Veronica Shukla

I will be visiting family in and around Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. It's husband's family, and I've never been to India. I am founder of a nonprofit in the states called Project Food Forest that is planting public food forests on "host sites." We are touring food forests with video and doing interviews to give people around here an idea of what a food forest would look like and how it can produce. I'm in the heart of massive scale industrial agriculture and surrounded by conservative Midwesterners who are mostly genuinely caring, but are just afraid of change and have no idea what this looks like. I'm hoping to find some sites around Gujarat that I can visit. Any leads?

I don't get on here enough! I am one of those in Sioux Falls. I keep finding more of us, too . I grew up in Lake Park, IA (15 minutes from boji) and visit there once in a while to see family. If you are on Facebook, make sure you join Midwest Homesteading and Permaculture. I'm pretty sure there are NW IA folks in there.

Hi all! I've been looking for perennial ground cherry seeds for quite some time. Either Physalis heterophylla or P. Virginiana. Although they are native in my area, I haven't been able to locate wild specimens yet to save the seeds. Would anyone know where to get some of these seeds? Thanks!

Nick Kitchener, I totally love that thought process. That's exactly how I feel about every "problem" we encounter in our gardens.

But I also don't want to tick off all the neighbors and face possible consequences from the city or developer. It's a newer housing development, so it's a unilawn with some rock gardens. I'm working to set a good example so maybe some others will want to change that, too. And also, I'm planting comfrey in these beds and wonder if they will create lots of baby comfreys .

So right now, all I'm doing is pouring my urine mixed with water and a tiny bit of castor oil over the beds (they need some nitrogen added anyway since it's just carbon right now). I don't know if it will repel them or not; we shall see. We're next to quite a bit of undeveloped prairie area, so I'm thinking now that the snow cover is gone, most of them will head on over that way.

Maybe I should try that, too. Do you think the grass will survive and come up through that small amount?

Oh awesome, maybe I'll try that this fall. I wonder about if they are already in there how that works. Great idea, thanks so much!

I am fairly new to permaculture. I've been studying it for a couple years and just starting to practice it. I sheet mulched beds in the back for last summer and had no problems. This last fall I mulched what will be two apple guilds in my front yard with deep straw. Today, the snow has melted enough for me to notice vole tracks all over in the lawn and going into the straw mulch.

My biggest goal for now and the future is to make permaculture and ecological gardening cool and beautiful. I'm planning beautiful mixed border type beds for my guilds. My thought process is to make people want to do it themselves because it looks and IS so awesome. I live in an upper middle class suburban-type area in a small city where everyone has chemically treated grass. I'm so worried about what the neighbors will think and do! Do you think the cats will take care of it? We have at least 3 cats in close proximity that are let out routinely.

P.S. I cannot and will not kill them (or anything) so that's not an option. What do you think?

Hi all! I just joined permies. I live in Sioux Falls and am just starting my permaculture venture. My email is veronica@veronicashukla.com. That domain is my little, sparse website. Feel free to get in touch. I need permie friends!

I've been taking my project very, very slowly and have been wracking my brain over when to start the big stuff and how fast to go. I'm mostly posting to watch for any advice that comes to you. I want to plant all my trees and shrubs like last year, but alas, I only have so much time and energy and am waiting for the baby to get a little less demanding

What made me say that about permacture was the simplicity of it all. You have to know more and get to do less. It was like, oh duh! Copy nature! A great workshop would be one that emphasizes the simplicity (you know, once the complexity is implemented, lol) of permaculture. Show them that you can just lay down old boxes and your neighbor's leaves in the fall and you have a bed. Show them examples of how it gets EASIER each year vs. harder each year in conventional farming. Show them how they can use their natural desire to rig systems, gadgets, and fixes out of things they have on hand with a little imagination. Stuff like that. Show them that when they stop trying to dominate nature and instead let nature do the work as long as we pick the right plants, gardening becomes enjoyable and in fact very much doable. Stuff like that. have fun!