Dry Cold Permaculture Homestead

Hello all Permies!

My newest article details our long-term permaculture efforts in Pony, Montana:

Dry Cold Permaculture: Homesteading in the Northern Rockies

Any feedback or suggestions?

Sincerely,

Thomas J. Elpel
http://www.GreenUniversity.com

I have a different extreme here just barely above sea level. Cool damp winter with dry summer.  But I have a trick that may work for you for different reasons.
My raspberries will continue to produce fruit until the middle of November but they are not harvestable unless I can keep them dry.  I collected numerous frames from portable garages that had been storm damaged of the tarps wore out and they did not want to replace them. Then a friend that buys and sells cement forms got hundreds of feet of  scaffolding plastic sheeting that is used to work in extreme weather. Eventually I wound up with 200 feet of high tunnel with three rows of raspberries so I will be delivering raspberries to the co-op tomorrow. Some of the posts for the raspberry trellis are plum trees which set more fruit earlier than the ones exposed during blossom time. I have mason bees and paper wasps in residence and bumble bees come during the summer so I get good pollination and the wasps patrol for fruit maggots.

I had three peach trees sprout in my wicking barrels and after a couple of years I transplanted them along the north end of my two rows of hoop houses. They started to get peach leaf curl which speeds its spores in foggy weather. I happened to get another carport frame missing some of the horizontal pipes but I had some longer pipe on hand so the whole arrangement connected the two rows of hoop houses and covered the peach trees [one turned out to be a nectarine] and stopped the peach leaf curl.  

Hans,

Thanks for sharing. Great photos!  My neighbors have a peach tree growing in a chickenhouse/greenhouse. Seems like a great way to grow! We have too much wind here to have much plastic, but it is definitely easier to grow indoors than outdoors.

Thanks again!

Sincerely,

Thomas J. Elpel
http://www.GreenUniversity.com

Thank you for this beautiful and inspiring article!

Great article, which gives me some hope My land is a south facing sandy hill, zone 5, that dries out in summers. I'm approaching the end of the third year here and although there are some people who admire my efforts to bring some life into this land, the majority see no sense in what I'm doing - in their opinion I should move to a place with a fertile, moist soil. But I kinda like my challenges here and keep trying. As I see from this article, there is a hope for 2-3 apricots after the next 25 years or so ... Just planted 25 new fruit bushes, I hope they will make it ...