a flower!!! this was not my intention to start with.
I was happy with this as Bill says things work better if it represents a pattern that occurs naturally somewhere or other.
So to talk you through.
My goal is to field as many animal as I can on the given land, my modal is based on a 4 acre plot but you can expand or make it smaller to fit.
there are 6 paddocks each with there own shelter probably much like sepps modal. In each paddock there is a raised chicken arc so the chickens can be safe at night, this is so the chickens can scratch through the animal poo, removing parasites such as intestinal worms, lungworm and other stuff. So each paddock will have its own ground bird population. each paddock is surrounded by a live barrier, ash trees can be grown coppiced and when the coppice grows, they can be layed to create a live barrier/ fodder, so the barrier is the food also, other plants other than ash can be used as to make sure the animals have a varied diet.
Each paddock is to be planted with over 20 different species of grass, this is so the animals can stay outside All year round without chewing up the ground. see fordhall farm part of video a farm for the future.
put simply most farms now use 4 different types of grass, whereas if you have alot more species the grass grows at different rates and has different root strengths and depths, and grows better, this mixed with clover and other wild plants that suits your animals dietry needs.
Additionally to this each paddock twins up as an orchard, the orchard should have as many different type of fruit tree as possible or any you know that would suit the animal, apples, maybe pear nuts etc. these trees will flourish from the poos of the cattle and chickens. The animals will eat the windfall and you ca eat the harvest, windfall from paddocks that doesnt currently have animals in can be made into cider or fed to the animals.
as you see the outside of the flower pattern there is a circle which on the drawing I have put as willow coppice as have design this to go as part of an eco comminity that has fuel needs, but these too could be forage or fodder for the animals, the whole idea of this is to be able to complete feed these animals all year round.there are triangle shaped inbetween the paddock and the outside which could be used as rotational pig area or just areas to grow stuff.
I havent put it in the diagram but I would also introduce a 2 swale /dam system that goes through 3 paddocks then another 3 paddock below. the dams would be outside of the design but they back flow into the swales at the desired height of the designer, the top swale dam would then over flow into the lower swale, dame system providing water all year for the animals harvested purely from the land and then push it out hyper fertilized to other growing systems.
Using this principle I would start small regarding animal population and build up!! you can then monitor and decide if your size system can handle more animals. I would imagine that each paddock size and how many naimals in each paddock would determine how long you live them in there for. At most I would have 3 paddocks with animals in at anyone time then rotate given 3 at rest aswell. because the barrier if food and the windfall is food, it will mean they wont eat the grass quite as fast or even half as fast.
I have not put this to practice but will do one day.
Hi Guys, Mike thanks for your input wow, I cant wait to see your pics. I will have to look into the citrus thing , Im not gonna rush in to be honest, its gonna take a year to get my microclimates right or even the hugel running at full flow.
I have put my plan there but to be honest, I know it will change as I go, because im not an expert at Permaculture, so mine will be the changes made by observation, I imagine that the allotment will start off like my plan then evolve into a much different animal.
To answer Jean, well If im honest to start with I didnt tell anyone my intentions, humans are WAY to anal to change even if it is a better idea or more sustainable.
When I took over the plot the first thing I did was fill it with tree trunks branches and small sticks, to prepare for the bed, the guys up there thought I was dumping wood from a Gardening business as this guy, me, kept turning up and dumping wood on the plot.
Some guy made a joke about burning it and then I realized they were concerned. The allotment care taker was starting to ask question so I lent him my Sepp holzer permaculture book and bookmarked the page on hugelkultur.
this gave me some breathing space because then he understood, his opinion was Ill believe it when I see it.
From other allotment keepers, they was almost an uncomfortable skepticism, and some of them seemed almost mad at me for doing something different, and as each one came over to "see what was going on" it was obvious to me that the question I was being asked were ones of a general concern coming from multiple people so as not to make my feel any one person had an issue.
Well, I am one of these people that in a real life situation im hard not to love, I always have a smile on my face even with is cold and wet and im grafting, and soon my lively happy persona started to make them relax, which told me that they liked me as a person but wasnt sure on my plan for the space.
To be honest there ONLY worry is the "Weeds" that I will have on there. anything else doesnt really affect or concern them. I knew if I could get over that I would be alright.#
Firstly I visited another guys allotment, and saw he had alot of dandelions, I asked him if I could try to transplant them to my allotment, and then asked if I could pick them all the year through. he was over the moon at the thought of me periodically taking his weeds. The truth is I will have some dandelions but I have a friend with a tortoise and he is always after stuff for them and alot of our weeds are good tortoise food.
As each one voiced a concern for a given plant I gave an calm reason for why it is good to have, I even made the suggestion that they have the benefit of me having the plants to attract the predators and there plots get the benefit.
Very very very quickly skeptics became intrigued and interested, in the end they was helping me drag the branches from the gate to my plot which is about 100 metres as im the second allotment from the end.
much of the opinion now is that they are really wanting to see these theories work, I heard one person say that atleast he a nice guy, there is a guy on there does everything the right way but no one likes, I dont know why.
To ne the allotment is as much about the community, Theres one old boy that likes to show the fooding competition, so I told him he could take any great specimens for the show if he liked, but only on the condition that if any of mine won, he had to tell them that no fertilizer was used and the allotment that it was grown on was designed using principles of permiculture.
We are not allowed to put Permiculture by our work unless we do a PDC which I intend to do this year, but once I have doen this, I do intend to use the plot as an example of how food can be grown on a small space sustainably,
Although once I done the pdc I think I might change alot of things. it will be good to see, I am going to keep a diary of the whole thing by each month after set up on here. you could to Mike.
Thanks for the info on the bitter orange, thats give me something to research. its funny you mention doing that with the pine because I have a scots pine tree in the garden that I gotta take out and I thought about using it for the blueberries, I didnt know though if they would affect the ground too much, so I also thought about just getting loads pine needless to put onto and into the ground where I plant the blueberries. I think that because its just a small allotment it might create an issue whereas if i had a field that Id do that definately. I bet there is a whole range of plants that love and acid soil that would really benefit a diverse garden.
Its a shame really because there is so much wood coming off the pine, I might use it for building things instead, some sort of natural chicken tractor but thats a whole different thread.
How tall is your hugelkultur? Im hoping get mine real high so I can really so and get a good understanding just how they work and what there strengths and weaknesses are.
Any way im off for now, thanks for your input, ill post more piccies as I go on but as for now Snow has stopped play.
Hi, I was watching t PDC done by Bill Mollison, and he was talking about planting a apple tree amongst blackberries or brambles then letting the cows in to eat the apples they trample to un wanted thorny bushes to death. He also went on to say that cows love apples.
That got me thinking about the possibilty of planting apples in a cow field so they get some extra food.
I then read that eating apples can cause bloat in Cows and kill them.
Does anyone have experience here, because I have blind faith in Bill, but I dont want dead cows in the future.
Thanks for your reply mate. Well to be honest I am still in the planning mode.
At climax I would like it to be full of good yielding perrenial plants with some annuals and legumes etc, but if i am being honest, I am seeing perenial plant list, and im hearing that there great eating etc, but i havent eaten them and I havent cook them and I know very little about harvesting them, but I know thats the direction I need to go in for sustainability. So it is my goal to get these in this year and start my adventure on that route, but until im a fully fledge perrenial grazer I need to grow some of the normal stuff im used to cooking and eating.
I plan to completely stack the bed to start with nitrogen fixers, mainly clover and lupin, so as soon as the weather warms im literally going to plant the whole bed with everything everywhere in companion clumps. at climax there will only be some of these probably on the top of the bed running all the way along, so when i prune them and they self prune root, the nutrient gets wash down into the other plants roots.
Im going to plant the plants in groups throughout the bed, im still researching guilds for companion planting, so i will have clumps of 3 -4 odd species.
I am going to plant a sacrificial row of pot marigolds along the bottom of the bed aswell as sporadically throughout the bed, I heard that slugs prefer to eat these over most veg etc and also they are a bee plant and also attract Hoverflies which are great predators!!
other insect and bee plants im going to introduce will be white and purple dead nettle,poached egg plant, foxglove and dandelion, pignut, fennel, lemon balm. some of which have other uses, as mulch etc.
im going to put just about every veg i eat apart from potatoes, putting each species with its companion species.
for example~ carrots with coriander or onion.
interesting enough I am going to try the carrots quit high up on the bed because an old boy told me carrot flies only fly up to an height of around 40 cm I dont know if thats try LOL.
to give you some more names to look up soe other I have pencilled on a list are, sorrel chickweed siberian purslane burdock honesty daffodil garlc perrenial leak good king henry lung wort.
some of these will have a place on the allotment but because of the size they might have to wait until I have a bigger area, or I might put them ate the wilderness end near the beehive, or just on the ground where the chicken tractor will go over.
veggies that im going to grow include, onion carrots spuds in no dig bed, separate, sweet potato butternut squash, beetroot, sweetheart cabbage, tomatos, lettuce in vertical garden, ill mix some herbs in there aswell additional to my herb spiral,
i think it will take a few years to refine, and observe and really see what wants to be where, Ill pretty much just put everything everywhere and see where it flurishes and then let it decide where they want to be the next year.
im happy to not have as high yield aslong as my bed is absolutley self running regarding food, water/moisture etc. at best Ill help it out with some straw mulch, after a year im hopeing is can manage on its own.
I hope this gives ya some ideas mate.
sorry in advance for my crap spelling and gramma, my fat fingers hit about three bottons at a time and when i type i get excited and jumble words and thoughts togther!!!lol
I managed to ge tthe pictures on my hugel up and running, its a bit of a funny story. The wood I used is Ash, which I got from a guy cutting down in my local town and also my back garden. The problem you have in England now is Wood burners have come back in a big way, you know fuel here is £1.44 a litre thats over £7 a gallon which is crazy, gas and electricity prices are at a all time high,alot of people paying over £100 a month just to heat there homes.
Wood is now a resource that comes at a prices, anythin big enough to fit into the wood burners and bigger gets sold.
I done my layers of this bed different to normal and at present its only half way through. Because I had only limited wood, I need to utilise all the really small thin stuff I had, so I decided to use that first to boost up the size of the bed, then i added the bigger wood to act as a sponge. between each layer of wood, i added a layer of straw and horse manuer, the horse manuer is reasonably fresh to half way mixed, the reason for this is because I relly want to to continue to decompose and heat the bed aswell as provide fertilization.
I done it this way so there would still be air trapped in the bed, but also so the soil wouldnt just wash down inbetween my wood, as its smaller stuff im using instead of logs.
Heres where i got to so far, but weather has stopped play right now. the photos are medium size because I took them on my phone, I will endevour to use a camera from now on.
you bought up someinteresting points, that to be honest echo my own thougts, please lok at the second download, its my allotment plan in paint and has completely changed!!!
I have decided now to leave out the olive tree, firstly because they cost alot of money, secondly because although they do grow and fruit they dont yiled great in england, it is my goal to have a fully yielding olive tree in england, i dont thinkn here is the place for it.
The fruit trees I am getting on dwarf stocks and hope to train them so i have the shade where I want it, I am putting them in posts in side the beds, the pots will have holes in so worms and beneficial microbes can still get in, but I want to have the ability to take them away once I get my own place to grow.,
The citrus I am going to do as an experiment, I know they grow in greenhouses here ok, we get quite mild weather where i am as im on the most south easternly coast of england, also im hoping the heat from the hugel kutlture mixed with heat and humidity generated from rocks and the pond might just see it through, Sepp grows citrus up in the mountains of austria and it gets crazy cold there. I think if I plant a citrus and make a photo diary of it, and pulll it off, it could help people in the temperate climate to do the same, even my failings would educate and who knows with the input of peeps here, it might work.
Mulberries hmmm I realise now that some of my goals for berries might not be possible. I am going to try something done that end, but im not sure. I plan to grow upright / vertical strawberries, in fact my upright graden will almost equal the surface area of half my allotment whilst only taking up a fraction of the space, the downside of this is that this is often doen by hydroponics and does require watering which isnt totaly sustainable. On a larger piece of land I would ofset this by watering with water generated by dams, however there is no dams on the allotment so I am going to have to use water from the waterbutts.
My allotment is actually my uncles, he has medical problems and feels he can no longer do the upkeep of digging and the normal hard work of allotment growing, I think it will be a great idea to build this allotment so someone of failing health can still manage it, ie no dig spuds, hugel and other no dig beds that produce fruit and veg in abundance. Once I have done a PDC, I hope to then refine the allotment over the next few years and then use it as an example of permaculture on a small scale, as an introduction on how people can do this in there own back gardens.
by the way i have no intention of putting in gorse now, although I think this is a great plant, i think it a little to hostile for a small allotment.
Hi brenda thanks for the offer, but im in England, Im gonna try and compact the pond with a wacker plate used for wackering road surfaces, im gonnna put water in whacker, take out rocks and repeat and keep doing until it holds water, at most it should have a small leak, if thats the case ill use the pond clay.
I am also going to put some upright tubes with 2 inches holes drilled in the bottom and around the bottom edge to have composting worms in so Ill have more nutrients that way and its will be pretty nice, I can feed them and let them poop all in my hugelkultur.
I also have some medium sized ash branches left that im going to build integral to the bed so as you look at the bed it will look like there are 3 small trees sticking out the top, only they wont get leaves.
I will hang bird feed to these to encourage birds to use them as perches , the theory is they will poo on my hugelkulture and feed nutrients into the bed, , I will only use small branches to encourace smaller birds, i dont want big bird poo everywhere. Im hoping them that these small birds then will see the insects etc thatare available to them below.
between the worms, then legumes, the comfrey, the end of season mulch and the birds thats all the nutrients it will need.
heres an update of my allotment design!!! my first hugel bed is under construction and is half way built, right now its about 3 and a half feet tall.
I have taken photos of every layer to put on here. i didnt have any large logs so my main bed is made up of branches from 6 inches to 2 inches to twigs, so after each layer i put in a layer of sraw and horse manuer to help the composting, the horse manuer is fresh so it will compost for a long time.
i have now included up right gardens to increase my surface area and strawberry and salad yield, this will free up alot of space for perenial vegetables and also annuals.
photos of hugel culture to follow, but like i said its only half done so far.
Guy that is so funny, its glad to see somonoe else out there is obsessing too, feeding your seeds to chickens so they poo them out what a great idea!!!
Leila Mulberries would be GREAT!!! and for the record I am glad im using bird poo and not bear poo!!!
So guys I come across a new discovery for me earlier today that made me think enough to post on here.
Its just like the title say, "Free Seeds that come fertilized" what it didnt say was that you dont get to pick the seed type you want, its totally random.
I think under the category of Resources in Permaculture this comes under Opportunistic.
I made the discovery whilst in town looking for a totally new type of resource by way of a suet based minced beef pie for lunch. I parked up just round the corner from the shop and went to get my pie, on the way back I noticed a big bird Poo on my windscreen, the colour of the poo was deep pinky purple!!! and on closer inspection i noticed it was full of medium sized seeds about 20.
Then it got me thinking and I remembered I saw purple poo on the back of my van the day before!! So i went around the back and sure enough there was seeds on the back too. but less some had dropped off in transportation.
So now I am the proud owner of approxiamtely 30 FREE RANDOM seeds already fertilized by the poo they come with!!!
Its true I dot know what these seeds are, but I think its safe to presume that they are from a purple/ red fruit or berry, which is local to my area and that the local birds like!!!
I hope to grow these and once I identify what the plants are, it will determines where I put them on my new allotment. if there nothing more than a berry bush I put on the edge to attract birds then thats fine with me>
