Patrick Bonneville

Marianne Cicala wrote:Hi Patrick - so happy to see a fellow Virginian. The black bamboo fencing would be wonderful. I look forward to seeing some pictures.

Virginia is for lovers... of humidity and two very stark seasons!
My sympathies and yet at the same time, Virginia is so beautiful when the seasons change
I will likely begin digging trenches for rhizome barriers when it warms up again. I have a lot to keep me busy indoors (including tending to my baby bamboo) but when I get something more solid and less concrete I'll be sure to share pictures

Peter Ellis wrote:If the slope of the yard is not too steep, swales on contour might serve as well as terraces, while being a bit less work - no retaining wall. Geoff Lawton has recommendations as to what slope is too steep for swales ,but I do not recall off the top of my head what his guidelines are.

Sounds like an interesting project. Good luck, and keep us updated.

I've had great success with my mini-swales so far! I am yet to assemble any kind of retaining wall and after reading this (and a number of online things about earthworks), I think I would be better off with none at all than the small ones I wanted to make. I would like to get some topsoil and wood chips delivered to my home sometime around next Spring, not to destroy the slope, just to make it a bit more gentle.
In the past, before I even knew the many of these words like permaculture, I had piled up a good deal of yard waste near a shallow end of my hilly backyard, which prevented rainwater from running down the hill and pooling up on the cement in front of the back door. After a couple of seasons of playing with dead branches and leaves, I managed to grow up a small berm that dandelions and clover love to grow on so I'm going to consider that a success
Thank you for your insight

S Bengi wrote:I love the idea of building a privacy fence. hybrid poplar, isn't invasive like willow or bamboo and it will grow to 30ft in just 3years. I would recommend planting a plant every 5ft and just have them take over and just like willow they don't really mind damp or dry soil.

Yeah they grow pretty well here, we had some tree disease running rampant in my area in the 80s so I saw a lot of the trees I liked downed. I chose to grow black bamboo a few years ago in my backyard and managed to keep it pretty well contained. I have long planned for rhizome barriers and am well aware of how it can get a mind of it's own like Catnip and wander off to visit the neighbors lawn
I do like the idea of a poplar as well, a few of those would be great if I had more space, though I feel more comfortable with this species I've been playing with in my area. My backyard is kind of full up on trees at the moment, if I want to plant anything that needs a lot of sun anyway
Thank you for your ideas, I'll give a hybrid poplar a second look over today, I know they'd grow okay in my area, it's just that living so close to a city with nosy neighbors, I want something that will keep both physical bodies and eyes off of my property. It's weird trying to play farmer in your backyard with your neighbor's staring at you wondering if this was the day you finally flipped your lid

Hey Permies Peoples!

My name is Patrick, I live in Woodbridge, Virginia- it's kind of a satellite of DC, South of downtown by approx 60 miles (guessing). The area goes from hot and humid months to cold and dry months. As we're in the cold and dry and I have spent the warm mostly composting and building soil without tilling anything, I am curious as to what I should be focusing on next.

Even if I am not actively gardening (which I always seem to be, if only indoors), I am always composting. I have been focusing on composting a few bales of straw with amendments like rock dust, kelp and bone meal, mycorrhizal spores etc- I try not to overdose anything, but I will take cheap, junky compost or soil and beef it up by using piles of compost with heavy wood layers (I compost in a method loosely similar to how the book 'Teaming with Microbes' describes piles of compost within well-aerated containers, being consistently rotated with more organic matter. Without using any kind of chicken wire or containers, I have created a nice ground cover, shoving heaps of compost and rotting wood under layers of soil at lower areas of the yard. I have a worm farm indoors but it is currently vacant, now that it's cooler outside I'll likely start keeping worm pets to talk to and creep family members out with. I have used worm tea extensively in the past with molasses to break down straw and wood as well as get the local soil kick-started with microbial life.

I never really got anything special planted in my hilly, Northern VA backyard this last warm season. Now that it's cooler, it seems like a good time for me to disturb the soil a little bit in an effort to create terraces in along my hilly backyard and plan to heal the soil so I can really begin a food forest proper next Spring.

I have a good deal of this hill mapped out and feel like it would be a good idea to reinforce the keylines for irrigation with a few small ditches, backfilled with rocks, leaving the soil piled up to act as a terrace edge. I am making slow progress with wattle and daub / stone retention walls for my terraces but my hill is a 'gentle' enough grade that I'll have to do a little digging to make my terraces really pop out to form.
At the bottom of my hill I am building a fence between my far-too-close neighbors who feel the need to keep a camera in their backyard in a relatively nice neighborhood, and I have no idea if it's spying into my lawn- sorry if I sound paranoid about that but I would like some privacy in my backyard and not feel watched while working in my garden. Once I have a decent sub-soil liner and bed down to about 4" deep, I want to plant a number of black bamboo babies at the top of my mini-berm, behind a privacy fence. I think that would look nice and being at the bottom of my hill, it could help shadow a small pond I have been working on (tapped down the clay rich soil this past Summer and lined it with gravel and a few larger rocks, it's slowly raising a level of water and I put some olive oil in it to prevent mosquitoes from breeding there.

Something else about the privacy in my yard; there are only small, waist height chain link fences that I can't seem to speak to my neighbors about, so I will build my own privacy fences using black bamboo.
My hilly backyard faces East with a great all day sun and a few shady/mossy parts in the Summer/Fall (the deepest of now is my small pond). I am not certain how I will expand on this, however I have a great basic plan of what I want in my head that translates well out fo my imagination into my backyard, so far.
I have no animals to deal with slugs however I have been using a great deal of heavy mulch. I would like to have my entire backyard's edges built up with berms on 3 sides and enclosed live black bamboo privacy fences (a hopefully tasteful design that my neighbors like and I'll bury the bamboo deep enough with liner so it doesn't spread). Whatever I do, I will sprinkle a bit more diatomaceous earth around the border of my backyard.

I hope my words convey an idea, I'll post some pictures and mention my ideals, what I would like to happen and what I think may realistically come to pass
I will get a good deal of sun in my backyard at a nice angle even with a bamboo border fence (my strain gets up to about 30' which is the legal height for most things here). Inside of my fence I would like to create a couple of cobblestone paths, following the flow of water on contour and then plant things by height, with small rows placed in criss-crossing facing one another on slopes so I can get the most out of rainfall. The bottom of the hill is very fertile and has a flat area that would make a great semi-shade area.
I am not certain about the laws in my area, this is something I still need to take some time on but my backyard could really benefit from me having some chickens- or maybe grass-fed rabbits. Who knows what the future holds but this hobby has turned into a time-consuming labor of love that I really believe will become easier to care for when it's more established.

I would love to hear anyone's ideas or your own experiences with heavy mulching. I do not think I will spend the time here to establish a lot of hugelkultur but I do have one small bed going. I like the idea of starting fruit trees and planting a diverse number of plants with a chop n' drop method to help build up these layers or terraces.
Thanks for reading

Writing this, I thought- wow I hope this doesn't sound kinda too know-it-all or over-opinionated
There are my personal experiences though so, maybe we can help one another
The short version:
hugelkulture on hill, making heavy mulch with terraces and swales on contour, using rocks as borders and planting in a food forest method to retain water and nutrients

The long version:
I have a hugelkultur bed at the top of a hill that I started a while ago when I was trying to do something hands on but really hadn't visited permies in a while (I know, shame on me)
I have this issue where I have a hilly backyard that slopes down and flattens out into my neighbor's lovely, flat, green monoculture lawn. I've known for quite some time I was letting minerals and nutrients leach downhill with the rain.
I have decided that at the low end of the yard I'll make a small pond with tamped clay and rocks. It will go from humid and hot to cold and dry here back and forth so I would like to build something to trap the rainfall coming downhill.
My first attempt to capture the rain and keep all the nutrients in my yard was a small berm of compost shoved under dug up pieces of turf. This created the base of what I will use to build a small, shallow pond that will likely ebb and flow
with the rainfall / seasons. I don't plan to use it for fish, nor to let it become a mosquito bed in warmer seasons.
Midway down the hill, I began to dig a 8" deep ditch, using large rocks to cover the ditch and leaving the soil in front (uphill) of the little trench. I then covered it all in a mix of straw and compost, sweeping off the rocks so they can catch sunlight.
I am slowly but surely flattening about 4 layers of height on this hill into 4 terraces, with the bottom all naturally flowing into a pond.. but I'd love to build a water fountain in it if I put enough work into it.
I am home almost all the time and give my growing areas that I tend to a quick rake/sweeping over the top, heavy mulch and it prevents anything from getting too stale or stagnant. My backyard has tons of worms in it these days. Frogs like to hang
out in the heavy mulch and eat bugs, you can really see the difference of richness of life in the soil compared to my neighbor's yard.
I am building this in a way, with my heaps of straw intended to degrade over time with weathering, raking and the application of microbes, although instead of planning out a boxed up garden, I have begun to create cobblestone pathways in something
that is beginning to resemble a fruit forest.
One really great thing about the incline of the hill is that the bottom of it collects dead leaves and soon-to-be-compost things pretty well. Also, I have a bad habit of over-watering plants so the mulch and me keeping an eye on them daily helps me gauge what
is generally going on. I like to go out in the early mornings when the sun is just rising and tend to my yard/garden (yarden?) with a rake and small utility knife, it's a good time of the day to get a feel for things, whatever the season. I don't have any livestock
and my cats and dog ignore me when I ask them to help me with slugs, but since it's a space I can manage on my own I have just sprinkled 'strategic' parts of my yard with diatemateous earth and a daily check of things together seems to keep most of the
slugs and ornery lil critters at bay.

Still interested in advice, or especially an open (RESPECTFUL) dialogue about the prospects of micro farms focusing on permaculture.
I need to get out of the Northern VA area to a place that has a more steady climate and is less polluted. I'll likely end up in South Texas, so I have been doing a lot of reading about native species and as much as I think I'd hate the heat/humidity, a longer growing season sounds nice!

Su Ba wrote:I suppose the first thing I'd do if I were in your situation is to discover what niche crop I liked and develop a passion for it.

I agree, if I could manage to settle on a couple of things I'd be happy but then that isn't sticking to the ideals of diversity.
I have plenty of theory and have done my homework in many areas. I really enjoy the idea of growing a cash crop like bamboo (lots of uses) and focusing on mushrooms.
After following Paul Stamets work I destroyed a small amount of used motor oil with blue oyster mushrooms (my little cult, hehe).
I began a small hugelkultur bed in my backyard with native plants I like and a number of medicinal herbs.
There's still plenty to learn and nothing beats hands-on experience, I'd rather learn from someone who knows more than me, helping each other in exchange than being
an armchair gardener who knows everything about everything but has no experience. Since I live so close to a big, polluted area, I'm not comfortable with growing
food here, but my backyard garden has been a good teacher so far.
Thank you for your advice, I'm looking for more than just reading on my own though

Hello all, long time lurker, first(?) time poster...
I'm Patrick, 36 from Virginia

I have been interested in the idea of a micro-farm (perhaps some niche cash crop as well as my own food) for some time.
I have a great number of obstacles to overcome and right now, I am just hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
I've grown up in the DC area so I'm a city boy but I have a passion for learning and decided a while ago agriculture seemed like
a nice, wholesome thing I may be able to do from home.
One of the reasons I'd like to do things from home, is because I am disabled. I am physically capable (out of shape, but that's changing slowly).
I deal with some PTSD and I have panic disorder- but really I try to be a nice guy and I am quite interested in getting started on something on my own.
I have looked at various grants, loans and lack of programs (well, I haven't found many) and recently I have started looking into USDA farm loans that would
allow someone who is disabled like myself to get up and going. I don't know if I can do it all on my own though and ideally I'd rather work with others in
a co-op or be a part of something larger than me. I do like technology, am interested in renewable energy so I don't want to live in a hippy commune for
vegans, but I don't think I could bring myself to butcher an animal (city boy, sorry).

Where can I go from here? I am not ready to get a small home loan and move across the country near the Rockies, but one day that's what I'd like to do.
Being in Northern VA, I live near a number of places people have mentioned on here. If I was more prone to traveling, I'm sure I'd already be involved in
the wwoolf'ing movement, but my disabillty (which I am slowly 'fixing') has prevented me from being as involved as I'd like to be (or travel as much).

I think I would like to volunteer somewhere and learn from someone else. I don't want to live off of disability and not have a more wholesome job.
I do want to be involved with something bigger than me and preferably learn hands on from experience, but I'm really not sure where to start other
than my own attempts at backyard gardening.
I think I'll be moving away from Northern Virginia in about a year and I'd like to be prepared to move onto my dreams- not feel stuck simply thinking about them.
Any ideas? I have plenty of my own ideas and I don't know which ones of them are feasible, but I think I should get some hands-on experience and start forming
a plan now.
Thank you for your time

Hey folks, I've lived in Virginia most of my life, around Dale City mostly. It's not very urban here anymore, DC is slowly swallowing the area into part of a metropolis sprawl. I live closer to the edge of that sprawl and would like to escape to somewhere less stressful, probably more rural. I have a decent sized backyard and a love for biology; I like making small changes to my backyard and seeing what happens.
I've lurked on permies videos and the forums to a degree for a while now, today for some reason I decided to join.
So... yup. Hi