German permies here!

I'm in bavaria - anyone else on these forums in germany?

Yep. BW FTW.

German, but currently in Seattle. I'm curious about the German permaculture scene. How active is it? Are there any regional concentrations of permies? How different is it from what goes on here at permies.com?

I'm a German expat in Australia.

We went to a young'ish regional farmer, many miles away -where there was a nice place, land, animals, etc- to check out the farm, etc. Had not heard of permaculture or sepp holzer.

Coming from a guy who speaks the german language, was born around there/here, and is coming from a meeting of a group of farmers with a shortage in attracting young people, whom apparently never heard of permaculture.

so pffft...

i know of no-one incorporating permaculture principals or something like high output brix farming for the east (so-called 'germany')

..

albeit sepp is one of the biggest symbols of permaculture, is a 'native german' speaker, and merely some hundreds of KM away... yet no has one ever heard of him. Very odd.



ok. One guy - I'm riding my hog [through the city] and have been doing some emissions-tuning, and ask a bicycle rider if it stinks - "no!" and somehow the topic of permaculture is raised, and yes he knows what it is!

His profession: Hairdresser.

I'm in Saxony here. Wouldn't call what I'm doing permaculture yet - just trying to incorporate some of the principles into my garden.
And sadly nobody I talk to about permaculture around here has ever heard about it before.

Interestingly enough grandma used to have a small urban (well its a small town near a big one ) farm during ww2 and after. So I started out trying to recreate that especially since one old customer still existed. I just wish I would have found permaculture back then.

I'm in Switzerland. We are backed up to the Jura mountains. I grew up in Southern California close to the beach, so it has been a huge change for me.

Southern bavaria, me.

My recommendations for german permies are:

http://www.amazon.de/Handbuch-Sameng%C3%A4rtnerei-erhalten-Vielfalt-vermehren/dp/3800169916/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392108493&sr=8-1&keywords=sameng%C3%A4rtnerei

Handbuch Samengärtnerei by Andrea Heistinger

and

http://gbis.ipk-gatersleben.de/GBIS_I/

Genbank Gatersleben; one of the biggest genebanks for cultivated plants worldwide, they give away seeds for free to private persons in small packages; you have to search for latin names; awesome!!


@ pete samson

I made very different experiences. As said, I live in southern bavaria, the Texas of Germany; very conservative. And even there and even some backcountry farmers have cowsheds and ponds and stuff in Sepps fashion. Also there are associations like "Dreschflegel" in Germany, "Pro Specie Rara" in Switzerland and "Arche Noah" in Austria or the "Prinzessinengarten" in the middle of Berlin (where I used to live) who may not talk so much about permaculture, but are definitely applying it. I mean of course it is not yet mainstream (and probably never will be) but there are people living it.

Take care,
Afghani

I`m from NRW. I started my permaculture garden last year. First Hügelbeet is doing good so far. I even got my first seeds, thanks to Handbuch Samengärtnerei. It`s a really great book for learning how to get your own seeds.
Dreschflegel is great, too. I got all of my seeds from them and this year i will plant those i gathered last year from my own plants to breed my own varietys.
Also i tried to experiment a little bit with clayponds at a hillside. But it didn`t work out well(probably to steep sides and to small), there did not stay any water in the pond.
I didn`t have the money yet to do a pdc.
But hopefully this May i might have some spare-cash.
Did you guys do a pdc, Permakultur-Akademie any good? Otherwise i will try to get in Geoff Lawton`s online pdc.

ipk-gatersleben seems to be great, but won`t there be the same arguments against it as https://permies.com/t/6255/permaculture/free-seeds-USDA

plantsnobin McCoy wrote:I urge you NOT to request 'free' seeds from the USDA.  I cringed a bit when I saw this thread.  It is not meant for this purpose.  It is not for someone new to gardening who is all excited to grow something.  It is for research and breeding purposes.  And if you are indeed breeding, trialing, and experienced, fine.  I know I am sounding really hateful here, but I don't mean to be.  But, it has happened before that someone put out the info that everyone could get free seeds on the internet.  Everyone started ordering seeds, and one guy was dumb enough to go bragging all over the place that he was getting seeds, then selling them on ebay.  You can imagine what the fallout from that was.  Truth is, many of the seeds are old accessions that won't germinate anyway. 
Now, for a little good news.  If you need seeds, there are lots of places to get seed to start your own garden.  There are many generous people on the Homegrown Goodness forum who will gladly share seeds with you, some want a trade, others will give them away.  There is also wintersown.org  Trudi will give seeds to those who need them.  I am sure there are other organizations who do too.  Again, sorry for the possible hateful tone of this post, but this has caused problems in the past for those who truly are interested in breeding, but don't have a university affiliation. 

i don`t see why their seed should be old (they grow their varieties on a regular basis, store their genetic material as tissueculture in the fridge and definately know how long their stock would be germinable) and why small scale growers should not have access to this source. therefore they have to know about the place, which for example i did not for a long time.
i think the way their catalogue is made is the best prevention against "missuse", because its in latin names only, so you need to have some basic knowledge; the samples they send are, depending on the species, rather small; and you have to give a short statement about who you are and what your plans are. furthermore, the only real "missuse" i can think of would be people ordering seeds on an annual basis to avoid buying them.

Nevertheless you may be right that one should give the proper background information with the link, which we just kind of did, didn`t we? thank you.
once more: their seed is for growers who save their own seed properly and share it (for this they have plenty old and proven strains) and for breeders who need a large genepool to pick their favored qualities from (for example dozens of no-name strains of corn from southamerica).

take care,
afghani

I'm in Hessen, on the border to BW, off of the Bergstrasse.

Aldona

I'm living in Frankfurt and only have a tiny garden. I would love to help out and learn from anyone in the area.
I can't wait to meet ya.

Hi there! I 'm in Hessen, are there other permies, either in the area, or further away in the country... ?

yes we are in Germany
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