Bryan Cooper

Those are some excellent resources and exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for your responses they have been very helpful!

That is a good idea! I will definitely be doing that. Do you know of examples of others tackling a project like this. I have been trying to look at what others have done in the past to bring back such over abused property.

I have recently become a small part of rehabilitating a piece of property to become a permaculture site. This particular peice of property comes complete with a lot of land erosion and an abandoned automotive shop. The goal is to develope the property to be able to grow food, as well as creating a site for people to congregate and learn. The old auto shop is still sound in structure and able to be converted to a multipurpose building. My question is what about the land? I've worked in the automotive industry and can tell you from experience there is a great deal of pollution that poors into the ground around these places.

My questions regarding this are as follows

When I take soil samples how far down into the ground should I go?

Let's just say the soil samples come back looking scary. What steps should be taken to remediate that area?

How much time needs to pass before it is gone from the soil naturally?

The setting for this is in the mountains so there is a grade and water flows.

I completely understand R Scott.

R Scott wrote:count your time and expenses of marketing and managing CSA and farmers market stands. Those are REAL TIME SUCKS!!!

have a good division of labor between you and your spouse.

$50 sounds cheap to me, but then you would saturate the market

I was thinking about offering the banana guild with the four plants as a way to get my foot in the door. After they see how well the guild does without any care I'm confident they will take me up on my other packages. I thought of selling guilds in sections. Start with a banana guild then you would buy the next component like a plantain attachment that has taro and Mexican sunflower. It would be like buying their food forest in sections. I could offer multiple guilds each split into these packages. Then I could offer to come back once a month and harvest the fruit for the older folks or manage any overgrowth and chop/drop that needs to be done. It's a ruff idea right now but I think it would work.

These are some awesome responses! I live in downtown Orlando, so if anyone in my area is willing to let me experiment I think it could be a home run. I'm going to start making phone calls today.

Has anyone ever had success with selling guilds? I have a banana guild that is just, banana, lemon grass, sweet potatoes, and pineapples. I thought it would be cool to market it as a "no to low watering system". It would come complete with the plants mulch and bio char for 50.00 dollars. Does that sound reasonable. I get all my mulch from local tree trimmers for free, and the bio char I make myself with regular pioneer plants and clippings form the garden. Man this forum has me so enthusiastic about the future! I can't wait to hear your responses.

That was great advice about margins. It sparked an interest in the foods that people are willing to spend more on. Today I am going to focus on my floridian natives like the Everglades tomato and Seminol pumpkins. With your advice I'm going to try a road side stand and see if these varieties get bigger bucks.

I am very interested in how others became successful enough to support a family with thier permaculture life style. I for one am tired of working at a job I hate, that pollutes the environment, and doesn't have any opportunity for growth. I am not a fan of money per say, and I really don't care to do anything but rehabilitate land and grow food. However, I do have other people to think about, and want to be a good provider.

With the ultimate goal being producing my own food and creating a strong CSA. Where should I start? If I get a permaculture certificate what would that do for me?

I agree with you about how we change the flow of things by our presence alone. I would actually go a step further and say that as humans we are an expression of nature. We are infact part of the whole system. This is why I feel we should put as many practices under the micro scope as possible. Even things like seedlings over seeds. What does it take to produce the seedling you've bought? Whats the cost ratio associated with seeds vs seedlings. If you start your own, are you using pots? What type of industry is behind each pot you buy? Plastics? My experience has been mixed. I have many plastic pots that I find being thrown out. Just those normal black, ribbed, landscapers pots. These are in my opinion terribly contradictive of an environmentally beneficial practice. My logic is that the cost ratio is better for seeds. If you take care in the beginning to choose the correct kinds you should be able to cut down on your failure rate. Also, think about industry behind seeds. It's often easy to aquire them and if you use local sources can be much less than any store bought pots, or soil. So I feel that for a truely long term system, it has to build its resiliance by survival of the fittest. Plus how much lazier can you get than chucking a handful of seeds and calling it a day

Hey, I was thinking today about the practice of raising seedlings and transplanting them into your garden. What natural phenomenon are we recreating by doing this? I know there's nothing technically wrong with it but are there any examples of seedlings being planted naturally. Doesn't raising the seedlings require a level of production that we are trying to distance ourselves from? The best response I have gotten so far came from a friend of mine that is much older and wiser than I. He told me herds of animals trample plants that duplicate from cuttings spreading them about each season creating more plants and thus more seeds and so on so forth until they have spread them about increasing their cover. While I think this is a plausible argument for a small range of plants, I don't think it gets to the heart of my issue. Either way I have found that seedlings are not worth the trouble for me as I simply mix the seeds I want to grow for the season into a different batches, each sorted according to the depth and light requirements they need. Then when the season starts I grab the corresponding seed pack and spread them about. My theory is if it wont seed it doesn't belong in my system. I treat the plants in this system like adults. It should be self reliant and contribute to your community, if a certain plant doesn't like it there, or requires different needs than can't be fulfilled by my system, I won't work to keep it. This is one of a couple practices that make my garden so elf reliant. I'm interested to know how others feel about this. How do you seed into your permaculture system? What kind of benefits do seedlings give you other than an early start? If someone can, how about a comparison between success rates among seeds and seedlings? Looking forward to your responses

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