urbanpolyculture McCoy

Just so y'all know, I LOVE comfrey (I've been working with it for 36 years) but cannot recommend the self-sowing kind. It's just asking for trouble.

I've grown the self-sowing variety of comfrey and cannot recommend it as it spreads voraciously. Unless you are looking for wall-to-wall comfrey instead of a garden I'd recommend the non-seeding Russian variety. I killed seedlings for months before I was able to remove it entirely and I saved NO seeds. No offense to Skeeter, but I think his recommendation is dangerous especially to beginning gardeners. You could have an entire neighborhood severely pissed off at you for introducing this cultivar and huge amounts of unnecessary work keeping it under control. Good luck if the birds start spreading it. I sure wouldn't want to live nearby with a neighbor making even more work for me and the rest of the settlement. Opportunistic plants should not be planted casually. 

Ludi,
Please pardon my inexactitude. Let us refer to a transitional period / phase that did not disappear from the scene despite the emergence of agriculture and the diminishment of hunter gathering which also did not vanish. I have no argument with your assertion / observation / clarification.

Take a look at http://www.indigenous-permaculture.com/ for modern (or is that post-modern) examples of native Americans who've embraced permaculture.

Snip
"OUR MISSION

    * Revitalize Native and local communities through indigenous science, land stewardship, sustainable agriculture, community food security, and sustainable development.
    * Promote awareness of human impacts on the natural environment and on Indigenous communities when unsustainable choices are made
    * Use locally-available resources and demonstrate the power of conscious choices to create self-sufficient communities that care for and preserve Mother Earth

We share traditional farming practices and apply environmentally and culturally-appropriate technology, with the ultimate goal of community food security, and do this work in an affordable way that builds capacity within the community. We provide holistic support to design and implement community food security projects, inspired by indigenous peoples' understanding of how to live in place.

Toby Hemenway points toward that moment in human history between hunter / gathering and agriculture referring to it as horticulture. That approach applied the best of both systems and manifests currently as forest gardening and "traditional" or indigenous polyculture. Watch the video, entitled How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization, at http://kjpermaculture.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-permaculture-can-save-humanity-and.html

This tradition lives on in many tropical cultures even today and, of course, in many permaculture sites around the world. It's up to us to become indigenous to the places we reside.

Ditto, previous comments. If you have to wait a while fill a large container with water with seaweed concentrate and soak the uprooted tree until you are ready to plant it. Don't leave it in there more than a day or two at the most as roots will drown and start to rot. Figs are fairly durable and can tolerate a fair bit of abuse. Here in Indiana in heavy clay soils they develop a lot of lateral roots near the surface and so I end up cutting most of them. They still transplant easily for me. I've also used their long and strong roots for crafts, basketry, and garden "twine".

In addition to air layering I have good results layering branches that are near the ground. I intentionally leave low branches on new fruit trees for this reason. Even species that are considered difficult to root by cuttings are more successful by layering. Because low branches are often few in number we can't propagate the numbers we might by other methods but it's worth doing when you can. Often the same branch can be reused for a second crop. If the branch sends up multiple sprouts you can often get several rooted starts off of it. This is similar to "stooling" wherein one heavily prunes a fruit rootstock, buries the remaining stem / branches and harvests, for replanting, the rooted sprouts after a season's (+/-) growth. I will often pre-wound a branch by scratching the bark and letting it scab before layering it. This encourages quicker roots from the damaged area.

As with the hawthorns mentioned above, sometimes merely damaging some of the roots will stimulate sprouting near the wounds. These can be left to root for lifting and transplanting at a later date. Some plums and cherries, for example, are known to do this spontaneously.

I've been using urine in my garden for several years now. During the winter months I mostly put it into the areas of the garden where the wood chips, sticks and stems are piled the highest and into the compost to maximize its contact with carbon. If I had a lot of sawdust / fine chips I'd do the bucket thing mentioned earlier but we're collecting from 3 adult men and so have a fair bit to deal with. Fortunately the garden has a LOT of durable carbon piled on it to soak it up. Even when our composting toilet is finished next year we will still likely isolate the urine for reuse.

It seems that this is a good opportunity to mention the technique called hugelkultur (I'm sure you can find more discussion elsewhere in the forum) which uses "durable carbon", i.e. large, woody material ( sticks, branches, logs and stumps) as a medium for building garden beds. This material is either buried below the soil surface or laid on the surface and buried with soil from other locations (e.g. pathways). You will find that it breaks down more rapidly than the same stuff simply laid on the surface and becomes full of mycelium and water. This practice builds high quality soil quickly. Paul, our forum host has posted videos of the process elsewhere. Remember that for every unit of organic matter we incorporate into soils we can increase water holding capacity by a factor of 4 units. The buried wood becomes (if it is already dry and dead) full of water and, subsequently, full of worms, millipedes, pill bugs and roots. I've dug up pieces buried a year or two before and, like a squeezed wet sponge, water pours out of it. The carbon eaters are the principle agents that break down or isolate toxic substances. As Geoff Lawton recommended for his Jordan project, grow whatever will grow fast, then chop and drop for mulch or hugelkultur it. Previous commenters have offered excellent advice. We're lucky to have this access.

http://kjpermaculture.blogspot.com/2010/12/make-mine-of-mud.html
FIRST EARTH is a documentary about the movement towards a massive paradigm shift for shelter — building healthy houses in the old ways, out of the very earth itself, and living together like in the old days, by recreating villages. An audiovisual manifesto filmed over the course of 4 years and 4 continents, FIRST EARTH makes the case that earthen homes are the healthiest housing in the world; and that since it still takes a village to raise a healthy child, it is incumbent upon us to transform our suburban sprawl into eco-villages, a new North American dream.