Quincy Mb

Hi Nick, thanks for the reply and suggestions on my moisture issues.
I have thought about a few of those things before, but perhaps I should think about them more. Last summer rainfall was so poor, that when it DID rain it poured and the rain barrels would fill up quickly and the rest was not captured. Our eavestroughers said that it is no feasible to have ALL of our water going down one spout on the side of our house where the rain barrel system is, so I will be putting in smaller barrels at the two other downspouts, one of which is already running above a raised bed to drain out at the sidewalk -- I am very tempted to put a few holes in it to at least get some drip irrigation happening.

I would be interested in taking a look at each others gardens this summer. Big garden or just a few potted plants, I am always curious and interested in whatever gardening others do. If my friend has one potted tomato plant, I am still excited for them!!! Perhaps there are a few things I could learn from you, even if you are just building up from scratch in Winnipeg. Are you also in the West End?

I am new to the board, attracted by this very thread which I found via DuckDuckGo search.

I live in Winnipeg (West End). Though I have been familiar with permaculture for a few years, and have done WOOFing before, I only recently decided to learn more about permacultural principles after seeing the documentary INHABIT, which is about permaculture being implemented in towns and cities as part of smart & productive design of space.

We are growing veggies in raised beds and flowers in grade-level beds. Last year I began to tap our 3 Manitoba maple trees in our backyard, and began the adventure of beekeeping (2 hives).
As far as how we are integrating our projects into our natural environment we have as of yet only built a 3-barrel rain catchment system (2 meters above the ground), 3 cubic foot compost bin, a vertical gardening trellis. I know, this is not particularly permaculture.

Some of the ideas I have yet to implement are: cold frames, rain barrel pump to speed up watering, cloches/greenhouse, drip irrigation hoses, aerated compost tea.

Irrigation: We have a tough time watering our raised beds enough. With mulch, we can keep them most for two days tops, and I think being raised beds they are evaporting much quicker from 3 sides. Thoughts? To be honest, we are thinking that some addition beds we are making in our back yard this summer will be standard grade-level beds, our hope being that moisture will stick around longer. Main hindrance is that one of our fence lines is infested with Virginia Creeper which is such a pain to deal with...
I am also starting to be under the impression that, barring extremely wet summers in Manitoba, I could direct all my roof run-off directly into the garden with no risk of excessive irrigation. Any experience with this?