Two main questions on starting thousands of trees from seed.
(1) how do you do it at Versaland? I've only ever seen the picture of the plywood box with Chestnuts sticking out the top.
(2) would you ever use the Jang seeder to walk a row of tree seeds in parallel with one of your existing tree rows?
I imagine tilling shallowly that small area, laying out several rows in tight succession, sowing an appropriate ground cover, and planning to sell them as nursery stock over the next 2-5 years.
If not, why not.
If maybe or yes, do you have any cover crop recommendations that would aid the tree seeds along without stunting their growth?
Thanks for all you do. Inspired and moving along in Michigan. Jesse
I love your book, it is one of my favorite 'permaculture' books to date!
Question about the stun method of 'sheer and total utter neglect'. When establishing, say 5000 apples, do you grow 5000 seeds from multiple varieties in a nursery bed, in the field, or elsewhere? If so, how do you prepair the beds for seeds?
If you are planting seedlings by the thousands, do you have suggested nurseries that you purchase from (other than Forest Ag )? Gather from zone 5 wilderness? How do you go about gathering that volume of plants affoardably?
What about gaining access to large quantities of seeds, any suggestions on how to get 10,000 cherry seeds of various varieties? Etc.
Equally, how do you gain access to large quantities of scion wood?
We are at a PDC right now in Detroit and have been considering ways to manage the Japanese knotweed too. Some of the students found research that suggests that the accumulated toxins are in the roots and do not travel up the stem. So we took some machetes and a few folks and chopped em down. Laid right on site, chopped up into smallish pieces. We are sheet mulching it out and could further cover that with other organic matters and plant right into that. We could plant non-edible productive plants though I think edibles might be just fine.
You and yours can attend 1 day, 1 section or the whole course. In fact, you can pick 5 days to come and they can be spread out anyway you like. We are trying to meet our students needs in both time and cost commitments. If you have the inclination, contact us: 734.709.1176
This course is about to be epic! Time banking, Urban Community Center building, food forests, mushroom remediation, at the corner of MLK and Grand River in Detroit! You really cannot beat this price we are offering either. A full, certified PDC, taught by 2 excellent teachers Larry Santoyo and Keith Johnson at $300-1800 combined with Time Bank/Work Trade informal/semi formal economies. We wanted to plant the seeds of permaculture design within the city of Detroit and help co-create a beautiful template for the Urban setting. Detroit is the world's premier Post-Industrial site for demonstrating a way out of this mess we have about us.
Thank you Paul Wheaton and all the great posters at Permies.com for your great work! You are an inspiration to us all. Please share this with interested individuals in your life. Thanks again.
What other cities need Urban Community Centers based on permaculture design?
Just wanted to bump this up a bit in the feed. This course is about to be epic! Time banking, Urban Community Center building, food forests, mushroom remediation, at the corner of MLK and Grand River in Detroit! You really cannot beat this price we are offering either. A full, certified PDC, taught by 2 excellent teachers Larry Santoyo and Keith Johnson at $300 combined with Time Bank/Work Trade informal/semi formal economies. We wanted to plant the seeds of permaculture design within the city of Detroit and help co-create a beautiful template for the Urban setting. Detroit is the world's premier Post-Industrial site for demonstrating a way out of this mess we have about us.
Thank you Paul Wheaton and all the great posters at Permies.com for your great work! You are an inspiration to us all. Please share this with interested individuals in your life. Thanks again.
What other cities need Urban Community Centers based on permacultulre design?
Hey Everyone, Im Jesse from Lapeer Mi. I live currently in Ypsilanti. I have a permaculture design company called Aurora Design Solutions. We are doing an 'everybody come to the PDC' PDC in Detroit from July 22nd through Aug 4th. $300. Larry Santoyo and Keith Johnson. Anyway, we are beginning to serve Michigan communities through edible and medicinal landscape designs for community hubs like churchs, schools, hospitals, etc.
My main interests are in large scale foresting (edible and material), remediation of toxins, and abundant foods, medicines, and work. I am starting a perennial nursury at home, small scale right now. I've planted about 50 fruit trees this year in Lapeer and Ypsi. We are hosting this Design Course and hope to begin community projects next year. Exciting times for me personally and it is nice to see all these permie Michiganders!! Let's work together sometime!
Please consider coming to Detroit this summer too! Any day you want you can come, if not, I wish you good luck and happy partnerships with Nature until we meet!
And then, a full 12 day PDC in Detroit with Larry Santoyo and Keith Johnson with an emphasis on Urban Ecosystem Design!! This event is from July 22nd through August 4th. Registration and info can be found here: http://auroradesignsolutions.com/courses/
Consider joining us in Michigan for either/both of these events and please also share widely through your permaculture networks. You can private message me here at permies for more specific info too! I hope this message finds you all well and thanks.
And then, a full 12 day PDC in Detroit with Larry Santoyo and Keith Johnson with an emphasis on Urban Ecosystem Design!! This event is from July 22nd through August 4th. Registration and info can be found here: http://auroradesignsolutions.com/courses/
Consider joining us in Michigan for either/both of these events and please also share widely through your permaculture networks. You can private message me here at permies for more specific info too! I hope this message finds you all well and thanks.
Paul wants to save the world, and so do I. Though the world will go on, "the Earth has no center, without man."
There are so many people without a job, especially in Michigan, and so the type of jobs we NEED are 'permaculture' jobs. Right? Low tech, appropriate tech, food systems, remediation, local economies, et al.
How can we connect this resource, human capital, with this need, failing systems/joblessness?
Keeping in my mind, like Geoff Lawton said, we only need to reach tipping point to 'save the world', which is 10% of any system, before the system takes over.
So, can one most effectively 'save the world' by getting 10% of your town or mine, with energy producing, food producing homesteads?
Hugelkultur is a technique that we can use within the 10% to most effectively use branch/tree/clipping 'wastes' of a township or town for food production, soil creation, water retention, and energy conservation. So it seems to me, the most effective way to ensure widespread use of this technique, is to reach communities approaching 10%.
More and more communities are moving in these directions out of shear necessity. So, imho, a Hugelkultur marketing campaign is in order!
yeah im close to Detroit too. in fact we are trying to bring Larry Santoyo here next summer, details to be worked out. but it sure would be good know those contacts.
In the podcast, pt. 2, Geoff mentions 8 schools in Detroit teaching permaculture curriculum? Or was it that had active systems on the school grounds?
And a Fab unit? Whats that?
I live in Michigan and plan to help bring a PDC to Detroit 2012 and was really excited to hear that.
Anybody know anything else about that?
Detroit btw, is an truly prime candidate for large scale permaculture works. There are 58sq km of vacant and abandoned land. Detroit also has several buried rivers of note. It doesnt take much to imagine an interconnected web of food forest and grazing systems within the Motor Capitol of the World! Living water systems would be a smart move too.
We'd love to bring Geoff, Paul, Sepp out to help build this vision of Detroit asap. Still looking for funding....
Geoff and Paul thanks for bringing this conversation to us! I can just imaging youngsters getting into permaculture in America through the podcast door. Pretty awesome and needed stuff.
Geoff mentioned high finance as a niche market which is exactly the direction of my permaculture works. Funding and subsidies have grown military, tech and energy markets for a long time and we see the results. Funding on large scale, multi-million dollar scales for peace, regenerative works and lets say, carbon farming, or whole-systems design implimentation has not been afforded that level of investment.
The time is now and one "super rich" dude or dudette could fund good works for a really long time. Following the 3rd ethic allows the money cycling within the system. The money that enters a permaculture system never has to come back out of that system.
ill use that jargon. i think the word itself, like all words, has much potential to be maligned. often i have had people tell me something like "permaculture--there has to be a better name than that!"
i like biomimicry and biomimetics design. or whole-systems design.
fractal design. scalable pattern and zero waste design? its all the same stuff.
i fall on the brown side too, despite, in addition to honoring and respecting the purple side of life and spiritualism. but i do not much like the assumed rap that the word permaculture gets.
"it seems we'll have to rely on the hippies" Bill Mollison.
As far as my limited understanding goes, cob and packed earth houses functions due to thermal mass slowly heating and slowly releasing heat over days and nights.
Owning an 1860's farmhouse in Michigan I wonder, could I attach a greenhouse to the South side of the house and fill the North side wall with cob?
The house is a 2 story house and im really wondering if you can remove the drywall and insulation and fill the wood walls, the frame of the house, with cob, up to 2 stories?
Both are structural so I imagine it will not fall over.
Do you all think I will get the thermal effect this way?
Any other thoughts on retrofitting old "standard" houses for passive heating and cooling?
I have found the new Sepp book to be, for my money, the best permaculture book besides A Designers Manuel. Edible Forest Gardens are needed for their Appendices. So thankful that we have those, thank you Dave Jackie! and thank you Paul Wheaton for all the FREE information and material!
In general wealth and people with wealth need to begin funding permaculture and whole-systems design's on a much larger scale. Nader's recent book "Only the Super Rich Can Save Us" kind of gets to that point but minus the permaculture.
Its easy to imagine a 1 million dollar a year budget for remediation, food production, or agroforestry works in, say Michigan. The work that could get done on that budget could be immense, and thats 1 million bucks, not exactly a lot in this world.
I see no reason that private wealth should not subsidize remedition works the same way that public monies subsidize tech ventures, military R&D, etc.
the problem of succession is what happens when i die, or my direct successors die and the trust or corporate entity that protected, conserved and remediated the land/old-growth trees has now moved through a few generations?
i keep thinking of a corporation that, as mandated through their by-laws, assumes stewardship over old-growth trees. these trees might live to be 1000 years old, so what is the legal mechanism that prevents the trees from being destroyed, manipulated, or undermined for that length of time?
i do not know enough about trusts to say one way or the other...perhaps this is the mechanism.
the trust idea is a great idea and the 'problem' of succession is indeed the problem.
its nice to see this discussion being had.
my thinking in having permaculture versed lawyers is that that could help LLC's or S-Corp's whom are acting in the interests of the ecological health and stability of any given site work the language of the law into linking the corporate mandates, as written in the By-Laws, to the land.
it is a well known fact that lawyers are the bridgekeepers of the law. we can use this to the advantage of individual trees that we want to become old-growth trees, perhaps that is what our corporation does... so now there is currently no legal structure or precedent, as far as my limited knowledge goes, that creates legal contracts through the corporate entity that protects said trees indefinitely.
but if that is what our corporation does, is manage, conserving and preserving old-growth trees, as well as other forms of agroforestry, and we are legally bound to our corporate by-laws, then it stands to reason that we need lawyers to navigate the legal language that can link an ecological element, to the corporation, which is immortal.
so are they're any lawyers out there on this forum? lend us your thoughts...
I am interested in the Corporate and Legal aspects of whole-systems design. We cannot have a whole-system, in today's world, without considering the legal protections and the personal protections that the legal entity 'Corporation' affords. Nor can we ignore the language of law.
IMHO, both of this institutions are ripe for transformation from within. I wonder what you all think of establishing hundreds and thousands of local permaculture corporations in America? Of course, these are based on the ethics of permaculture.
A more specific question is this, are there any permaculture informed lawyers on this forum or otherwise?
Heres a thought; since corporations are immortal entities, can we legally tie land, old-growth trees, or whole ecological systems to the corporate entity, thereby protecting land indefinitely?
Im thinking generational legal protection of land, water, trees, etc until such times come where greed has been reigned in and people live in local natural systems again.
I dont know if this was mentioned or not but Darren Doherty spoke on Jill Coultier's podcast stating: if we could increase the carbon content of the worlds agricultural soils, 12% of Earth's arable land, by 1.6%, then we could sequester carbon to pre-industrial levels.
He seemed to indicate that soils are the greatest known source of carbon sequestration.
In combination with tree sequestration and fungal filtering properties, I think we're pretty good off.
Larry Santoyo told our class in Detroit that it takes 10 to feed 150. I am interested in this number as a rough, scalable assumption.
I guess my real question is how much food, in a diverse perennial system, do 150 people need. Let's assume Michigan as location. The human body needs approximately 2500 calories a day. That's 375,000 calories a day for the group of 150.
But let's assume that I am in that group of 10 in charge of feeding the 150, I'd rather know how many CSA style boxes the average adult male and female and child would require per day, week, month, etc. to meet their caloric intake.
The cold frame was for only considering winter vegetable needs.
on average, and yes it is a subjective question, has anybody found or kept track of your own food needs for one year?
i had read in Elliot Colemans book Four-Season harvest his estimate for one cold frame per person for winter consumption. then i wondered about how many chickens for meat and eggs, spring vegetables, fruit trees, etc.
i know this is a ridiculous question given the number of variables but thought you all might provide some interesting answers/links.
I agree that the quicker interactions lead to a better communities and inspiration.
As you start to feel more like, 'um i've said all I wanted to say' would you consider interviewing the Toby's and Salatin's and Santoyo's of the world? That would be a huge hit amongst people just learning about permaculture, especially the youth and thats like the future, right?
IT is probably a lot of work arranging schedules and all, but i think with podcasts generally being an extremely popular form of self-education, that these interviews would soon become THE place to go when the interest of permaculture is piqued.
I've listened to all of the podcasts and like them all.
Pigs/chickens/Helen/bees are my favorites.
I like the movie reviews just fine. I noticed a future podcast might be a review of the Soils videos of Geoff Lawton. Perhaps reviews of permaculture videos and books would be cool.
All in all, the podcasts will amount to a wealth of 'free' knowledge archives! So that's pretty cool huh?
IDK if this is a full podcast episode or not but I would love to hear your "Essential Books" list, Paul. I heard the story of you buying and reading like 100 gardening books in one year or something like that and wonder what are the books you would consider essential. Any topic be it; gardening, soil, wildlife, permaculture, field guides, foraging, etc.
I love the podcasts and site and recommend it to all my friends!
)? Gather from zone 5 wilderness? How do you go about gathering that volume of plants affoardably?
