in reading about gut health and body healing, i am reminded that growing food with microbes whether by innoculating with microbes or not tilling, keeping all gound covered at all times, planting with 20 to 30 different plants.  too much feeding of the plants stops the microbes and mycorrhizals.   in short  regenerative agriculture, gives us gut health, stops diseases chronic or acute in their tracks.

as a cranioscral therapist i worked successfully (meaning their symptoms cleared quickly) on a lot of folks with concussion.  i also had a major stroke and got help from both acupuncture and homeopathy.

am working on construction of replacement housing (for fire destroyed) in the mckenzie river area.

someone told me that the wissner's had gotten building dept approval for at least one rocket stove.  where can i find out about this.

it looks like i would have to buy the bricks from the company.  not that a lot of hemp is available locally this seems a shame.  

i am wanting to reply to this thread and not just to this post.  thank you all for some great things to consider.  i am right now working in the city of eugene on a property where we will build both temporary and permament housing.  a great idea you might be interested in where homeless folk help build their own temporary sturcture, participate in other ways to earn money which will be created on site, as well as be involved in building a permanent structure.   i am interested in very inexpensive specific ways of permanent construction.  are there other treads on permies that have ways of building, meaning the actual building materials that would work for nonskilled labor.

many thanks.

We held a permablitz on the 13th, 14th and 15th of december.

Many of us learned to make clay slip that we then stuffed into pallets which can be used for the walls of a building.

We learned how to use sho sugi ban, a japanese technic where we burn, in our case with a blow torch, wooden pallets that we will use for a foundation for a building.  After scaping off excess burned material we coated the pallets with used motor oil, again not the traditional japanese technic.  They used this technic to preserve wood, lasting sometimes 1000 years.

We also learned to take the bark off of posts that we gleaned from a nearby forrest.  These posts were for a roundhouse that we are building.

My hope for the weekend was that we get the roundhouse constructed.  Huckleberry who was to show us how he constructed one in 2 hours could not come.  Instead he sent a video and parts of his book.

My hope for the permablitz movement we are starting is that people will learn from an emerging paradigm in a present moment to construct the round house and more

see theory  https://www.presencing.org/aboutus/theory-u   these methods have been used for millium by indigeneous peoples.  

This first of the permablitz  did not work as desired.    I had done this practice while creating more than 650 gardens in Eugene Oregon.  There was no explanation beforehand.  People in small groups seemed to rapidly respond to me doing the process with them.  The down side was that with no debriefing.  Folks grocked that they were involved in something amazing but did not have a language for it.  Many people returned again and again to drink from the well of people working and creating together in this way.  

Folks had a great time, formed new friendships and many even told of extraordinary creativity.  So a taste of what could be did happen.

I have spent the preceding week visiting both folks who attended and other friends who did not.  This is where I learned of theory U.  The indigenous methods do not require any words or explanations.  One friend says though that it does take time.  I am reminded of the story of a war council of some plains indians.  They spoke around the fire for 18 hours.  They were not stragegizing about how to do war.  More they were listening to their guides and speaking from their hearts.  At some point, an elder stood up.  The council was over.  It was clear that the speaking had done its work and it was time to begin.  

We had a large group with many scattered parts.  Now I see we needed maybe to have a preceremony the week before where people had a council to clear themselves to open to a sacred space.  Or maybe we just need to start small, most folks to not want to come to ceremonies to make way for the sacred.

So our next permablitz will be open to a small number of women.  We hope to be able to form a group that we can then add to.

I feel strongly that our current paradigm of fear is paving the way for us all to become paralyzed noodles where we give away our power to join a glorious future of love.

I and my partners are going forward with our vision to have a practice for action where we are alive in the presence of joy and fulfillment of our needs.

please see permablitz pacific northwest on facebook if you want to learn more.

this video of a portable round house building was done by huckleberry several years ago.  the round house was done by huckleberry.  do not know who did the video.  this is great.  it could be covered with canvis much like a teepee inside at the end.  

brendan mcnamara, part of requirements to receive a permablitz is that you contribute to at least one permabliz  we have a team coming from shelton huckleberry is near shelton and several other folks are coming from there including julie.  consider joining them if you want to learn and receive a permablitz yourself.

we will more likely build the walls from pallets filled with cob and straw.    this will most likely be dryable with an inside heater.  there will be a large roof overhang, so we can also put the heater outside for the outside walls.  i like the cordwood thickness so we might put on over time 2 or even 3 layers of cob pallet wall.

i tend to push the envelope, finding ways to make things work with what we have.  it does not need to last 100 years.

we may not get the "tea house" finished.  we know we will get the portable round house finished.  this is something we might form a coop to build for people on the land who have access to forest gleanings to make an incoime for themselves.  

hi missa, you sound like someone i would like to connect to.  i am at victorygardensforall@gmail.com

hi chloe, i live in snohomish county and would be interested in coming for a visit.  sounds like you are not now on the land, so could visit wherever you are.  would like to do this soon.  i have an rv that i could live in.  www.handsonpermaculture.org, victorygardensforall@gmail.com

hi alec.  would love to come and visit you.  i am in snohomish county, www.handsonpermaculture.org, victorygardensforall@gmail.com.  

would love for you to contact me, marc and corina.  i remember ordering from you at one time and would love to see if there is a place for me at your place.  my email is myindigenousself@gmail.com

i cannot explain the three sisters plantings of native americans.    i can explain what i saw hundreds of times in india.  they used only givumreitum which is a microbe tea, fermented rather than bubbled with a bubbler.  subhash pallakar speaks of using 1 cows for 30-40 acres of land.  this is one of the reasons cows are sacred in india, because they are necessary for growing food.   they put 1 kg. of cow dung, 1 kg of cow urine (there is a reflex point near the cow's anus that when you push it the cow releases urine), 1 cup of dahl flour and 1 kg of molasses in 50 gallons of water.  ferment for 3 days.  then add to 300 gallons of water.  

with the benefit of the microbe tea the plants grow with their microbe partners.   all soils have what the plants need.   when the plants have everything they need they rarely have bug or fungas problems.     also notice all the forest trees growing hundreds of feet in the air without soil amendments.  the microbes in the soil make what is there available for the plants additionally .there is an added benefit of the microbes holding the water in the soil so in india they can grow for 5-6 months with no rain.  another benefit is that food grown in this way is nutrient dense meaning meaning that what our own microbe systems need is supplied by our food.  this will stop the chronic degenerative diseases which are now an epidemic.  

to our paradigm  we ask how could this possibly be true.   however if you look at 300 foot tall redwoods and forests throughout the world you will see that plants are not dependent on us for their nutrients.  of course now with round up being carried in the rain, all our forests are compromised and need microbe inoculations.

you can see on my web site www.handsonpermaculture1.org a lot of resources that lead to understanding of a paradigm that supports the earth and our bodies in a new/old paradigm.

this type of science is more complicated than it needs to be.  john kempf and AEA are inoculating with microbes.  they are now working with farmers on 4 million acres in the u.s.  without deciding for the plants what microbes they need, using rather a pan microbe concoction.  plants and their microbe partners have been the method nature uses for fertility for billions of years.  by using this, AEA drasticallty reduces the amount of external inputs (fertilizers) needed increasing the productivity of the plants and thus increasing the farmers bottom line.

\https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/regenerative-agriculture-podcast/id1372359995

i was just at a 2 acre orchard in cottage grove, oregon where she has many, many trees, at least 100.   this is her third year in ownership and she is regrafting all her gallen trees because they are covered with scab.  i do not know where you are, but serious scab deforms the apples.   in places like eastern washington this is not such a problem.  she uses horsetail tea to help with scab and this works with her other varieties but not the gallens.   i have another friend who has a lot of scabby varieties who used EM from TeraGanix and MycoGrow from Fungi Perfecti which cleaned up all the scab as well as coddling moth that had plagued his orchard for 47 years.  also he got larger apples.  i like your spacing this allows a lot of "companion plants."  what is your spacing between the rows?  regrafting the trees is easy (if you know how to graft).  you can even put 3 different types of apples on one tree.  most people want their varieties to cover all time periods between early, late and winter keeping aoples. this friend in cottage grove is starting a hard cider business which means she needs some bitter tasting apples.

r. ransome.  a great thread. made greater by your observations.  

there are a huge amount of variables that need consideration.  per gabe brown (from the video mentioned above) the organic matter in the soil, with extra emphasis on  the mycorrhizals in the soil will determine how much water the soil holds.  he uses the figure of 250,000 gallons of water per acre with 10% organic matter.  in india where they have been gardening for 10,000 years sustainably using no irrigation (where they have not been "sold over" by the green revolution), they have no problem growing mangoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and many other crops with no irrigation and no rain for 6 months.  part of their sustainable practice is gevumreitum (a fermented concoction from cow dung, cow urine, legume powder and molasses).  in most parts of india, they have higher temperatures than we usually do, with 40 C to 50 C being normal temperatures during part of the year.  

they have a favorite tree sesbania grandiflora that they plant with their vegetables that they trim off at 8 feet tall, turn into a single leader and have dancing shadows.  they use what they cut off for chop and drop, for animal feed and also it is a kind of spinach for humans, with very good nutrient density.  they plant these trees every 4 feet.   a comparable tree for us in all these respects is is toona senensis.  korean natural farming shows us lots of concoctions that we can make to increase our microbe populations.  It turns out according to the Bionutrient Assocition that plants have their intestines in their microbe partners.  Plants grown without microbe partners do not develop full protein layers, full lipid layers or the secondary plant metabolites need for both insect protection and to feed the human biome.  with food properly feeding our human biome we are are susceptible to cancer, heart disease, diabetes etc.

bare soil is the worst thing for the soil life as gabe brown mentions on this same video.

elaine ingham also did a video in an arabian country where dew from the plants was the only water the plants got.  i have not found this video.

in the u.s. dryland farming involves tilling and as they are decimating the microbes with the tilling they compensate for that by gently scratching the surface with a hoe, making what they call a dust mulch.


i  admire your looking at the plants with an eye to what is making them collect water.  it reminds me of my time in the chiropractic world where the more i learned the more i did not know.  the human body, like the plants and the soil has millions of variables and only with our nonlinear thinking can we begiin to grock it.    i also want to refer you to an interview with tony renaudo, who started a project near the sahara in africa which has now reached 5 million hectares, mainly by self organization, meaning people saw the results and started doing it.    I was especially struck by him being in one village for years, being made fun of for his western ways which were not working.   one day he realized that this shrub that he saw was a tree resprouting, an ah hah moment.  he then protected these shrubs which then turned into trees and these trees reestablished the hydological cycle and their agriculture would work.  a lot of land has become healthy again.  Tony Rinaudo talks at the Tenth International Permaculture Conference (Sept 2011) in Amman, Jordan, about the massively positive impact Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) has had on the world, and his vision to see the benefits of FMNR enjoyed by a great many more yet.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm_qlyvdZ_A

the change in tony from coming from his head to learning to work with nature is what i believe toby hemenway was talking about in his video why agriculture can never be sustainable.  the horticulture paradigm  involves  living inside the egosystem rather than laying our vision onto the earth.

this might help with how you determine what is the right time to move the animals. https://vimeo.com/savoryinstitute/readingyourland

also as horses and donkeys are not ruminants, you might want to consider adding in microbe teas to help increase microbes on your land.  if you want to grow your own microbes please see korean natural farming.

major contributors to simple solutions which you might not know.

Adam Sachs, Bio4Climate.
Didi Pershouse, Ecology of Care. . . see previous post
Narsanna Koppula, Aranya Agriculture Alternatives
Rajendra Singh, 10 rivers back in life in Rajistan, India.  
Brad Lancaster for his work in the Tucson desert with 11 inches of rainfall
Gabe Brown
Christine Jones, soil biology australia
Walter Jehne, microbiology as applied to the rain cycle, australia
Neal Spackman, dryland restoration in Saudi Arabia, facebookn
Matt powers, the permaculture student
Subhash Palikar, 18 books about zero budget natural farming
Bhaskar Save, ghandi of natural farming in india subject of book by bharat mansata
John D. Liu, Ecosystem Restoration Camps
Vail Dixon,(female), Simple Soil Solutions,  gardener in toby's ecosystem tradition on more than 2000 acres in virginia, mentor of gardeners.

Simple solutions

As I read this thread I see that Paul is saying that he wants to take a rest from the fray and he wants others to shoulder the responsibility he has been carrying.  Many people do not hear this message.  They are encouraging Paul not to give up.  

I feel that I am shouldering some of this responsibility.

If you would please watch this video from Toby Hemingway you will understand the paradigm shift that Toby has long been describing.  



this is a keystone video.  the solution that he recommends is horticulture or I will call it ecosystem gardening to not confuse it with the science of the current horticulture. . there are 3 ways that I know of to quickly grow an ecosystem 1) with a lot of mulch, no bare soil, no tilling and cover crops, 2) holistic management including ruminant rotational grazing or 3) microbe inoculations. see on facebook microbe teas, a quick way to regenerate soil as well as a story of microbes how they can accomplish seeming miracles on Permies site.

I was feeling a lot like Paul is feeling.  Not because I have made anywhere near the contribution that Paul has, and not because I have spent anywhere near the time and effort that he has.  More because I am a woman and like most women, I need to see that my contribution is not only needed but being received.  I am wired to need feedback to know that I am on the right course.  In Toby’s video he describes that a major problem with agriculture (or industrial agriculture as I will call it) is that it takes 100 or more years to see how the soil has been decimated.  Actually to deplete the soil so much that farming is no longer possible.   In tropical countries it only takes 20 years to decimate the soil.  So this need of mine and other women for feedback can be a very good thing.  If in a mothering roll, the child does not respond, we know to change what we are doing.

I am spending this winter on the East Coast because Adam Sachs from Bio4Climate had seen my crowdfunder on facebook and  wanted me to speak at the Bio4Climate conference where he is bringing practioners together with scientists who want to find solutions for our planet.  I might not have come except that Didi Pershouse who wrote

The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities.

invited me to attend a workshop with a famous microbiologist Walter Jehne where we would brainstorm on solutions with a lot of movers and shakers.  Feeling myself surrounded by 30 other people who are as committed as I am to simple solutions is giving me the foundation to continue my work.   I have seen that using microbes in ecosystem gardening covers at least 10,000 acres in the New England area and if we enlarge that to include holistic management, then we are probably up to 200,000 acres minimum  in the U.S..  Around the world there are at least 5000 holistic management type sites some of them with 50,000 acres.  Holistic grazing has been reversing desertification and alleviating drought wherever it is practiced correctly with concomitant humus and ecosystem regeneration.  Whoopee there is hope for our future, especially if these small and large scale solutions can continue to grow.  It is starting to sound like we will reach the turning point soon.

Because of my presentation at the Bio4Climate conference I have made connections with many women running organizations in this area including SustainableBrattleboro, BioConcordcan, Sustainable Arlington, etc.  They are adding to their current projects a movement to convert their lawns to natives and perennials.  the BioConcordCan group calls their project YIMBY.  Yes in My Back Yard.  They want to create humus as quickly as possible as they have been hard hit by drought and uderstand that the carbon in the humus can hold up to 250,000 gallons of water per acre and thus the beginning of the solution for drought and desertification.   I am working with a team here to write a manual for how to do this, hoping that this will take off around the country.  With 41.5 million acres of lawns this can make a significant difference.

These technics have the benefit of reversing desertification, and alleviating drought because they allow the water to go into the soil, (as opposed to running off it) filling the deep aquifers and drastically slowing the water returning to the sea that is causing increased rises in the ocean levels.  With the addition of trees there is bacteria from the trees which seeds the clouds causing rain in that area, which can mean that the water does not return to the ocean for 10 years.

I believe that everyone of us (people) including every bacteria, every plant, every animal have something to contribute to what Paul calls simple solutions.  We all need to let the creativity that Toby says is the heart of an  ecosystem gardening practice (love and abundance vs. fear and scarcity)  to fill us with the contributions that we can make.  Our creative contribution leads to our own health as well as that of the planet.

I give this 10 out of 10 acorns.

i was asked to give acorns to this book.  this is hard for me.  it is hard because i begin to think of the subject matter and could someone else have made it easier to digest, brought it together in a better way.   I suspect that someone else could have done it more perfectly, whatever that means.    the real questilon though is were it done more perfectly would it have led to my trying to do that on my own..  i would say that the way she has done it has left me a lot of room to figure it out for myself which is very important to me and i would think to most people reading about these issues.  so from that point i would give 10 of 10 acorns for this book.

##########

Think globally and act locally. How do we expand our horizons enough to think globally.

This is a review of Cows Save the Planet, and Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth.

There is another subtitle: Unmaking the Deserts, Rethinking Climate Change, Bringing Back Diversity, and Restoring Nutrients to Our Food.

I am 72 years old and probably should be ashamed to admit that finding this book was a grand surprise for me. I did not know that there are books where someone has waded through scientific material, farmer material, doctor or health material (whatever) and given an overview of a topic. Maybe that is what textbooks are supposed to be but they are dry and boring. I was delighted to find this book which is a tour through man made planetary and human disequilibrium, call it what you like, climate change, desertification, drought.

She surrounds “meaty subjects” with a context such as having breakfast in a beautiful spot on the African savanna. I loved the whole book. She describes a lot of the pieces of what are causing disruptions of our ecosystems and what can rebalance them. Water cycles are divided into the small water cycle, what happens at the local land level and the large water cycle, moving the water from the sea to the land and back again to the sea. She describes holistic management developed by Allan Savory and how and why it is restoring severely degenerated land, all over the world. I am a vegetarian and I highly value what these practices are doing for our world. I do not agree that working with animals is the only way to restore our ecosystems, as I am demonstrating a system I learned about in India to do this very thing.

She describes the connection between degenerated land, degenerated water cycles and increasing air temperatures. She describes why growing our food without enough microbes is compromising our health and causing us to over rely on medicine. She even has a section about economics. And so much more. I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you have any holes in your global thinking, as I did, that you would like to complete.

this has been around a while, but i just saw it, so maybe others have not seen it.




| Pattern Mind by Joel Glanzberg
http://patternmind.org/an-open -letter-and-plea-to-the-permac ulture-community/

           First of all, I want to thank you, not only for your good efforts, time, and energy but for your caring…your caring not only for this living earth but for the people and the beauty of life. Thank you.

           Many of you may know of my work from the example of Flowering Tree in Toby Hemenway’s excellent book Gaia’s Gardenand the video 30 Years of Greening the Desert, others from my regenerative community development work with Regenesis. In any case I know that you share my concerns for the degrading condition of the ecological and human communities of our biosphere and I am writing to you to ask for your help.

           We are at a crisis point, a crossroads and if we are to turn the corner we need to use everything at our disposal to its greatest effect. My concern is that we are not using the very powerful perspective of permaculture to its greatest potential and that we need to up our game. We know that the living world is calling for this from us.

           I often feel that permaculture design is like a fine Japanese chisel that is mostly used like a garden trowel, for transplanting seedlings. It can of course be used for this purpose, but is certainly not its highest use.

           Permaculture Design has often been compared to a martial art such as Aikido because at its heart it is about observing the forces at play to find the “least change for the greatest effect”; a small move that changes entire systems. This is how nature works and is precisely the sort of shortcut we desperately need.

           The lowest level of any martial art is learning to take a hit well. Yet this is where so much of our energy seems to be directed: setting ourselves and our communities up to be resilient in the face of the impacts of climate change and the breakdown of current food, water, energy, and financial systems.

           The next level is to avoid the blow, either through dodging, blocking or redirecting it. Much of the carbon farming and other efforts directed toward pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and developing non-carbon sources of energy fall into this category.

           At their highest expression practitioners track patterns to their source, shifting them before they take form, redirecting them in regenerative directions. This is what is behind principles like “obtain a yield” or “the problem is the solution” and the reason for protracted and thoughtful observation. We learn to read energies and to find the acupuncture-like inoculation or disturbance that changes the manifestation by changing the underlying pattern. Problems are turned into solutions and provide us with yields if we can stop trying to stop or block them. This is the pattern of Regeneration.

           Every permaculture technique is a small disturbance that shifts the underlying pattern and hence the system. Water-harvesting structures, rotational grazing, chicken tractors, mulching, spreading seed-balls, setting cool ground fires in rank meadows or forests, transforming spoiling milk into creamy cheese, revolving loan funds, libraries, and even the design course itself all follow this pattern. The point is to disturb brittle senescent systems to allow the emergence of the next level of evolution, even if the system is our preconceptions and habits of thought. This is at the heart of self-organizing systems and the key to effective change efforts.

           In a changing world it does no good to teach a man to fish. What happens when currents or climate or communities change? It is essential to teach how to think about fishing, whatever can be fished with whatever is at hand. This is why it is called permaculture DESIGN.

           In its highest form permaculture is not about designing anything. It is a pattern-based approach to designing systemic change efforts. This is the point of the PDC [permaculture design course] as well as all that time spent in the forest or garden. It is to learn how living systems work and how to observe them to find the effective change so that we can apply those skills to shifting the living systems most in need of shifting: human systems including how we think about the world.

           Changing [the] paradigm tops systems thinker Donella Meadows’ list of the most effective places to intervene in systems. To effectively change the systems that are causing global degeneration we need to change the human paradigm and we need to start by shifting our paradigm of what permaculture is. If we do not shift these larger human systems our lovely gardens and beautiful hand built homes don’t have a chance.

           Although the PDC contains many techniques and ways of doing, it is about changing how we think about the world primarily. It is meant to crack our certainties about everything from agriculture to economics and how the world works. This is why so many of the principles are like a whack on the side of the head. “What do you mean the problem is the solution? Or that yield is limited only by my mind?”

           If the PDC is designed to shift our paradigm, then it shows us the pattern of shifting people’s paradigms. And this is the greatest use of our skills. Not to create gardens or to train gardeners, but to shift the thinking of folks who understand business and economics, laws and governance, so that they can all be re-thought and re-worked to follow the patterns of living systems.

           We have been warned that “the map is not the territory” and then have mistaken the map of permaculture as the territory of permaculture. Living in a materialistic and mechanistic culture we have grabbed onto the stuff and mechanisms of permaculture rather than the essential patterns. Just because we learn about living systems through gardens, forests, and fields, does not mean that is where our art is most fruitfully applied.

           So what am I asking of you? Please just think about this. Let it burn out the choked underbrush of your certainty. Watch how it effects how you think, and teach, design, and work. Let it open room to let something new emerge in the sunlit space. While cracks in structures need to be fixed, in nature from splitting seed coats, hatching chicks, or birthing babies or ideas, cracks are the doorways to new life.

           Please forward this around your networks. Try it on and try it out. If you would like to know more or let me know your thoughts please go to patternmind.org.

           Many thanks for your open hearts and minds,

           Joel Glanzberg

--

thank you very much John Welland for these informative articles.  also gabe brown, elaine ingham, especially the roots of your profits and many others are sharing great results with mcirobes.  gabe brown is not innoculating.  he is just allowing ruminants to graze and do his innoculating for him.

some results from my microbe innoulation at terra lingua farm in eastern oregon.

this farm gets 8-14 inhes of rain per year.  the soil is a sandy loam.  the farm has 100 acres of rye grass (not rye).  i have leased 20 acres of this self seeding rye grass.

this last year i sprayed 13 times with EM, effective microorganisms which i bought from a company.  you can google where to buy this.  also i used soluble mycorhizzals which i got from Fungi Perfecti (Paul Stamets company).  when i was working in western oregon (eugene) where we had the ability to water i only sprayed once.  

at this point i would recommend using korean natural farming tehnics to grow your own microbes.  they in the advanced sections even teach you how to replicate mycorhizzals.   elaine ingham recommends that local microbes will be a lot more help than buying them as i have done.  (i felt this year i did not have the band width to make my own with my 20 acre project that i am essentially doing alone.

someplace around 7 sprays i started seeing green weeds growing, including lambs quarters and red root (amaranth).  the weeds grew quite tall (3.5 feet) and bushy, so they had water.  in none of the 80 acres that i did not spray were there any of these weeds growing.  visitors to the farm mentioned that they had not seen green weeds growing in the last 100 miles without irrigation.  so we know we had increasing organic matter.  




in my nursery section where i watered, i now have 4-5 inches of the type of black aggregated soil that is called humus.  even in 100 degree heat, this soil retains moisture.

i did dig around these "weeds" and could not see any black soil or even any moisture.  if i had a microbescore i probably would have seen the budding humus.

i also want to mention that we did contour plowing with a chisel plow (the closest i could get to a yeoman's plow)  about 70% of the weeds were growing where the chisel plow had made a cut in the soil.

in february i will begin to broadcast the herb, berry and tree seeds that i want to plant. i am planting only seeds.  if i bring in plants, i would have to water and besides carrying water by vehicle, i cannot water.  hence all the work to hold the water in the soil by innoculating with microbes so  water is not needed

last year most of the seeds for the 20 odd grasses, legumes and broad leaves that i planted did not oome up when i planted them in may and july.  everyone tells me that they will come up when there is enough moisture, which because of a storm, we got significant rain in the typical time to plant is in the fall and many of the seeds did come up.   For added insurance,  i did another planting in the fall.  i was going to broadcast the herbs, berrries and trees but i ended up leaving the farm for the winter, so will plant in the very early spring, unfortunately having to stratefy the seeds.  I have found a way to stratefy the seeds in several weeks by putting the seeds in earth and then refrigerating them.

narsanna koppula uses a lot of natural farming. only thing he removes are things that he feels are toxic.    yes i will use a lot of natural farming.  will broadcast seed for 20-30 nut and fruit trees, as well as herbs, vegetables and see what natures grow.

no i will not use raised beds or manures.  i am one person on 20 acres and will use only innoculations.  i did use where there was compaction from tractor, some hay to about 3 inches to cover the seed i planted.

SOME OF WHAT I LEARNED IN INDIA, re growing food in dry barren lands .

Margie Bushman from the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network was sharing with me at the North American Permaculture Convergence how valuable the International Permaculture Convergence can be for Permies. I stayed in India for 2 years. The next IPC is in India so it is timely to talk about what i learned in India.

1. Aranya, Narsanna Koppula's food forest where he had not irrigated or fertilized since he started 17 years ago. He has some of the best production i saw in all my travels. In the first years of his trees he used ollas (terra cotta containers) to water them. He has 20 inches of rain a year which comes mostly in two monsoon times, so that there are 5-6 month periods of dry spells. The temperatures are sometimes 125 degrees and often 115 degrees.

2. Dryland farming happens in 70% of Indian agriculture, so it opened to my eyes to what is possible.
There are 3 ways to do this using no till permaculture without fertilizer.

a) Mob grazing, where the ruminant's bellies ferment the food and generate microbes. My favorite video on this is from gabe brown.

b) Mulch. There was a forest next door to Narsanna;s farm so this was his method.

c. Microbial innoculations of bacteria, mycorhizzals, etc. This is used a lot in India and other Asian countries, especially Korea (see Korean Natural Farming, also called Korean Low Budget Farming). Geoff Lawton is using compost tea for large acerage.

We are using microbial innoculations at Terra Lingua Farm. I was highly motivated to start a demonstration of what permaculture is capable of, especially as all of these methods create ecosystems helping carbon sequestration in the soil and therefore mitigate climate change. The carbon in the soil working with the microbes in the soil holds tremendous amounts of water in the soil. It now appears that it is the destruction of ecosystems around the world that is the cause of climate change. There was a mini ice age in Europe after the settler in the America’s wiped out all the ecosystems here set up by the native peoples.

3. Corporations have gotten most Indian farmers to believe (even though they have a 10,000 year history of sustainable agriculture) that they will make more money if they irrigate and use chemical fertilizer. In fact chemical fertilizer causes the plants to gobble as much as 5 times more water and then the plants become weak and attract pests and diseases. Any concentrated fertilizers including organic fertilizers will cause this.. The plants are used to being fed with mulch and their microbe partners and concentrated foods cause them to uptake more water to balance cell osmolality. Too much water also causes problems. Again the plants are used to growing in multicrop systems with cover crops. The plants want only a small amount of moisture which ecosystems filled with microbes and mulch provide.

4. I spoke to many, many farmers who could not afford to dig new bore wells. As the water levels were decreasing so rapidly, they needed to dig a new well every 2 years. The farmers wanted to move to the cities so they could earn an income since they could not afford the bore well.

5. Living for years in this milleau with the humongous numbers of people was serious eye opener to the value of permaculture, as well as to what the farmers leaving their fields would mean for starvation of millions of people.

6. Especially in India hundreds of thousands of farmers are committing suicide because they have mortgaged their land based on this promise of higher returns from industrial agriculture, and when it falls through they lose their land and cannot support their families.

7. I am doing a demonstration to make industrial farming obsolete. We will have less set up costs, no fertilizer, pesticides, herbicide costs and we will get the same or higher prices for the food we grow. Yes a diverse crop will be harder to harvest and possibly to sell.

8. Most of us have read One Straw Revolution and many people do not believe that we can grow here in the U.S. in this way. We most certainly can. Gabe Brown planted 30 acres of vegetables with no till into his cover crops with great results, again with no irrigation and no fertilization in North Dakota with 15 inches of rain a year.

This is the link to the interview I did with Narsannaji regarding his food forest.

http://permacultureindia.org/permaculture-farms/
Aranya's Farm
The Aranya Permaculture Farm Story This mature food forest is the only one I know of in the permaculture world -- a never irrigated dry land food forest, that can increase the ground water (dry land means that it is not irrigated) It is important…
PERMACULTUREINDIA.ORG

hi r ransome.  in the genre of uses i have put to the microbes on this go around, i have not used stinging nettles.  stinging nettles is something that the biodynamic people have been using for 50 years so it would probably work.  i do not know if you plan to bubble the concoction or ferment it.  the biodynamic people ferment it.

i would recommend that you check our korean natural farming.  they have a lot of stuff on facebook.   they have their version of EM which is what i buy and then i use mycorhizzals from paul stamets organization fungi perfecti.  i believe as they are using leaf mold in their concoction you would not need to add the mycorhizzals.  they call korean natural farming low budget natural farming sometimes, very inexpensive to make these products.

they make this from several grains (small amounts).  they recommend making it locally.   elaine ingham also recommends local teas.

using EM and mycorhizzals after 7 sprays i started  seeing results here in the desert.  it is very exciting, although far slower than anywhere else i have worked, probably because of the lack of water.  the results that i am seeing are showing that the water in the soil is already way up.  what i am seeing is a lot of weeds growing.  no place else on the farm are their green weeds growing in the rye grass.  also some visitors came and said that for hundreds of miles they had seen no weeds in the fields except where the whole field was green and they were watering.   they normally plant things like winter wheat and rye here in the fall and it comes up in the spring.  i planted in the spring and most of the plants did not come up.  it just rained yesterday and i am hoping that with the moisture that the microbes help the soil retain, the plants will now come up.  we shall see in a couple of weeks.

in my work in india i used givumreit which is made from cow dung, cow urine, a powder from legumes and molasses.   this is what the local people used.   i did not add mycorhizzals and got tremendous results.

good luck with your experiment.

wanted you all to know about this group which integrating science with agriculture to solve the problems of climate change.

http://bio4climate.org/

i have started a related thread:  applying gabe browns work to edible forest gardens without domestic animals https://permies.com/t/58649/urban/Applying-Gabe-Browns-work-mob#497725