A small nursery in Haiti.



Will says

Local nursery for perennial fruit trees and bushes

I think it’s a great opportunity to start a small business growing useful species of trees and other perennials for one’s local community.  It’s an excellent opportunity for young greens of modest means. I am not an expert, but i have some resources and tricks that i’ll pass on here now.

Growing from Seed – adapting to zone and local species

My favorite species for growing from seed, remembering that i am in the BlueRidge mountains of Virginia USDA zone 6b,  are:  american persimmon, pawpaw, various chestnuts,  hicans, hardy pecans, and various walnuts, hazelnuts, and red mulberry. There are many places online where you can check what zone you live in and what grows best in that zone.

There are many others that are suitable.

Here are some sources I have used for seeds… and while some of my old favorites are no more,  there are new ones too:

http://trees-seeds.com/

http://www.treehelp.com/items.asp?Cc=SD420

http://www.sheffields.com/

Grafting and Root cuttings

It is a great idea to learn to graft and then you can graft improved varieties of scionwood on your seedling.   Most berry  plants are better propagated from cuttings or root cuttings and this is an excellent! and this is easy and a great  thing to learn.

Just take wineberry, raspberry or blackberry cultivars ( cultivated varieties)  and put a piece of root in a pot full of good dirt and a very salable plant results first season. I used to find cuttings in the classified section of Progressive Farmer that were very reasonably priced and I would think that they would be folks selling them on ebay or other sites because selling root cuttings is pretty simple too.

Growing and selling locally

There are disease problems with the rubus tribe  (mostly rust and with blackbery and raspberry etc but  not with wineberry) to watch out for in both buying and selling these. Disease and pest problems are one of the reasons I stress LOCAL and urge caution and education  in choosing what to bring to one’s area and to avoid shipping to other areas entirely. Real plant people ( you know who you are) have an intuitive feel about these things and they should listen and others should find another gig for sure.

Hardy kiwis are a good choice from cuttings , remembering that except for the “Iassai” cultivar they need a male for every several females to produce fruit so you need to root both.

Blueberries are a great crop in my area and are easily reproduced from hardwood cuttings taken in late winter , stored in wet sand in the bottom a refrigerator until the weather settles and then put in a frame with hardware cloth bottom and several incheds of growing media (remermbering that they are total acid heads needing a pH 4.0 to 5.0)covered by a poly humidy tent with burlap over that. Misting systems are awesome and thensome but i never had one.

http://www.stuewe.com/

Goji berries are easy from seed and you can soak regular berries you get in the store, blend them up just enough so the seeds all come out with isn’t much and then the seeds settle to the bottom.  Drink the juce, plant the seeds and jillions of the buggers come up easily and you do not need to buy the seed people are selling at ridiculous price or need any special fertilizer , but remember they are real alkies, mening they need an unusually alkaline soil. They have a a ph of 8.2 to 8.6 in their natural habitat..

Also remember that if the roots get warm in a black pot in the sun they will look like crap and be unsalable, key info i found out the hard way.  Here is info on growing them remembering that you do not need to buy their seed.

http://forgojiberries.com/HowToGrowGojiBerries.php3

Nut Trees

Nut trees will take a while to mature, but many people interested in permaculture are looking to the future and wanting seedlings to plant.   Local varieties always do best.

Walnuts,and hazelnuts, Chinese chestnuts, pecans and buratnuts hicans and butternuts ,true i am a nut nut loving all nuts  but peanuts.

Here is a very good overview of these species:

http://www.utextension.utk.edu/publications/spfiles/sp307-p.pdf

Acorn seeds! This looks like a great source for seed

http://www.acorno.com/

Here is a great article on acorns and how to use them.  Looked throught quite a few before i found this and this far the best:

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/clay79.html

Acorns and other wild nuts have been a far more important source of food for our species for far longer than most folks have any idea. I strongly believe that they also will play such a role agian in the not too distant future. For those wanting extra tree nerd credits, here is a totally excellent pdf  called “

http://www.swsbm.com/ManualsOther/UsefulPlants/Useful_Wild_Plants-3.PDF

Containers for Bushes and Trees

The place i like to get containers is Stewie and Sons because they are real nice folk , but a whole lot more because their “tall one” one gallon tree pots are perfect for growing trees to salable size because they taper, have vertical ridges running down the inside to prevent root spiraling and have half open bottoms to promote air pruning of the roots.

All of these are perfect and the choice of professional growers. Plants experience transplant liberation rather than transplant shock this way if planted properly, in my opinion.

Buying, Selling and Trading Tree Seeds

Ebay is an awesome source of tree seeds.  Remember pawpaw seeds are easy to germinate if they have not been allowed to dry, and only buy  fresh or properly handeled of these.

http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=tree+seeds&_armrs=1&_from&_ipg=%EF%BB%BF

This looks like the way of the future for tree seed trading and buying and selling.  Selling tree seeds is a pretty good way to makes some money!  The internet hugely fascilitates this.  Here is an agricultural swap site with subcategories for seeds> forest tree seeds, fruit tree seeds and bush seeds as well as vegetable seeds and many other things.  Looks very good to me.

http://www.agriseek.com/buy-sell/e/Crops-Seeds/Seed/?AUT&FF_UMX=Y

http://www.agriseek.com/buy-sell/e/Crops-Seeds/Seed/Fruit-Tree/?AUT&FF_UMX=Y

http://www.agriseek.com/buy-sell/e/Crops-Seeds/Seed/Forest-Trees/?AUT&FF_UMX=Y

Buying bareroot stock in quantity and potting them up is cheap and quick way to salable plants!!  Here is the source i used for that:

http://www.lawyernursery.com/

Will recommends this book on Trees

http://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Woody-Plants-North-America/dp/1604691123/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

This book is fairly expensive but if you are really! interested in tree seeds i recommend getting it.  I loved this book, and still do i reckon.

The reason it was so important to me is that every different species has different requirments for germination; wet stratification, dry stratification, scarification, light, temp. requirments and for each process a time period minimum and by golly it is pretty close to necessary to know these things if you are doing them, and years back having this book was the only way i knew to get these.

Nowadays one can supply the supplication ” ginko seed germination requirments”  without the quotes into the Great Google and answers will almost always come forth.  Here is an  excellent thumbnail guide to the terms and basic processes involved such as  statification and scarification etc.

This site i found writing this note and is far far and away the single best source of information on growing trees i have ever seen. Praise the web and pass the information and we’ll all stay free!

http://www.treehelp.com/howto/howto-grow-a-tree-from-seed.asp

Tree Seed Technology Training Course

This manual is intended primarily to train seed collectors, seed-plant managers, seed analysts, and nursery managers, but it can serve as a resource for any training course in forest regeneration. It includes both temperate and tropical tree species of all intended uses. The manual covers the following topics: seed biology, seed collection, seed handling, seed-quality evaluation, seed protection, seed basics for nurseries, and seed programs. It also includes practical exercises.

Tree Seed Technology Training Course – Instructor’s Manual More Details Tree Seed Technology Training Course

http://www.rngr.net/publications/tst

Plant Health is Vital

APHIS stands for Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and is the thin green line trying to stop the rising tide of pests and diseases such as gypsy moth and emerald ash borer. Here is their website on plant health.  When in doubt, don’t do it.  Education and awareness are absolutely necessary in this matter.  The USDA is not the enemy in this,  human ignorance is.

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/index.shtml

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

Copyright is the result of our requiring money to share our gifts

A friend recently made a statement about  ’thieving’ words as she quoted some powerful words she’d found on another friends page. This thought of ‘thieving’  comes from a generally accepted paradigm that words, like skills and products are owned and can be exchanged for money.

Seeing this word has given rise to some contemplation about copyright and whether messages or indeed any of our gifts should be ‘owned’.   I am beginning to believe that there is no thieving.  This is not easy for I have made a living in the past from selling my words through self-help books.

We crave money because our basic needs aren't met. If they were we could use our gifts as TRUE gifts

Copyright and ownership and thieving are all restrictions and ‘abuses’ stemming from the love of the wrong god – the god of Money instead of loving God the All-One, All-that-is.

We feel guilty at ’stealing’ another’s words and I too have felt a sense of ‘being robbed’, when my words weren’t credited to me. But that is because we have learned to use our ‘gifts’ as a means to supply us with our needs.

But I sense this is  my ego taking hold and I could learn, as we all could, that our creative gifts, including the good words that we send out  from our own channelling of what is right should not be copyright or used for selfish purposes.  And yet this goes against a paradigm in this world that who writes the words has ownership and that ownership can be used for personal commercial gain.  What a struggle this is…

And it’s a struggle because we need our basic needs to be met in order to survive.

Wouldn’t a truly self-less lover of humanity, and I am struggling with this, as an  ego-bound human, wish only for his or her words to carry the message and know that the message is more important than the messenger.  In other words, our gifts should not be gifts for us to selfishly profit from but  GIFTS TO HUMANITY.  And if our basic needs are met, we can truly use our gifts as gifts.

Breaking the circle of selfish concern

We are trapped in a circle of needing to meet our basic requirements, and having to use our gifts in exchange for ‘money’ in order to purchase those basic needs.   And we are trapped in a a mesmeric trance of believing we need more than the basics in order to be happy.    We learn that we can feel good when we buy a new pair of shoes, when we can purchase a planet ticket or buy gourmet food or anything beyond our basic needs.

Breaking the circle of gifts for money is one of the most challenging things we can do.

We need to break the circle of money, supply basic needs to all and enter the circle of gifts

I therefore declare that all words I put out are free to all to resubmit.  I do not ask for credit, but I do I ask that no one claims these words as their own or uses them to make their own selfish profit, but,  instead, uses them for the good of all.  The free Commons License states that the words may be freely passed on as long as they remain intact.   And even that should not be written in stone.

Sharing with Integrity for the Greater Purpose

If a particular message has been crafted, and changing it may change the original intent then it should remain intact, if the change is used to skew the intent in a way that it is NOT for the greater good.  If someone finds a way to pass on this message by changing the words I have used or using them as a basic jumping off point and by doing that they give greater power to the message, then, I must, if I am considering the greater good, be happy to have this happen.

Telling ourselves the complete Truth.

God knows the truth about us. Do we?

Granny Matthis, who is 97 and strives to be very pure said to me ‘God knows everything about us’  He knows all our transgressions and beyond that he knows when we are being really true. Humans are easily able to justify their actions through deeply seated personal lies that even we don’t recognize.

On our website we state that people may copy or use the words and we ask for a link back to us.  If I am to examine my motives I must recognize that while we would like people to go to our site and read the rest of our words, for we have some well crafted messages I also see a deeper motive.  We have affiliate links to products we like, so I know that my desire for that back-link is partly  based on our need to make the dreaded money.

And, like me, you have to live.   What is wrong here is the way we’ve been taught to ‘make a living’ versus ‘living life’.  We’ve been taught to pursue money to have a life, when living life in our true purpose is all we need to do.  And to do that we need to have our basic needs met.

This leads me to the philosophical contemplation of how I long to have no need to sell anything to make money and also to how I can regulate my acquisitoin of money so that ONLY AS LONG AS THE MONEY SYSTEM STILL EXISTS, I am directing it through who I am, to be for the greater good.

Embracing a simpler life is a small step towards freeing ourselves from the money system

We are in a transition phase from using money as the medium of exchange and all of us being focused on satisfying our own individual needs to a world where our basic needs are met and we can truly offer our gifts as gifts.  We must begin by simplifying our lives and working towards ensuring everyone has the basic simple gifts of life.

So right now I’m having to make do and do the best I can.

Praying for the minimum we need to live our purpose and share our gifts v praying for stuff

God, please give me only what I need to be able to freely share my gifts with the world

When I pray to God for ’stuff’ I try not to ask for a car or a horse or ten dollars. I try to ask that God will give me enough that I may continue to live on this earth and be able to do the work I was put here to do in relation to the greater good.

This is something I am trying hard to be.. a servant of God of the Greater Force of this Universe… and of course, I have had years of ego training to the contrary.  I am praying that I will continue to develop this way of being.. and it is a struggle.. Life here on earth and living right is not easy… it is part of the evolution of humans into higher purpose non-egoic other-centered entities.

And we get greedy and live from selfish concern because we are biologically driven to have our basic needs supplied.  And in that drive, we’ve lost sight of what ‘basic’ means and struggle to acquire things so that we can feel good.  Yet feeling good should come from living a natural earth connected life.

WHEN WE SUPPLY THE BASICS TO ALL HUMANS – EVERY-ONE’S GIFTS CAN BE TRUE GIFTS

Air, Food, Shelter, Water, Love are humanity's basic needs and rights. Let us strive to achieve that

So how can we allow more and more of us to share our gifts freely?

It brings me to the theory I first learned from the Venus Project material and which is based on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of basic human needs.

Maslow saw that we have a hierarchy of needs and the diagram shows the most necessary at the bottom of the triangle and so on.   Our most necessary need are air to breathe, water and shelter from the elements as well as procreation.  Next in importance is security. We need to know that there will always be a place to lay our head and that we will be safe from predators. Beyond that, as human animals, we need social interaction and love . And beyond that we need esteem, we need to know that our gift is worthwhile and that it contributes to the world and that we have purpose.

If we were all guaranteed basic water, food, shelter and loving human fellowship, then any gifts we have whether it is one for spinning emotive words or building a cob oven, can be just that.. a true gift to the world.

Wow, my conscience and ego are already fighting this.. as I can imagine yours might also.

And this all comes from the one root of belief that dominates most cultures on earth today – we own our gifts and they can be used in exchange for money and thus for our own personal security.  We are all afraid of not having those basic needs as outlined by Maslow.  So we sell ourselves in order to find them.  And we become selfish.  We accumulate for us because we are AFRAID OF NOT HAVING ENOUGH.

What a paradise might we live in if we were so content with the basic needs that giving our gifts was not done out of necessity for those things, but because we are free to give them.. for we no longer need to sell them.

If you knew that you had a place to lay your head that allowed you to sleep well and be fit for the day to come and you had good healthy food and clean water to nourish you with sufficient energy to engage in the world and you knew you had companionship and social interaction… what else do you really need?   How much easier would it be for you to freely share the gifts that you previously sold to get more than you need?

When you take some time for honest inner contemplation you might find that you have been easily able to justify your quest for stuff and money and that you may be telling yourself lies by pretending that you are doing good works, when in fact you are actually satisfying more than your basic needs because you’ve been programmed through fear to think you cannot live without them.

We are in tough transition times and each and every one of us needs to take stock and start telling ourselves the deep honest truth about our own fear and our own greed…

Purpose beyond self and community

If, for example we desire to build an intentional community, we will probably be motivated from a need to meet our own basic needs.  We will come together with that community, in the same way we do with the nuclear family and kin and build a stronghold that will satisfy our community.   But if we don’t take count of the rest of the pattern, those without our walls, we cut ourselves off from the greater purpose of humanity as one unity.

When we can build that community with a focus on meeting our basic needs so that we can facilitate the entire community to release their gifts and that those gifts are used for the purpose of helping those beyond our little clique, then we’ve truly got it.

It’s a long hard road but we won’t survive in loving harmony and recreate the Garden of Eden if we don’t find a way to give all humans what they need to be able to freely share the gifts God gave us.

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

Brownies know that we have to go beyond the ‘green’ concepts of water-saving flush toilets and store-bought organic fertilizers.    If you are going to ‘brown down’ and live the simple life, then creating a compost pile and building a composting toilet are a couple of the self-sustaining, organic methods of re-purposing waste into rich natural fertilizer for your veggie garden.

The indoor composting toilet

Here is a video from a composting toilet manufacturer.  It makes a great case for changing to a composting toilet.  You can buy the expensive one OR you can make your own using an RV porta-potty or wood, buckets, sawdust and more buckets.

Ingredients for a basic composting toilet

• A wooden flat top box with a hole cut in the top  [screw on a regular toilet seat for extra comfort]
• A bucket that fits under the wooden top.
• Sawdust – put 3 inches of sawdust in the bottom and then add an adequate amount of sawdust to cover the contents of the bucket each time you use it
• When bucket is full, remove, take into the garden, throw in a bit of soil, seal and leave or put it in a composting pit [dig a trench in the pit and then cover each 'dumping' with leaves or hay. In a year you'll have wonderful mulchy organism filled organic compost.
• Or you can dig a large hole in the ground and empty the bucket into it, covering it with soil or hay or old leaves and use that as a  rich growing patch for veggies after at least a year

The Forest Gardener Composting Toilet

Forest disappeared into the yard for an afternoon and the result was this

Everything, except the padded seat [$6 from the dreaded Wal-Mart] was found in a dumpster or stuff we had laying around. The wooden box and step up was made from wood we’d retrieved from the moldy cellar we cleaned out. One side ‘wall’ was a fold out door from an old RV and the other a piece of old trellis.  The fancy toilet roll holder was found in a dumpster.  Even the ‘reading material’ was a free give away.

As you can see from the picture above, the bucket is contained in one of those $4 lidded plastic storage boxes.  When you want to go, you slide out the brown box and take off the lid then slide it back in again.

At the back of the platform on which the bucet and container sits are wood blocks that keep the container in the right position.

The RV sliding ‘door’ wall is secured with wire attached to hooks screwed into the ceiling of the car port.

On the wooden platform where the seat is mounted, we have room for reading material and a small spray bottle of colloidal silver mixed with a drop or two of oil or oregano. This makes a great hand cleanser as opposed to chemical hand sanitizer.

One friend suggested having a plastic bottle of sweet and nasty soda and a small glass bowl. Empty a drop or two of the soda into the bowl and it will keep the flies occupied and away from the poop!!

The entire toilet can be broken down and stored in the RV should we have to take to the woods !

Toilet in the Woods

Friends of ours building a log home have gotten the camping lifestyle down to a fine art, including potty stuff.   Digging a toilet in the woods is respectful, natural and feeds the earth with our waste.

Their outdoor earth-based toilet’pit’,   is almost invisible such that it blends into the natural setting. Clue – look for the twig toilet paper stand crossing one of the tree shadows.  Our friends set up this gorgeous homely camping site to live in while they work on constructing the log/earth house.

Kitchen Composting

By the kitchen prep area we keep a 5 gallon bucket for the compost and a cardboard box full of sawdust and wood chippings from our wood cutting [we use a woodstove in winter for heating AND cooking].  Just like the pooper, I line the bin with the chippings and each time I throw something in, I sprinkle a handful or two of chippings onto it.  This stops the smells and also begins to compost the material before you throw it onto the main compost pile.

Composting – 4 ways to do it

If you are going to grow food in a garden, it makes sense to compost.    This concise article by Ernest Wilmington outlines four methods of composting.

There are four methods of composting. Hot, Cold, Sheet and Trench

Hot composting is the fastest. However, it is also the most labor intensive.

When hot composting all of your ingredients have to be ready to go at once. You start your heap by placing sticks or twigs on the ground. This is for air circulation. Next you pile about four inches of brown dry material. Then four inches of fresh green material.

You want you pile to be about 3 ft sq. and 3 ft. high. This can be done using some kind of a wire cage. While you are piling this material, you are wetting it as you go. When you pile is 3 ft. high, you need to cover it with heavy plastic or a blanket (or old piece of rug, etc).

After three days, check the temperature. When the pile reaches a least 140 degrees, its time to turn the pile. From now on you must turn the pile every other day until its finished, which is in about four weeks. This is the method that is used by commercial compost makers. Of course, they don’t turn by hand.

Cold composting. This is quite easy, but takes the longest. The plastic bins that are sold for making compost, uses this method. You simply toss all of you compostable material into the bin. After 6 months, lift the little door at the bottom and you have compost, all the while, you are still throwing stuff in the top.

Cardboard composting is used to create new garden bed or plot. Like hot composting, all of your ingredents must be ready at once.

Choose a site where you want to create a new bed. Cover the area with a couple of inches of newpaper or non-waxy cardboard.

Then pile on alternate layers of brown [leaves, coffee grounds, twigs, torn up cardboard and paper and green manure [fresh garden mowings, green leaves]  in layers of 2 – 4 inches each.

When you get to at least 18 inches, cover the pile with heavy duty black landscaping plastic cloth.

In six weeks, remove the plastic and you are ready to plant. Nothing else needs to be done.

Trench compost is simply burying your food waste and other compostable material in your garden. The earthworms will work on it and it will be gone in about a month. This is the easiest and best to get rid of household garbage that might otherwise smell in a regular pile.  Some composting gurus suggest that you can compost anything including meat and bones [which is what we do] and others say ‘no meat or dairy’.

Here’s another video on composting which has a good tip on starting the pile with crossed over branches to allow air pockets in the bottom.

Compost Tea

I got this recipe on my permaculture design course.   It’s really easy and makes a great addition to the garden.

Ingredients: 1 x 5 gallon bucket with lid.  A mesh bag.  Comfrey or Garden weeds, Yogurt liquid.

Recipe: Fill the  bucket water [put it out in a heavy rainfall and let it collect the water from nature].  Stuff the mesh bag with weeds or preferably, comfrey [it grows wild or you can cultivate it most anywhere].  Put a rubber band round the bag to close it off and put it into the water.  Pour in  the liquid from a large container of natural yogurt.  Seal the lid

Leave this for a couple of weeks and you have 3 – gallons of rich compost tea.  Water your plants with it once or twice a week.

It’s natural, way cheaper than ready-made plant food and it’s loving and kind to the planet.

Heirloom Seeds

And once you get your compost pile built, you’ll want to plant some really great organic heirloom seeds.   We love this company because they sell a vacuum sealed variety of seeds for every situation be it the single urban liver, a family of 4 or a larger homestead or farm. They also sell specialist packs such as medicinal herbs, tomatoes and tobacco!

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

Amish Friendship Bread that you can pass from friend to friend.

The Bread begins with a starter,which used to be an Amish secret, but is now public knowledge so that we may all share frely.  Find the recipe for the Amish Friendship Bread starter at the end of this post.

When you pass the starter on to a friend, make sure they understand that they will need to follow the instructions beginning at day one then will use the Amish Friendship Bread Recipe (with the oil, eggs, vanilla, etc.) on Day 10.

Amish Friendship Bread is not only a lovely bread, it’s also a way to create a flow of giving and abundance by sharing countless loaves of bread baked in different kitchens that all began from the same bowl of simple ingredients. Choose a few friends and start this wonderful tradition, they’ll thank you for it!

The Amish Friendship Bread recipe

Do not use any metal containers or utensils when making this bread. This is important.

Day 1 – receive the starter (the recipe for the starter is below)

Day 2 – stir

Day 3 – stir

Day 4 – stir

Day 5 – Add 1 cup each flour, sugar and milk.

Day 6 – stir

Day 7 – stir

Day 8 – stir

Day 9 – stir

Day 10 – Add 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk. Divide into 4 containers, with 1 cup each for three of your friends and 1 cup for your own loaves. Give friends the instructions for Day 1 through Day 10 and the following recipe for baking the bread.  Remember to write on the bag or container the date you made the batter.  e.g. 05/18/10 = day 1

After removing the 3 cups of batter, combine the remaining cup of Amish Friendship Bread starter with the following ingredients in a large bowl:

1 cup oil
3 eggs
1/2 cup of milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla essence
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 cup of milk

1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Using a wooden spoon beat by hand until well blended. You can add 1 cup raisins/dried fruit, pumpkin pie spice and 1 cup nuts (optional).  Get creative here.

Grease two loaf pans with butter, sprinkle with sugar instead of flour.

Bake at 325 degrees F for 45 minutes to 1 hour (individual oven temperatures vary). Cool 10 minutes, remove from pans. Makes two loaves of Amish Friendship Bread.

Amish Friendship Bread Starter

This is the Amish Friendship Bread Starter Recipe that you’ll need to make the Amish Friendship Bread (above). It is very important to use plastic or wooden utensils and plastic or glass containers when making this. Do not use metal at all!

Ingredients:

1 pkg. active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water (110°F)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
1 cup warm milk (110°F)

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in warm water for about 10 minutes. Stir well.

2. In a 2 quart glass or plastic container, combine 1 cup sifted flour and 1 cup sugar. Mix thoroughly or the flour will get lumpy when you add the milk.

3. Slowly stir in warm milk and dissolved yeast mixture. Loosely cover the mixture with a lid or plastic wrap. The mixture will get bubbly. Consider this Day 1 of the cycle, or the day you receive the starter.

For the next 10 days handle starter according to the instructions above for Amish Friendship Bread

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

Here’s some info I found on companion gardening… I’ve used it in my own garden.. Enjoy

COMPANION PLANTING Information from www.ghorganics.com

 PLANT GUIDE

ALFALFA: Perennial that roots deeply. Fixes the soil with nitrogen, accumulates iron, magnesium, phosphorous and potassium. Withstands droughts with it’s long taproot and can improve just about any soil! Alfalfa has the ability to break up hard clay soil and can even send its’ roots through rocks! Now that is a tenacious plant! Alfalfa is practically pest and disease free. It needs only natural rainfall to survive.

AMARANTH: A tropical annual that needs hot conditions to flourish. Good with sweet corn, it’s leaves provide shade giving the corm a rich, moist root run. Host to predatory ground beetles. Eat the young leaves in salads.

ANISE: Licorice flavored herb, good host for predatory wasps which prey on aphids and it is also said to repel aphids. Deters pests from brassicas by camouflaging their odor. Improves the vigor of any plants growing near it. Used in ointments to protect against bug stings and bites. Good to plant with coriander.

ASPARAGUS: Friends: Aster family flowers, dill ,coriander, tomatoes, parsley, basil, comfrey and marigolds. Avoid: Onions, garlic and potatoes.

BASIL: Plant with tomatoes to improve growth and flavor. Basil also does well with peppers, oregano, asparagus and petunias. Basil can be helpful in repelling thrips. It is said to repel flies and mosquitoes. Do not plant near rue or sage.

BAY LEAF: A fresh leaf bay leaf in each storage container of beans or grains will deter weevils and moths. Sprinkle dried leaves with other deterrent herbs in garden as natural insecticide dust. A good combo: Bay leaves, cayenne pepper, tansy and peppermint.

• For ladybug invasions try spreading bay leaves around in your house anywhere they are getting in and congregating. They should leave.

BEANS: All bean enrich the soil with nitrogen fixed form the air. In general they are good company for carrots, celery, chards, corn, eggplant, peas, potatoes, brassicas, beets, radish, strawberry and cucumbers. Beans are great for heavy nitrogen users like corn and grain plants because beans fix nitrogen from the air into the soil so the nitrogen used up by the corn and grains are replaced at the end of the season when the bean plants die back. French Haricot beans, sweet corn and melons are a good combo. Summer savory deters bean beetles and improves growth and flavor. Keep beans away from the alliums.

BEE BALM (Oswego, Monarda): Plant with tomatoes to improve growth and flavor. Great for attracting beneficials and bees of course. Pretty perennial that tends to get powdery mildew.

BEET: Good for adding minerals to the soil. The leaves are composed of 25% magnesium making them a valuable addition to the compost pile if you don’t care to eat them. Beets are also beneficial to beans with the exception of runner beans. Runner or pole beans and beets stunt each other’s growth. Companions for beets are lettuce, onions and brassicas. Beets and kohlrabi grow perfectly together. Beets are helped by garlic and mints. Garlic improves growth and flavor. Rather than planting invasive mints around beets use your mint clippings as a mulch. 

BORAGE: Companion plant for tomatoes, squash, strawberries and most plants. Deters tomato hornworms and cabbage worms. One of the best bee and wasp attracting plants. Adds trace minerals to the soil and a good addition the compost pile. The leaves contain vitamin C and are rich in calcium, potassium and mineral salts. Borage may benefit any plant it is growing next to via increasing resistance to pests and disease. It also makes a nice mulch for most plants. Borage and strawberries help each other and strawberry farmers always set a few plants in their beds to enhance the fruits flavor and yield. Plant near tomatoes to improve growth and disease resistance. After you have planned this annual once it will self seed. Borage flowers are edible.

BRASSICA: Benefit from chamomile, peppermint, dill, sage, and rosemary. They need rich soil with plenty of lime to flourish. Avoid planting with mustards, nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, etc).

BUCKWHEAT: (Member of the family Polygonaceae) Accumulates calcium and can be grown as an excellent cover crop aka green manure. Buckwheat’s shallow white blossoms attract beneficial insects that control or parasitize aphids, mites and other pests. The beneficials it attracts  include the following:  hover flies (Syrphidae), predatory wasps, minute pirate bugs, insidious flower bugs, tachinid flies and lady beetles. Flowering may start within three weeks of planting and continue for up to 10 weeks. Buckwheat will take up phosphorus and some minor nutrients that are otherwise unavailable to plants. These nutrients are released as the residue of the buckwheat breaks down and are then available for later crops. The fine roots makes topsoil loose and friable with only minimal tillage.

CABBAGE: Celery, dill, onions and potatoes are good companion plants. Celery improves growth and health. Clover interplanted with cabbage has been shown to reduce the native cabbage aphid and cabbageworm populations by interfering with the colonization of the pests and increasing the number of predatory ground beetles. Plant Chamomile with cabbage as it Improves growth and flavor. Cabbage does not get along with strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, rue, grapes and pole beans.

CARAWAY: Good for loosening compacted soil with it’s deep roots so it’s also compatible next to shallow rooted crops. Plant it with strawberries. Caraway can be tricky to establish. The flowers attract a number of beneficial insects especially the tiny parasitic wasps. Keep it away from dill and fennel.

CARROTS: Their pals are leaf lettuce, onions and tomatoes. Plant dill and parsnips away from carrots. Flax produces an oil that may protect root vegetables like carrots from some pests. One drawback with tomatoes and carrots: tomato plants can stunt the growth of your carrots but the carrots will still be of good flavor.  

CATNIP: Deters flea beetles, aphids, Japanese beetles, squash bugs, ants and weevils. We have found it repels mice quite well: mice were wreaking havoc in our outbuildings, we spread sprigs of mint throughout and the mice split! Use sprigs of mint anywhere in the house you want deter mice and ants. Smells good and very safe.

CELERY: Companions: Bean, cabbage family, leek, onion, spinach and tomato. Flowers for celery: cosmos, daisies and snapdragons. Foe: Corn.

CHAMOMILE, GERMAN: Annual. Improves flavor of cabbages, cucumbers and onions. Host to hoverflies and wasps. Accumulates calcium, potassium and sulfur, later returning them to the soil. Increases oil production from herbs. Leave some flowers unpicked and   German chamomile will reseed itself. Roman chamomile is a low growing perennial that will tolerate almost any soil conditions. Both like full sun. Growing chamomile of any type is considered a tonic for anything you grow in the garden.

CHARDS: Companions: Bean, cabbage family and onion.

CHERVIL: Companion to radishes, lettuce and broccoli for improved growth and flavor. Keeps aphids off lettuce. Said to deter slugs. Likes shade.

CHIVES: Improves growth and flavor of carrots and tomatoes. A friend to apples, carrots, tomatoes, brassica (broccoli, cabbage, mustard, etc) and many others. Keeps aphids help to keep aphids away from tomatoes, mums and sunflowers. Chives may drive away Japanese beetles and carrot rust fly. Planted among apple trees it helps prevent scab and among roses it prevents black spot. You will need patience as it takes about 3 years for plantings of chives to prevent the 2 diseases. A tea of chives may be used on cucumbers and gooseberries to prevent downy  and powdery mildews. Avoid planting near beans and peas. See chive tea on disease page.

CHRYSANTHEMUMS: C. coccineum kills root nematodes. (the bad ones) It’s flowers along with those of C. cineraruaefolium have been used as botanical pesticides for centuries. (i.e. pyrethrum) White flowering chrysanthemums repel Japanese beetles. To the right is a picture of the painted daisy from which pyrethrum is extracted.

CLOVER: Long used as a green manure and plant companion and is especially good to plant under grapevines. Attracts many beneficials. Useful planted around apple trees to attract predators of the woolly aphid. Clover interplanted with cabbage has been shown to reduce the native cabbage aphid and cabbageworm populations by interfering with the colonization of the pests and increasing the number of predator ground beetles.

COMFREY: Accumulates calcium, phosphorous and potassium. Likes wet spots to grow in. Comfrey is beneficial to avocado and most other fruit trees. Traditional medicinal plant. Good trap crop for slugs. More on comfrey.

CORIANDER: Repels aphids, spider mites and potato beetle. A tea from this can be used as a spray for spider mites. A partner for anise.

CORN: Amaranth, beans, cucumber, white geranium, lamb’s quarters, melons, morning glory, parsley, peanuts, peas, potato, pumpkin, soybeans, squash and sunflower. A classic example is to grow climbing beans up corn while inter-planting pumpkins. The corn provides a natural trellis for the beans, pumpkins smother the weeds and helps corn roots retain moisture. Corn is a heavy feeder and the beans fix nitrogen from air into the soil. The beans do not feed the corn will it is growing but when the bean plants die back they return nitrogen to the soil that was used up by the corn. A win-win situation. Another interesting helper for corn is the weed Pig’s Thistle which raises nutrients from the subsoil to where the corn can reach them. Keep corn away from celery and tomato plants.

COSTMARY: This 2-3 foot tall perennial of the chrysanthemum family helps to repel moths.

CUCUMBERS: Cucumbers are great to plant with corn and beans. The three plants like the same conditions warmth, rich soil and plenty of moisture. Let the cucumbers grow up and over your corn plants. A great duet is to plant cukes with sunflowers. The sunflowers provide a strong support for the vines. Cukes also do well with peas, beets, radishes and carrots. Radishes are a good deterrent against cucumber beetles. Dill planted with cucumbers helps by attracting beneficial predators. Nasturtium improves growth and flavor. Keep sage, potatoes and rue away from cucumbers.

DAHLIAS: These beautiful, tuberous annuals that can have up to dinner plate size flowers repels nematodes!

DILL: Improves growth and health of cabbage. Do not plant near carrots, caraway or tomatoes. Best friend for lettuce. Attracts hoverflies and predatory wasps. Repels aphids and spider mites to some degree. Also may repel the dreaded squash bug! (scatter some good size dill leaves on plants that are suspect to squash bugs, like squash plants.) Dill goes well with lettuce, onions, cabbage, sweet corn and cucumbers. Dill does attract the tomato horn worm so it would be useful to plant it somewhere away from your tomato plants to keep the destructive horn worm away from them. Do plant dill in an appropriate spot for the swallowtail butterfly caterpillars to feed on. Even their caterpillars are beautiful.

EGGPLANT: Plant with amaranth, beans, peas, spinach, tarragon, thyme and marigold. Eggplant is a member of the nightshade family and does well with peppers. Avoid planting fennel near eggplant.

ELDERBERRY: A spray (see insect treatments) made from the leaves can be used against aphids, carrot root fly, cucumber beetles and peach tree borers. Put branches and leaves in mole runs to banish them. Elderberry leaves added to the compost pile speeds up the decomposing process.

FLAX: Plant with carrots, and potatoes. Flax contains tannin and linseed oils which may offend the Colorado potato bug. Flax is an annual from 1-4 feet tall with blue or white flowers that readily self sows.

FOUR-O’CLOCKS: Draws Japanese beetles like a magnet which then dine on the foliage. The foliage is pure poison to them and they won’t live to have dessert! It is important to mention that Four O’clock are also poisonous to humans and animals. Please be careful where you plant them if you have children and pets. They are a beautiful annual plant growing from 2-3 feet high with a bushy growth form.

GARLIC: Plant near roses to repel aphids. It also benefits apple trees, pear trees, cucumbers, peas, lettuce and celery. Garlic accumulates sulfur: a naturally occurring fungicide which will help in the garden with disease prevention. Garlic is systemic in action as it is taken up the plants through their pores and when garlic tea is used as a soil drench it is also taken up by the plant roots. Has value in offending codling moths, Japanese beetles, root maggots, snails, and carrot root fly. Researchers have observed that time-released garlic capsules planted at the bases of fruit trees actually kept deer away. It’s certainly  worth a try! Concentrated garlic sprays have been observed to repel and kill whiteflies, aphids and fungus gnats among others with as little as a 6-8% concentration! It is safe for use on orchids too.

• Try concentrated Garlic Barrier Insect Repellent!

GERANIUM: -Repels cabbage worms and Japanese beetles, plant around grapes, roses, corn, tomatoes, peppers and cabbage. Geraniums help to distract beet leafhoppers, carrier of the curly top virus.

GOPHER PURGE: Deters gophers, and moles.

GRAPES: Hyssop is beneficial to grapes as are basil, beans, geraniums, oregano, clover, peas, or blackberries. Keep radishes and cabbage away from grapes. Planting clover increases the soil fertility for grapes. Chives with grapes help repel aphids. Plant your vines under Elm or Mulberry trees.

HEMP: Repels many types of beetles which attack brassicas.

HORSERADISH: Plant in containers in the potato patch to keep away Colorado potato bugs. Horseradish increases the disease resistance of potatoes. There are some very effective insect sprays that can be made with the root. Use the bottomless pot method to keep horseradish contained. Also repels Blister beetles. We have observed that the root can yield anti-fungal properties when a tea is made from it. (See: Horseradish: Disease)

HOREHOUND: (Marrubium Vulgare)   like many varieties in the mint family, the many tiny flowers attract Braconid and Icheumonid wasps, and Tachnid and Syrid flies. The larval forms of these insects parasitize or otherwise consume many other insects pests. It grows where many others fail to thrive and can survive harsh winters. Blooms over a long season, attracting beneficial insects almost as long as you are likely to need them. For best results use horehound directly as a companion plant. Stimulates and aids fruiting in tomatoes and peppers.

HYSSOP: Companion plant to cabbage and grapes, deters cabbage moths and flea beetles. Do not plant near radishes. Hyssop may be the number one preference among bees and some beekeepers rub the hive with it to encourage the bees to keep to their home. It is not as invasive as other members of the mint family making it safer for interplanting.

KELP: When used in a powder mixture or tea as a spray, this versatile sea herb will not only repel insects but feed the vegetables. In particular we have observed that kelp foliar sprays keep aphids and Japanese beetles away when used as a spray every 8 days before and during infestation times. If you have access to seaweed, use it as a mulch to keep slugs away.

KOHLRABI: May be planted with cucumber, onion and chives. Kohlrabi and beets are perfect to grow with one another! Do not plant kohlrabi with pole beans, pepper, strawberry or tomatoes.

LAMIUM: This will repel potato bugs- a big problem for many gardeners!

LARKSPUR: An annual member of the Delphinium family, larkspur will attract Japanese beetles. They dine and die! Larkspur is poisonous to humans too.

LAVENDER: Repels fleas and moths. Prolific flowering lavender nourishes many nectar feeding and beneficial insects. Lavenders can protect nearby plants from insects such as whitefly, and lavender planted under and near fruit trees can deter codling moth. Use dried sprigs of lavender to repel moths. Start plants in winter from cuttings, setting out in spring.

LEEKS: Use leeks near apple trees, carrots, celery and onions which will improve their growth. Leeks also repel carrot flies. Avoid planting near legumes.

LEMON BALM: Sprinkle throughout the garden in an herbal powder mixture to deter many bugs. Lemon balm has citronella compounds that make this work: crush and rub the leaves on your skin to keep mosquitoes away! Use to ward off squash bugs!

LETTUCE: Does well with beets, bush beans, pole beans, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, onion, radish and strawberries. It grows happily in the shade under young sunflowers. 

LOVAGE: Improves flavor and health of most plants. Good habitat for ground beetles. A large plant, use one planted as a backdrop. Similar to celery in flavor.

MARIGOLDS: (Calendula): Given a lot of credit as a pest deterrent. Keeps soil free of bad nematodes; supposed to discourage many insects. Plant freely throughout the garden. The marigolds you choose must be a scented variety for them to work. One down side is that marigolds do attract spider mites and slugs.

• French Marigold (T. patula) has roots that exude a substance which spreads in their immediate vicinity killing nematodes. For nematode control you want to plant dense areas of them. There have been some studies done that proved this nematode killing effect lasted for several years after the plants were These marigolds also help to deter whiteflies when planted around tomatoes and can be used in greenhouses for the same purpose. Whiteflies hate the smell of marigolds. Do not plant French marigolds next to bean plants.
• Mexican marigold (T.  minuta) is the most powerful of the insect repelling marigolds and may also overwhelm weed roots such as bind weed! It is said to repel the Mexican bean beetle and wild bunnies! Be careful it can have an herbicidal effect on some plants like beans and cabbage.

MARJORAM: As a companion plant it improves the flavor of vegetables and herbs. Sweet marjoram is the most commonly grown type.

MELONS: Companions: Corn, pumpkin, radish and squash. Other suggested helpers for melons are as follows: Marigold deters beetles, nasturtium deters bugs and beetles. Oregano provides general pest protection. 

MINT: Deters white cabbage moths, ants, rodents, flea beetles, fleas, aphids and improves the health of cabbage and  tomatoes. Use cuttings as a mulch around members of the brassica family. Mint flowers attract hoverflies and predatory wasps. Earthworms are quite attracted to mint plantings. Be careful where you plant it as mint is an incredibly invasive perennial. We have found that placing peppermint cuttings (fresh or dried) where mice are a problem is very effective in driving them off!

MOLE PLANTS: (castor bean plant) Deter moles and mice if planted here and there throughout the garden. Drop a seed of this in mole runs to drive them away.  This is a poisonous plant. See Moles: Critter Trouble

MORNING GLORIES: They attract hoverflies. Plus if you want a fast growing annual vine to cover something up morning glory is an excellent choice.

NASTURTIUMS: Nasturtium is an excellent companion for many plants. It is a companion to radishes, cabbage family plants (cabbage, collards, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, broccoli and mustards), deterring aphids, squash bugs, and striped pumpkin beetles, and improving growth and flavor. Plant as a barrier around tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, and under fruit trees. Deters wooly aphids, whiteflies, cucumber beetles and other pests of the cucurbit family. Great trap crop for  aphids (in particular the black aphids) which it does attract, especially the yellow flowering varieties. It likes poor soil with low moisture and no fertilizer. Keeping that in mind there is no reason not to set potted nasturtiums among your garden beds. It has been the practice of some fruit growers that planting nasturtiums every year in the root zone of fruit trees allow the trees to take up the pungent odor of the plants and repel bugs. Studies say it is among the best at attracting predatory insects. It has no taste effect on the fruit. A nice variety to grow is Alaska which has attractive green and white variegated leaves. The leaves, flowers and seeds of nasturtiums are all edible and wonderful in salads!
Try our recipe for: Nasturtium Salad

NETTLES, STINGING: The flowers attract bees. Sprays made from these are rich in silica and calcium. Invigorating for plants and improves their disease resistance. Leaving the mixture to rot, it then makes an excellent liquid feed. Comfrey improves the liquid feed even more. Hairs on the nettles’ leaves contain formic acid which “stings” you.

OKRA: (Hibiscus esculentus ) Plant lettuce around your okra plants and they will shade the lettuce in the summer giving you some more growing time. Okra also does well with peppers and eggplants as it helps protect these brittle stemmed plants from high winds. It also gets along with basil, cucumbers, melons, and black eyed peas. For planting with the peas plant your Okra first. When the okra is up and established plant the peas around the edges of the okra planting. You may find that the peas are far less bothered by aphids when near okra. 

ONIONS: Planting chamomile and summer savory with onions improves their flavor. Other companions are  carrot, leek, beets, kohlrabi, strawberries, brassicas, dill, lettuce and tomatoes. Intercropping onions and leeks with your carrots confuses the carrot and onion flies! Onions planted with strawberries help the berries fight disease. Keep onions away from peas and asparagus.

OPAL BASIL: An annual herb that is pretty, tasty and said to repel hornworms! Like the other basils it also does well with peppers, oregano, asparagus and petunias. Keep away from rue and sage.

OREGANO: Can be used with most crops but especially good for cabbage. Plant near broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower to repel cabbage butterfly and near cucumbers to repel cucumber beetle. Also benefits grapes.

PARSLEY: Allies: Asparagus, carrot, chives, onions, roses and tomato. Sprinkle the leaves on tomatoes, and asparagus. Use as a tea to ward off asparagus beetles. Attracts hoverflies. Let some go to seed to attract the tiny parasitic wasps and hoverflies. Parsley increases the fragrance of roses when planted around their base. Rose problems? See: Rose Rx for answers. Mint and parsley are enemies. Keep them well away from one another.

PEAS: Peas fix nitrogen in the soil. Plant next to corn. Companions for peas are bush beans, Pole Beans, Carrots, Celery, Chicory, Corn Cucumber, Eggplant, Parsley, Early Potato, Radish, Spinach, Strawberry, Sweet pepper and Turnips. Do not plant peas with onions.

PEPPERMINT: Repels white cabbage moths, aphids and flea beetles. It is the menthol content in mints that acts as an insect repellant. Bees and other good guys love it.

PEPPERS, BELL  (Sweet Peppers): Plant peppers near tomatoes, parsley, basil, geraniums, marjoram, lovage, petunia and carrots. Onions make an excellent companion plant for peppers. They do quite well with okra as it shelters them and protects the brittle stems from wind. Don’t plant them near fennel or kohlrabi. They should also not be grown near apricot trees because a fungus that the pepper is prone to can cause a lot of harm to the apricot tree. Peppers can double as ornamentals, so tuck some into flowerbeds and borders. Harvesting tip: The traditional bell pepper, for example, is harvested green, even though most varieties will mature red, orange, or yellow. Peppers can be harvested at any stage of growth, but their flavor doesn’t fully develop until maturity.

PEPPERS, HOT: Chili peppers have root exudates that prevent root rot and other Fusarium diseases. Plant anywhere you have these problems. While you should always plant chili peppers close together, providing shelter from the sun with other plants will help keep them from drying out and provide more humidity. Tomato plants, green peppers, and okra are good protection for them. Teas made from hot peppers can be useful as insect sprays. Hot peppers like to be grouped with cucumbers, eggplant, escarole, tomato, okra, Swiss chard and squash. Herbs to plant near them include: basils, oregano, parsley and rosemary. Never put them next to any beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts or fennel.

PENNYROYAL: Repels fleas. The leaves when crushed and rubbed onto your skin will repel chiggers, flies, gnats, mosquitoes and ticks. Warning: Pennyroyal is highly toxic to cats. It should not be planted where cats might ingest it and never rubbed onto their skin.

PETUNIAS: They repel the asparagus beetle, leafhoppers, certain aphids, tomato worms, Mexican bean beetles and general garden pests. A good companion to tomatoes, but plant everywhere. The leaves can be used in a tea to make a potent bug spray.

POACHED EGG PLANT: Grow poached egg plant with tomatoes, they will attract hover flies and hover flies eat aphids.

POTATO: Companions for potatoes are bush bean, members of the cabbage family, carrot, celery, corn, dead nettle, flax, horseradish, marigold, peas, petunia, onion and Tagetes marigold. Protect them from scab by putting comfrey leaves in with your potato sets at planting time. Horseradish, planted at the corners of the potato patch, provides general protection. Don’t plant these around potatoes: asparagus, cucumber, kohlrabi, parsnip, pumpkin, rutabaga, squash family, sunflower, turnip and fennel. Keep potatoes and tomatoes apart as they both can get early and late blight contaminating each other.

PUMPKINS: Pumpkin pals are corn, melon and squash. Marigold deters beetles. Nasturtium deters bugs, beetles. Oregano provides general pest protection.

PURSLANE: This edible weed makes good ground cover in the corn patch. Use the stems, leaves and seeds in stir-frys. Pickle the green seed pod for caper substitutes.  If purslane is growing in your garden it means you have healthy, fertile soil!

RADISH: One of the workhorses for the garden. Companions for radishes are: radish, beet, bush beans, pole beans, carrots, chervil, cucumber, lettuce, melons, nasturtium, parsnip, peas, spinach and members of the squash family. Why plant radishes with your squash plants? Radishes may protect them from squash borers. Anything that will help keep them away is worth a try. Radishes are a deterrent against cucumber beetles and rust flies. Chervil and nasturtium improve radish growth and flavor. Planting them around corn and letting them go to seed will also help fight corn borers. Chinese Daikon and Snow Belle radishes are favorites of flea beetles. Plant these at 6 to 12 inch intervals amongst broccoli. In one trial, this measurably reduced damage to broccoli. Radishes will lure leafminers away from spinach. The damage the leafminers do to radish leaves does not stop the radish roots from growing, a win-win situation. Keep radishes away from hyssop plants, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and turnips. For some good eating try our delicious Radish varieties.

RHUBARB: A good companion to all brassicas. Try planting cabbage and broccoli plants your rhubarb patch watch them thrive. Rhubarb protects beans against black fly. Some other interesting companions for rhubarb are the beautiful columbine flowers, garlic, onion and roses! It helps deter red spider mites from the columbines. A spray made from boiled rhubarb leaves, which contain the poison oxalic acid may be used to prevent blackspot on roses and as an aphicide. 

ROSEMARY: Companion plant to cabbage, beans, carrots and sage. Deters cabbage moths, bean beetles, and carrot flies. Use cuttings to place by the crowns of carrots for carrot flies. Zones 6 and colder can overwinter rosemary as houseplants or take cuttings.

RUE: Deters aphids, fish moths, flea beetle, onion maggot, slugs, snails, flies and Japanese beetles in roses and raspberries. Companions for rue are roses, fruits (in particular figs), raspberries and lavender. To make it even more effective with Japanese beetles: crush a few leaves to release the smell. Has helped repel cats for us. You should not plant rue near cucumbers, cabbage, basil or sage. A pretty perennial with bluish-gray leaves. May be grown indoors in a sunny window. Rue may cause skin irritation in some individuals. Remedy: See cats and dogs: Rue spray.

RYE: An excellent use of plant allelopathy is the use of mow-killed grain rye as a mulch. The allelochemicals that leach from the rye residue prevent weed germination but do not harm transplanted tomatoes, broccoli, or many other vegetables.

SAGE: Use as a companion plant with broccoli, cauliflower, rosemary, cabbage, and carrots to deter cabbage moths, beetles, black flea beetles and carrot flies. Do not plant near cucumbers, onions or rue. Sage repels cabbage moths and black flea beetles. Allowing sage to flower will also attract many beneficial insects and the flowers are pretty. There are some very striking varieties of sage with variegated foliage that can be used for their ornamental as well as practical qualities. More on sage.

SPINACH: Plant with peas and beans as they provide natural shade for the spinach. Gets along with cabbage, cauliflower, celery, eggplant, onion, peas, strawberries.

SOUTHERNWOOD: Plant with cabbage, and here and there in the garden. Wonderful lemony scent when crushed or brushed in passing. Roots easily from cuttings. Does not like fertilizer! It is a perennial that can get quite bushy. We have started to cut it back every spring and it comes back in not time. A delightful plant that is virtually pest free.

SOYBEANS: They add nitrogen to the soil making them a good companion to corn. They repel chinch bugs and Japanese beetles. Why not try soybeans, they are good for you. They are many tasty ways to prepare them.

SQUASH: Companions: Corn, cucumbers, icicle radishes, melon and pumpkin. Helpers: Borage deters worms, improves growth and flavor. Marigolds deters beetle. Nasturtium deters squash bugs and beetles. Oregano provides general pest protection.

STRAWBERRY: Friends are beans, borage, lettuce, onions, spinach and thyme. Foes: Cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and kohlrabi. Allies: Borage strengthens resistance to insects and disease. Thyme, as a border, deters worms.

SUMMER SAVORY: Plant with beans and onions to improve growth and flavor. Discourages cabbage moths, Mexican bean beetles and black aphids. Honey bees love it.

SUNFLOWERS: Planting sunflowers with corn is said by some to increase the yield. Aphids a problem? Definitely plant a few sunflowers here and there in the garden. Step back and watch the ants herd the aphids onto them. We have been doing this for years and it is remarkable. The sunflowers are so tough that the aphids cause very little damage and you will have nice seed heads for the birds to enjoy. Sunflowers also attract hummingbirds which eat whiteflies. Talk about a symbiotic relationship!

SWEET ALYSSUM:  Direct seed or set out starts of sweet alyssum near plants that have been attacked by aphids in the past. Alyssum flowers attract hoverflies whose larva devour aphids. Another plus is their blooms draw bees to pollinate early blooming fruit trees. They will reseed freely and make a beautiful groundcover every year.

TANSY: Plant with fruit trees, roses and raspberries keeping in mind that it can be invasive and is not the most attractive of plants. Tansy which is often recommended as an ant repellant may only work on sugar type ants. These are the ones that you see on peonies and marching into the kitchen. At least for us placing tansy clippings by the greenhouse door has kept them out. Deters flying insects, Japanese beetles, striped cucumber beetles, squash bugs, ants and mice! Tie up and hang a bunch of tansy leaves indoors as a fly repellent. Use clippings as a mulch as needed. Don’t be afraid to cut the plant up as tansy will bounce back from any abuse heaped on it! It is also a helpful addition to the compost pile with its’ high potassium content.

• Tansy Warning: You do not want to plant Tansy anywhere that livestock can feed on it as it is toxic to many animals. Do not let it go to seed either as it may germinate in livestock fields.

TARRAGON: Plant throughout the garden, not many pests like this one. Recommended to enhance growth and flavor of vegetables.

THYME: Deters cabbage worms. Wooly thyme makes a wonderful groundcover. You may want to use the upright form of thyme in the garden rather than the groundcover types. Thyme is easy to grow from seeds or cuttings. Older woody plants should be divided in spring.

TOMATOES: Tomato allies are many: asparagus, basil, bean, carrots, celery, chive, cucumber, garlic, head lettuce, marigold, mint, nasturtium, onion, parsley, pepper, marigold, pot marigold and sow thistle. One drawback with tomatoes and carrots: tomato plants can stunt the growth of your carrots but the carrots will still be of good flavor. Basil repels flies and mosquitoes, improves growth and flavor. Bee balm, chives and mint improve health and flavor. Borage deters tomato worm, improves growth and flavor. Dill, until mature, improves growth and health, mature dill retards tomato growth. Enemies: corn and tomato are attacked by the same worm. Kohlrabi stunts tomato growth. Keep potatoes and tomatoes apart as they both can get early and late blight contaminating each other. Keep cabbage and cauliflower away from them. Don’t plant them under walnut trees as they will get walnut wilt: a disease of tomatoes growing underneath walnut trees.

WHITE GERANIUMS: These members of the pelargonum family draw Japanese beetles to feast on the foliage which in turn kills them.

WORMWOOD: Keeps animals out of the garden when planted as a border. An excellent deterrent to most insects. Don’t plant wormwood with peas or beans. A tea made from wormwood will repel cabbage moths, slugs, snails, black flea beetles and fleas effectively. The two best varieties for making insect spray are Silver King and Powis Castle. Adversely Powis castle attracts ladybugs which in turn breed directly on the plant. Silver Mound is great as a border plant and the most toxic wormwood. Note: As wormwood actually produces a botanical poison do not use it directly on food crops.
See More on wormwood. for more details.
For insect spray: See wormwood spray

YARROW: Yarrow has insect repelling qualities and is an excellent natural fertilizer. A handful of yarrow leaves added to the compost pile really speeds things up. Try it! It also attracts predatory wasps and ladybugs to name just two. It may increase the essential oil content of herbs when planted among them. Yarrow has so many wonderful properties to it and is an ingredient in our own Golden Harvest Fertilizer.

ZINNIA: Pretty zinnias attract hummingbirds which eat whiteflies. Alternately the pastel varieties of zinnias can be used as a trap crop for Japanese beetles. All zinnias attract bees and other insect pollinators.

Here are two charts that might help: one for plant height at maturity, one for rooting depth:

Root Depth

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

Bruce Thompson*
November 22, 2003

This document offers a comprehensive  summary of the current oil crisis situation, what is going to happen, the inadequacy of expected solutions, how it will affect YOU, why public warning is so late, WHAT YOU CAN DO with more information via links to sites discussion groups and contacts.  You can also download this document from links at the end.

Feed the Future Note – This document was written SEVEN years ago.  The crisis is much more imminent.  Alongside that we have the rise of genetically modified food, natural disasters and more.

YOU CAN MAKE a DIFFERENCE but you MUST ACT NOW. Read this document to inform yourself about peak oil and the implications AND why we must localize food growing.

Oil & Gas Shortages Soon, Final Emptying of Wells

Summary

This document reveals that in this decade:

• After a hundred years of exploration and extraction very little new oil and gas is being found. See graph.  Today, for every barrel of oil discovered, the world consumes four barrels.
• When energy get scarcer and dearer there is very serious disruption of transport, industry, business, government and private life.

Serious shortages and disruptions

• Globally, 90% of transport (road/rail/air/sea) depends on oil. So does industrial & farm equipment (food).
• Much natural gas is used by power generating stations to generate electricity. Gas shortages can therefore trigger grid outages that disable computers, communications and electronic control equipment.
• More than 500,000 oil & gas-based products will also become scarcer and dearer: plastics, clothing, asphalt, tyres, medicines, sealants, inks.

Alternative energy sources cannot compensate

• Hydrogen is not the answer because it is actually made from natural gas, which itself is running out.
• Hydroelectricity, coal, nuclear, windmills, solar etc. cannot be increased sufficiently in time to prevent seriously disruptive shortages of energy.

Difficulties adapting

• Changeovers take years. Our immense existing infrastructure was built assuming plentiful fuels. (Cars, globalization, suburbs, arctic/tropical cities.)
• Changeovers demand fuels to implement them too.
• Coal, nuclear, oilsands etc involve serious pollution of air/water/soil. They use oil/gas/electricity to exploit them.
• The energy decline is strange, unwelcome news to the public. There is confusion, resistance and delay.

Evidence of decline of oil and gas

Some people still say oil and gas are abundant, and that money and technology will meet needs for decades. But oil and gas industry data show:

• A clear, 40-year trend of less and less discovery of oil. (See graph at top of this page.)
• In regions including USA, the North Sea, Norway, New Zealand there is obvious decline of oil and gas.
• Global oil supply is 70% from pre-1972 wells
• Steadily decreasing output from the existing wells.
• Big military takeovers of oil & gas resources.

Timing and severity

• North America’s gas supply: Start of decline: about 2003 – 2004. Electricity is 20% gas-powered. Grid blackouts, brownouts in North American workplaces, cities, homes, Internet system, economy. Importing gas is seriously constricted by lack of ships and suitable port equipment.
• Global oil supply: ‘Conventional’ (easy-to-extract) oil: Decline from about 2005 on. Expect higher prices not only for fuels, but all goods and services because all require energy to create and deliver them.
  ‘Unconventional oil’ (Expensive deep sea, polar, etc): Decline about 3% a year  from 2009 on.
• Competition: Prices are affected by fierce global competition for oil and gas. Scarcity for one kind of energy also raises the price of the other forms, such as electricity or coal.
• Duration of decline: Forever. Oil and gas took millions of years to form, in extremely rare conditions. Regeneration rate is practically zero.

World now consumes four barrels of oil for each barrel discovered

• Barrels consumed globally/year: 28 billion (2002).
• Barrels discovered globally per year: 6 billion of “conventional” plus 8 billion deep sea, oil sands etc. Discovery of oil fluctuates each year, but peaked in the 1960s, and has declined at an average of about 9 billion barrels per year over the past 40 years.
• Pre-1973-discovered oil in use today: More than 70% of present global supply. We’ve mostly just been using up huge old oil fields.
   

Those figures, & the above graph of discoveries are at http://dieoff.org/page85.htm  and http://dieoff.org/page90.htm

Proportion of global energy provided by oil

• In developed countries 40% (1997)

Inadequacy of Expected Solutions

The “invest more to find it” idea

Yet-to-be located oil, globally

After a century of exploration, the earth’s geology and oil resources are generally well known. When the fields are emptying, money only helps to scrape out the hard-to-reach remainder. There are 210 billion barrels left to discover and 1000 billion barrels left to extract. This is indicated by the 40-year decline in discovery of oil. No amount of money will create oil that simply isn’t there.

Number of oil wells already in world/USA

More than 500,000. In USA, 80% of the wells now produce less than three barrels a day.

Percentage of oil recovered from a typical oil well

20% to 60%. It relates primarily to the viscosity of the oil. You get less from a heavy oil than a light one because it sticks in the reservoir.

“Technology will solve it” idea

Challenge to technology

To compensate for the expected 3% oil decline (at today’s 28 billion barrels a year), create and install, by year 2009, permanent supplies of portable energy, equivalent to 840 million barrels of oil a year. Then as oil keeps declining forever, increase this new energy it until it replaces 40% of the world’s oil  supply (22 billion barrels a year) OR reduce energy demand equivalently as the global population increases by almost a quarter million people every day.

The “better efficiency” idea

Increases in efficiency usually fail to reduce consumption (more m.p.g. just causes people to travel more or buy two cars, or other goods) unless they are personally determined to reduce energy consumption.

What about nuclear power?

Nuclear supplies 16% of the world’s electricity. Its ability to soften the oil and gas crash is problematic:

• Past accidents. Risk of more, and terrorism.
• Many more reactors would be needed, at huge cost, against local opposition.
• Tons of radioactive materials to transport at risk to public.
• Nuclear waste disposal is still the major, unresolved problem, especially breeder reactors producing plutonium – a nuclear weapon/terrorist raw material, half-life contamination is 24,000 years.
• All abandoned reactors are radioactive for decades or millennia.
• Nuclear is not directly suitable for aircraft and vehicles.
• Adapting nuclear to make hydrogen or other fuels would be a huge, and energy-expensive project.
• Nuclear fusion is still not available, after 40 years’ research and billions of dollars invested.

Note from Feed the Future.  Obama is considering bringing two nuclear plants to Georgia in spite of all the evidence above.

Natural gas

Proportion of global energy provided by gas

20% of global energy supply (1997).

Natural gas is also running short

Demand in North America is already outstripping supply, especially as power utilities take the remaining gas to generate electricity. Later in this web page there is a graph suggesting important effects of gas decline on the electricity used for computers, communications and control equipment.

Gas is not suited for existing jet aircraft, ships, vehicles, and equipment for agriculture and other products. Conversion consumes large amounts of energy and money. Natural gas also does not provide the huge array of chemical by-products that we currently get from oil.

Hydro-electric

Present use: 2.3% of global energy supply (1997). Many rivers are already exploited.

As a replacement for oil:

Very minor compared with 40% provided at present by oil. Unsuitable for aircraft and the present 800 million existing fuel-powered cars.

Coal

Current global use

24% of global energy supply.

As a replacement for oil

Is 50% to 200% heavier than oil per energy unit. Bulky and dirty. Expansion of coal mining, causes land ruin, and increases greenhouse gas emissions.

Hard to fine-control the rate of burn

Tuning the rate of burn of oil and gas fuels is easy, but coal is different. It is therefore is used in power stations to make electricity, wasting half of its energy content.

Coal mining operations run on oil fuels

Present coal-mining machinery and transportation runs not on coal, but on oil-based fuels.

Pollution

A single coal-fired station can produce a million tons of solid waste each year. Burning coal in homes pollutes air with acrid smog containing acid gases and particles. (Smog, greenhouse gases, and acid rain).

Liquid fuels from coal

Very inefficient, and huge amounts of water required.

Solar and wind

Global solar use

• Is about 0.006% of global energy supply. Energy varies constantly with weather or day/night. Not storable or portable energy like oil or natural gas so unsuited for present vehicles and industry. Batteries bulky, expensive, wear out in 5-10 years.
• Photovoltaic solar equipment (US$4/watt) is about 15% efficient, giving about 100 watts of the 1 kW per square meter exposed to bright sunshine (enough for one light bulb). A typical solar water panel array can deliver 50% to 85% of a home’s hot water though.
• Using some of our precious remaining crude oil as fuel to manufacture solar & wind equipment may be wise.

Global wind power use

0.07% of 1990 global energy supply. As with solar, energy varies greatly with weather, and is not portable or storable like oil and gas. Each wind turbine from Denmark produces an average of 698 kW averaged over a year.

Hydrogen

Current global use

US (only) 1998 consumption is 0.01% of global energy.

As a replacement for oil

• Hydrogen is currently manufactured as from natural gas, which is running short. It is therefore an energy “carrier” not a source.
• It can be produced in other ways, such as electrolysis, but always with a loss of the energy needed  to do that. Usually it is better to simply use the original energy directly.

Other sources of energy

Options

Shale, tar sand, coalbed methane, ethanol, biomass (from vegetation), etc.

Effectiveness as replacements for oil

• Huge investment in research and infrastructure to exploit them, plus large amounts of now-expiring oil supply.
• A major problem is that they cannot be exploited before the oil shocks cripple attempts to bring them on line, and the rate of extraction is far too slow to meet the huge global energy demand.

How It Will Affect Us

Food supply

Food production & delivery depends on oil

Food grains now contain between 4 and 10 calories of fossil fuel for every 1 calorie of solar energy. Example: 4% of USA’s energy budget is used to grow food, while 10 to 13 percent is needed to process it and transport it onto plates.

Fertilizers are made from natural gas. Grain yield without fossil fuel support can fall from 130 bushels/acre down to 30 bushels/acre. The worsening fuel shortages will make agriculture increasingly expensive and land-needy. Localizing agriculture closer to cities will help, as will more-vegetarian diets.

Efficiency

70% of all grain grown is used to feed animals for human consumption

The meat feeds 1/5 as many people as the grain could.

Number of cats & dogs in USA

131 million

Food given to pets

North American pet food business is $30 billion/yr, and is growing.

“Future food” being consumed by using gasoline in vehicles

Gasoline consumed ‘now’ will deprive future agriculture of energy for producing food.

Below are examples of how much “future food” a 30 mile-per-gallon vehicle is “eating” now. Also shown is the heavy physical labor humans will have to do in future when gasoline is unavailable for farm/industrial/office/home machinery:

• Bread, 1 kg loaf = 6 miles = one slice per 422 yards That 1/5 gallon = human heavy farm labor for 23 hrs.
• Beef, 1 kg = consumed by driving 76.2 miles That 2.5 gallon = human heavy farm labor 300 hrs.
• Canned corn 1 kg = consumed by driving 5.4 miles Again, 1/5 gallon = human heavy farm labor 20 hrs.

Transportation, Business, Globalization

Oil for transportation

• Automobiles, globally: 722 million
• Automobiles, USA: 132 million
• Trucks (all types) in USA: 1.5 million (all types) in USA:
• Buses: (all types) in USA:: more than 654,000
• Locomotives: USA: 26,000
• World aircraft fleet: 11,000 aircraft of more than 100 passengers. All 11,000 designed for oil-based fuel.
• World shipping: 85,000 ships in world.
• Decked fishing boats in the world: 1.2 million

Globalization

Will end. (Fuel costs & scarcity).

Oil for industry

Construction industry example: Energy to build an energy-efficient home is equivalent to 6,500 gallons of gasoline.

Number of by-products of oil

Over 500,000 including fertilizers, medicines, lubricants, plastics (computers, phones, shower curtains, disposables, toys, etc.), asphalt (roading and roofs), insulation, glues/paints/ caulking, (modern synthetic rubber) tires and boots, carpets, synthetic fabrics/clothing, stockings, insect repellent.

Government Services, Economy

City drinking water, government services

• Number of cities in the world: over 55,000
• Services to consider: Water supply pumping, sewage disposal, garbage disposal, street/park maintenance, hospitals & health systems, police, fire services. National defense (land, sea, air).
• Possibility of wars over remaining oil.

Economy and employment

• International oil import costs: Sharp rises (increasing global competition for dwindling oil & gas of five Middle-Eastern countries and former Soviet Union. International tensions.
• National debt, inflation: Money goes out of country, to oil producers. Money gets scarce. Interest/mortgages rise. Government prints more money to pay overseas energy bills. Money devalues. Inflation. Prices rise.
• Poverty: Public, and businesses become poorer paying higher energy costs. Less spending, less sales. Layoffs. Unemployment.
• Welfare costs up, taxes up. Therefore taxes up. Pensions for aging/disabled reduced or discontinued, and devalued by inflation.

Migration

• People will migrate away from hardship into less uncomfortable areas. Locally, regionally, globally.

Other serious quality-of-life aspects

• Heating and cooling: In cold regions oil heats buildings (burned as fuel in homes or in oil-fired electric power stations). In hot areas oil power provides air conditioning. As natural gas is substituted for oil, the gas price will rise too.
• Smog: Energy price and shortages will increase wood and coal burning in homes, increasing city smog.

Why Public Warning is so Late

Normal business and political posturing

For business and political reasons, there have been very misleading reports of sizes of stocks of oil:

(a) By firstly understating discoveries, and then later overstating discoveries, oil companies have given the false, but pleasing impression of an increasing discovery trend. Investors respond accordingly, and finance more exploration.

(b) The seven major oil-extracting countries have for years reported unchanged reserves (even though they were extracting and selling billions of barrels of oil, and that the reserves would therefore be less each year). See table of “spurious reserve revisions” shown below.

(c) In 1988 five of those countries claimed they each had about twice as much reserve oil as in 1987. See graph below, based on tables from < http://www.hubbertpeak.com/campbell/images/com12.gif >.

d) We, the public have enjoyed using up the gasoline, heating oil, plastics, and countless other oil products for decades. The oil kept flowing generously. We “looked on the bright side” and mostly ignored warnings by environmentalists that fossil fuels would run out. Media constantly announced new oil discoveries, and increasing stocks of oil. Emptying wells seemed decades in the future. Nobody planned for it. Now they really are running empty.

(e) OPEC countries need to earn as much oil revenue as possible to support rapidly growing populations where the public health care, education and other services are provided free, from oil revenues, not by taxes. They seem especially frightened of alternative energy sources, even though when examined closely, those alternative sources are drastically too small to compensate for oil. “As a group of fossil fuel exporters, OPEC stands to lose more than most from any proposals that threatens to cut oil consumption,” – Rilwanu Lukman, the Secretary General of OPEC, speaking at the 16th World Petroleum Congress, Calgary, 2000. (Globe & Mail Newspaper, June 5, 2000.)

Economic theory says exhausted resources always replaced

Economists have taught us the illusory theory that market demand will always generate suitable solutions. This ignores any physical limitations of the earth, human resourcefulness, or time needed. Example quote:

“Minerals are inexhaustible and will never be depleted. A stream of investment creates additions to proved reserves, a very large in-ground inventory, constantly renewed as it is extracted… How much was in the ground at the start and how much will be left at the end are unknown and irrelevant.” 

 Feed the Future note – BULL 

That is from Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Morry Adelman, who has long been one of the world’s foremost energy and resource economists and a leading analyst of international oil and gas markets. The quote is on page xi of his book, The Economics of Petroleum Supply, M.A. Adelman, published 1993.

 They lied to us

Certain countries reported that oil stocks were “not declining”, even though oil was being taken out, steadily emptying the wells.

Certian countries spectacularly increased the reported quantities of oil in stock, so that OPEC would recognize them as bigger suppliers and allow them to export more, increasing revenues. They were desperately competing with each other to make up their revenue by having a bigger slice of market share, because the price per barrel had plunged to about $12 per barrel.

The history graph of the information on all this prices is at  http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/chron.html

What You Can Do

Feed The Future Note - If your local town has a transition organisation, join it.  If not, start one.   Get together with your community to increase community and local fortitude and work together to create ‘energy descent’.   Look up transition towns on google.

Personal preparations

Reduce energy dependence of family, home, lifestyle. The less fuels and goods you consume, the less affected you will be..

Workplace

Observe, reduce energy need. Talk with friends, workmates, neighborhood, city, governments. The ideal use for remaining oil and mineral reserves is into industries that create inexhaustible alternative energy equipment like windmills, solar water heaters, biomass (vegetation that creates fuels), etc.

Share your feeling with others

Try to stay positive and active rather than ignore it or blame people for it. Where there’s life there’s hope, especially if we all collaborate and are creative.

“It’s not that new”. Humans have always faced hardships, and many among us do so constantly now. Learn from them.

Possible emergency measures to consider

• Alert the public so people understand the energy decline and cooperate to adapt to it. This includes alerting your city council and local media, the government. Everyone needs to collaborate, at all levels.
• Prepare the community for conserving and rationing of dwindling fuels & oil/gas-derived products.
• Discontinue projects that assume abundant fuel, such as road widening, overseas trade
• Re-localize life, business. Un-globalize
• Relocate food production nearer to cities
• Feed the Future note- learn about permaculture and how you can create forest food gardens that contain all nutrients for health and wellness and will in a few years supply YOU and your family or community AND have surplus
• If you already have children, STOP NOW Population control IS VITAL to prevent children being born into extremely harsh conditions that seem likely, and to conserve soon-scarce resources for those already alive.
• Reconsider immigration, which adds load – Feed the Future Note - don’t run off somewhere else, it’ll be the same everywhere.
• Strengthen the police and army to deal with social chaos & to control distribution of  supplies. Feed the Future Note

  – we don’t agree with this. Strengthen your own defences and start to care and share, make sure you have your own community supplies and encourage other communities to do so, sharing with those nearest to you.

• Alert national leaders to organize well against this major threat that faces us all.  Feed The Future Note – this was written in 2003.  Our sense now is that national leaders are not interested in taking the measures we need because they are too concerned about securing resources for the moneyed few. THEY WILL NOT HELP US WE MUST HELP OURSELVES.

Feed the Future – additional info on what to do

1. Start shifting your lifestyle now into a more ‘return 2 earth’ simpler one.  Research how to do this. (Adapting to new ways of life takes time and effort so it’s to your advantage to start now). Repurpose, Recycle, ReUse, Refuse to buy stuff that travels thousands of miles to get to your table or home

2. Learn new skills in order to become as self-sufficient as possible; in terms of food, water, energy, and personal transport.

That means a large productive community/ home vegetable garden and more particularly a permaculture style food forest garden to compensate for reduced commercial food production and higher prices.  Start canning and preserving food.   Get yourself an emergency food supply.  Investigate  renewable energy generation – get a wind tower or some solar panels.   Start to conserve water by adding water catchment systems to your home.   Change your water outlet system so that greywater [from sinks, bathrooms [not toilets] and kitchens flow into your garden

3. Promote community re-localization to your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and community leadership; reducing your dependency on long-distance supply chains. Redirect your purchases toward locally produced agriculture and goods, local services, and local and decentralized energy production.

4. Reduce or eliminate your fossil fuel use as much as possible, especially for transportation — use mass transit, bike, or walk. Work closer to home. Support alternative, renewable fuels. Increase the energy efficiency of your home. Withdraw support for further development of highways, urban sprawl, and large personal vehicles.

5. WARNING  If you wait to start preparing, the resources you need or the conditions you count on to adapt may be exhausted, too expensive, or no longer viable. For example, if you wait until things get tough to trade in your SUV for a hybrid or plug-in car, there may not be any left (due to demand), and there may be no one willing to take that SUV in trade.

Prepare Yourself NOW

Order a year’s supply of freeze dried food, buy a solar oven,  get batteries to see you through in times of power outages.  These items are designed  to keep you going while you transition into a more local, self sufficient, regenerative lifestyle .  Be prepared for emergencies and for the future NOW.

Pass this document on to everyone you know.   Talk to people everywhere.
More Information and Contacts

Documented evidence

You can obtain two versions of this document “The Oil & Gas Crash and You”:

• “Shorter Version”, available as a two-sided, one-sheet handbill that you can give to other people (It contains most of the contents of this web page). < http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/_FactSheet.doc
• “Full version”, a 12-page resource for researchers and journalists, containing extra references and authorities, and more explanations and links. http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19.doc

Websites

• http://www.hubbertpeak.com/duncan/olduvai2000.htm   The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge,by Richard C. Duncan, Ph.D. Pardee Keynote Symposia Geological Society of America Summit 2000 Reno, Nevada November 13, 2000.

This paper suggests that decline of natural gas may be the most disastrous event from year. 2007 (or sooner, see updates) because of resultant shortage of electricity for computers, communications and control equipment.

The following sites are conveniently keyword-searchable for research. They have lots of scientific and oil industry literature about energy resources and the ecology generally. They are heavily annotated with authoritative references and links:

• http://www.hubbertpeak.com/  Named after the late Dr. M. King Hubbert, geophysicist, this website provides data, analysis and recommendations regarding the upcoming peak in the rate of global oil extraction.

•  http://www.dieoff.org/ This untidy, emotional site is nevertheless a very large, valuable resource. It’s full of reputable energy-related and environment-related reports and papers, conveniently assembled in one place by researcher Jay Hanson.
• www.oilcrash.com is a New Zealand activist website operated by Robert Atack. It is especially useful for downloading audio and video recordings of the world’s most prominent speakers as they notify the public about the decline of oil and gas, and the implications.

Discussion forum – Technical/scientific

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources  (restricted membership at about 450, to prevent newcomers posting material already discussed, but there are ten thousand previous postings keyword searchable.)

Discussion forum – Implications, action

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2 which is the current discussion group.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty which is now closed, but there are ten thousand previous postings in the archives for researchers by keyword search. Monitored the energy decline by featuring news items about it, and discussed countless implications at personal and societal level. Membership by request to bthomson@e3.net.nz.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2OnEmpty2  After 10,000 messages in RunningOnEmpty, this group has continued the discussion, reserving the original egroup as a VIP conference egroup, and as an archive.

Author of “The Oil & Gas Crash and You”

Bruce Thomson, author of this article is  a technical writer in Palmerston North, New Zealand. He moderated the original RunningOnEmpty group, and is the moderator of that RunningOnEmptyNZ2internet forum.

There is no institutional financial sponsoring or influence of Bruce Thompson’s  page or the forum.

Some moral authority to expose the Convince Sheet to the public was gained. After weeks of debate (3,100 forum message) there was a poll of 280 members. We all knew the announcement would be disturbing, with possibly serious impacts on the public, the stock market and general business and personal confidence. Of those 280 polled, 62 members responded, and over 85% of them voted in favor of exposing the truth.

Perceived advantages of informing the public were

• People might cooperate better with governments, instead of innocently demanding more energy or insisting on lower fuel taxes (As fuel imports cost more and more, cutting taxes will just impoverish governments, and cause cuts in services like health care, education and social welfare. A great deal of energy conservation is possible, and is a better solution.)
• People can make correct decisions for themselves personally (to have less children, plan cheaper transport, safer jobs, pay off debts, consume less, conserve energy more, etc.
• All the cleverest minds and wisest leaders of the world could work on the problem. With them helping, and an understanding public, we might fare better than if everyone continues innocently wasting the remaining energy and bringing the oil and gas crash to us faster and sooner.

You may copy freely to others…

• This web page (you can refer people to it: http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ   
• ‘The Oil &Gas Crash and You’ files. This shorter one, and the full version are downloadable at… http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19SHORT.doc  http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19.doc

• http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19.doc http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19.doc

There are no political or commercial allegiances associated with this document it was created as a personal enquiry, and in the public interest.

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

 I am renewed with inspiration and ideas to begin to live in a self-sustaining and regenerative way that will save the earth and promote co-operation and love amongst communities.

Permaculture is one of those words that most people who don’t know might easily associate with gardening.  That’s a bit like associating spirituality with prayer.  It’s an important part but it isn’t the whole.

On the last day as we shared our gifts in a circle outside on Koinonia Community Farm, we were reminded that permaculture is more than just growing food ecologically.  It espouses a way of life, the principles of which relate not just to growing food, but to our very way of living and being.

Golden Learnings – a way forward

With 230 million acres of forest being decimated in the last 3 years, we must change the way we live.  As long as people are addicted to MacDonalds and the like, forest will continue to be slashed down to make way for grain to feed animals for human consumption.

The Sahara desert was once a lush forest.  

The concrete skyscrapers of New York stand on land that was once covered with diverse trees and plant life, home to a plethora of wildlife and harvest-able edibles.  

We humans are gifted with intelligence and cognition.  We have used these gifts to do many good things, but we forgot to put on the brake.  

Human magnificence has created the keyline plough that doesn’t compact but aerates the land and it has also developed agriculture row farming and chemical fertilizers /pesticides that quickly destroy the natural fertility of Earth.

Say no to chemical fertilizers and yes to pig/chicken poo, compost teas and mulching

The same spark of creativity that discovered fossil fuels in the ground and a way of harnessing it for human energy can now be converted and harnessed to discover ways of capturing and storing energy.

Say no to city water, the electricity grid and say yes to elemental power from sun, water, wind and earth [solar, hydro-electric, windmills and geo-thermal sources of energy]

The same genius that learned to build cities is now able to find creative ways of creating natural dwellings that can appeal to all tastes from simple cob huts to huge earthship systems [Actor Dennis Weaver was one of the first people to build an earthship on his land in the 70's].

Say no to cement and urbanite and yes to sand, clay, straw, bamboo and tire-based structures.

The same genius that discovered penicillin and created anti-inflammatory drugs is now beign redirected to developing herbal medicines, alternative wellness programs and miracles like colloidal silver.

Say no to big Pharma and yes to growing your own medicinal herbs and plants, learning to make medicines and practising and using wellness ways as found in yoga, tai-chi, acupuncture and shiatsu.

The mind power that learned how to store and process food from across the world for mass consumption can also be turned to growing food forests that offer an earth-friendly way of feeding humans coupled with old-timey ways of preserving produce that promotes wellness and doesn’t drive us into the arms of diabetes, heart disease and toxic poisoning.

Say no to mass cultivation and imports of foods that enlarge our clod-hopping carbon footprint.  Say yes to home grown, local produce that is still replete with valuable vitamins and minerals because we pick, eat and share it as soon as we harvest it.

The same intelligence that worked out how to clone and genetically engineer can also be put to divining natural patterns and learning to grow in a way that preserves Earth and makes her a richer, longer lasting source of bounty for all life.

Say no to ‘So not Man’ and yes to heirloom seeds, non GMO foods and the right for farmers to save and distribute their own seeds.

We cleverly developed microwave ovens, espresso machines,  gas powered BBQ systems and state of the art kitchen appliances and it is that same cleverness that will help us to develop resource conserving solar and cob ovens as well as woodstoves that can serve dually as a heat source and cooking facility.

Say no to microwaves, electrical kitchen gadgets and discover the joy of woodstove cooker, solar oven baking and open fire BBQ’s using deadwood from the forest.

The intelligent faculty that helped us invent plastic bowls and man-made fibres can also be turned to learning how to make tree bark baskets, weave natural cloth from animal wool, and eating utensils carved from wood [ecologically harvested to encourage not deter reforestation]

Say no to buying more man-made fibres and plastics, re-purpose what exists instead of land-filling it and say yes to natural ecologically harvested materials for clothing, furniture, cooking utensils and building.

It took a genius to develop suburbia and vast city living structures and that same genius is now being harnessed to create transition initiatives, bringing communities together to build shared resources, and begin the ‘energy descent’.

Say no to urban skyscrapers, isolated housing and road dependent urban sprawls and say yes to helping your community begin to pull together and become self-sustaining and regenerative.

Our greatest gift and that which sets us ‘above’ the animals is that of intelligent creativity and innovation.   That is why we are the designated stewards of this land we call Earth.   Animals and plants know how to live symbiotically and harmonically, accepting natural culling from predators and death to ensure renewal but they do not have an overall sense of the whole.  

We do and it is our birthright to ensure that every life form is taken care of and that we restore natural patterns of living that will ensure the eternal existence of this birthright.

A Native American said to me the other day, pointing to the land we were standing on, ‘This is MY land’ ‘You are standing on the land of my ancestors’.   My response was ‘this is neither your land nor mine. 

It is not a question of right but a question of right stewardship and native ancestry does not always mean that someone knows what is right.

The land has been leased to all humans and we all have a duty to tend it with the same outlook that came from the true spirit of Native Americans not the one corrupted by the white man.     We are all potential stewards not owners.   

Owning land privately should not mean that you can treat it any way you care.   Ownership comes with a hidden responsibility to care for it with the whole planet in mind, not just your selfish concerns.  

Selfish Manicured Lawns

Behind the 10 acres and house that we are renting lies hundreds of acres of neatly manicured non-productive land.   The owner has a massive mansion set in the hilltops, a guest house and a shooting lodge. 

The land has been deforested to create a parklike atmosphere.. and a pond is fed from the creek to house fish that are only avaialble to the few.     And they visit it no more than 3 times a year for an odd day or two.

Say no to manicuring and hoarding land for ego purposes and say yes to land-sharing and using the land to create food, ecological living space and a haven for all of gods creatures, plant, animal and human.

Share The Land

Pic by localfoodcleveland.org

If you own more than 20 acres, you probably have far more than you need and are able to farm and nurture holistically without damaging that land.  If this is the case, please consider sharing your land with those who are willing to work for the good of Earth first and create a pleasant, productive, ecological space for humans, animals and plants to thrive and feed each other in reciprocal generosity.

Find out how land trusts can be written to ensure your lifetime stewardship and provide a measure of security for those who are willing to put their life toil into the land.

If you are on Facebook please join our Share The Land group or pass on this blog or link to people you know who have land and are willing to share or those who are willliing to work and need land on which to homestead and build local co-operative community.

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

I was just in a discussion with people who are talking about their fear that when the ‘crisis’ hits, people will be invading their land with guns and pillaging and looting. I understand and sympathise… and yet I am horribly afraid that our very soul and spirit is at risk if we continue to think like this.   And I am not speaking as one who has got it and is practising it yet.  But I know in the depths of my soul that I must let go and become more giving, less self concerned and more open to the goodness and potential of our humanity.

We must pre-empt this and I don’t think the solution is more fences and more defences. 

In World War II when crisis hit, people pulled together.  In England, children who were in the most bombable target places like cities were evacuated to rural homes.  My own mothers family had to take in two city kids and have them living as part of the family.  My grandfather dug up his orchard and planed vegetables so that he could feed his village and he did it, working night after night, pulling in his kids and friends to help.

People shared, they made room and sacrificed their own luxuries to care for their fellow human beings.

What if in our plans and designs for eco-friendly living we were to make provison for this. Permaculture thinking talks about sharing the surplus.   I think it has to go beyond this and that we may have to sacrifice some of what we have to allow others to live. 

 If each person who has a home and a plot of land were to consider the minimum they can survive on and make provisons to take in those less fortunate and less informed fellow beings, we might just make it.

I urge each and every one of you to begin to make these provisons.  If you have land work out what you need to survive minimally and begin preparations to take in refugees.   This may sound crazy but it seems to me that by offering rather than trying to withold and protect we might avoid excessive violent confrontation. 

One thng you can do is start saving heirloom seeds now.   Monsanto are trying to control the world’s seeds. Already Haitan farmers have said ‘NO’ to an offer of 60,000 seeds because they don’t want to be dependent on GMO seeds which don’t produce save-able seeds and force you to buy from Monsanto over and over and over.

We urge you to band together with friends and family and buy yourself a pack of heirloom seeds. We have, and we are keeping them to help provide food for more than us.  

That is why it is vital for ALL COMMUNITIES to pull together and create ‘refugee spaces’. We need to start planting food forests now everywhere there is available space and even on our own spare space. 

We need to think about lobbying for funding or tax breaks for those who are willing to create ‘guest living spaces’ by building earth structures and kitting them out for survival for the less fortunate.

If we live our lives in fear of losing what we have, we will.   I am not worried on a personal level.  My husband and I have no land and no money but we do have good friends whom we know will, out of the kindness of their hearts, make space for us.    And we have survival skills. If we have to we will go into the woods and forage and live by firelight and our wits.  We are not afraid. But we are in the minority.

We must also encourage those who are living in the illusion to wake up.   We must begin to educate people in survival techniques. We must have gathering points and facilities to ‘farm out’ people before they take matters into their own hands.    We must begin a program of education NOW.     Do you really need that iphone or second car or thirty extra acres?  How many pairs of shoes or doggie coats can you eat when there is no food.

In a society that allows its citizens to arm themselves, we must be aware that unless we make provison, hungry people will take matters into their own hands.

I urge you to get together with your community, friends, family, neighbors and start talking now about how you can provide space, comfort and nourishment for your fellow man.  And if you are on the edge, begin now to make friendly relations, ask yourself how you can help and offer value in exchange for a place to sleep and some food to eat.

I sense that the impending crisis will see many deaths and an inevitable paring down of our excessive human population.   But I sense strongly that we can avert some of the crisis if we take measures now.

If we want to belong to the human race and be considered as spiritual beings we have no other choice.  This is a difficult path to take, and some may say ‘it’s all very well for you you have nothing to lose’ and that’s true… but I’d like to think that whatever I have I will be willing to share and I have a lot more than many.

Many indigenous tribes lived by the credo that if a stranger passes into their path, they are obliged to offer that person sustenance, no matter how little they have.   And they did so willingly and with love and a sense of offering NOT sacrifice. Some people on this earth still live like this.

I am determined to pare down what we need to the bare minimum and examine each time I feel a sense of fear that others may take what is ‘mine’.   

I truly want to be part of a human family and to do that means we must not make fences and divisions between ourselves and other humans.  It means that we will all have to make sacrifices… that we must learn the true meaning of connection and not just spout it as some kind of airy fairy credo.    If we don’t then we are not all one, we are not connected and we will lose our souls.

Is this possible? I don’t know, but I am afraid that if we dont’ change this thinking we will invite death and destruction in far greater proportions than we can imagine.

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

Permie’s might be likened to earth-friendly ‘jedi warriors’ on a crusade to restore the Garden of Eaten by going beyond the dark side [embodied in our warlike 'dominator' culture, human greed,reckless consumption and selfish corporatism represented by entities like 'No Man Satan/So Not Man and The Big Pharm].  

The word ‘religion’ comes from the Latin re [back] and ligare [tie or connect].  Through time the quest of humanity has been reconnect themselves to what some call spirit or god

My sense of God is not as the awesome figure in white robes sporting a long white beard watching over me from the sky like a threatening cloud, which was how I thought of him as a child, but as the force and spirit of all life that one of my mentors described as  ‘That which is greater than self, of which we are a part and not apart from’.    

“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.“  Obi Wan Kanobe Star Wars

It seems to me that, until we can connect to this universe on which we live and truly return to and embrace mother Earth, recognizing that we are an intrinsic part of and not apart from and above the system of life, we are up humanure creek without a bamboo paddle.  

Most religions offer dogmatic rules that make no sense to me.  The permaculture ethics and design principles, on the other hand, offer a set of guidelines that go beyond designing a way of living and offer hope for some kind of survival. 

It makes sense  to grow plants and trees that work symbiotically and reduce our long term labor demands.

It makes sense to use our poop as a fertilizer instead of flushing it into our drinking water system.

It makes sense to design our space for functionality and purpose.

It makes sense to plant for the future as well as for our immediate needs

It makes sense to make our own ’cheap as chips’  natural miracle-grow rather than putting profit into the pocket of pharmaceutical giants

It makes sense to catch and store sunlight and divert water into natural irrigation systems and ponds for fish and other aquatic life to flourish in.

It makes sense to mulch the land with cardboard, manure and straw as opposed to breaking our back or bank [with a tractor] to dig  huge planting trenches that destroy the soil. 

It makes sense to value diversity and work together as a system rather than as separate entities. 

It makes sense to make the least change for the greatest result and it makes complete sense to put our efforts into local, easily obtainable, natural organic food production that can sustain us whether we live in a city or rurally.

Last night one of my fellow participants said that now she truly knew the meaning of the saying that until you find something you are willing to die for you have not found your calling.    It was a goose bumpy moment.

The ‘commandments’ of permaculture are the ‘design principles’ and instead of ten there are twenty[although some have reduced it to twelve or ten].   These principles are rather like the pillars of a great temple, each playing a role in supporting the whole structure. 

These principles are foundated on four ethical considerations.

Care of the Earth

As designers, our first ‘client’ has to be Earth.  In considering our plan, we must always ask ourselves ‘how will this benefit Earth? And if it doesn’t, regardless of whether we think it’s great for humans, we must discard it.   This is pretty heavy duty.  If you drive a car, you are not earth friendly. If you use air conditioning, you are not earth friendly’.  If you use pesticides or buy food that travels halfway across the world to reach your dinner plate, you are not earth friendly.

In fact there are very few of us on this planet who truly are ‘earth friendly’.  Just because we buy organic or drive a Prius and recycle our plastic and tin cans, or pay back a few dollars in carbon footprint penance  we mustn’t kid ourselves that our  life style is OK. It isn’t.   We humans have made a lot of mistakes and we are on the brink of disaster.   If we don’t stop now, re-ssess how we live our lives, and make HUGE changes, there won’t be an Earth for us to inhabit.  

This is not a judgement call.  I write this as a fellow sinner knowing that whilst forgiveness is always available, it is our duty as ‘reformed sinners’ to start walking a more righteous path.

That’s a kind of turn around for us humans who have spent so many eons believing that we are more important than anything and that the earth is there as an endless well of chocolate for us to gorge on.   [Although, if you've tasted the bitter chocolate pecan bars that Koinonia produce you might be tempted into the sin of gluttony]

Care of Humans

Our second most important client, as designers, is humanity.  That doesn’t mean that we’re more important than animals or plants.  We aren’t. But we are more intelligent and with that intelligence we have a responsibility.  If we live with holistic integrity, then animals and plants get to do their thing to the best of their abilities  and everyone is happy.

Give Away the Surplus

How many pairs of shoes or items of jewellery or bath towels do you really need?   As someone who has gone from being fairly comfortable to on the edge of poor I have learned to value functionality over style and frivolity.  

When we stop being greedy and selfish, recognize that our needs are far less than we’ve been hypnotized into believing, limit what we consume and how many of us are on this earth, we will have enough left over to give to others. That’s a pretty tall order for the consumer culture we’ve been cunningly trained into by those who wish to pump up our false economy.

The last permie ‘article of faith’  requests that we respect the intrinsic value of all beings.

There really is nothing natural on this earth that is not part of the grand design. Snakes, spiders, wasps and even soldier flies all have a role to play if we’ll only recognize what it is and utilize it as it was meant to be.

Here are a few of the design principles… see if they make sense to YOU…

Observe and Interact

The foundation of this is about being ‘present’ or ‘in the now’. When our five senses are on full receiver mode we take in much more information about what’s going on that when we’re ‘in our heads’.  And like that we can react more quickly and more effectively. 

Design for Reduncancy

Don’t put your eggs in one basket.  If you’re using monoculture and a blight pops up, the whole crop will be gone and your stomach will be rumbling.  Multiple streams of income and a variety of planting, maturing at different times, ensure that if one fails, there is something else to put pennies in your pocket and fill your stomach

Use Appropriate Technologies

We have to be realistic.  If we have a lot of earth moving to do in order to set up a long term ecological system, it’s OK to use gas-powered machinery.  We just need to be mindful of not becoming over reliant and consider this as a short term solution that can eventually be replaced by more earth-friendly ways.

Stack and Pack

Instead of laying out your garden in rows, use the vertical as well as the horizontal. Squash and cucumbers don’t have to grow along the ground.. they’re often quite happy trailing themselves up a strong corn stem or a tree trunk.  Look at the unders and overs.    Tomatoes can grow happily strung from the eaves of a roof and herbs or grapes can flourish on a rooftop turf.

Obtain a Yield

Don’t just plant stuff to look good, make sure that it can sustain yourself and your family and strive to go beyond that so that you can help others less fortunate than yourselves and have stuff to trade.  As they saying goes ‘you can’t work on an empty stomach’.

Produce no Waste

Re-use everything.   Cardboard becomes a mulch base, old bottles can build retaining walls, plastic  bottles can catch water, your poop and urine are mega effective zero cost natural fertilizers, and food scraps feed chickens and pigs.  

Use Energy Efficient Planning

When designing your permaculture lifespace, it makes sense to put your herb and kitchen garden NEXT to the kitchen.  You get easy access and they get greater care from being close to you.  Divide your area into zones, the closest one being the ones you access on a daily basis and the furthest ones being wild land like an area of forest that needs minimal human interaction and then only for healing.

Design from Patterns to Details

Start with the big picture and then fill in the details.  You’d be surpized at how we zone in on something we want like a ‘herb garden’ or a particular tree and become so obsessively and narrowly focused that we end up trying to manipulate everything else to fit that. If it doesn’t fit into the whole pattern, it won’t work no matter how much we want it to.

Start Small and Learn from Change

Make lots of small mistakes that become learning milestones, rather than big ones that turn into disaster tombstones.  Big mistakes will linger on in living death, longafter we are gone.

And there are more and that’s what ‘google’ is for….

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

As you can imagine,  I was not looking forward to having to make a scale map of a 500 plus acre farm as part of my team permaculture project.   

 Handy Body Measurements

As we sat down to a session on map making given by Dylan, another of the dedicated assistant trainers on this amazing 2 week permaculture course,  my automatic psychological ‘numbers escape mechanism’ was activated and my eyes started to close. But not for long.  It’s amazing how learning just meanders in when you’re having fun.

Instead of being confounded by trigonometry and calculations I found myself learning how to measure using my bodies.   I discovered that the space between the top and second knuckle on my pinkie finger measures roughly 1 inch.   My arm span is 5′7 and when I stand up straight and raise my right hand, it measures 7′2″.  Wow, I’m a living ruler.   

One of the ‘design principles’ of permaculture is ‘use appropriate technologies’. This means finding tools and technologies that liberate us from dependency.  It doesn’t mean that we have to throw away our tractor or computer and build a road with a shovel and a pen and paper.  

Modern technological tools can be really useful and whilst we still have the electricity and fuel to power them and they are utilized for the greater purpose we should.  A chainsaw can help us build a log home quickly, and when the fuel runs out, we can learn to use a cross saw just like the participants in Frontier House did.

If we’re creating a food forest garden that will eventually feed hundreds of people, it’s perfectly ethical to do what it takes to set it in motion, using big and techie tools in the beginning and then moving onto more ecological innovative, simpler methods.

And what could be more ecological and simpler than using our bodies as measuring instruments?    If you don’t have your tape measure or one of those digital laser things that need batteries and are liable to break down [as was my experience years ago when the realtor reduced the size of my living room by 6ft because his fancy digital measure was on the blink] relax, because as long as you’ve got all your limbs, and a willing friend, you can still take pretty accurate measurements.

In that spirit, we step outside into the crisp sunny afternoon to watch the intrepid Dylan demonstrate how to measure 100 ft using our paces.  

He marks out a 100ft path and places two flags at either end. Starting at the first flag, we walk to the furthest one and back again at a regular leisurely pace counting up each time we put the same foot on the ground again.   Average out the two and I now know that twenty of my leisurely paces are equal to 100ft.    It’s so simple I want to cry!

A few minutes later, Patricia prances onto the grass waving a round protractor with a string dangling from it with a pen attached to the end of the string.  She shows us how we can measure the angle of rise of a distant object by holding the protractor to our eyeline and tilting it to meet the top of the object we’re measuring.   The string moves round the protractor to reveal the angle.   Doh!

And if you’re going to build a road, you’ve got to know the angle of elevation so that you can calculate how to wind the road round so that the rise is not too steep.    Yes, I did say ‘build a road’.

Little Old Lady Road Building

After Patricia’s presentation on road building yesterday, as someone whose home improvement skills were limited to what I could do with a hammer and a box of nails,  I had a big grin on my face as I thought to myself  ‘ohmygosh, I actually know how to build a road’ 

Patricia remarked to me on the way out of her road building presentation, with a twinkle  in her sparkly green eyes,  ’If a little old lady can build a road, anyone can’. 

Back out on the lawn, Dylan took us through our paces again.  This time we were learning how to measure  the distance across a creek by using nothing more than our hand, eyeline and the foot of a friendly partner.  This is of course vital if we want to know how long a tree we must cut down to make a bridge across the water.   I am beginning to feel more than a little empowered!

This course is peppered with all kinds of fascinating  tricks and tips for doing things simply and innovatively and in particular gardening.

Make-do Gardening Tips

Chuck Marsh’s gardening tips are unmissable.  This man has 35 years experience of permaculture and he must have tried every trick in the book.   

If you are thinking of throwing away that old mattress forget it.   You can turn it into a garden by placing it on top of a piece of old plastic sandwiched between two layers of old carpet and a bit of straw.  Poke a few holes in the top, shove in some seeds, water it and hey presto.. you’ve got a raised garden bed.

And instead of forking out $9.99 for one of those fancy tomato hangers [as we did in our ignorance] you can make one out of a couple of plastic store bags and some old chicken wire with a bit of scrap material scraps wrapped around it to stop light degradation [Bob added in that bit].

Old tires, which generally end up being burned are an amazing re-purposing resource.  Slice off the top, shove in some soil and a bit of manure and you’ve got an urban container planter.   Short of space?  Plant some tall growing field corn and a little later, shove in some beans which with a little bit of encouragement from you will grow quite happily up the stem of the corn. 

Chuck advised urban gardeners to carry a poking stick around with them… and each time they see a bit of earth, poke a hole in the ground and shove in some seeds.   He told us how he got his landlord to plant a couple of apple trees in his garden which fed the homeless with nutritous organic snacks.   The trees were conveniently located along the route from the homeless shelter to the liqor store!!!

If you’ve got some old windows [and there's plentiful discard of old windows as more and more of those who can afford it sling out their old ones in favor of energy saving sealed units] and a bale of straw you’ve got the makings of a greenhouse.  

Stick the bale of straw on its side, stuff in some manure or mulch on top, pour water into the bale until it’s saturated, shove in some seeds and lean a window up against it.   On top you can raise the hardier green leafy stuff while using the space between the angle of the window and the straw bale as a kind of make do hothouse.

If you think you can’t because you don’t have any space, we heard today from one participant about the abundant gardens being raised by New Yorkers in tiny apartments using a 3′ by 4′ window and vertical spacing.  ANYONE can grow food.   There are even portable plastic sprouters that provide high quality, portable nutrition that can be grown in  two or three days in the back of your rucksack.  

If you want to find out more, there are oodles of books appearing on the market on the topic of guerrila gardening, dumpster diving and repurposing

Map Making Triumph

And as for mapping, my design team consisting of a retired lawyer, a refugee worker, a farmer and myself actually managed to draw out our map tonight using google earth and a calculator.  After hours of debate, hair tearing out and sleepless nights we finally did it.   

Next comes the good stuff.. planning out how to make an income yielding resource out of an intentional community farm that will not only feed the members of the community but also provide plenty of excess to share with friends and neighbors and be regenerative and self-sustaining for many years to come.

I can’t wait to get back home and put all this into action.. and already we’re thinking about how our newfound knowledge can really and truly help to put nutritious food in the mouths of the hungry and set up a food forest for the future.  

I’m hooked and I bow down to the wonderful people who’ve made it their life mission to take permaculture from a little known esoteric activity to being the potential answer to saving and healing this planet.   

Incidental Mushroom Foraging

And a special hurrah to Bob’s design team who found a huge clump of Lions Mane wild mushroom in a hole in a tree.    Looks like we’ll be eating exotic wild mushroom soup tomorrow alongside all the other amazing goodies our chefs are cooking up each day.

More Permaculture Info

There’s another of these courses planned in Atlanta this year… and I suspect it’ll sell out quickly. For more information check www.georgiapermaculture.com  and check Patricia Allison’s site for more permaculture events round the country.  http://www.patriciaallison.net/schedule.php.  Chuck Marsh teaches permaculture and also runs a medicinal plant nursery in NC.  http://www.usefulplants.org/

© 2010, Pierre Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes