Forest gardener working mulch into the soil

We live in the rural back hollers of the N. Georgia mountains.  The elders here, those in their late 60′s and above, all remember how to be poor and successful.  Their success wasn’t about accumulating stuff or status or money, it was about surviving on the land.  This is a skill that has almost died out. Many of the elders we speak to lament that their kids only know how to flick on a switch and if they lost that they’d be lost.

Stop Trying to get ‘Rich’ and Learn to be Richly Poor’

Programmed with this idea of acquiring more status, stuff and money and escaping poverty, that generation wanted their kids to not have to get up at 3am and milk cows before they walked 10 miles to school.  They were bombarded with the idea that ‘more is better’.   They ‘did the right thing’ and proudly sent their kids to college, working all hours at jobs that took them across the country, sometimes away from home for months.   And now they see that their kids are not equipped to survive the coming tough times.

I found a blog this morning entitled ‘We knew how to be poor’ and as I read, I realized that knowing how to be poor will soon become a very sought after skill.     The writer is musing on the knowings of the elders and how they survived poverty.

In the 60′s an enterprising English teacher in the South Eastern Appalachians, sent his class off to interview the old timers for articles about ‘the old ways of doing things’ in a newspaper that would form their class project.  The project turned into a series of books called Foxfire. They are named after a local Appalachian plant that glows and, like the knowing of the elders, has gone from prolific to near extinction.

If you haven’t read the Foxfire books yet, you might want to get hold of a copy – They are full of old timey knowing.  Marilyn was one of the people interviewed in the blog [link below].

At age 79, Marilyn had a remarkable life story. Besides the six children (five in five years, if you can fathom that), she spoke of living low to the ground in a way that I cannot really imagine. Her family grew, raised, and put up darn near all their food, and had a small dairying operation that served as their cash crop. (Until, that is, the logic of BIG economies of BIG scale discarded their efforts.)

Deliberately Choosing to Live on Less

My husband and I came here to live on the land.  I wanted to go into the woods and write, but I found that this was not my purpose, just a by product of it.  Since coming here we have exhausted all but a teeny bit of our funds but in return we have learned some valuable life skills and we are part of a community. In other words we are richly poor!

I know how to live poor. When I first came here I had no idea how to start a fire, and my growing was limited to planting an avocado in a pot for fun.

NOW – I know how to garden.  I have mentors to help me and books and experience of what works and what doesn’t.  I know how to preserve food and on a grander scale, I know how to plant food forests that will provide perennial abundant food for all, including meat and requires virtually no tending after the first year, other than to harvest.

I have learned how to make shelters out of cob and earthbags – the rudiments of natural building.   I have learned to cook on a woodstove and how wood works to provide heat.  I have learned about hunting and preserving meat and even how to cook squirrels and dumplings.  I have  tried to do many tasks by hand before using my machines, so that I understand and know how it works and I am acquiring more knowledge every day as I LIVE instead of working for a living.

Forest, my husband,  does honest labor jobs helping people build things, clearing brush, guarding land in hunting season, birthing cows and decorating.  He brings in just enough to keep us in rent and utilities [which we conserve].  He cuts and puts up wood and I help him. We heat by wood alone and it keeps us plenty warm.

Our now revised 'chicken motel' built entirely from scrap

We know how to scavenge, refuse and recycle.  We aren’t too proud to take other people’s garbage.  We built our chicken lodging out of stuff gleaned from old barns, neighbors discard, stuff lying around and an old mattress we acquired.  When you’re rich you think ‘chicken house – Home Depot or send off for an online kit or have one built’.  When you’re poor you ask ‘what can I find to build this chicken house without paying a dime [where possible].  Poverty leads us to be creative, ingenious and work harder!

Paying Into the Bank of Kindness

We deliberately put ourselves in a position where we were free to explore, connect, engage and learn.  We became part of a local community by endlessly showing them that we were for real because we were!

My husband got up early one snowy, freezing cold morning, just before Christmas last year and announced he was going to help our farmer neighbor.  ’It’s cold and he has cows to birth and feed and he’s all alone and sick and he needs my help’.  He went every day for several months knowing that the farmer couldn’t pay for an extra worker.  He even got up at 4am to go down there and massage a newly born crippled calves feet.  The calf lived and thrived.  He called this ‘paying into the bank of kindness. And in return we received so many kindnesses from this farmer, from food to connections that our ‘investment’ has been rewarded.

It does not mean that you do this deliberately to see what you can get.  You cannot approach the bank of kindness way from that space.  It means that you take the leap and offer your gift because IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO and you trust that you will get only what you need to fulfil your purpose.   We do not need that much as we’ve learned.

What Do We Really Need?

What do you really need to be truly happy?

Maslow had it sorted when he came out with his hierarchy of needs.  After all, what do we really need versus what we’ve been programmed to think we need?  We need food, shelter, air, clean water, sleep at the basic level. We need safety and security [and today those are truly semantically hypnotically loaded words]. We need love and companionship. We need self-esteem – and we need self-actualization.  That last one’s at the top of Maslow’s list.

When we are being who we truly are destined to be in the greater scheme of things, using our gifts for the good of the whole, we are actualized.

We”ve been hypnotized into believing we need a lot of things [that, strangely?!, make lots of money for very few of us] and we’ve been told the right way to get them.   We have to work for a living so that we can come home exhausted, but with a pocket full of green paper so that we can buy instant food [no time or energy to grow, prepare and cook our food] get a dishwasher [no time or energy to wash dishes] buy a car [work too far from home to walk], go to a gym [our work is so sedentary that we need to create exercise time] watch tv [because we're so stressed we need to cut off from reality] and so it goes.

Living v Working for a Living

What these old folk were about was living.  They may have done some work, but the majority of their labor and that of their forefathers was taken up with building shelter, putting up wood to keep warm, preparing the land to grow food, sowing seeds, tending and harvesting, putting up food for winter, tending livestock which provide meat, milk and manure.

And the Winner is… the poor person who’s adapted

If you are working for a living, doing a job that you hate, then it’s time to ask yourself  ’What has to happen for me to simplify and learn how to live on very little?’.  A few years back, parents were worrying how to get their kids into college so that they could get a degree and get a good job. If I were a parent nowadays, I’d be doing everything I can to ensure my kid knows how to survive and live by his or her own labor.

If the 99% would just stop maintaining the rungs of the 1%’s stairway to fake heaven in the hope that they too can climb that ladder and turn their energy to working out how to live a sustainable, self sufficient life, they would create a new ladder to HEAVEN on EARTH.

Return to Earth, Recreate Eden.  Withdraw your lifeblood from the system and inject your energy into a simple life for you and your family and your community.  And while you’re at it, pray.  Pray that you get exactly what you need to do God’s work and accept that there is a difference between asking for what you need and asking for what you think you need [oh we need a big fancy truck or whatever].

Related Blogs

http://satori.hubpages.com/hub/Common-Ideas-to-Put-to-Bed-With-a-Shovel–Pt-2

http://www.culinate.com/mix/dinner_guest/life_and_food_lessons

© 2011 – 2012, Sunny 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

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, Sunny 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

Part of this was foundated on the concept of permaculture. Dune, the first of a series of books was written in 1965 even before the word ‘permaculture’ was made popular by Bill Mollision and David Holmgren in the 70′s.

One of Dune’s characters, Liet Kynes was a planetologist who was devoted to reviving the desert. He served as both the planetary ecologist of Dune and leader of the Fremen the simple, desert dwellers.

He continued his father, Pardot Kynes’s, vision of gradually terraforming the planet from a harsh desert into a temperate world with precipitation, greenery, and open water.

An entire permaculture plan for the desert planet, Arrakis

In the Appendix to the first Dune, Herbert lays out Pardot Kynes’ entire imaginary, but sound, ecological plan for this transformation. “There’s an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance on any man-healthy planet. You see in this beauty a dynamic stabilizing effect essential to all life. Its aim is simple to maintain and produce co-ordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity’

‘Life and all life is in the service of Life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases’

‘The entire landscape comes alive filled with relationships within relationships within relationships’

‘The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an eco-system’ Kynes said, “is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a mis-step in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late.

That’s why the highest functioning of ecology is the understanding of consequences’.

He goes on to talk about the revivification of the desert in a total permaculture way using the Fremen, desert-dwelling simple-living warriors to undertake this grand plan 

“When will we solve it [the water problem]?” the Fremen ask.  Kynes told them ‘in three to five hundred years’.

A lesser folk might have howled in dismay but the Fremen had learned patience from the men with whips…. somehow the disappointment made the prospect of paradise more real.

The concern on Arrakis was not with water, but with moisture. Pets were almost unknown, stock animals rare. Some smugglers employed the domesticated desert ass, but the water price was high even when the beasts were fitted with modified still suites

Kynes thought of installing reduction plants to recover water from the hydrogen and oxygen locked in native rock, but the energy-cost factor was far too high.

There was a native root plant that grew above the 2,500-meter level in the northern temperate zone. A tuber, two metres long yielded half a liter of water.  And there were the terraform desert plants, the tougher of which showed signs of thriving if planted in depressions lined with dew precipitators.

He began the re-examining of the evidence of dry wells were trickles of water had appeared and vanished, never to return… and through a series of relationships with the sandworm and other creatures he set up a system to irrigate the land..

Then they went to work on the climate. The sand surface often reached temperatures of 344 – 355 degrees. A foot below the ground it might be 55 cooler, a foot above 25 cooler. Leaves or black shade could provide another 18 degrees of cooling.

Next the nutrients.  The sand of Arrakis, a product of worm digestion. Dust is produced by constant surface creep. Course grains are found on the downward side of the dunes. The windward side is packed smooth and hard. Old dunes are yellow, young dunes are the color of the parent rock – usually grey. Downwind sides of old dunes provided the first plantation areas.

The Fremen aimed first for a cycle of poverty grass with peat-like hair cilia to intertwine, mat and fix the dunes by depriving the wind of its biggest weapon; movable grains. Adaptive zones were laid out in the deep south..the mutated poverty grasses were planted first along the downwind slipface] of the chosen dunes that stood across the path of the prevailing westerlies.

With the downwind face anchored the windward face grew higher and higher and the garss was moved to keep pace. Giant sifs along dunes with sinuous crests more than 1,500 meters high were produced this way.

When the barrier dunes reached sufficient height, the windward faces were planted with tougher sword grasses. Each structure on a base of about six times as thick as its height was ‘fixed’.

Now they came in with deeper plantings – ephemerals, then scotch broom, low lupine vine, eucalyptus [the type adapted for Caladan's northern reaches], dwarf tamarisk, shore pine, then the true desert growths, candellilla, saguaro and the barrel cactus.

Where it would grow they introduced camel sage, onion grass, gobi-feather grass, wild alfalfa, burrow bush, sand verbens, evening primrose, incense bush, smoke tree, creosote bush.

They turned them to the necessary animal life – burrowing creatures to open the soil and aerate it: kit fox, kangaroo mouse, desert hare, sand terrapin… and the predators to keep them in check, desert hawk, dwarf owl, eagle and desert own, and insects to  fill the niches these couldn’t reach : scorpion, centipede, trapdoor spider, the biting wasp and the wormfly..and the desert bat to keep watch on these..

Now came the crucial test: date palms, cotton, melons coffee, medicinals, more than 200 selected food plant types to test and adapt. Kynes and his people watched and waited.

The Fremen now knew what he meant by an open-end prediction to five hundred years.

Constant Monitoring and Re-Assesment

A report came from the palmaries. At the desert edge of the plantings, sand plankton was being poisoned through interaction with the new forms of life. The reason, protein incompatibility. Poisonous water was forming there which Arrakis life would not touch. A barren zone surrounded the plantings and even shi-hulud would not invade it. Kynes went down to the palmaries..he tested the barren zone and came up with a bonus, a gift from Arrakis.

The addition of sulfur and fixed nitrogen converted the barren zone to a rich plant bed for terraform life. …

Nor could the Fremen be ignored with their windtraps and irregular landholdings organized around water supply – the Fremen with their new ecological literacy and their dream of cycling vast areas of Arrakis through a prairie phase into forest cover.

So it was true as this umma had said in the beginning: the thing would not come in the lifetime of any man now living, nor in the lifetime of their grandchildren eight times removed, but it would come. The work continued: building, planting, digging, training the children….

 You can buy the first Dune book here
Dune, 40th Anniversary Edition (Dune Chronicles, Book 1)

© 2010, Sunny 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

Building and Growing with Nature

Earth builders and forest food gardeners who follow the permaculture principle of learning from the natural environment, observing patterns and using that to create  a design for the optimal needs for that environment, have got it right…

Bottom Line – We cannot fight with nature.  We tried that already and we’d be well to remember the Easter Island experience and how they decimated nature to create stone statues to their gods turning their home into an uninhabitable wasteland.

 Nature has much to teach us about harmonic and most productive design. 

The nature-harmonized earth house

We speak often of earth houses in general but there are many types of earth houses. What works in one environment superbly would be a disaster in another.

Naturally Right Building

Every style of natural building such as cob, log, straw bale, earth-ships, bamboo huts, houses on stilts, yurts and more, all evolved as a result of a direct relationship with and understanding of nature and natural design.

The design that works best for you is one that takes into account the natural ingredients of the specific location.  It may not always be the design you are locked into.

Early earth home builders studied the natural climate, land structure, soil type, vegetation and human and wildlife interactions and needs.

The Mandans of the Upper Missouri in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains designed log structures worked perfectly for and  with the natural contours and components of the Plains.

In the desert climes, thick-walled adobe structures painted white and thick walled serve the purpose of sheltering humans from the harsh sun and protecting them from colder extremes of temperature.  Damp is NOT an issue. Water was precious so they focused on water catchment and well systems.

 The log structure that works so well on the Plains won’t necessarily be as functional in hilly wetter climes without adaptation.   It is up to each builder to know how the area works by basing his design on what works in nature.

There is a harmonic building structure and design that is perfect for each unique climate and micro-climate and contour. 

 Evolving and Adapting

Given how bright we humans are and how much technology we have at our fingertips, we will quickly learn to adapt and evolve ways of earth building that take this into account.  Permaculturists are doing it already.

Edible food forest gardens mimicking nature

As students of permaculture and permaculturists know, nature has a perfect design for every part of the land.  The forests are living examples of eco systems.  By taking into account the natural design and what works, food forest gardeners learn the purpose  of patterns and structure and allow this to inform  their design. 

 They never try to impose a design that is contrary or counter-productive to natural workings because they know, in the end, it won’t be the most beneficial for nature or themselves.

They know they need canopy trees and they know they need ground cover. In the tropics mangos and coconut trees form the canopy layer whilst in Northern Georgia apple and pecan trees serve the same purpose.

In the same way when builders use natural designs and structures the structure is fluid enough so that someone building in wetter hilly lands can begin to devise a way to dam and reflow the water so that it doesn’t run back into and under the house. 

 Someone building in the desert of Nevada will design what works in a water-scarce desert. They won’t worry about excessive water flowing under or flooding the house because what little there is has been redirected to a water catchment system.

 The ultimate aim of both is to capture water without damaging the natural contours and flow.

 The Miracle of Nature-based Building

Mike Oehler, r-evolutionary author of  ‘The $50 & Up Underground House Book’, does not design cellars, mole holes or dark gloomy homes.  He designs homes that are functional and suited to the environment.

The home is constructed to reach below the frost line to protect the fragile structure from frost damage. 

It is a place where all the workings like pipes and wiring are underground in an easily accessible space.  This keeps them protected from freezing and other hazards of being exposed.  It also makes repairs and reworking easy as no structures have to be disturbed to get at the pipes and wires.

The merits of ‘underground’ housing are, according to Mike Oehler – author of ‘The $50 and up Underground House Book’ pretty fantastic.

If you are into natural building and could design and create an ‘earth’ home that is synchronized with the natural environment, and have all of these amazing facilities.. why would you choose any other way..????

Benefits of an ‘underground’ house

• No Foundation
• Less building material and labor
• Less Tax
• Warm in Winter, Cool in Summer
• Better view
• Built-in Greenhouse
• Ecologically sound
• Increased yard space
• Fallout Shelter
• Defensible
• Concealable
• Close to Source of Water
• Relatively fireproof
• Pipes never freeze
• Superior flooring
• Can be built by anyone
• Weatherproof
• Less maintenance
• Soundproof

We recommend this book and here’s our Amazon link to it.   

 The $50 and Up Underground House Book: [How to Design and Build Underground]

If you click here, and you do decide to buy, you are helping us as we re-route money energy from the machine towards supporting a more ecological cause!  Feed The Future – A food forest garden in every community is doable and could alleviate world hunger in 10 years.

Mimicing Nature is the Only Way

Builders who study the contours of the land, the rainfall, the flow of water or indeed where water, the position of the sun and all the natural ingredients, will design structures that work perfectly with nature and offer relative to that environment all of the above features. 

In Oehler’s book he points out all the mistakes people are making when they design earth houses and all the things they can do to create a successful, secure, warm, sound structure that utilizes the natural situation to the best advantage of all concerned including their needs.

For example he has come up with an amazing design for housing set against a hill.  He finds a way to avert the flow of water from the hillside, have it run down beside the house without ever reaching the house.  He describes how to create drains that naturally pull the water back into the house.  It’s not just a question of catching water or sloping roves, it’s creating roofs that contribute to the above qualities..

 His designs have been called ‘radical’, ‘revolutionary’ ‘unique’ unconventional’ ‘practical’ ‘masterpieces’.  

 They are based on pure physics and a study of natural design and purpose. 

For instance, It makes sense to have the kitchen garden, greenhouse as an extension of the kitchen and not an external entity. 

The greenhouse captures the suns rays while being protected by the house from winds.  In turn we get  easy accessibility to foodstuffs as they grow.  Nipping in and out of the greenhouse as you cook, you are more in tune with how it is growing and take more care of what’s there.. as it takes care of you by producing more abundant offerings.

 It makes sense in Tony Wrench’s underground house to grow grapes on the eaves of the house. The roof offers the grapes space to climb and protects the house while providing on tap food and with a little processing natural wine!

It makes sense to have a composting toilet that collects human waste and with very little effort other than facilitating natural process, it turns in to rich, natural fertilizer for the garden in less than two years.

It makes sense in some locales to have French drains that through a natural filtering and siphon system reclaim good water and direct it into the home.

 Forest Food Gardens – Natural Wonders

 Food Forest Gardeners observe what works in nature, how water flows and how to guide the water to where it is needed most and is kindest to the land.  

 They have a structure from nature of layers and inter-actions between different species for the greatest good.  They apply that structure to local specifics and as a result the forest becomes healthy, lush, self-sustaining and abundant. 

It makes sense to cover the ground with abundant, local herbs and beneficial plants because they offer not just nutritious food and medicine but also keep off invasions of unfriendly weeds.

It makes sense to plant mutually cooperative species because the system requires so much less maintenance after the early labours of reconnoitre, design and planting and pruning, the system starts to take care of itself and become independently inter-dependant.  The only ‘labor’ that remains is that of walking through the forest collecting the fruits – Tough eh!

It makes sense to let chickens run around in the forest [while protecting tomatoes from them!] and let them peck at fallen fruit and pests … while keeping down the tree pests, the chicken’s manure sows seeds and fertilizes the earth.

It makes sense to contour and dam water flow so that it is distributed in a natural way to where its needed most and away from where it can cause damage by accumulating.

So much of this just makes plain natural sense.   And all it takes is for us to get off our backsides and get into action.   We can’t argue with nature any more, so why not use her system to our advantage.

Here in the USA, the pioneer nature of the people is emerging to meet the needs of our changing times and the opportunities of re-contouring building and growing in a way that works for all perfectly. 

This spirit  genetically evolved and a part of our history, will save this nation.  When other countries, areas, look back to what worked and use what they know now to merge the two and alchemise new workable ideas.. the world will begin to flourish again.

 We simply have to stop being afraid, take that leap and JFDI

Recommended Books:

The $50 and Up Underground House Book: [How to Design and Build Underground]

 An introduction to permaculture (Design course series)

© 2010, Sunny 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

 by David Jacke  author of Edible Forest Gardens (2 volume set)

 

Picture yourself in a forest where almost everything around you is food….Mature and maturing fruit and nut trees form an open canopy. If you look carefully, you can see fruits swelling on many branches—pears, apples, persimmons, pecans, and chestnuts. Shrubs fill the gaps in the canopy. They bear raspberries, blueberries, currants, hazelnuts, and other lesser-known fruits, flowers, and nuts at different times of the year.

Assorted native wildflowers, wild edibles, herbs, and perennial vegetables thickly cover the ground. You use many of these plants for food or medicine. Some attract beneficial insects, birds, and butterflies. Others act as soil builders, or simply help keep out weeds. Here and there vines climb on trees, shrubs, or arbors with fruit hanging through the foliage—hardy kiwis, grapes, and passionflower fruits.

What is Edible Forest Gardening?

Edible forest gardening is the art and science of putting plants together in woodlandlike patterns that forge mutually beneficial relationships, creating a garden ecosystem that is more than the sum of its parts. You can grow fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, other useful plants, and animals in a way that mimics natural ecosystems.

In many of the world’s temperate-climate regions, your garden would soon start reverting to forest if you were to stop managing it. We humans work hard to hold back succession—mowing, weeding, plowing, and spraying. If the successional process were the wind, we would be constantly motoring against it.

Why Grow an Edible Forest Garden?

While each forest gardener will have unique design goals, forest gardening in general has three primary practical intentions:

•High yields of diverse products such as food, fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizer, ‘farmaceuticals’ and fun;
•A largely self-maintaining garden and;
•A healthy ecosystem.

These three goals are mutually reinforcing. For example, diverse crops make it easier to design a healthy, self-maintaining ecosystem, and a healthy garden ecosystem should have reduced maintenance requirements. However, forest gardening also has higher aims.

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” Masanobu Fukuoka

Where Can You Grow an Edible Forest Garden?

Anyone with a patch of land can grow a forest garden. They’ve been created in small urban yards and large parks, on suburban lots, and in small plots of rural farms. The smallest we have seen was a 30 by 50 foot (9 by 15 m) embankment behind an urban housing project, and smaller versions are definitely possible. The largest we have seen spanned 2 acres in a rural research garden. Forest gardeners are doing their thing at 7,000 feet (2,100 m) of elevation in the Rocky Mountains, on the coastal plain of the mid-Atlantic, and in chilly New Hampshire and Vermont.

Forest gardening has a long history in the tropics, where there is evidence of the practice extending over 1,500 years. While you can grow a forest garden in almost any climate, it is easiest if you do it in a regions where the native vegetation is forest, especially deciduous forest.

Edible forest gardening is not necessarily gardening in the forest, it is gardening like the forest. You don’t need to have an existing woodland if you want to forest garden, though you can certainly work with one. Forest gardeners use the forest as a design metaphor, a model of structure and function, while adapting the design to focus on meeting human needs in a small space.

While you can forest garden if you have a shady site, it is best if your garden site has good sun if you want the highest yields of fruits, nuts, berries, and most other products. Edible forest gardening is about expanding the horizons of our food gardening across the full range of the successional sequence, from field to forest, and everything in between.

Ecology

Edible forest gardens mimic the structure and function of forest ecosystems—this is how we create the high, diverse yields, self-maintenance, and healthy ecosystem we seek for our garden. It is therefore critical to understand forest ecology and its implications for design. Four aspects of forest ecology are key: community architecture, ecosystem social structure, the structures of the underground economy, and how the community changes through time, also known as succession. Brief discussions of each of these aspects and examples of their influence on garden design and management follow.

Architecture

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom on forest gardening, vegetation layers are only one of the architectural features important in forest garden design. Soil horizon structure, vegetation patterning, vegetation density, and community diversity are also critical. All five of these elements of community architecture influence yields, plant health, pest and disease dynamics, maintenance requirements, and overall community character.

For example, scientific research indicates that structural diversity in forest vegetation, what we call “lumpy texture,” appears to increase bird and insect population diversity and to balance insect pest populations—independent of plant species diversity. Learning how and why plants pattern themselves in nature and about the effects of the diverse kinds of diversity on ecosystem function can add great richness to the tool box of the forest gardener.

Social Structure

The unique inherent needs, yields, physical characteristics, behaviors, and adaptive strategies of an organism govern its interactions with its neighbors and its nonliving environment. They also determine the roles each organism plays within its community. The food web is one key community structure that arises from each species’ characteristics. Organisms also form various kinds of “guilds” that partition resources to minimize competition or create networks of mutual support.

When we design a forest garden, we select plants and animals that will create a food web and guild structure, whether we know it or not. It behooves us to design these structures consciously so we can maximize our chances of creating a healthy, self-maintaining, high-yield garden. For example, the vast majority of solar energy captured by natural forest food webs ends up going to rot. We can capture some of this energy for our own use by growing edible and medicinal mushrooms, most of which prefer shady conditions.

We can design resource-partitioning guilds by including plants with different light tolerances in different vegetation layers, for instance, or mixing taprooted trees such as pecans and other hickories with shallow-rooted species such as apples or pears. We can build mutual-support guilds by ensuring that pollinators and insect predators have nectar sources throughout the growing season. Insights into the guild structure of ecosystems provides clear direction for design as well as research into many aspects of agroecology.

The Underground Economy

The workings of nature’s “underground economy” are a mystery, but the dynamics of this ecosystem are fundamental to the workings of all terrestrial communities. What is the anatomy of self-renewing soil fertility? How do plant roots interact with each other and their environment? What roles do microbes and other soil organisms play in our forest gardens, and how should we interact with them?

Plants are critical components of the structure that creates self-renewing fertility in natural ecosystems. They plug the primary nutrient leaks from the soil and energize a networked system of plants, soil organic matter, soil organisms, and soil particles that gathers, concentrates, and cycles nutrients conservatively. Maintaining perennial plant cover greatly aids this process.

In addition “dynamic accumulator” plants like comfrey (Symphytum officinale) selectively accumulate mineral nutrients to high levels in their leaf tissues, adding them to the topsoil each fall. As we enter the post-oil age, our understanding of the anatomy of self-renewing fertility will become more and more critical to our success in temperate climates.

Understanding the dynamics of woody and herbaceous plant roots is critical to learning how to design and manage forest gardens. In what patterns do plant roots grow, why, and when? While the majority of tree roots grow in the top two to three feet of soil, it turns out that fruit trees that can get even a small percentage of their roots deep into the soil profile produce more fruit more consistently, resist pests and diseases more effectively, and live longer than those that have only shallow root systems. Good pre-planting site preparation is therefore a highly worthwhile endeavor. Root system understanding provides a solid foundation for plant species selection and polyculture design.

Soil organisms perform numerous critical functions in forest and garden ecosystems, and we can easily disrupt these allies and their work with unthinking actions. Luckily, basic forest gardening principles like using mulch and leaving the soil undisturbed provide just the kind of benign neglect our tiny friends need. However, good soil preparation can make all the difference, as well.

For example, compacted or poorly drained soils can severely hamper the development of healthy soil food webs, and hence healthy forest gardens. Understanding the soil food web also provides insight into how to manage for healthy mycorrhizal fungi populations and how to ensure that nitrogen-fixing plants actually do their soil-building work.

Succession

Ecosystems are dynamic, and ever-changing. Plant succession used to be thought of as the directional change of a community over time from “immature” stages toward a “mature” “climax” community typical of a given region and environment, such as a field changing to shrubland and then to, say, oak-hickory forest. However, new models of succession have arisen in recent years that articulate the complex reality of plant community change over time without so blatantly projecting human cultural constructs upon natural phenomena.

Plant succession is nonlinear and occurs patch by patch within the ecosystem, and rarely do ecosystems ever attain a climax or equilibrium state. Disturbances of various kinds are a natural part of every successional process—windstorms, fires, insect attacks, and human intervention.

Nonetheless, linear succession to a “horizon” is a valid model to use when designing forest garden successions, as are various other permutations that mimic garden crop rotations or represent an ever-changing dance responding to the forces, needs, and whims of the moment.

While the practical applications of these new successional theories are of necessity somewhat vague, we do know that the most productive stages of succession are those in the middle—such as shrublands, oldfield mosaics, and woodlands—not necessarily full-fledged forests. In addition, most of our developed tree crops are species adapted to such midsuccession environments.

Our highest yielding forest gardens are therefore most likely to contain, not the dense tree canopies of late succession forests, but lush mixtures of trees, shrubs, vines, and herbs all occupying the same space in patches of varying density and character. Succession theory also teaches us many different approaches to directing ecological succession in our gardens.

Design

At its simplest, forest garden design involves choosing what plants to place in your garden in which locations, at which times. However, these seemingly simple acts must generate the forest-like structures and functions we seek, and they must also achieve your design goals. A forest garden design process, then, must be information intensive if it is to achieve even moderately complex objectives. Therefore, begin by articulating your goals and assessing your garden site. Then you can select and apply design patterns, ecological principles, and plants in such a way that you integrate your goals and the site into a coherent whole.

The challenge is to array the available design elements to create a set of ecosystem dynamics that will in turn yield the desired conditions of high yields, maximal self-maintenance, and maximum ecological health as inherent by-products of the ecosystem.

You can use design patterns drawn from natural ecosystem examples or invent your own patterns that solve specific problems your design faces to help you do this. Patterns also arise from the requirements of the goals themselves and from a deep understanding of the site’s characteristics. The goals guide the site analysis and assessment, and the site assessment discovers the design.

We recommend designing on paper, at least initially, so you can make as many mistakes as possible there, and correct them before putting anything into the ground. On-site design techniques can also work well, especially for those who prefer to avoid the mapping process.

Careful design of plant spacing is a critical piece of the puzzle, in any case. Planting too closely together is the most frequent mistake that forest gardeners around the world have made. We hope that a more robust and explicit design process will help us all avoid such common mistakes and make some newer mistakes that are more interesting so we can learn from the experience.

Practice

Good site preparation is a critical precursor to planting your forest garden. Your site analysis and assessment should help you understand your site’s limitations so that you can decide whether or how to alter the site, or how to adapt to the conditions present.

Soil compaction, for example, is exceedingly common in most urban, suburban, and even rural sites, and it can severely restrict root growth, water movement in the soil, and the health of soil organism communities.

Double-digging, chisel plowing, radial trenching, and other techniques can help you deal with severe compaction, while the simple act of mulching the soil and planting deep-rooted perennials will eventually address slight compaction. Other common site preparation challenges include poor soil texture, shallow soil depth, road salt, and persistent weeds.

Proper stock selection, planting, and mulching techniques can also have major long-term effects on plant vigor and productivity. Many woody planting specimens have been transplanted multiple times, and these can have kinked, circling, or damaged roots that will result in plant stress and even an untimely death.

Carefully examine your specimens before you buy to ensure a quality root system, or purchase bare root stock so you can see the whole root system before planting. In fine-textured soils, the edges of the planting hole often become smeared to a smooth, impenetrable surface as a natural part of the digging process. This can severely restrict root growth and cause water to pool in the planting hole.

Breaking up the edges of the hole with a spading fork allows roots and water into the surrounding soil. This needs to become a common planting practice, as do proper planting depth, proper mulch depth, and effective sheet mulching techniques.

Once the garden is in the ground, the longest and most satisfying phase of forest gardening begins: management, harvest, and coevolution. Potentially the hardest part of this phase is learning to do less and let the system take care of itself, as well as knowing when to intervene and how.

These questions are, however, part of the process of shifting from a paradigm of command and control to one of cocreative participation as part of a natural system.

As we observe ourselves and our gardens through the dance of the seasons, we will learn the most effective ways of guiding the garden ecosystem’s evolution, we will select and breed ever more delectable crops for all the niches of the garden ecosystem, and we will begin to realize the full potential of forest gardening as a tool for cultural and personal evolution, not to mention cultural and personal survival in a post oil world. Welcome to the adventure!

Good information on plant, animal, and mushroom species and their ecological characteristics is essential for good forest garden design. You’ll need data on the plant’s size, form, and habit, its rooting patterns, hardiness and other tolerances and preferences, as well as its native habitat, human uses and ecological functions.

Information that helps you design habitat for beneficial wildlife such as insects, frogs, toads, salamanders, and birds is also crucial. Ideally, this information will come in a variety of formats and levels of detail that relate to different parts of the design process. The appendices of Edible Forest Gardens provides this kind of information on over 600 useful plant species and a plethora of beneficial wildlife for your designing and gardening pleasure.

© 2010, Sunny 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