Dale, when you say "any acreage" how big do you mean? I have actually looked at the ads for this book and wondered if it would help me. I have 2 acres I am developing into a market garden and (hopefully, eventually into a Food Forest). There are so many great books and DVDs recommended. I wish I could get, or at least read and/or view all of them, but it is taking all the money I can pull together to develop my
land, with fencing, watering, small buildings, etc, and to keep expanding my market garden beds to the point where I can grow
enough produce to
sell. We (my two adult sons and I, a 60-something female with ambition but not a lot of strength), are doing all the work with hand tools. I have
water lines but no power to the property. Because of the semi-arid climate, we have learned that sunken beds work much better than raised beds, so we are gradually digging out all the growing spaces with pick and shovel to break through the thick, compacted layer just beneath the loose surface sand. I have had to buy
compost to top the beds of scrounged
wood, old
hay and straw, manure, etc, to get a layer of something I could plant into, as my land is nothing but pure sand and has no topsoil. I am trying to create compost from these materials, but in this high, dry "shoulder of the Rockies," I have had piles of organic matter, my "compost piles," sit for a whole year and still look like the meadow hay, straw and weeds that I laid down. it doesn't seem to matter how much I water them--the dry air just sucks all the moisture out of the pile, and out of my beds. I did finally achieve some success when I made a compost heap with a 10 foot diameter and covered it with a tarp to hold in the moisture, but compost making is a very slow process here.
Back to topic, I have about one acre that I hope to develop into a Food Forest, using swales and/or "kratur-beets" (sunken beds filled with wood and other organic matter, on contour) to catch and hold moisture for lines of
trees and shrubs etc. So I ask, would this book be a good resource for this situation? Or are you referring to a much broader acreage?
Thanks to all for posting these resources. It would
be nice to have a library nearby that carried some of these things. I have been able to check out, multiple times, Mollison's Intro to
Permaculture, as well as the Earth Users guide to PC. I do have Mollison's Designers Manual, which I read or search over and over, and Perm. I and II, which I bought back in the 1980s; How to Make a forest garden, by Whitefield; the 2 volume set Edible Food Forest, by Dave Jacke and Eric T.; and a nice little book called "Growing Food in the Southwest Mountains", by Lisa Raynor. I read all these books over and over, along with Gaia's Garden and 4-season harvest, trying to glean new ideas to try (My copy of Gaia's Garden is starting to fall apart, I read it so much). I have been trying to watch and or read as many of the youtube videos and forums as I can, but many of the ideas for plants and methods only seem likely to work in much milder regions. Even the info I have found from Colorado Extension office seems more geared to the higher elevations with cool summers--and doesn't apply here at all. I started watching that
permaculture design
class in nc, but most of the plants he talked about are so
local to his region that it is hard to translate into my climate.
I do think I have learned the basic principles of PC from my reading and experimenting, but methods and techniques are very site/region specific. The tricks and techniques that were successful in Maine, or Delaware, or western Washington, just don't work very well here, so I really need some more ideas of things that might work in this harsher environment. (Low rainfall, high elevation, hot summers, cool nights, cold winters, harsh winds). I know PC works, and works very well in many places all over the globe, and even is working quite well here in my 1/8 acre home garden, I just have to figure out how to work with what we have on a bit larger scale so we can "get a yield" and get most benefit for least work, and eventually to create a surplus to share.
So, I guess my real question is, do any of you know of any specific resources that might relate more to my situation? Or does anyone know if there are other bioregions that are siimilar to this that I could study? Sometimes I feel like I am on a little island that is totally different from all the surrounding territory. It is also hard to find sources for plants that might be adapted, to say nothing of "local."
Thanks everyone
djn
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