Permaculture Design Exercise

  These are the images and a short description of my final design exercise in my certification course. I am hoping that I don't get an email from the institute telling me that I have issues with my design. The way I understand it, if I don't hear from them, I'll have my certificate within a couple of weeks.

  I chose a piece of property that I may one day be able to develop, since it is family land. It belongs to my grandfather.

  The total property is 40 acres or about 16.5 hectares. The boundaries form an upside down L shape and there is a small creek that runs through the middle of the property year-round. There is a house on the site, along with several outbuilding structures near the main road. There is a small marshy area in the NW corner of the property and lots of wooded land around the borders.

  I chose to place a new house site in one of the empty grassy fields, SW of the existing house, because of the contours within that field and the access to water and other resources. Building an earth-sheltered house into the side of a hill works better because you can add features to the house using the elevation change of the hill that help with the natural cooling and heating cycles of the year. being on a hill also provides me with a much broader sun exposure during the winter months and that is important for both the greenhouse and the solar array I will be implementing to provide power to the house and outbuildings.

  My current design establishes an approx. 2000 sq ft house, a 625 sq ft animal shed, a 150 sq ft blacksmith shop and a small chicken coop near the house. The house itself will be earth-sheltered and be made of primarily wood harvested from the property and cob or cob mixed with other recycled materials. This is kind of the way they build earthships, except earthships are way more extravagant than you need for everyday living. The other outbuildings will use either timber and cob or timber, cob and recycled bricks. The only thing I would build using newly acquired materials is the blacksmith forge, which would be composed primarily of refractory bricks, surrounded by cob.

  There is a 625 sq ft (these numbers are not set in stone and only came from the fact that I used a specific scale on the grid paper to make sure everything would fit to scale) kitchen garden just outside of the house to the West, with an herb spiral next to it. These will supply the house with all sorts of everyday needs in both herb and vegetable produce. The main crop garden is in Zone 2 and measures about 10,000 sq ft. This is where you grow all of your crops needed for year round living. huge amounts of root crops for winter root cellar storage are grown here as well as the long germinating varieties of beans and corn and tomatoes and squash...etc. The kitchen garden is composed of a lot of greens and small everyday meal plants, where the main garden grows the large plants that we harvest and preserve or freeze.

  There are several food forest sites all over the property where we grow fruit trees along swale mounds and understory berry bushes and other edibles. I have designed 3 dams on the property as well to attempt to harness the water on the site so that I can pump some to the house and use the rest for irrigation and possibly even aquaculture (fish) one day. The stuff in the bottom of a fish pond is about the most amazing fertilizer you can find anywhere.

  I think that about covers it. There is plenty more that I could say, but I'll just post the images and you'll get the point I think.

From Permaculture

This is an actual topographic image of the site with the boundaries superimposed.

From Permaculture

This is my design. It is definitely subject to change since this is my first attempt ever.

From Permaculture

An image of the house site with the outbuildings. Hopefully it isn't hard to understand.

From Permaculture

Finally, some of that food forest I was talking about. This picture also shows one of my designed dams.

  With any luck, I'll be doing this kind of thing for a living within the next year or so. The design aspect is only one of many in permaculture. I also get to go out into the field and survey and move earth to build dams and swales. There is home design and building. And, of course, I'll also be doing some blacksmithing and selling my products to people online and locally.

Permaculture Certification

  Summer has pretty much passed me by. Between working on the rental house we bought in May and trying to keep up with life I barely had time to go out into the garden and look at the plants this year.
  Some things grew marvelously without me. Other things really needed my attention and, therefore, were not as strong as they could have otherwise been. Here are a couple of pictures:

From Garden

From Garden

Pretty nice, right? And this is what it turned into:

From Garden

From Garden

Jungle...

  I have learned a few things this season, which makes up for the lack of success I achieved in the beds. I think the first lesson I am drawing from this year's garden is that my tomato plants need a bed of their own in which they can just consume all the space. 

  The best thing to come from this summer was my completion of the first of my certifications in Permaculture Design. I was hesitant to take a course online due to the lack of hands on experience. But then in March, Geoff Lawton offered an online certification that promised to be incredibly comprehensive and worth the money. I have to say, it definitely was.

  I submitted my final design on September 26 and I haven't heard anything to tell me there were issues so I'm hoping that means I have a certificate coming in the mail from Australia. I'll post the design elements in my next update.

  So now I have to tear the garden apart and start several large batches of compost from the green materials in the garden and the dead leaves that will shower my yard in the coming weeks. 

  I almost forgot to mention that I also finished a Master Composter class through my local county this summer. So I know everything there is to know about municipal yard waste composting. Fun times!

Garden Progress

It seems as though I can never get the garden started at the time I'd like to. This year, that worked out in my favor.

I've never been really keen on forcing my plants to survive events that they couldn't normally survive on their own. This includes covering for frost. Now, to be fair, I didn't plant any of my cole crops during the proper time in which they should have been planted. I also didn't get my tomato or cucumber seedlings transplanted until a few days into June. This all turned out to be a very good thing because we got one last frost here on the Sunday before memorial day. The community garden where I have a few things planted this year lost a lot of crops due to the very late frost. I got lucky because I was too busy to plant anything until June 3rd!

Here are a couple of updated pictures of the garden in my back yard. I still have one bed to cut and prep which will host my beans and corn and some root veggies. The largest bed in the photo is half sewn with buckwheat and amaranth and the rest is tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, basil, celery and peppers. The 5x5 that you see in the photos has been prepped and contains lettuces, spinach, herbs, garlic and onions.

From Garden

I double dug the half of the garden which would have the food crop in it. Double digging is probably the hardest garden-related activity I've ever performed. The digging is relatively easy, but my beds were littered with roots and so moving one trench into the next was a chore. The roots held everything together except the top layer, which would landslide into the trench ahead or behind. The whole point of double digging it to loosen 24" deep while maintaining soil structure and I found that to be a very difficult thing to do well. Maybe I'll try again in a couple of seasons.

From Garden

I found some info online about "trench planting" tomatoes. I had a couple that had grown a bit wonky so I tried the trenching method. Of the 8 plants I put in, I trenched 3 so we will see how well they do.

From Garden

The final step was to layer about 1.5" thick of compost on top of the beds. This step is crucial, as compost has an amazing water retention factor and acts somewhat like mulch with water. The only hard part about using only compost is that it is amazingly suited to grow things, which means any kind of weed or grass seed that ends up in it grows amazingly well. Compost added every year also greatly helps the structure of your soil. Layer after layer builds up to be a lovely high structure of organic matter and nutrients.

I began building the beginnings of my new composter a while back. Here are some images of that. I still have 2 more frames that same size to build, as well as a door for each and a lid.

From Permaculture

From Permaculture

I ran out of leftover cedar for the side with one plank to go! I have some more on standby now until I have some time to cut it and install it. This container is about 3 cubic feet, the size required to successfully hot compost all compostable materials (including vegetable cellulose plastics). The next 2 units will attach to this one and will also be about 3 cubic feet. I also plan on building another unit near the chicken coop once that is completed to allow for the composting of manure for fertilizer.

I suppose that is enough for this post. I will be updated more and more as the summer progresses and my projects get more complicated. I am thinking I'll also highlight some of the tools I use from time to time for reference material.

I need to work on a new sign off. Stan Lee calls everyone "true believers" and most newscasters say something like "stay classy San Diego". I need a little quip to end with. I'm thinking something like "Until next time, keep growing!" but anything I come up with sounds stupid in my mind...so just check back here frequently this summer for more updates.

My ever expanding universe

I have been making some big changes around the garden. I'm adding a new bed and expanding the existing garden space to make a total of about 100 sq ft. I'm also double digging at least one of the spaces to Grow Biointensive standards.

I've uploaded some new pictures into the garden album to show before and after.

In addition to all of this, I'm also in the process of preparing the windows I scavenged to make the greenhouse/chicken coop. I have them mostly cleaned now and I have to replace some of the broken panes and then scrape and seal the entire window. Each one is about 35" x 45", so I figure if I turn them on their sides and stack them vertically, I'll be about half a window too big. Luckily, I have other ones of various sizes that I picked up earlier this year and I think I might just be able to patch them together. The bonus to all of this is that I don't have to purchase any new windows for the entire coop because I have enough for the greenhouse wall as well as the sides of the greenhouse area and the sides of the coop.

My seedlings are doing exceedingly well in the basement under the lights. Too well in fact. I needed to transplant them a week or two ago. I've been hardening them off slowly, but lucky for me I didn't plant them in the beds yet. We frosted for (hopefully) the last time a few nights ago and I have been too lazy to get everything into the ground so nothing of mine died. Some of the members at the GNG weren't so lucky.

I have one of my 2 plots at the GNG prepped and potatoes planted. I attempted to save some strawberry plants that were in the bed already, but the severe heat and no rain we've had this month did not favor them. I think maybe 1/3 survived so I guess we will see what comes of that. I also have strawberries in PVC tubes at the homestead, so we won't be without this year hopefully.

I'm taking my PDC online this summer. I know how oxymoronic it sounds to take a class on permaculture design over the internet, but it was a good deal and Geoff Lawton is teaching it. I'm into the third week now and I have to admit, there is a lot about the subject that I don't know yet. I've been independently studying this for over a year now, but permaculture is still an amazingly complex philosophy.

Here are a couple of before images of the garden:

From Garden

From Garden

It's finally time to plant

Just a quick update, as it is about 2:30 in the morning. I planted the first round of seedlings tonight. I had a Hydrofarm brand seed starting kit left over from last year and one of the principles in permaculture is "produce no waste". So instead of chucking the thing, I choose to make use of it. I put in 18 spanish onions seeds, 10 roma tomatoes, 14 Rutgers tomatoes, 18 brussel sprouts, 16 straight 8 cucumbers and 5 strawberries.

I picked a few of these based on length of time to maturity and the rest I just randomly selected. Tomatoes tend to survive transplanting better when they are large. I also found out a new method to plant my tomatoes this year, which may lead to larger yield. It is called "trench planting" and you can read more about it here. Basically, you lay the seedling flat into a trench to get a better root structure from the plant. I can't wait to try it out.

I have made significant progress in the way of chickens as well. I have the area where the coop/greenhouse will be placed leveled and prepped. I also dug the holes for the cement footings of the coop and I'm now ready to mix some concrete and get the posts anchored. I haven't gotten very far on the framework yet, but I'm still holding out hope to have the project done by the end of May.

My next step on the gardens is to get all 3 beds prepped when we have some warm weather. I was offered 2 plots at the GNG and I have my 102 sq ft holding in my back yard. I still have some work to do with the expansion behind the house, but it should be relatively simple considering I won't be building any new raised beds, but will be transferring the ones already built to the additional spaces. The beds at the GNG seem to be in relatively decent shape and I was able to get 2 next to each other. My only issue there is that my bed spaces run north and south of each other so I won't be building any trellises for pole beans or peas.

I realize now that I still have some seeds to purchase: peas, comfrey, herbs for the spiral...etc. I guess I better get on that. I got my potatoes in the mail a few days ago and realized I could have just gone and bought a 5 lb. bag at the grocer's. At least these are certified organic and I know that they haven't been riddled with pesticides and weed killers.

I will be sure to post a couple of pictures of the coop footings and other things as I go. I also hope to do a tutorial on both composting and double-digging garden beds in the near future on this blog. I might even venture into video this summer, who knows?!

Simple Project: Waterproofing Canvas Shoes

Waterproof? Well, maybe more like water-resistant...but still.

When you are vegan, you don't buy leather. One major downside to this is that most canvas shoes are not coated, which means that you have to shop carefully to find the shoes with a rubber covered toe or, at the very least, something with some substance to it.

We recently upped our hipster cred by getting some Toms brand shoes. The vegan version is essentially a piece of canvas attached to a recycled rubber sole. When it is wet outside, they absorb water almost instantly. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, however, we have discovered a method for keeping our feet dry. Since I did this myself and took these pictures during my own process, I will not be crediting another site or blog for this.

Check it out:

Step 1 - get a small chunk of beeswax. Most natural food stores carry this in little bars. Take the wax and rub it against the canvas HARD. You need to deposit a lot of wax on the canvas for this step.

From Simple Projects

Step 2 - Cover the whole shoe well. Make sure you get in all the little cracks and crags. The place to overdo it is along the seam between the sole and the body of the shoe.

From Simple Projects

Step 3 - Now take the shoe and run your hairdryer on high and hot all over the shoe. Move slowly over each part and make sure the wax melts and absorbs completely into the canvas.

From Simple Projects

Step 4 - Test out the final product. Run the tap over the toe. Does the water soak in or does it roll off? Hopefully it just rolls off.

From Simple Projects

It's a beautiful thing! Try it for yourself. Now, these are Toms and I haven't tried this method on other brands of canvas shoes, but the premise is solid and should apply to pretty much any canvas shoe. I will try it on some of my other shoes soon and report back on my findings. In the meantime, if you have Toms, this works!

The window situation

I may have mentioned before that I am building a chicken coop with an adjacent greenhouse space to serve multiple purposes. The greenhouse will be a geothermal heating room for the coop, a place to propagate my seedlings in the spring and a storage area for garden tools and supplies. I'm going to build the window wall from old windows.

This morning I met with a lady I met at the Eastern Market Antique store who told me she had a "warehouse full of windows". Little did I know what she meant was that she had a warehouse with windows that I had to cut out of the walls... either way, I am getting enough old warehouse windows to do my whole greenhouse.

I also had purchased a few windows from random places, and I had one or two in my basement. So I guess I'm building several cold frames now as well, which is good because I know people who can use them.

I go to pick up the warehouse windows Tuesday. Hopefully the guy who is taking them out can get them without breaking them. We shall see. I'll post some pictures when all is said and done.

Let's Talk Dirty...as in Compost

I just finished my first class in my Master Composter program and let me tell you, it was amazing!! The material we are covering and the possibilities for community outreach and education are very promising.

I also attended my first co-op garden meeting this week and I already see that I'm going to fit in nicely there. I like a lot of what they are doing already and I see plenty of opportunities to add my input.

In the coming months I have several more composting classes to finish the program. Part of the requirements include building a composter and getting a heap started as well as 12 hours of volunteer work in multiple different settings. I'm scheduled to help run a demonstration table at both the Greenfest at the zoo and Vegfest, which is being held in Novi this year. I contacted my guy through the Ferndale Environmental Sustainability Commission to potentially get myself on the roster to head up a composting workshop in Ferndale this summer.

Part of my volunteering can come from simply working in the community garden, which is awesome since I sporadically volunteered to lead a Wednesday evening work night at the garden. Hopefully, after I've taken a few more classes, I'll be versed enough to hold a workshop for members of the garden on starting and maintaining a compost system.

As I mentioned previously, there are multiple methods to composting. The method that SOCWA, the organization hosting the master class, uses is primarily cold composting. I have already noticed variations in the way they teach how cold composting works, however. This is of great interest to me, since I plan on studying different methods this summer. My plan is to build several enclosures and test different methods to find out if they work the way they should. Provided I have the time, I will be building 3 new composters in my backyard. One will be a double unit, near the house for kitchen scraps and yard waste. One side will be a hot system, the other side will be cold. I hope to get one going near the chicken coop as well and one on the opposite side of the yard.

I will sketch a site map this week and post it so that what I am talking about will be easier to envision.

Permaculture 101

I've been schooling myself in permaculture all winter. I've been waiting for a class to present itself in the Detroit area for 2013 and so far it seems like I'm out of luck. Instead of relying on someone else to offer me a program, I've pieced one together myself. Basically it consists of purchasing way too many books and ignoring everyone around me for large chunks of time while I read about swales and edge and diversity of species...etc.

In addition to all of this reading, I've been proactive about learning through experience. I joined a co-op garden on the edge of Ferndale and I also enrolled in a composting class which runs twice a month in March, April and May. I plan on volunteering a few hours a week down at the CSA we joined last summer. I wanted to work with people who have already established a system and these folks offer a "work share" to make the program more affordable. So I guess I'm not technically "volunteering" but I'm really only taking what I grow and I'm not getting money for helping...so yeah.

This summer looks to be quite busy for us. I addition to the 10 x 10 plot I'm getting from the co-op, I'm also planning an expansion on my backyard garden space. I'll be essentially doubling my growing area. I'm using John Jeavons' GROW BIOINTENSIVE method to garden this year, which adds a bit more prep work, but should decrease the amount of labor time I spend in the beds. I'm definitely building my chicken coop this spring and we hope to have chickens in it by May or June at the latest. Our front porch needs to be demolished and rebuilt and then for the few days that I'm not doing all of this, we want to remodel our bathroom. Overwhelmed yet? Me too!

Here are a couple new pictures. My ever expanding library (I think I have at least 3 or 4 more books since this was taken.) and the preliminary images of the coop plans. I will post a high res image as part of the series I'll be doing during construction.

Make your own dirt...

In this post I am going to be discussing a few different methods for composting, listing some of the steps to each method, but mostly going over pros and cons of each method. I will cite some sources at the bottom for further reading. If more information is required, use the comment section to ask questions.

Composting is something I've become quite interested in lately. I've found many different sources on how to do it, using many different methods. It seems to me that, depending on what your overall goal is, you may need to choose a specific method of composting, rather than just setting up a heap and throwing all of your organic waste into it.

For instance, a heap made from all sorts of food and yard waste may not contain the proper nutrients your soil needs when it comes time to introduce your compost to your garden. Plant yield can vary greatly, depending on the organic matter in which it grows.

I was always under the impression that taking compost from your heap and establishing it as the primary soil in your garden was a top-notch idea. According to one of my books, I was dead wrong. Compost on its own only plays a fractional part in the production of food. Adding compost to the soil that already exists, and introducing other materials as needed seems to be the ideal way of growing. In fact, the Biointensive method only asks for a 1-2 inch layer of compost on the very top of the garden at the beginning of the season, meaning that the other parts of the soil are just as, if not more, important for the proper propagation of species.

One method of composting is the "rapid" compost method. This is a simple formula which requires more work from you but yields much quicker breakdown as a result. Using something like 2/3 brown and 1/3 green ingredients, you monitor the moisture on a daily basis and turn the compost everyday as well. Within 2 weeks you have a fully composted heap, ready for use. The major downside to this method, based on the reading I've done, is that when organic material breaks down that quickly, a lot of the vital nutrients are released in gas form from the pile. Turning the heap causes air to get to the nitrogenous "green" material faster. This is why the pile converts quickly, but the problem comes from the fact that much of the important microbial life in the pile, the stuff that helps strong root growth in the garden, cannot survive in the high-nitrogen environment and the resulting compost is of inferior quality.

Now, there are 2 somewhat opposite techniques which both yield highly nutritive compost, but each has benefits and flaws. These two are the "cold" and "hot" compost methods. "Cold" composting consists of getting the proper mixture of brown and green materials, as well as a small amount of garden soil introduced to the pile. Ordinarily, one would loosen the base of the heap about 12 inches down and then place a layer of sticks on the bottom to provide a solid base for the pile. You then add the brown (dead leaves and plant matter), followed by the green (fresh grass clippings, leafy vegetation), and you top it off with some soil from the garden. The major downside to this method is the final step...in which you leave it alone for 4-6 months. The description of this method mentions potentially turning the heap once, about 2 months in, but otherwise this pile sits and works over time. As long as you have no urgency for compost, this seems to be the best method to get the most out of your compost. Not only does "cold" composting provide more useable compost for the material you put in, but it also provides compost with the most nutrients and microbial life.

"Hot" composting is somewhat opposite from cold, in that you turn the pile infrequently and maintain it more often. This method is necessary for breaking down items like "compostable plastics" made from vegetable materials and larger sticks and twigs. The heat required to consume a compostable bag of chips is upwards of 140-170, which you can achieve through "hot" composting. There are drawbacks to this method. First is the amount of human energy required to maintain the temperature. Second is the fact that, despite normal claims that a hot pile will kill weed seeds and small insects like aphids, the truth is that in order to actually be 100% effective, temperatures have to reach above 200.

I like to "hot" compost because it allows me to compost in the winter in Michigan. It also lets me throw things like compostable forks and coffee cup lids into my heap. There are a lot of places in the Detroit area using these materials now and, on the rare occasion that I purchase something that comes with vegetable-based plastics, I have a hot heap at home to biodegrade these items.

As I mentioned in my last post, I plan on expanding my garden and composting operation this summer. This plan includes trying each of these composting methods first-hand. I plan on using images, as well as updating with blog entries step by step as I go to find out just how well each method actually works. With any luck, they will all work well and I can send soil samples to the MSU extension office in Lansing to have the nutrients in each heap tested.

And that is my diatribe on composting. Obviously, there will be more compost conversation coming this summer, so if you love organic matter, keep checking back.

More info/citations:
Rapid Composting
Ecology Action: GROW BIOINTENSIVE method

Spring already?

Is it spring already? It sure feels like spring with the warm weather that we have had lately. While I'm concerned about the crops up north and other things that happen in Michigan when the weather is poor, I am also very excited about the possibility of starting the garden early this year.

I have been reading a new book called How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine. Long title, I know. But the title says exactly what the book is about. This summer I'm going to use the technique in this book, called Grow Biointensive. This method, unlike other methods I've used in the past, focuses almost entirely on soil health. Yield is considered a byproduct of healthy soil. This all makes a lot of sense and of course that is partially why I've never heard of it before.

Anyway, the Biointensive method is a long term commitment kind of thing, so I will have plenty to blog about in the coming months. I'm very excited about getting started with this new plan, especially with the other ideas I'm putting into the works with the city soon. I'm working on getting a lot of support from all sorts of people and so far, everyone I've pitched my ideas to has been overwhelmingly excited about the concept of inexpensive, quality food availability in Ferndale.

My home garden is also going to expand this summer. Basically, I am going to be working all day every day to accomplish all the goals I have in mind for this endeavor. I addition to the beds I have already built, in order to get to my golden 100 sq ft number,  I will be expanding one bed to 4x6 and adding another bed of the same size. This will give me a total of 102 sq ft of soil to cultivate.

I also plan on setting up several more rain barrels, building a chicken coop, creating at least 3 compost heaps of varying materials and, if time allows it, still riding my bike with my kids several times a week!

My next post will be all about composting, so stay in touch for that!