Permaculture in Kenya: help me grow a youtube channel from scratch

Hi there!

I've been reading on permies for a long time and learned so much from you. I recently decided to share some of my learnings with a wider audience using a youtube channel. It's called 'Growing Small' as I love E.F. Schumacher's book "Small is Beautiful" and contemn growth-obsessiveness.
It's very much a permaculture channel, but I'm not going to stress the term 'permaculture' too much as I've learned over the years that gentle nudging is more effective than in-your-face preaching.

I'd love for you to help me grow this channel by providing feedback on content and presentation, suggesting topics, giving encouragement...I'd love for this page to be a kind of engine room of my channel!

Just a bit of background and context. I'm right now living in Nairobi, Kenya, though I'm not from here. I started the garden just a year ago from a run-down lawn with very compacted soils. Tons of organic matter arranged lasagna-style, mulching, composting, vermicompost, no-dig etc. have really helped the garden thrive. It's been amazing to witness the transformation. In my videos, I'm going to focus on my own gardening activities, but from time to time I'll also be visiting small organic farms and gardens.

The first video is a brief tour of the garden. Enjoy!

Very nice!! I like the length of your video, I think that is helpful, especially at the beginning of a channel, often youtube videos are 50+ minutes and quite honestly, I watch a lot of "farm tv" but anything over 25-ish is just not an option for me.
Your mini farm looks a lot like mine, I have the same clay roof tiles as borders, and lots of the same plants. Wish I had the same intense sun, though! Look forward to seeing how it goes. I think you'll find the hugelbed really works well with heavy tropical clays, although as you surely know after a year you need to keep adding organic matter, since it decomposes so quickly.

Thanks Tereza, I'm so glad you took the time to watch the video and also for giving me some useful feedback. I'm with you on the length of videos -- I prefer the 10-15 minute range for most stuff and will aim for this in my videos unless it's a quick "how to" which should probably be shorter than 10 minutes!

The sun here is really intense, wet cloths on the line dry within an hour or less once the sun is out :) Now that the rains are starting, growth will be really intense for the next couple of months. I just planted some more greens, some arugula, cauliflower, sunflowers, divided the artichoke, etc. I'm sure things will do very well in the coming months -- it's just that once the dry season is here (especially the latter half when the ground is without any moisture) little-irrigation gardening is challenging.

Looking forward to checking out some of your gardening activities as well, especially since you mentioned that there's some similarities already!

I hear you on water shortage, we are in a 100-year drought here, mulch is saving me (as is all my dishwater and whatever other water I can scrounge).
Cheers, from somewhat less sunny southern Brazil where summer is just beginning!

100-year drought is probably as scary as it sounds! Mulching as much as possible is definitely hugely important, though once there's no water whatsoever in the soil, it's getting difficult to grow anything. One thing I've learned in the past year is to mulch heavily while the rains are still there to really lock the water up so to speak and create a really good contact between the mulch layer and the soil. If I mulch only after it gets drier, effectiveness is reduced.

Just uploaded a video (the second ever!) on my simple chicken compost system.Really a deep litter system given enough time and kitchen scraps etc. to turn into nice compost. How would you differentiate between "chicken compost" and "deep litter" in the context of this video? How did you like watching this video - the good, the bad, the ugly?

Growing Small is back with another video from my Nairobi backyard, this time showcasing a simple yet effective way to boost growth of fruit trees using fast-growing nitrogen-fixing support species pruned strategically. I've been quite inspired by Geoff Lawton's videos and it shows here!

I've been wondering though whether this technique works equally well in temperate climates? What support species have you found to work well? When would you prune to maximize sun exposure for the productive tree?

Food Forests will play a key role in repairing our broken food systems around the word. In this new video, I visit a mature and productive food forest in Gilgil, Kenya. The climate there is harsh often with prolonged droughts. Yet this 10-year old food forest thrives. It's an amazing place and there's lots to learn and admire. The person shown in the Thumbnail is Charles who now owns the land, though it was his grandmother (!) who planted the trees in the first place. So much wisdom and foresight!

In this video I walk through a recently established food forest in Gilgil, Kenya, highlighting five key design principles that every permaculture food forest should follow. There's many close-ups of super diverse trees (also indigenous ones), flowers, shrubs, climbers, groundcovers, nitrogen-fixers, etc. This food forest was designed and established by small-scale farmers (whom I trained in two three-day workshops) who are now installing food forests on their own land. At the moment this is still a "baby" food forest -- but just wait a few years and nothing in the region will compare to the beauty and calm and productivity of this place. Food forests are just so amazing because labor over time decreases while productivity increases -- isn't this just incredible?

This is a follow-up video from the previous one, sharing some key maintenance tips for young food forests (shot at the same location). I'd be curious whether you think the advice given in the video is specific to subtropics/tropics - or whether temperate climate food forests require similar maintenance patterns?

I was sitting in my Nairobi garden the other day and realized that one bed in particular embodies several important ecological gardening principles. I decided to make a video about it and this is the result! I probably should have added "no dig" to the list, but I wanted to keep the video relatively short. What else is missing you think?

Visiting Alice's wonderful garden, a great example of how permaculture design can bring about productive and sustainable food production. Enjoy!

A portray of Joseph Lentunyoi, one of the leading figures working with permaculture to create change in Kenya today. This video gives some great insight into his inspiring work with Laikipia Permaculture Center. I'm always inspired by stories of people like Joseph who are working for change through low-cost, sustainable & earth-friendly means.

Hey Jakob.
Amazing channel. I have been following it for a while now and came here (permies) to look for Kenyan Permaculture Designers who can help me design for 1 acre in outskirts of Nairobi (Kitengela semi arid zone) then I found your forum. I've studied PDC online but no practical experience other than traditional Kenyan homesteading.  I want to set a long term design plan before hopefully building a home on the land in the future.
It's a bare land (no sign of plant farming) with small acacias  and was majorly used by local maasai pastoralist.
Would you have any contacts of designers who can do consolations?