Roving Permaculture

I'd like to share my thoughts and hear any ideas others might have on a subject that's been nagging at back of my mind ever since I began learning and thinking about issues related to permaculture a few years ago.

Most of the existing permaculture literature I've encountered assumes that the reader will be working with a single, static piece of land, typically over the course of many seasons or years, with the luxury of being able to harvest edibles from the same perennials one plants, grow seeds in the same soil one has nurtured with compost or other decomposing organic material, and generally just do things in the same spot over a long period of time.

While this all sounds like a nice idea, and I'm sure it works great for a lot of people, this vision doesn't seem to match the circumstances that I and significant number of my close friends have encountered when dealing with the real world.  A much more common scenario is that a few months after finding a place that appears to be affordable and livable enough to be satisfactory, something goes awry.  Often it's landlords attempting to raise rent or impose new restrictions on the use of a property.  Sometimes, it's issues arising with other tenants.  But whatever the reason, the result typically ends up the same: pack up and leave the budding garden (if it even exists yet) behind.  On to the next mess!

For a long time, I've allowed this to convince me that I "can't" really practice permaculture until arriving at the ever-receding goal of finding the "right" piece of land to stay on, the "right" ecovillage to settle down in, or even just a house in town with a little yard to garden and build up soil fertility for more than a single season.  But recently (on Wednesday afternoon while I was napping by the Clark Fork, to be precise), a realization dawned that maybe what's really needed is to stop chasing after the mirage of some "promised land" (a.k.a. the American Dream, permaculture edition);  no, what's needed here is a new genre of permaculture!

This form of permaculture, which I'll describe as "Roving Permaculture" for now, would concern itself with ways to practice permaculture under the assumption that the place you're working with will soon be left behind.  It could tackle issues such as "Why not use fertilizers and pesticides to get a quick yield, even when you know the land will be out of your hands before the benefits of more wholesome long-term techniques bear fruit?"  But also "How to get what you need from the land you're on while giving it love before it's gone."

If you know that a landlord is going to kick you out of a place anyway without returning your deposit (hypothetically speaking), is it ethical/moral to cover the dying monocrop lawn with a thick layer of mulch and seedballs to sprout edible varieties for next year's inhabitants?  Or would this just give permaculture a "bad name" in the minds of those whose ideal yard consists of the same-old, same-old?

I could see an entire volume going into this, but I need to eat breakfast and leave for work in a few minutes.  Can't wait to hear others' thoughts on this subject.

If I knew I was going to have to leave, I'd just use containers that would leave with me.

On rental land, or even owned property within the confines of a HOA, "permaculture" in reality becomes "tempaculture".  If you do not own the property, you are at the mercy of the landlord.  With a HOA, you are at the mercy of each and every owner within the group.

Are you willing to buy a dump truck full of compost, and $200 worth of fruit trees to put on somebody else's land?  The landlord may love the improvement so much that he boots you out, and re-rents it at a much higher price once the fruit trees begin producing.  Or he may feel that you have damaged his property, and sue you for the cost of reverting it to its original golf course look.

Before you do any major landscaping on rental property, make certain that you have the owner's permission (preferably in writing) before you begin.  If you get evicted for "damaging" his property, you will forever have problems renting again elsewhere.

Still wrote:

This form of permaculture, which I'll describe as "Roving Permaculture" for now, would concern itself with ways to practice permaculture under the assumption that the place you're working with will soon be left behind.  It could tackle issues such as "Why not use fertilizers and pesticides to get a quick yield, even when you know the land will be out of your hands before the benefits of more wholesome long-term techniques bear fruit?"  But also "How to get what you need from the land you're on while giving it love before it's gone."

While I hadn't thought of things quite that way... I do think we need to think outside the yard or our property. To me part of permaculture and my gardening, is not to grow things I can get freely in the "wild". Think hunting and foraging. I really don't want black berries in my yard. I have better things to do with my space... but they already grow all over the place and I can pick as many as I like within a few blocks of home. It seems I can get about as many apples (and other fruits) as I want... just for the picking from abandoned or unused trees. I can't raise my own animals, but I can hunt. Maybe not "roving" so much as "extended". This where it is possible to learn by seeing what nature has done to remain balanced.

maybe every one ought to fight for comon land for every one coming and going, to the place, at least in smaller villages were people are more within reach of the land.
  The english government used to give out allotments in London, the town was p0lanned so everyone would get a fair bit of garden in the ninteenth century, so ask for allotments and see what they can find for you, a bit of old railway line or whatever.
Would more people vote for a government that dealt out a lot of allotments around the country? I should think so.
    I suppose you have to work as if you were going to stay a hundered years and as if you were going to leave tomorrow, at least then you get experience that might help you when you did get a place, except for the spending a lot of money on things dont do tha tas if you were going to live a hundred years, always try to work out how to do it without money, growing trees from pips so as to have the trees to graft your neighbors fruit on to for example.
  I think the young are bad at doing things that will serve them in twenty years, it should be the old who feel short of time but they have seen how twenty years in the future comes and goes and it does not seem so wearysome for them to do things that will work a while on very efficient peopl plan for things tha tthey will get in twenty years and do the sam efor others part of being real is to think this person can do it in twenty years in stead of thinking, she cant get there tomorrow its not for her.
I think it is men and the rich who are used to thinking into the future, in starting what will work for thier grandchildren, your smith and sons ranch, it is hard for women and the poor who live more hand to mouth to think of or educate their children to think of planning for something that will work, bear fruit in twenty years.
  If you start a business that fails you, you get a lot of experience that may serve you later to start one that works.
  Just grow cheap food if you think you will move on. My neighbors grow their own seed by letting some vegetables  flower. I love the flower of the onion family.
  Learn to find empty spaces and grow there, the day may come when things are quieter and the experience serves you. 
  think how things went after the great war they did get much better. Gardening looks easy, and  sounds easy but it needs a lot of experience. Life is long in a way and short in another, long enough for things to change a lot.
    You get to learn that projecting things is sometimes more agreable than having them, your tree gets big and you start to want to cut it down. Trees are so small at first, you need five were later you will only need one. As projecting things is so agreable and such a learning process  its worth doing what you will never see bear fruit. agri rose macaskie 

All, thanks for the replies.  Rose, your observation about the correlation between gender / economic class and long term vs short term thinking matches up well with what I've observed personally in people.  Amongst many in the lower class there seems to be a mentality that thinks "What I have now is going to be taken away anyway, so I may as well use it all as quickly as possible, trash the place for fun, and move on," while those accustomed to keeping and accumulating wealth are able to think more long term about how to maintain it.  Kind of turns into a feedback loop in both cases.

I guess I'm trying to figure out an answer that works for both cases.  Finding a way to obtain a yield quickly while also thinking about the larger picture of investing in broader, more long term goals.

Amongst many in the lower class there seems to be a mentality that thinks "What I have now is going to be taken away anyway, so I may as well use it all as quickly as possible, trash the place for fun, and move on,"

aka~~a parasite.

I completely redid a rented yard,replacing dead lawn with beautiful drought-tolerant succulents and in the back yard, a vegetable garden.  After the property was sold and we moved out, the new owners tore out all the succulents and put in a lawn.

I think if you want to permaculturize a rental yard, you have to do it for your own present satisfaction, but know it almost certainly will be torn out and replaced with whatever the next owner or renter thinks is the thing to have.  The only thing I can imagine might survive would be a permaculture yard which is designed to fit in with the prevailing aesthetic of the neighborhood, as an edible landscape.

Living in a rental situation is idiotic anyway. Get a credit with good conditions, no variable interest rates, and buy a piece of land. You always live cheaper in a place you own.

tempaculture...good new word.

sure permaculture really does mean permanent..and someone that rents is going to have a more demanding situation on their hands to move everything..

we had a housefire at our home and the deconstruction, reconstruction threw off  our entire balance of our property for about 8 to 9 years..so yea..permaculture does a lot better when it is permanent !

I had 2 acres of permaculture food forest that had to be dug up and moved, removed, and I lost all but one tree with the moving..lost all my mulched beds and my soil microrganisms..and still have not managed 9 years later this week to get them reestablished..

my suggestion is to try to purchase at least a small tract of land to do your permanent plantings on if you can..as soon as you can..as in containers you'll never reach the depth of growth that will make it true permaculture, but that doesn't mean you still shouldn't do everything you can while you rent to provide what you need for yourself..albeit maybe not permanent

When I was in college, I rented a place that was a gross pit.  the landlord agreed that if I cleaned the place up he would not raise the rent.  I spent the first month cleaning it up and fixing it up.  I'll omit the tales of how gross it was.  I lived there for a few months until the landlord raised the rent:  because he realized he could get more.

In another place I asked the landlord if I could build a raised bed garden.  He said that would be fine.  I lived there for nine years.  Twelve years after I left, the garden is still there.

I rented a place in seattle and, with the landlord's permission, built hugelkultur beds.  I loaded them with perennieals.  When I moved out, the woman that moved in ripped out the edibles and put in flowers in a landcaping-ish fashion.  I drove by years later, and the hugelkultur was green and lush with what I planted - it had overwhelmed everything else.

I rented a place in a community where I was told i could do all of my permaculture stuff.  Once settled they said "we never said that".

I bought land.  Some neighbors were great.  Some were horrible.  And then ... divorce was necessary.

Renting can be good or bad.  Owning can be good or bad (neighbors, gub'mint, etc.). 

The only way to be sure, is to move onto land that is already doing permaculture that is above your standards.  That way, even if you are there only a short time, you will have reaped the rewards that you seek. 

Buying land is the next best option. 

Renting is good **IF** you can find somebody trustworthy to rent from.  And those folks are rare.

My thought is that one shuld "do permaculture" wherever whenever an oportunity presents itself including guerrilla gardening style to put useful trees in vacant lots and fruit bushes in urban parks, sure most of it will get ripped up, but what doesn't will feed someone sometime

One of the simplest things to do in a rented place that makes a difference for a lot of people is to just cut your grass higher.

You will likely spend less in water, fertilizers, and moving, and the grass will thank you. Also the effect on the soil will be more positive.

We are renting a place and one thing we did was put in a bed in the front yard where we would like to see a fruit tree or other type of tree. The soil is poor there, and we are hoping to build the soil to the point that either next year or at some point, someone (maybe us) will take the initiative to plant something there. Also, our cost has been a almost nothing.

T pierce if you are thinking of no good poor then i suppose images can come to your mind of no good poor people but, don't you have any images of endless small and neatly kept places too? The mind is selective and when we think of some topic like the the rough districts, we suddenly forget the millions of even too respectable poor.
  The rich have covered up their doings neatly but they can be a rotten bunch too, My mother used to say of the very poor she would be quite alright if she were a countess as in in a situation in which a tremendouse lack of efficienty did not matter so much. The financiers, before the crash had gone on a destructive rich spree of wild fire levels and some how we have been distracted from how very irresponsible they were. The majority were too lazy and too incompetent to see what was going on, it seems their job did not really need a high level of competence at least not the way they did things or too wolfiseh to let the cat out of the bag. They persuaded poor people to buy their houses though they knew they could not afford it, they even bribed them too, offering them teaser prices for the first two years they wanted more people to take out laons so badly.  Tthe reason they wanted it was that the public wanted to buy into loans, a loan is goood for the lender they get the interest on the loan and they get the money back in the end. The financiers get a cut on doing the deal and they desperatley wanted more people taking out loans so they had more loans to sell more deals is more cuts on the deals and they can argue a hind leg off a donkey, they told poor people they could afford it and when this stupid behavior caused a crash they cunningly said, "peoples fault for being greedy and wanting more than they could afford" the wolves. Being no good is somthing that exists the world over but the rich can afford to look like weighty responsible people whether they are no good or not. There are very good books on the crash that are even amusing to read written by respectable writers.
Sometimes the poor  have to work such long hours, two jobs and such, that there is  little time for gardening and if you give as much time as you should to little children, that is a phase in your life when gardening is impossible too. It all depends on how much time you give to what and giving time to little children is also a worthy activity. rose macaskie. 

My mothers opinions about gardening had an enormouse influence on me, so though she never had much time on any one garden, her ideas lived through me. She was keen on organic ideas and a big talker of the things that she believed in, so she did communicate her ideas to me. My father does not talk much and so his ideas dont live, not through me at any rate, in fact I find I did not know him at all. Talking is necessary, it is often criticised as mere garrility, as a sort of addiction, you can live with people for years and not know them if they dont talk and people say that short relatons are unreal, long ones can be very unreal too or even more so. You also have to talk as teachers do though the class does not want to listen, or you will end up with some i¡gnorant kids who aren't used to weighing anything up, to be brave and lose their love because you have interrupted their time playing video games. 
  Also the more or less owners of the village were i used to spend the holidays kept everything wild, the village instead of being a place that was full of neatly cut lawns and trimed hedge rows as many villages in england are, it was full of lush overgrowth of every type of plant even the destructive ones like holly, that pulled down walls and nettles as well as wild flowers and such rampant vegetation was a inspiration to me. Maybe it takes a while to get a good collection of weeds appearing in your garden, city waste lands have less attractive weeds but if left for long enough they might get some attractive grasses and the prettier wild flowers.
  The family was said to be intellectual cerrtainly they made more efforts at being that than at having possesions that impress, they had just one car that grew moss and the most rag bag set of clothes in the world though they did own the houses in the village, the houses bought in more expenses than rent. Being intellectual in England then included knowing about the land the university types in Spain know nothing about the land, organic farming was an important moviment in England most people who pretend to be educated especialy maybe in the sixties knew about it so though i have not heard their opinion on it,  the rampant overgrowth of vegetation in the village may well have had a organic and in favour of wild flowers, ideology behind it.
    You never know what little girl or boy wont carry the torch for your ideas later on so it is worth trying your permaculture garden even if it never comes to fruition and it is true that if you do things you learn about them, you do need to do gardening so that you have the skill sets necessary when you do get your own place. Gardening is complex, intricate, you need lots of knowledge to do it well, which should not stop you trying though you dont know much about it, if people who dont know much about it dont try the abilities wont spread much. agri rose macaskie.   

It sounds as though anyone who is interested in doing  permie stuff might do well to get some sort of agreement in writing  after the tenant /landowner discussion "just to be clear I understand what we agreed to". It would likely be a good idea to spell out specifically what you want to do and how this will benefit the owner in an increased property values.. and you might want to include something like "in exchange for same, owner agrees not to raise the rent for 2  (or whatever) years and thereafter not more than (x)% per year. (Also take photos before during and after to remind him just how much you've done). That should take care of "I never said that" or I didn't know you wanted to do THAT!"

If the owner won't go for it and has no reasonable thing to say as to why then you know where you stand before you start and can decide how much time and effort and money you want to invest.

I am not a lawyer but it seems to me that that might be a workaround for people who are not in a position to buy or are not at all sure they are in the area they want to live in for forever.  I know landlords who have had the same tenants for almost 30 years;  so there are some out there who are grateful for responsible tenants who like to garden and care for their surroundings. A handshake these days doesn't mean what it used to, though, now everything better be in writing and clearly spelled out. 

practice, practice, practice
doing something permaculture at a place should be helpful to you. consider it a "consultation"
so when you finally get your own place, you can start with some experience

rose, the bubble crash never would have happened if people paid for what they bought instead of being greedy. The tempters will get theirs one day and the orchestrators will get theirs. Best advice though is for people to not borrow with and/or on interest, if they borrow at all.

agree with pam, get everything in writing.

another thought, and you might put this in your agreements. if you document what you have done, how things work, and where things are going, when you move on, the next person can learn and then make an educated decision before they rip everything out. Good opportunity to educate people. Wish i had the manual on what had been (and not been) done where i'm living now. There are obvious dump sites and other randomness on the property. Been nice to know things like where the septic system is/was, where they had a gravel driveway, where they had a garden, when certain trees were planted and what varieties they are...

on temporary land, it never hurts to be a good stuart of the land. leaving something better than when you got it is a wonderful thing. seems like one of paul's stories agrees. taking into consideration what the next persons wants/needs, you may increase the chances of your efforts being extended. (ie, a fruit tree over the driveway may get cut down, clovers and dandelions may get sprayed... but education may solve some of those)

The way I understand it anything that you do to make your situation, whatever it is, more sustainable is permaculture.  That could be anything from planting in buckets on the balcony and gathering purslane out of a field to planting a forest garden and digging a pond.

It was a video of Bill Mollison that really hooked me when he said "it can be as sophisticated or as simple as you like.

So I wouldn't be discouraged; it sounds as if you are already practicing and implementing permaculture methods.  I believe I am seeing them referred to as Urban Permaculture and the 'big guys' have a couple of videos out on that subject.

Dr-temp i grew up fearfull of asking for a loan so sure was i  that banks were strict and would not give me one. Had i tried and suddenly found them willing to lend me anything i wanted even encouraging me to borrow more, my idea of their stricteness would have predisposed me to accepting, to believing in their judgement.
     I am fed up of people defending those who know so well how to throw their weight around. It is one of the things that got us into this muddle, suddenly everyone became very lenient to the wolves around, it was not your just behave yourself wolves, it became, "oh its so good for people to  have wolves around, its survival of the fittest the wolves help the weak get strong, roll on cheats and scoundrels, let the weak accept their guilt for having allowed themselves to be stepped on. Sure it must have been their fault, some moral weakness that led to the weaks  downfall".
    The financiers wanted more loans desperately they were making a killing selling those loans on, they were willing to convince senile old people the subnormal and half baked to do anything to satisfy thier, the  financiers greed. The cunning have so many tricks up their sleeves and if people complain about their tricks they are always good at saying, "no it was their fault for being gullied, sure they thoght it was in their interest to do what i wanted, this is what they say after they have lied taken away all alternatives and coerced and browbeaten people into doing what they want.
     I have never asked for a loan in my life and also i have been a less useful member of the country i live in for it. The more people you have starting up businesses the more businesses you are likely to have that suceed, thats why socialism works, when the poor are less poor they start to lift up their heads and start businesses and so you have more than four old cats using their bravery and imagination and initiative to think of ways of making everything work. It is brave to take out loans and bravery is also good for your country and not so good for yourself maybe you will be one of the many whose business does not work. 
    The financiers  have not got their come uppance and it does not look as if they ever will. Attack is the best method of defence the financiers  turned round and said to the poor, your fault for being greedy and so distracted all the attention from their own greed that was  harder to compute, it seems that no one wanted to talk about how bad those who have power to make or break them were. Nearly no one said look the financiers suddenly had a reason to convince people to  take out a lot of money, You dont often get rich without being good at using guilt against others and covering up your own, the financiers weren't going to bite any bullets, take any shoot if they could get others to do it, let the broken do that, let them lose their reputation as well as all their money, the Tom Sawyers who decide to risk there skins to save the weak for justice, seem to be few and far between, more normal  is before i suffer a hair of my head to be touched i will undo the unfortunate. Oh for the super moralist films of the fifties and I am not talking of sexual morality, the, a gentlman looks after  his country morality that did not reduce all wolves but i bet it helped to stop wolves getting totally out of hand. Being sexually moral seems to go hand in hand with being murderouse to all forms of social justice.  rose macaskie.

I get back to food production not political topics here.
  What i meant to write when i open this section and ended up writing the last bit, was that if you are always moving on maybe you ought to adjust your permaculture. Stories of the great poverty for some in America are begining to get get through on to the news programs.
Maybe laying hens is the qickest way to increase you food without many plants in the garden, you can always feed them from scraps from restaurants or shool canteens and such hens would eat the meat that was left on the plates at restaurants as well as the vegetables if you chopped it up a bit you could have a chicken bag in stead of a doggy bag.
       If you have a truck you can take left over food from restaurants on a permaculture animal feed round to the other permaculturists in the district and maybe earn a bit of money.  Hens will also manure your garden, on the down side they make a noise. Rabbits are silent and a goat will eat anything they say and give milk i have just read that it is more efficient than other animal food eaten products produced ratio at least among milch amnimals i suppose, smaller animals are always meant to be more efficient, eat less for meat produced than big ones, so it couldd not be as efficient a meat producer as a hen or rabbit.

   Fruit trees aren't so very expensive here in Spain about fiteen euros something like the price of a tee shirt, if you have very little anything is expensive and in North America less, if i remember brenda groth comments on the prices of trees in another thread and in another thread a man mentions that trees can be bought specially  cheap from your local government agricultural nurseries. maybe someone with exerience could say how much they cost.

   Could fruit trees  be grown in some sort of container? containers Could be a good deal more expensive than the trees unless you are good at finding thrown away barrels and such. If you grew them in containers  you could take them on with you when you moved. They sell even plastic bags as containers i saw in one garden centre on line shop. You can plant the trees in a bag, d¡g a hole put in a big bag or folded plastic and fill up with the tree and the soil you have taken out of the hole and then it will be easy to take the tree with you when you leave. agri rose macaskie.

 Still. I  have been reading about fruit trees trees grown on their own root on an, "orange pippin" site which seems to be a nursery web site.
  They talk of taking a cutting from a tree and growing a tree from the cutting, that way it will grow true to the parents type. There are advantages to growing a tree on its own roots according to this site, they are more compatible than the roots of a different apple tree but they have not yet weighed up all the advangtages and disadvantages of growing fruit on its own roots the custom of grafting them on to special roots which are good for clay ofr for drought or will produce small trees tha tmake picking the fruit easier or what ever, is so usual that there is near to no information on growing fruit trees on their own roots.

  It would take a while to have your own fruit if you grew the trees this way. They say you can get fruit from a three to four year old tree, htere are tricks to gettign fruit earlier like tying down the branches so they grow horizontally instead of straight upwards which optimises the possiblility of getting fruit soon.There is a girl on you tube with a great video of putting cuttings in water in which she has has previously left willow branches cut into inch long bits for three to four days. This water works like rooting powder.
Taking cuttings and growing them is a practice you could start trying to develop though you were always moving on if you dont do it already. I am not much good at it. you can buy a warm plate to put under pots with cutting in them warmearth increases the po9ssiblility of getting cuttings.
Then there is grafting good types of apples on to root stocks or onto the branches of an apple tree you already have, you can have diferent types o fapples growin goff the same tree by grafting on type of appl on one branch and another on another this increases the successfull polination of the flowers on your fruit tree if you dont have room for variouse trees i in your garden.
 You can buy an apple tree root stock, which is and  like an apple tree they sell for you to put other apples on. You can buy root stocks pretty cheap they say, i dont know where.
  I found videos of getting rootstock yourself but it involves already havin an apple tree. Normaly fruit trees are grown on the root stock of some tree specialy bred for this purpose and right for that sort of fruit tree yu stick the paple whose furit you want to eat on the roots of a tree that grows well in your sor tof soil or that wil keep the tree small.
In the video the man had cut down an apple tree the year before and whips of apple tree had grown up from the roots of the root stock left in the ground when he cut down the tree  and he was diggin up these shoots tha had appeared as root stock.
   The new shoots cut down trees send up tend to come from variouse places on the roots of the old tree so you wouldd get variouse new trees if you cut these new shoots apart. He was getting two to three and four new specimens from every root he dug up. He pulled them a bit and cut of side shoots that had enough root to maybe be able to grow on their own and so had three or four new apple tree root stocks.
  If you have root stock or an apple tree, you can beg bits of branch of the trees of neighbors and graft them on your trees or root stock.If your tree has grown from seed then the whole will be free, the tree grown from seed will be the root stock and the begged bits of branch that will grow the class of apple you want or your neighbor has tha tyou have grafted on will all be free but a bit of a hassle, still learning to graft is a good idea for example i have inherited from the former owner four pear trees that dont fruit, probably because they are all the same type of pear and need to be ploinized by a different sort of pear, if i can graft other types of pear on to them then i can have four trees of different types so they will in future like as not get fertilised and giv efruit.  another advantage is hta ti might be able to graft on one pear of an early type and one of a late one that stores well and another, a good cooker and so have much more practical selection of pear trees in my garden.
  Also, If i can graft bits of my new trees on to my old trees, maybe i can get fruit much sooner than i would from the new trees some mof which pears which wont fruit till they get older but maybe will grow and fruit quicker on a tree that already has  a good root system and thick branches.
There are lots of good grafting videos on you tube, i tdoe snot look too hard. rose macaskie.  

Another possiblilty is to grow fruit trees from seed. Pips and stones of fruit.
I f you grow treees from seed then they are likely as not never going to need water to get them started s shop brought trees do that have short roots till they can bget down some deepre ones or just put out more root.
      Plants that  grow from seed  will shoot down a tap root in the first few weeks of growing and soon enough it will be pretty deep. If you plant lots of apple seeds and seed of other fruit trees then trees wil come up that you can use to graft some special types on to, maybe they wont be very compatible but it would be worth trying stealing a sprig of some one elses apple tree to graft on to your trees and see if it works or get them to give it to you or whatever, you only need a smalish sprig for a graft, pencil thick i bet my neibghbors woud take some from me, i dont really know if saying as much is fair or not but it seems to me some of my things disappear i also offer them but i htink they find that a bit tame was a way of getting things. I do pick things for myself out in the country seeds and branches that I hope to use as cuttings grow  a plant from .  The only ones you could hurt stealing it would be those who are such pigs they want to be the only ones with that type of tree.
      You can graft onto any apple tree you had  grown from seed or you could take a risk on the apples that came up from your seed being perfectly eatable and just eat the apples of any fruit tree you grew from seed.
    Most fruit tree seeds come up, not the spring after the time you plant them but the spring after that. It seems a long time but when they time comes you feel gladd enough to have them. I  have lots of apricots i  have grown from the stones of fruit I hav earten in pots on my balcony, trouble is I made them into a hedge instead of planting them as fruit trees and now i want them as fruit trees.  That would not cost anything and the ones you planted in the garden would work if you did happen to stay at the place and the ones in pots would be there for you if you did not. Put all the stones you can into the ground not just one or two that way you are more likely to get some trees. I have plums cherries and apricots growing that way. Any fruit trees tha come up maybe a help to who ever came after you if you had to leave.  If you also planted seeds in pots you could leave some and have some to take with you.  When i plant fruit seeds in pots i first put the seed in slightly damp earth in the fridge for two mounths before i plant it this fakes wintering out something they need to do., Sometimes i look at the seed in plastic bags to every so often to make sure it is not sprouting early. agri rose macaskie. 

Quote  "trouble is I made them into a hedge instead of planting them as fruit trees and now i want them as fruit trees "  unquote

Could you thin the apricot trees.. take out say every second one or two out of three? Then would they turn into the fruit producers you now would prefer? Plant something else to become your hedge under and behind   the apricots?

I think our whole 'system' is a bit broken.  Land is permanent... thus permaculture.  It's human care that's temporary.  Maybe the european method of having small garden patches for townpeople next to the train rails is a solution.
i'm a follower of the 'henry george' philosophy... 'georgism': whose main tenet is that people should own what they create, but that everything found in nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all humanity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George

there's no way we'll see this shift ever take place in our lifetime, but it would be a good start if we added this concept into our discussion and to teach our children.

Conservancy trusts, foundations, TIC - tenants in common, etc.  along with forest land gardening etc are all positive tools.  Work with solutions, spread good stuff... as Bucky Fuller said...


“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

“You may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to the highest advantage of others.”


I get a bit tired about all the negative stuff...  ...pun intented.

i have sort of tried to dig up the apricot part of my hedge that flowered last year but it was so well rooted that i gave up i wish to go on trying i have a madroño arbutos unedo there too and it is a evergreen plant that i want to let grow it has flowers for hte bees in winter and a not very nice fruit but it is planted just where the sun should be shining on the house to warm it up in winter so it would be counter passive solar heatign rules to let it grow big just there so i want them both transplanted.
I thought that fruit grown from stones was no good but someone on these forums said that apricots grown from stones were perfectly good. Between those i grew in pots on my balconies in madrid i plant fruit stones in pots that are growing someithkgn it is easier to remembvbber to water then ¡m that way and those that  grew from all the apricot stones i threw on my flower bed i had planty.
  The reason i most wanted to pull up the apricot was that i have one apricot planted as a fruit tree and it flowers and does not produce fruit and this bit of hedge was flowering at the same time all be it with with not many flowers so i wanted to plant it by the other apricot tree where it would be more likely to polinise it..
 the apricots in the hedge are free of disease so may be cutting them back radically is good for them, maybe they are just hardier types of appricot. Apricots grow so fast in my garden that it suprises me.  
If you want a hedge a collection of trees grown from the stones of fruit seems to be a good way to get one. Mine is mixed apricot and plum i pull up the many suckers of wild plums plums seem very hardy in dry climates, and replanted them where i wated a hedge. My wild plums are not very tasty it seems from the comments of people in england that other wild plums are tasty. Maybe i can graft unwild plums on to them.  rose macaskie.

winsol3. Negativity is a complicated question, there are several abuses of language that serve to keep the status quo, like if children complain then they are making a fuss where as if adults complain they are keeping order. The same goes for women and men, men are keeping order or perfectly justified in their hissy fits, while women are hysterical if they lose it. This use of language is so subtle or seems it we are so used to taking men seriously and respecting their anger and thinking women hysterical if they get angry that the people who are the normal victims of double standards use the language against themselves.
 You cant resolve problelms without recieving complaints, you have to be responsable to resolve problems, it's hard workdone wll you have to get to the bottom of things and that takes time and you must not be too confident in your power to understand people on first sight to trust first impressions or you will think you know it all without havign to investigate.
      Complaints can be seen as negativity, as the glass being half empty and the complainers can be instructed to better their evaluation of what they have and see the glass as half full rather than half empty, this prevents the stitch in time that could have saved nine, it is important to encourage complaints so as to sort things out while they are still only small problems, or before someone gets hurt. A woman is killed a week on average by her husband here in Spain, how many are killed in North America? I have known the people of a ecological village of whom it was claimed they burnt each others houses because of unresovled fights.

  Negativity becomes counterproductive when it stops people discussing options they are so sure their are none. I am always with people who put aside all plans because they refuse to believe they can do anything. I have only just learnt to say, "enough! we are talking about how to do this, not about the reasons it cant be done", that is at fifty five! I used to just accept the criticism of any plan without being aware that i was allowing this evaluation of the difficulties of any plan to stop the discussion of how it could be brought to fruition. Both discussions are important if anything is to be done sucessfully but discussing the cons to the plan seem more real but in fact are just as counterproductive is just discussing the pros.  Understanding the ways a plan can be carried through as well as the problems that might get in the way of carrying it out is in fact normal part of leadership.
 Lots can be done, we have just been through two centuries in which the french revolution happened and the whole of Russia and neighboring countries were turned into a big communist state, the soviet union did not go at all well but people acheived enforcing a new system, it can be done, the nobles heads can be guilotined.
   In europe there was a slow move to more fair distribution of wealth that brought great wealth to the countries that were involved, i think just because more people starting businesses means more buisnesses that grow to be sucessful.
    The increase in those starting businesses in coutries were the left pervails enough to bring about greater equality is the result of greater wealth among the poor tha allows them to start buisnesses and an education to university level and beyond of nearly all the population. That is why it is better to distribute the wealth a fair amount but as much as the soviet union did does not seem to work.
     States only became fairer though through the work at difusing new ideas of an awful lot of people, communists, left wing people, anarchists who are not so caotic as people pretend they are, in Spain they organised schools for the poor and adult education lectures for the grossly under educated poor, achieving as a result some peasants who were equal to any members of the intelligencia. They even for a while ran factories in which everyone was employed, the diligent and lazy and turned a profit. What made this hard to continue in the end was not that they employed the useless but that they insisted that no one person should be a leader. Mind you in Marxist kibbutz they rotated leadership and the kibbutzes did probably do still work i have been on one.  
   The anarquists  were a very positive influence in Spain and though no one wants to be blown up by the bombs of an anarquist or to live in a communist state, i am afraid that without them around to work hard spreading the word and to give weight to the left side of arguements we will return to having nobles and serbs set up, your dracula and his downtrodden, groveling, male servant, peasant, situation. I  have been whatching, "Young Dracula", a program that is packed with usefull ideas, though a lot slower to whatch than adult films that say very little beyond, i must catch the murderer or the girl i love, much as they know how to keep you on the edge of your seat and in a glamourous world for a while. agri rose macaskie.