Permaculture rocks - no, I mean actual rocks

Chris, I believe I've seen broken concrete referred referred to as "urbanite."  They've recently demolished a building in town that was gutted by fire last year and I've been drooling over the piles of brick and concrete.  

I really enjoyed looking at all the beautiful rock creations everyone has made. Thanks for sharing! Here are a couple of my meager efforts at using my stones. I'm still working on using them all up.

I have  friends who live on a mountianous 'rock farm'
I taught them the following uses of rocks;
- on contour rock ledges in an olive grove on a hill to capture silt and moisture for the trees.
- dry stone walling for a set of walls at their gateway.
- I built a pair of loveseats at the hill top for the two of them.
- reinforcing the drive edge as it goes around a dam.
- erosion control in a manmade water channel to prevent erosion.
There are many rocks left, so I keep thinking of good uses for them.

Depending on how close your house is to the road. You may consider putting along the road. Friend of mine had a  stolen car go through her fence. She was afraid another one was going to crash and go into the house.

Another friend of mine but in dirt berm right along the road and planted a bunch trees in it.

At this house we have a rock patch with weed barrier for landscaping.  We have what I call a rock watermelon.  Each year the kids sit on the porch and spit watermelon seeds into the rocks and each spring we get a few watermelon plants.  This year we got a huge one.  I don’t water it much, just if it gets really droopy.  The summer heat in Nebraska is too much without some water.

Commenting here about our success with "rocks" and reviewing the photos from 4 years ago til last year has shown me just how much has grown with not much effort!

We repurposed an agricultural building into a home a few years back.
We took down a staircase and used the mortared bricks to make a "Rockery" where I planned to grow Prickly pears as a wind break as it roars through the valley and hits the garden. We quickly realised we had too much rubble for the project.

The original plan was to cart the knocked down bits of cement mortared clay bricks, cement stairs and plaster ceilings offsite once we had finished. We thought it would only be a few loads. But it was A LOT of material and we quickly realised the pile was getting ginourmous. We thought well, we can cover it eventually with our humanure and plant it up with wildflowers and chicken food fodder plants as it was situated in our eventual poultry yard. It would make a nice feature in our flat landscape and it wouldn't matter if stuff struggled to grow, it would still function as chicken enrichment. So we started dumping it in a log shape, then it got bigger so we curved it, eventually it resembled a horseshoe.

Still having lots to do, we covered it with shade cloth and put intersting bits and pieces on it to camoflauge the eyesore. One of the things to do was stabilise the terrace wall outside our house. My husband rebuilt the wall and topped it with a wide bank of stones and rocks.

Last autumn we finally got around to removing the camo nets and covering it with 2yo old humanure, and we had dug out some deep beds so the excess clay went on the mound too. Just before I left home for a 3 month contract, I spring cleaned my seed box and mixed all the old seed together and strew them all over the mound, ran a rake over it all and left. My husband is eating the best radishes I have ever grown! I haven't been able to produce a single radish in my deep wicking beds that are filled with good compost enriched soil! There are also various brassicas and wild flowers coming up.

As you can see from the overview picture, we have no soil, we have no rain, we have lots of heat. What you can't see is we have no unlimited water source. We catch rainwater and ferry water from the local village 600L at a time. Water is precious so we don't waste it on rockeries and mounds and re-inforcing banks. We occasionaly throw clothes washing waste water on the rockery and bank.

In all 3 instances we have seen such growth. Unfortunately I haven't got recent pictures of any of the projects but my prickly pears have taken and I even got 3 fruit off them last summer. I emptied my herb seeds onto the bank before I left in Jan so I am interested to see what has grown in my abscence. I will take updated photos when I get back.  I don't get any photos from hubby-except those of radishes. Hubby aint a gardener (yet) but this success as encouraged him to sow radishes in succession - he loves radishes, I can't stand them!

I love rocks so this thread is a favorite of mine.  

Sarah good to know you have found a use for all your rocks ...

Rock on!

Great thread, very helpful!

My project house has several "beds" of these rocks. I have no idea what the past owner put them in for, but in a hot climate they add way too much heat too close to the house, and make every type of building and maintenance more difficult as you have to clamber over them. I just knew Permies would have some ideas as to what I could do with them - I was sure they could be a resource for some purpose!

Rebecca Widds wrote: I have no idea what the past owner put them in for...

I might try asking any elderly in the area. My first thought from the picture is that they're intended to help infiltrate water in storms, to keep it from the house foundation?

... in a hot climate they add way too much heat too close to the house

Have the weather patterns changed? Are you universally "too hot" or are there cold periods when the latent heat in the rocks was an asset? You could help with seasonal patterns by growing short life plants in the hot season, and removing them in the cold season.

and make every type of building and maintenance more difficult as you have to clamber over them.

Yes - are there "flat" rocks on the property? Rearranging them and adding flat flagstones in key spots for walking would definitely make them safer.

It's pretty frustrating when you have a problem that appears to be man-made, but have *no* idea why they thought it was a good idea. However, it does look intentional to me, so I would genuinely be trying to determine whether they just were really into rocks, or if there is some sort of important function underlying their location.

where I live I see lots of piles of rocks because the land is littered with rock.

Some land owners gather up the surface rock leaving them in big piles.

The county uses piles of rock where erosion is possible.  Your pile reminds me of that since it looks like it is on a slope.

Rock piles make good habitat for small animals.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The house is my grandparent's old house, in the country village where I grew up. I know the land well and the oldies nearby have known me since I was a baby!

Instead of saying "no idea" I should have said "we've had lots of ideas but none of them seem to make sense other than that we were told by the neighbours he was given the material for free and just liked it". It's black rock that is not local, it's something you would buy from a landscaping or road building place. They are in rectangular blocks with railway sleepers for edges that mean to walk through the yard you effectively have to go through a maze.

It's on very flat land on a large village block in a very dry climate.  It's hot for much more of the year than it is cold.

I'm an ecologist so I know it provides habitat, I will be leaving the ones that aren't in the way of using the yard, and aren't right next to the back door.

Rebecca Widds wrote:... we were told by the neighbours he was given the material for free and just liked it". It's black rock that is not local...

Yes, this is helpful! Sounds like you won't have much trouble figuring out where it's a bother, so the challenge is to put it to a higher use?

What sort of infrastructure *would* you like? You suggest you're very flat. Would the rocks be at all stackable for some sort of raised bed? If not, do you like the look of gabions?

What are the winds like? Would a curved wall direct a breeze where you would want it?

Do you have a budget that you can put into materials that you might require to improve the situation?

Spent the whole renovation budget on getting the foundations and roof redone - we are on a DIY budget now, or a "save and wait"! I really like to upcycle and there is always lots of wire and mesh at the local dump so I was thinking of gabions. The examples here have been great to get me thinking, I'm very thankful for this thread.

I was considering an outdoor kitchen with a rocket stove already, so the gabions could make a great base for benches for food prep.  I could put it on the south side of the house so it's not just a heat trap in summer (I'm in Australia).

Water is a big limiting factor out there too so I'll revisit my books to see what I could build with rocks that could conserve/better harvest water from rain and dew.

I’m thinking about your rocks, Rebecca.  Would you be able to sell any?  Maybe after you built some artsy gabions?  Get some money for materials for another project?

Did Jay already suggest utilizing them in a structure?  A shed, a chicken house?  A root cellar?

Or work trade to get some more muscle moving your project forward?

I've added some more rocks to my original pile of rubble. But this time as a garden feature. I found a piece of very large drain pipe and cut it to make an arch. Then stacked stones on top to make it look like a hump back bridge. I've still got to put a row of ducks going over it and there will be a bath pond in front so it will look like a river flowing under it.

Rebecca, I'm not sure of the size of your rocks, but they look like the basalt chunks that used to be used on the country railways as ballast to hold the tracks down in the heat. Years ago, I saw a former rail worker's cottage right next to the tracks in the NSW Central West that had a front garden covered with the black rocks. Making gabions sounds like an excellent use of them.

Sarah, your rocks look like mine at my Bulgarian house. The soil behind the house is full of them, there are lots of old drystone fences built of them, and since the ancient stone barn collapsed in a winter storm, I have a huge supply of similar stones. I hope to use mine to make low terraces on contour and slow the water flow in the sloping back yard.

I think you may be right Jane, as I believe said owner did work on the railway...

Sarah that looks so good! Arches are so pleasing to the eye.

Thekla that's such a great idea, I hadn't thought of trading them for stuff or labour! I really appreciate your suggestions, thank you.

Jane Mulberry wrote: Sarah, your rocks look like mine at my Bulgarian house. The soil behind the house is full of them, there are lots of old drystone fences built of them, and since the ancient stone barn collapsed in a winter storm, I have a huge supply of similar stones. I hope to use mine to make low terraces on contour and slow the water flow in the sloping back yard.

I'm sure they will work well as terraces. All the terraces here are shored up with these rocks so the edges of the terraces are slighly higher than the terrace itself, but years of ploughing have changed the slope of the terraces as I am sure they were originally designed to slope backwards into the terrace behind. Now the water sheets over the terrace and finds places to drop down onto the one below until hitting the road and disappearing down the hill!  They also used them for walls, infilling the middle with all the smaller stones. We don't have many in our terrace soil so we don't need to find many uses for stones - we actually have a shortage for creative features. These were taken from a collapsed low wall that serves no purpose-besides a home for creepy crawlies, and we've left enough for them!

Here is my "best rock", found in the paddock just as-is.  Now part of the garden edging.   The lizard is a blue tongue, but the water supply also attracts the shingle back lizards and the more greedy kangaroos.

I LOVE rocks! Had pretty much zero on my property two years ago when I bought it. Would literally kill to be in the ozarks with an infinite supply.