Hello and my humble beginnings

Hello everyone. I'm in Central Florida (Minneola) on a 1/4 acre lot. I haven't been able to afford the PDC but I've been trying to consume everything permaculture I can get my hands on. I have a couple of books by Mollison including the Design Manual, some from Toby Hemenway and Ben Franks, and I've been spending time YouTube'ing anything permaculture and catching what I could of Geoff Lawton.

I spent some time prior to looking at permaculture with raised beds, tried to grow some olive trees, avocado trees, blueberries, and bananas to no avail. The raised beds did well for a while and I had a year or two using a 40x40 plot before bugs took over. Now I'm determined to give permaculture a run.

I've started out with a rough noob plan. You can see it at the link below along with some standing rainwater pics (doesn't stand long).

http://s284.photobucket.com/user/wonderfulwild/library/Backyard%20Permaculture%20Design

I'm trying to work on the plant list, which is a bear of a task, and to fill a couple areas that are vacant in my plan. I've got to get guilds together for my mini orchard too. My soil test kit came today too so I'll be seeing where I stand with that:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003JCMKEK?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

I'm sure I'll get some things wrong initially but I'm trying to work through experience and observation and learn a little that way too.

I'll post updates on my progress and I'll be trolling around reading all the topics here.

Hi Jimmy,

Welcome to Permies. Have you found the regional resources page yet? I am not new to the site, but new as a volunteer, but I think this link https://permies.com/forums/f-33/southern-usa will take you to the forum where people in the "USA, south" can discuss region specific things. The lists of plants suitable for one function or another are unique to climates, soil types, etc, and people in your region are a great starting place for plant lists, as well as many other things. Courses, gatherings, meet ups, projects you could participate in, people you could learn from.

Thanks for joining us, thanks for posting.

Good luck on your project

Thekla

Hi Jimmy welcome hear on permies. You're project seems very interesting, and for sure until you'll manage to save money for a PDC hear you'll fin tons of information. I came on permies before taking a PDC, learnt a lot, saved money and took mine this year.
I think it would be really nice if you created a thread of your project in the projects forum sharing photos of your past experiences.
We all do some errors its true but only errors can teach us how to do things right. the truth is errors are useful if we observe and thats the base of it really observation. You don't need a PDC to build this ability, and once you'll get to a PDC you'll be ready to put it all together.
chi non fa non falla, we say in italian; who doesn't do, doesn't make mistakes,mt poor translation on google the expression was put his way: He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing
the concept is clear though

Thank you The Thekla and Lorenzo, I will post my site as a project. I looked in the regional forum and found Nick Garbarinos plant list so that's a huge time saver

you're off to a great start,Jimmy!