Confessions of a seed hoarder
I must confess…I have a hoarding problem. I hoard seeds. What started innocently with buying some different varieties to grow (food should be fun, you know!!) move on to trading extra seeds for some additional different varieties. Then the seed catalogs come in December. I welcome their arrival like old friends. We nestle under a blanket […]
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Sepp Holzer earthworks workshops about to begin
I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend the California and Montana workshops which Sepp Holzer will be leading and in which we will be implementing Holzer style earthworks. I was asked to translate what I meant by Permaculture Earthworks Courses in a post that I put up on facebook, so I decided […]
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Determining soil type with your hands
I am reading the book Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture. In the book he talks about a quick, in the field way, to tell what type of soil you have with just your hands. Pretty interesting, I thought. Here is what he wrote… To perform the test, take some fresh soil (not dried out) and roll it […]
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Beginning to build a forest of food
Welcome to my enchanting forest. Well, what will become my food forest. See those wire cages? Right now it resembles the begining of an orchard, but that will change over time and the addition of many more plants. What is a food forest? Wikipedia’s formal definintion is “Forest gardening is a low-maintenance sustainable plant-based food production […]
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Top work grafting
Oh what a glorious day it was! Taking full advantage of the sun and warm weather was top of my list. I have been looking at a bag of various left over scionwood from my grafting onto rootstock projects. Knowing that I had access to a peach tree and my crabapple tree, I decided to […]
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Grafting experiments
I was working on trying to learn grafting today. I did some last year but could not tell completely my rate of success (or lack of it) because the deer kept eating off the leaves on the rootstocks and ended up killing the large majority of them. I did have a graft take for a […]
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Spring cleanup
In preparation for repotting and re-homing the seedlings that I have started inside, I had to do some minor repairs to my greenhouse. Over the winter a panel on the roof came out and blew away. I did a seach through my yard and surrounding neighbors yards for it, but did not find it. Since […]
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Holy MOLEy!
As I look out across my back yard, one sure sign of spring is apparent. MOLES! Standing on my deck and looking out over the yard, I was wondering what the heck it was. It sort of looks like a herd of cows got loose in part of my yard and generously provided fertilizer. Since I knew better […]
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Artist spotlight – Getting to the root of beauty
I have an artist friend that does sculpture work in wood, stone and metal. The material that he chooses is all reclaimed, from fallen or removed (by others) trees, scrap yards or just found items. One of the most interesting things that he has been exploring using lately is the root wood from trees, typically […]
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Mark Shepard and Restoration Agriculture
Mark Shepard, author of Restoration Agriculture, presents his ideas on permaculture and development of his farm, New Forest Farm. He has successfully utilized a wide variety of principles to transform what was very damaged farmland into diverse, productive and finacially successful farm. While this is a long video, it is definitely worth listening to. )
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