Richard Gorny

Welcome to permies!

Apologies if I have misunderstood or missed something in your design, English is not my native language :)

Congratulations on your awesome urban design, you did a really good job!

Let me make a few comments here:
- you absolutely do not have to distinguish five Zones in your design. Due to a size of your plot, it is basically Zone 1 and 2, 3 the most, and a symbolic Zone 5
- is Zone 5 within the borders of your property, or it is rather a public zone?  You could possibly convert your Zone 4 into Zone 5
- I would plan an easy, straight access to the porch and house entry
- We know, that you are planning to collect rainwater, however we do not know where an excess of this valuable resource goes when tanks are full. Each place where water collects should have a planned, safe overflow. In your case it can go to the pool or under the fruit trees.
- You can make a small plant nursery in order to raise many plants from seeds or cuttings, in order to reduce costs of buying plants substantially, and even make a small income in a future
- small urban gardens are ideal for vertical growing, also for vines on pergolas that block excess of summer sun
- there is still a lot of space for additional container gardening, especially around the pool and lawn
- in urban settings it pays off to think about the house - Zone 0 - as the most important element that consumes most energy and resources. It is fantastic that you have solar panels and that you are planning to install batteries. Have you considered other possibilities - greywater? heating with woodstove? bokashi composting?
- do you know a book Retrosuburbia" by David Holmgren? If not, it might be interesting one for you.

All the best with implementation of your design, and please do not forget to take BEFORE and AFTER photos!

Nancy Reading wrote:Although not a cold climate, I do have a pretty short growing season here. I do like the idea of developing a strong root system on tomatoes prior to planting them out. Has anyone else tried the elongated stem method of achieving this? I usually end up with rather elongated stems due to low light levels, but hadn't thought of planting them horizonally rather than just deeper.

From my observation, planting horizontally is not helping to make a stronger root system in a Square Food Garden beds I mostly use. No matter how planted, a single tomato plant uses all that space anyway. However, planting horizontally makes a difference in field planting, where plants are far away from each other. In my sandy soil, it seems to help.

Another thing to consider is what do we mean by "stronger" - in my case, I want a deeper root system, not necessarily wider. Horizontal planting gives definitely wider but shallower root area.

For me, the main purpose of planting horizontally though is to get rid of "excess" stem easier and to make a plant sturdier. In grow bags though, where planting horizontally is not possible, I just plant them just deeper.

Welcome to Permies!

Are you familiar with no-dig concept of market gardening, especially that of Charles Dowding's market garden?

You might find it interesting to take a look: YouTube site of Charles Dowding

I have never cut any tree in my homestead, yet my firewood shack is always full. I use only what beavers have cut on my land. And they cut only green trees.
I cut it, split it, and let it sit at least 2 years.
I have two willow baskets for firewood. From a shed I bring a basket full of 30 cm (12 inch) splitted logs (that's the size of my firebox) and I place it on a masonry bench by the wood stove. While this basket is drying even more on a bench, I use logs from another basket, standing there already for a few days. The top of the bench under baskets is roughly 35-45 degrees Celsius (100-110 F roughly) for many hours after I burn the wood in a stove.
Also, I have a simple, cheap humidity meter - you pinch a log with a meter and it returns information about water percentage the wood contains. I never use anything than has more than 20%, preferably below 15%. A freshly cut by beavers alder has over 50%.

FOR POLISH, SEE BELOW.

I encourage anyone interested in the PDC Permaculture Design Course in Polish to explore what the Permisie.pl School has to offer.
This is the fifth edition of our course, which has been completed by 135 people so far, including more than a dozen from around the world.
Full information about the course can be found HERE.
Registration opens on December 15, 2025. See you in the course.

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Wszystkie osoby zainteresowane Kursem Projektowania Permakulturowego PDC w języku polskim zachęcam do zapoznania się z ofertą Szkoły Permisie.pl
To już Piąta Edycja naszego Kursu, który do tej pory ukończyło 135 osób, w tym kilkanaście z różnych stron świata.
Pełną informację o Kursie znajdziesz TUTAJ.
Zapisy rozpoczynają się 15 grudnia 2025, serdecznie zapraszam.

For a couple of years I have been experimenting with growing vegetables in various containers in city settings, on balconies and terraces. I was using mostly grow bags, and some traditional pots. Recently I have tried to use five gallon buckets with very good results. What I have also noticed is that more and more seed shops start to offer specific varieties for container gardening. Initially it's been tomatoes and peppers, and herbs, now we have cucumbers, zucchinis, short root carrots, you name it.
I would like to ask about varieties that you have grown in containers, that performed extremely well and were giving high yield.
For me, I can recommend:

-  basil Emerald Tower (small grow bags)
- Hundreds and Thousands tomato (hanging baskets, 5 gal. buckets)
- Dancing Green Fingers tomato (hanging baskets, 5 gal. buckets)
- Tiny Tim tomato (small grow bags and pots)
- Fish hot pepper (small grow bags and pots)
- Menavka sweet pepper  (small grow bags and pots)
- Little Marvel peas  (small grow bags and pots)
- Bush Baby zucchini (5 gal bucket)
- Bush Champion cucumber (grow bag)
- Chantenay short rooted carrots (5 gal bucket)

Can you share your experience below?

Just an idea ;)

I have voted for the first one.
I am not sure if the font used fits the topic.
I would go with Rustic Serif type of font (Caslon, Garamond, or a slightly distressed serifs such as Recoleta or Alegreya).
Or perhaps, for fun and pun, Bakery Script font?

I like this page very much.

Being me, I have to say a word about font consistency.
I know that ToC is a screenshot from the book and that including it as it is was easy and natural choice.
But, its look does not fit to the design as a whole.
I would either:
- rewrite it using appropriate font,
or
- put a miniature image which opens full size in a new window when clicked,
or
- put it at very end.

Or maybe convert to green and see how it fits?

For me, non-US resident, it just sends me to https://permies.gumroad.com/l/garden-master-bundle. Unable to test it fully then.