Getting Kids Into Gardening, Part IV: Creativity in the Garden
Education, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Land, Medicinal Plants — by Anthea Hudson May 23, 2012
Inspiring our children to develop an enthusiasm for gardening is a wonderful gift we, as parents or caregivers, can give them. This theme revolves around using the garden and its produce as an outlet for creativity. The following ideas will hopefully help give you some starting points for helping your children make the most of the garden in a myriad of ways. Use just one idea, combine several, or come up with your own ideas.
Mazes
Children are often fascinated by mazes. They can create their own living mazes, either on a miniature scale with low growing plants, or a full-scale hedge maze, if you have the room and can afford the plants. Get your kids to create a simple maze design on paper first (graph paper might be handy) and then lay it out on the ground using tent pegs or stakes and string. Alternatively, they could lay little stones or sticks out to mark the design.
Comments (1)Getting Kids Into Gardening, Part III: Creating a Resilience Garden
Education, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems — by Anthea Hudson May 11, 2012
Hands-on experience in getting the most out of a garden is going to be an invaluable skill in the challenging times ahead and getting kids enthusiastically involved, in their early years, is important for their future resilience. Giving your garden (or part of it) a theme can help inspire children and this particular garden theme — a Resilience Garden — may particularly appeal to boys, which is not to say girls won’t enjoy it also, of course!
A Resilience Garden helps provide some of the things you may need, that can be grown rather than obtained from an outside source, if necessary, thereby making your family more self-sufficient. The following are some ideas you might like to have your children try in your Resilience Garden. Some of them only take a short time to grow to a useable state, other things are more long term projects… but you’ve got to start somewhere!
Comments (5)Indigenous Land Management Practices in the USA (Videos)
Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Seeds — by Eric Toensmeier April 24, 2012
I’ve been interested in indigenous land management for many years, but since the publication of M. Kat Anderson’s phenomenal Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources I’ve been engaged in active research. This has included collaboration with the Woodbine Ecology Center and my work on a publication (read an excerpt here) for them about indigenous management in the prairie and Rocky Mountain regions where they are located. As part of this learning process I’ve created several short videos.
Here’s my overview of indigenous management practices with examples from the Woodbine region:
The next video covers one of our efforts at eco-cultural restoration at Woodbine, enhancing a “wild” edible riparian area:
Comments (3)Tree Cotton – Gossypium Arboreum
Animal Forage, Food Plants - Perennial, Medicinal Plants, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Peter Myers April 5, 2012
You might have seen the cotton growing out west — around St George, Gundiwindi and Dirranbandi in Queensland, Australia, and Moree and Narrabri in NSW.
It’s an annual crop — sown in the spring and harvested in the autumn — grown in flat plains country. The blocks are levelled by laser-guided machinery. However, they’re not quite level: there’s a slight slope from one end of the block to another, which allows flood irrigation.
Huge dams, in a country subject to long droughts, supply irrigation water. But these dams themselves take water from the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin.
Comments (5)Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi – Watch for Free
Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Medicinal Plants, Seeds, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Trees, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Michel Fanton April 4, 2012
In September 2008 Seed Savers released their first film, “Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi”, a 57 minute documentary that celebrates traditional food plants and the people that grow them.
We have now released this documentary on the net for free viewing (with English audio and Portuguese subtitles — we will put French, Chinese and Japanese subtitled versions online in the future). Watch it now (or read more about it below the video):
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Seeds from the Kitchen Cupboard
Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Medicinal Plants, Seeds — by Emma Crameri March 15, 2012
by Emma Crameri
Seeds from the kitchen cupboard
As an experiment, I wondered if I could grow any plants for free from our kitchen cupboards.
Comments (8)Suburban Permaculture with Janet Barocco and Richard Heinberg
Compost, Consumerism, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Irrigation, Land, Medicinal Plants, Nurseries & Propogation, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Trees, Urban Projects, Water Harvesting, peak oil — by Anthea Hudson March 14, 2012
Richard Heinberg not only talks the talk, but also walks the walk, as we get to see in the video at bottom. Peak Moment host, Janaia Donaldson, visits Heinberg and his partner Janet Barocco in their own venture in sustainable living in suburban Santa Rosa, California.
When they bought the place in 2001 it was a complete disaster, Richard tells Janaia, but it had advantages that drew them to it, such as being within walking distance of where they worked and shopping areas, having a large ¼ acre block and the house itself being small enough that they felt capable of remodelling and caring for it.
The ‘before’ shot
Visiting an Urban Permaculture Installation, Five Months On (Video)
Animal Housing, Bird Life, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Irrigation, Land, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Trees, Urban Projects, Waste Systems & Recycling, Water Harvesting — by Dan Palmer March 13, 2012
by Dan Palmer, Very Edible Gardens
Two days ago Dan and Will returned to a large VEG permaculture design and implementation project that was completed about five months ago. Via the videos below, take a virtual walk about the front and back yards — warts, ducks, giant silver beet, gorgeous connected multidimensional abundance and all!
You can also check out the design and before, during and after photos of the project here and also in our downloadable portfolio (warning: 38mb PDF!).
Part I
A Permaculture Farm in Wales – Zoning 101 (Videos)
Demonstration Sites, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Land, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Trees — by Sunny Soleil March 12, 2012
If you are new to permaculture, these three videos provide a delightful living introduction to the topic. As Angie takes you through the different zones on her farm in Wales, UK, you can try to spot how many concepts are integrated into her enthusiastic, holistic descriptions of how permaculture works.
Permaculture is not Organic Farming
In this first video we meet Angie and her family and visit some areas of her farm as we hear explanations of the difference between permaculture and organic farming and why permaculture is important.
Comments (0)Getting Kids Into Gardening, Part II: Create a Pizza Garden
Compost, Education, Food Plants - Annual, Medicinal Plants, Rehabilitation, Soil Composition — by Anthea Hudson March 7, 2012
Pizza making with home grown produce
Gardening can be an invaluable tool for helping children explore all kinds of things — from chemistry to botany, healthy eating to interactions within a natural system. It also promotes a connection with the earth and an understanding of where food comes from and what is involved in producing it.
Kids love to eat what they have grown, so why not combine that with another kid’s favourite — pizza! Let your children try growing all of their favourite veggie pizza toppings.
Comments (2)Grow your own Drugs
Consumerism, Health & Disease, Medicinal Plants — by Sunny Soleil March 1, 2012
Pharmaceutical companies have been raiding nature’s larder for years and isolating ingredients to make high cost, patented, chemical drugs to cure our ails. My friend Florence who is 99 tells me that there is a plant for every ailment and James Wong agrees.
An ethno-botanist and gardener, James Wong explains, in the videos below, how many of the ingredients in commercially available drugs can be found in your garden or on a country walk. Cornflowers have been used for hundreds of years for eye ailments while almost every pain killer on the market contains something extracted from the common poppy. In these two videos he shows us how to prepare a marigold skin clearing acne gel, elderflower throat lozenges,eczema cream from wild violets. Wong also demonstrates preparation of Syrup of Figs for Constipation, Goji Berry Chicken Soup for Colds and Flu, Hops Pillow for Insomnia & Kiwi and Papaya Face Masks.
Part I
Stabilizing the Climate with “Permanent Agriculture”
Animal Forage, Biodiversity, Biofuels, Deforestation, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Land, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Trees, Village Development, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Eric Toensmeier
Trees are one of our most powerful tools to pull carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil for long-term storage. This is why reforestation and protecting intact forests are such important parts of plans to address climate change. Conventional climate change science tells us that the planet’s capacity for reforestation is limited, however, by the need to preserve land for agriculture.
But movements like agroforestry and permaculture show us that farming and trees are not mutually exclusive. From tree crops to contour strips of nitrogen fixing trees between bands of annual crops, there is a wealth of techniques that can give us the best of both worlds. These techniques, should a global effort get behind their implementation on a large scale, could have a major impact on climate change. They would also have numerous other benefits to the planet and its people.
A century ago, writer-farmers like J. Russell Smith coined the term “permanent agriculture” to describe food forestry and other farming practices that combated a key issue of their day — erosion and degradation of farmland. From Smith and his compatriots we in permaculture have taken the name of our movement, though our movement has grown to encompass much more than food forestry. Today these visionary ideas are more essential than ever, to address an environmental crisis on a scale Smith and his contemporaries could not have imagined.
Comments (3)Perennial Staple Crops of the World
Animal Forage, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Seeds, Trees — by Eric Toensmeier February 25, 2012
This article reviews perennial staple crops, a little-known group of species with tremendous potential to address world problems.
Ricardo Romero of Las Cañadas in perennial staple food forest featuring
peach palm, macadamia, air potato, banana, and perennial beans.
Perennial Staple Crops are basic foodstuffs that grow on perennial plants. These plant sources of protein, carbohydrates, and fats can be harvested non-destructively – that is, harvest does not kill the plant or prevent future harvests. This group of crops includes grains, pulses (dry beans), nuts, dry pods, starchy fruits, oilseeds, high-protein leaves, and some more exotic products like starch-filled trunks, sugary palm saps, and aerial tubers.
These trees, palms, grasses, and other long-lived crops offer the unique possibility of crops grown for basic human food that can simultaneously sequester carbon, stabilize slopes, and build soils as part of no-till perennial agricultural systems. Such production models seem the most likely of all regenerative farming practices to approach the carbon sequestering capacity of natural forest, because they can mimic the structure of a forest most closely.
Comments (21)Natural Hair Care and Small Steps Towards Sustainability
Consumerism, Health & Disease, Medicinal Plants — by Niva Kay February 22, 2012
In this article I would like to share with you the transition Yotam and I went through from conventional hair care to a completely zero waste, home made, natural hair care regime.
I think this process is also a mirror to many other parallel transitions we have been doing in our lives on our way to sustainability, and that our society still needs to go through.
Any step you take on this path is blessed, but knowing that there is more that you can do can help in taking yourself further.
Here are the steps we’ve gone through:
Comments (7)Food Forests, Part 2: Looking for Clues
Deforestation, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Land, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Regional Water Cycle, Seeds, Soil Composition, Structure, Trees — by Chris McLeod January 24, 2012
Click for larger view
As people become urbanised, they start looking at the world in urban ways. What does that car or house say about that person? How does that person’s occupation affect their social standing? People may not admit it, but they understand the answers to these questions intuitively. As permaculturalists, we need to apply these same observational skills to our permacultural adventures.
These observational skills are important for permaculture because they allow you to read a landscape. No two pieces of land are ever the same! Whether that land is in an urban area or a rural area you can gather a huge amount of information as to its suitability for your next permaculture project simply by observation over a period of time. These skills will also allow you to identify ways to adapt your land to your particular purpose.
Reading a landscape is an observational skill so I have decided to take you on a virtual tour of the mountain range that I live in and tell you what I see in the different spots that we stop off at. I will highlight things at each location that I have learned on my food forest permaculture journey, and that I hope to impart to you the reader. I hope you enjoy the tour!
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