Welcome Eric Toensmeier!

This week Eric Toensmeier will be joining us to answer our questions. He is offering one lucky member a chance to attend a choice of either the Backyard Bioshelter Greenhouse Workshop or the Edible Forest Gardens Workshop & Fruit Tasting. If for any reason the winner can't attend one of the workshops, they can choose to receive a copy of Eric's book Perennial Vegetables instead.



Eric himself will be popping into the forum over the next few days answering questions and joining in discussions.

From now through til Friday, any posts in this forum, ie the permaculture forum, could be selected to win.

To win, you must use a name that follows our naming policy and you must have your email set up in Paul's daily-ish email..

The winner will be notified by email and must respond within 24 hours with their snail mail address.

The book is also available to buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or direct from the publisher at Chelsea Green.

Eric is also a co-author of the definitive Edible Forest Gardens.

His website is perennialsolutions.org

Posts in this thread won't count, but please feel free to say hi to Eric and make him feel at home!

Hi everybody,

I'll be extra active on permies the next few days, happy to talk about farm-scale permaculture, PC economic development, plant geek issues for cold through tropical climates, our own 9-year old food forest here in Massachusetts, whatever you like.

The bioshelter workshop will be a lot of fun, we have loved building it and can't wait to plant out our subtropical fruits and get our aquaponics in gear this weekend with everybody. This is our experiment in insulated, unheated greenhouse production in USDA zone 6 but aiming for zone 9 inside.

The tasting workshop is very fun, we'll tour our food forest (9 years old) and Tripple Brook Farm's food forest (30 years old) and taste fruits and nuts along the way.

Eric

Ryan Mitchell,
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d murphy schmidt,
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Alex Ames,
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Mrs. Mucket,
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Rich Dana,
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I've moved some posts out to their own threads - posts in this thread don't count towards the promotion!

Burra Maluca wrote:I've moved some posts out to their own threads - posts in this thread don't count towards the promotion!

And posts in this thread that are off topic make work for us, which is annoying.

This thread is for welcoming Eric and talking about the promotion.

Randy Bachman,
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Julie Gahn,
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Hello Eric
Look forward to hearing more from you this week. I live in a zone 4 high elevation area with a short season 60-90 days, are areas similar covered in your book?
Thanks! Jan

thanks Eric, you are a fantastic author..i have enjoyed the books I have read..thanks for participating.

Hi Jan, Perennial Vegetables definitely addresses your climate, I tried to cover the whole US and Canada. You are kind of at the coldest edge of Edible Forest Gardens but it should have plenty of useful stuff too.

I've done a bunch of workshops at Woodbine Ecology Center in Sedalia, Colorado which has a very short season and cold winters so I've some experience in that regard.

Welcome, Eric,

I have all of your books and pore over them extensively, over and over, for hours, days, weeks, years. There is just no end to the value of what they contain.

They have greatly deepened my understanding of permaculture, and have saved me from making countless serious mistakes.

I hope you will write more books.

I wish there existed on the planet more perennial vegetables for zone 7/8, but that is not something you can do anything about.

I look forward to reading your posts, and appreciate your generosity.

Many Thanks and Many Blessings,
Pamela Melcher

Welcome, Eric!

Mods: Where can we find Eric on Permies this week? Does he have a dedicated thread or will he be all around?

Eric Toensmeier wrote:Hi everybody,

I'll be extra active on permies the next few days, happy to talk about farm-scale permaculture, PC economic development, plant geek issues for cold through tropical climates, our own 9-year old food forest here in Massachusetts, whatever you like.

The bioshelter workshop will be a lot of fun, we have loved building it and can't wait to plant out our subtropical fruits and get our aquaponics in gear this weekend with everybody. This is our experiment in insulated, unheated greenhouse production in USDA zone 6 but aiming for zone 9 inside.

The tasting workshop is very fun, we'll tour our food forest (9 years old) and Tripple Brook Farm's food forest (30 years old) and taste fruits and nuts along the way.

Eric

Thanks to everybody for saying such nice things about the books. Dave and I spent a long time on edible Forest Gardens and it's nice to know that people are putting it to good use. Ditto for perennial vegetables which was a blast to write but still quite a few hours of my life at the desk when I could have been in my garden.

I have lots more writings posted at www.perennialsolutions.org and videos on my youtube channel www.youtube.com/perennialsolutions. I also wrote a chapter of Crop Rotation on Organic Farms: a Planning Manual, which I could not more highly recommend. Much of my contribution to the design process in Edible Forest Gardens was influenced by what I learned interviewing successful organic annual crop farmers for that guide. You can download the whole thing for free, can't beat that.

Thank you, Eric,

Once again, you show that you are the real deal.

Pamela Melcher

Mrs. Mucket wrote:Welcome, Eric!

Mods: Where can we find Eric on Permies this week? Does he have a dedicated thread or will he be all around?

For the promotion we've asked him to answer questions anywhere in the permaculture forum, so that's where you should ask questions if you specifically want Eric to answer them. But he's more than welcome to go to any other part of permies and join in discussions there, too!

I need some good reading material for the six months I'm snowbound. Unless you're in Alaska, I'm colder than you.

Hi Eric!

Hey, Eric. Nice to see you on Permies.com Looking forward to your insights and stories

Welcome, we love your book and all you videos on the web. Keep up the good work, your an inspiration. We have our own forest garden at 6300' and planning another public forest garden when it gets approved. We will donate your book, if we get drawn, to our public library.( We already have a copy)

Hi everybody,

Thanks for understanding that I can't choose the species I put in perennial vegetables. I am forced to select from plants which actually exist, which means that not everything that we wish we could have is available. With backyard plant breeding, however, we can achieve outstanding perennial vegetables for every climate. I'll just take this soap box opportunity to say that often people from cold climates complain that there are too many tropical species in the book. Meanwhile folks from tropical climates wish that I didn't have so many cold–climate species. I guess that means I did my job right in providing the full range of plants for all kinds of climates. I was honored to learn recently that the book is used by an HIV gardening program in Mozambique, because perennial vegetables are easily grown even by people in very poor health, and it makes a big difference in their nutrition. I should say that Martin Crawford, plant geek extraordinaire, has a new book out on perennial vegetables for Europe which focuses on cold–climate species. I can't wait to read it, I guess my enthusiasm to hear what he has to say overrides any concerns about competition. I've learned so much from Martin in person, in print, and by correspondence, and I hope all of you are reading his material as well. I should add that I will have a perennial vegetables DVD coming out this fall with an hour in my Massachusetts garden, an hour in the cloud forest of Mexico, and an hour in South Florida touring mature permaculture sites and looking at a dazzling diversity of long–lived, low–maintenance vegetable crops.

I do actually have some more books coming down the pike. My latest is co-written with Jonathan Bates, with whom I have gardened for the last 12 years. It's called Paradise Lot: Two Plant Geeks, One Tenth of an Acre, and the Making of an Edible Urban Oasis, and it tells the story of our garden, which served as the design case study in edible Forest Gardens volume 2. It follows the development of our garden over 9 years and the things that have been excellent as well as mistakes and things we would do differently if we had it to do over again. Spoiler alert: edible forest gardens work and are delicious! It is going to the copy editor at Chelsea Green on Tuesday and will be out later this fall. We'll see if I can do a promotion on it here then. Before that one comes out I'll start working on my next book which is about perennial farming systems and their contribution to fighting climate change by sequestering carbon and reducing emissions, all while solving social and ecological problems. I also have a publication coming out sometime in the next year from the Woodbine Ecology Center currently titled Indigenous Management and Use of Native Plants of the Rocky Mountain and Prairie Regions. You can read an excerpt from it under “indigenous management” at my website www.perennialsolutions.org. I also blog on my website and frequently contribute to the Permaculture Activist and Permaculture Research Institute online. And I create and post videos at www.youtube.com/perennialsolutions. morning: some of them are very nerdy.

Eric

Hi, Eric,

I am MUCH, MUCH, MUCH MORE interested in your work as you serve the common good and tell us about Martin Crawford's upcoming book about perennial veggies for temperate climates.

I am confident that this is true of many in the permaculture community.

I will most certainly do more to tell folks about your books, knowing that you have this focus on the good of all.

You have such valuable knowledge and are such a good writer and there is so much need for this knowledge, that you will be fine. I have seen enough of life to say this with certainty.

Thank you soooooooooooooo much for providing more info for those who only have a small amount of land, as that's the condition of most of our species (including me.)

Many Thanks and Many Blessings,
Pamela Melcher

Eric Toensmeier wrote:
I also have a publication coming out sometime in the next year from the Woodbine Ecology Center currently titled Indigenous Management and Use of Native Plants of the Rocky Mountain and Prairie Regions.

I have a friend in the prairie that is contemplating farm-scale water management w/keyline swales & berms. It is good to see you're working on the Prairie Regions. Any pointers to other helpful resources would be most appreciated.

Thanks again for your work!!
Julie

I so wish I could attend your Bioshelter event but as I am in NW arkansas it is not possible. Have been looking into different avenues to do aquaponics and growing tropical fruits seems like this is just the thing I've been looking for. thanks for all your info.

The three books that have helped us are: 1) Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm, 2) Growing Tasty Tropical Plants In Any Home, Anywhere, 3) Aquaponic Gardening: A Step-by-Step Guide to Raising Vegetables and Fish Together.

Hi Eric,

Glad to see you on the forums still. Thank you much for answering my question about the case study in edible forest gardens. I was extremely surprised when I saw an author answering my question!

Thank you for all of your posts, Eric.

You are sharing very valuable information with us.

Many Thanks and Many Blessings,
Pamela Melcher

Welcome to you, Eric, and thanks for sharing the lessons learned that will help the rest of us be successful in our endeavors in permaculture!

Hi from the Ozarks ~ So happy to see you here..My "patch" gardening is only beginning ..Thank-you for the direction you are showing us..Looking forward to reading your book.. VD

So I run the winner picker app and out of the ten random posts picked, there was one person that the picker picked twice. First post was good! So that person makes the win list, but their email address is not in the daily-ish email. So that person is disqualified.

The best post out of what is left is by somebody that does have an email in the daily-ish email. Congratulations to

Julie Gahn

Congratulations, Julie!

Thank you very, very much, Eric, and Paul, and Burra, and all who posted, for this most helpful and fun event.

Abundance for All

Pamela Melcher

Thank you so much; I so wish I could make it to Eric's Food Forest, but alas; I'll have to learn from the books for now!

Thank you again, Eric for being here with us & Paul for setting it all up!

Julie

Hi Julie, send me your address and I'll pop a book in the mail. Please let me know if I can sign it to anybody.

Eric