Permaculture and the Internet

Nov 30

“Natural ecologies must be seen as the original cybernetic systems.” Why farmpunk?

Oct 10

alexamayiborrowapencil: We actually live on a 1/4 acre so this is enough red clover seed to cover the entire property, which I obviously won’t be doing… But I like having enough to whip out at a moment’s notice anyway.

I’m going to be sowing red and white clover as a living mulch where we usually use woodchips every year, for a number of reasons:

Suppresses weeds, so we won’t need to keep pulling up/smothering them not to mention buying and shipping and shoveling and wheelbarrowing the chips (more input than output = disordered system)
Nitrogen fixing, so any time we want to plant something we can just pull it up and plant there without much preparation (pruning the leaves also causes the roots to self-prune, releasing nitrogen into the soil)
Red clover is drought tolerant, major bonus for where I live
Attracts parasitic wasps for various “pest” insects
Edible and medicinal for humans: greens for salad, flowers for tea
Bee forage
Poultry forage
Aesthetically lovely

In a bid to turn our property into a higher-functioning system, I’m going to be getting some chickens and ducks soon, which is another reason that sowing the clover now is important. We have a huge “problem” with snails and slugs, and so I thought that instead of trying to control that with traps and bait, I would just introduce snail and slug predators. But more on that later. Gotta build a chicken tractor and stick-fences around the veggie beds, also set up some areas for growing chicken forage/work out a looping duck pool system.

Oct 6

In-bed worm farm. It has holes in the bottom, so that the worms will distribute the castings throughout the bed, and can seek refuge in the soil when it gets too hot. One of these guys will cover the fertilization of ten square meters, requiring very little effort on the gardener’s behalf. I’ve been really into coming up with closed loop solutions lately, mostly because I’m lazy but also because the summer is always busy. So we’ll see how this goes.

via alexamayiborrowapencil