Food Foresting

[nomadguy]

Cool thanks!

[Maria Stade]

Thank yoy for this insperational thread !
I hope to grow a food forest in the future, we are a groop of people that would like to live in earthships and have this kind of forest around
The young trees are standing in pots and waiting for me to find the right spot in Sweden to grow big on !

[nomadguy]

Hot Mulch : I am coining this as a certain mixture of humic decay and animal waste, most of all animals like Horses that have a tendency to create a high temperature compost.


Too many green tomatoes?



In predominantly cloudy areas, northern climates, or simply environments with shorter seasons or lack of sunlight, certain produce like tomatoes and peppers, certain beans and many other important plants never reach full maturity. Here is a one way you can assist the plant to boost the speed of ripening. In addition this technique is scalable and in line with permaculture premises. In doing this task you will be acting out the a typical and helpful fall time activity to your landscape, garden or food forest environment.

Hot mulch is a particular variety of compost that has a high temperature. Horse manure is a great ingredient for this task. One can additionally use Straw, and then the addition of a cup of molasses and perhaps some comfrey leaves to your humus. If you get a good batch of this type of mixture composting over summer in fall you will have a very warm dry mulch for your tomato gardens.

The hot bio-rich mulch will insulate, feed and create a hot surface under and around the plants. This can also be trapped with a canopy to boost the over-all temperature. Doing so will boost your red tomato ripening in a day by day fashion.
And when it gets close to freeze go out and snag most of your ripe, or half ripe and green tomatoes, I usually leave the premature fruit in case the freeze is not so hard. The additional mulch may also provide the adequate temperatures to survive a freeze or two.

After you Hot Mulch your garden, begin to go out daily and pick all tomatoes with any color. Then put the half ripe tomatoes into paper bag in a south or south east facing window. Within a week most of these will ripen.

~ On they go to the pantry or plate...

[Maria Stade]

Hi Nomad guy !
Why do you put the tomatoes in paper bags ?
Is there some special benefit by doing that ?
Nice pics !

Yea you can get real good benefits from hot mulch in the spring to, if you use some old windows over !
The sun and the micro life can make it posible to start up to 1- 1 !/2 months before normal and that can make big different in cold climat with short summer and few sun hours !

[Maria Stade]

Here is a amazing man !

Enjoy !

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl9rkXifxrw

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FhFJ801Y_M

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SBCzp_-9vQ

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPk7nKG68T0

[nomadguy]

Yes the benefit is that the paper bags help the green tomatoes ripen, the contained heat is a factor though I am not sure why it works so well.

[Maria Stade]

Maybe that the hormones that makes them ripe gets more concentrated in the same space !

[nomadguy]

thats highly possible, I add a ripe pear or lemon into other bags of unripe fruit for example and this often helps fruit speed up their process.

[nomadguy]

Fall-time permaculture activities ~

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu_telI5gxQ

Rocket Stoves?
http://permaculture.org.au/2011/10/3...-heater-redux/

Water






The secret to growing healthy nutritious food compost and biological fertilizers
http://permaculture.org.au/2011/11/0...l-fertilisers/

Permaculture saves lives - http://permaculture.org.au/2011/11/0...g-eco-systems/

[nomadguy]

Fall-time permaculture activities ~ cont....

Water Closets


Create aqua culture system from reused goods.
Part out your Kitchen Garden herbs to aquaculture trays and pots.




Further reference -

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WymWRDd1OOg

http://permaculture.org.au/2011/09/2...ntation-video/

[Maria Stade]

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl01au5pXm0

[Cjay]

Posted by nomadguy (here)
Hot Mulch : I am coining this as a certain mixture of humic decay and animal waste, most of all animals like Horses that have a tendency to create a high temperature compost.

Hot mulch/compost sounds like a great idea in cold climates because warmer soil would extend the growing season... BUT uncomposted horse manure is noturiously dangerous to use as a mulch for food crops or home gardens because it often contains Clostridium tetani, which causes Tetanus.

"Standard" practice is to compost horse manure for a year before using it on your garden. That would mean it is no longer hot, as it would be fully composted after a year.

The heat in active compost is caused by the rapid decomposition process - and the heat contributes to the decomposition process. Generally, when the depth of the compost is less than 30 cm (1 foot), the temperature of the compost will be much lower than a deeper compost pile. Lower temperature means much slower decomposition and slower recycling/release of nutrients. To emphasise this point, a well-managed compost heap will be ready after 3 weeks but if you spread the uncomposted material on the ground, it can take 3 years to decompose - or longer in cool climates.

ALL uncomposted manures are full of potentially dangerous (even potentially lethal) pathogens such as E. coli, Salmonella and many more. For this reason, it is recommended to THOROUGHLY compost manures before using them in your food garden. Many commercially produced composts and manure-based products are treated with steam at very high temperatures to kill the dangerous pathogens. As a further precaution, ALWAYS wash your food, even if you have not used any pesticide.

Almost any organic mulch would provide an insulating layer to help keep the soil warmer as the nights get colder. I recommend using a layer of mulch that is at least 5 cm (2 inches) thick. I personally use about 10 cm (4 inches) of mulch but it depends on the material being used as mulch. I have heard from permaculture gurus that you can mulch as much as 60 cm (2 feet) thick if the mulch is very coarse. As a rule of thumb, fine mulch should be applied thinner than coarse mulch. If you use too much fine mulch, little moisture will penetrate the mulch and make it into the soil where the roots are. Also, fine mulch can sometimes dry out the soil due to a wicking effect.

Manures can chemically burn most plants and kill some plants, so manures should be used sparingly.

One option that is far better than using fresh manure is to mix the manure(s) into a compost made with as many different species of plants as possible. Add biochar to the compost which accelerates the composting process and makes it hotter, thereby killing more of the pathogens.

In any case, "finished" compost releases far more nutrients than uncomposted plant or animal waste and it will not burn your plants even if you use a lot of it. To prove this point, I have successfully grown plants in 100% compost. By the way, I don't recommend this, for various reasons. As with many things in life, just because you can does not mean you should.

Speaking of compost, I am going oustide now to "turn" my compost heap. Frequently turning over a compost heap is a critical part of making good, sweet smelling compost. If you don't turn your compost, it becomes anaerobic (lacking air, especially oxygen) and it will smell BAD, like rotting garbage. If anything smells bad, it probably is bad for you. In the case of compost, if it smells bad, it is full of bad bacteria that can seriously harm you.

A simple schedule for turning compost heaps is to turn it on day 4, then turn it again every 2nd day until it is finished. If you turn it less often, it will take much longer to be fully composted (decomposed).

Happy composting!

[Maria Stade]

Very good writing on the compost subject Cjay !
I live in cold climat and here we use 1 year old horse manure in warm beds !
I always mix it with fresh plant material and water with nettle extract !
The compost mix should be at least 30 cm thick !
On top of that is a 30 cm layer soil where the seeds are put or small plants !

The bottom layer is active and warms up the top soil and then there is glas over !

This is very useful in the spring !

And about horse manure !
Many horses are on medications so I would be picky with from what horse or where I take my material to grow in !

Another way composts can be used is to make Biogas that can be used to cook with or drive a car and so on !

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=but5ntRMQQc

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrVC4XKR2s4

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-RyysPU1Hw

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MP5wI132u4

To bio gas even treated horse manure is fine to use ! But give it later to some plant that you dont eat, a tree works fine Like a pine !

If you use fine clean products they can be put in the plant soil later =)

I have worked out a way to heat the house with compost to ! But it has not been tested yet so It will be a future project when I have some land to play on.

Nettles are amazing and when I do my soil solution I pick nettles and put them i a Container !
Fresh airobic water ( with out cluoride ) is added so they all are under water ! Some rocks to keep them under on the top !
Put the container in shadow so the sun dont heat it.
Then I stear it morning and evning if it is hot outside or once a day !
After about 8-10 days it is ready to use !
Separate the plants from the extract and add some sand or stones !

I ad 2 dl extract to 10 L water and with this I feed the soil and the micro life !

Move around the extract every other day or every day if its hot !

Sometimes I add dandellion leafs or crushed roots !

Or in the early spring Willow leafs helps the roots develop as an extra stimulation !

[nomadguy]

Excellent point C-Jay you are so so correct, And good to mention, as it turns out I don't have any livestock. However I may in the future so this is very important to know.

Another pointer with certain manure's is that they all create by reaction and have a different PH already.
So different soils + different manure's can create a variety of different results. I am going to take some time and read through the last post's here, very good information, Thanks Maria, and C-Jay good work, very good information, I recommend everyone-anyone interested in gardening read it!

[nomadguy]

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qIXmusaeg8

http://beyondsustainabilitymag.net

ref - http://permaculture.org.au/2011/12/0...ed-capitalist/

[nomadguy]

Take your garden indoors for winter with aquaponics...

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_Tz9iXLI_U

winterponics?

[Cjay]

nomadguy, as soon as I saw your post, I remembered another similar post that I have copied below in it's entirety.

Posted by Muzz (here)
How 1 MILLION Pounds Of Organic Food Can Be Produced On 3 Acres.

video of a man who has figured out a system to grow 1 million pounds of food on 3 acres each and every year. How are they doing this?

Aquaponics 4 You* By producing 10,000 fish

* Using 300 to 500 yards of worm compost

* By utilizing vertical space

* Having 3 acres of land in green houses

* Using 1 simple aquaponic pump

* Food is grown all year by using heat from the compost piles

A packed greenhouse produces a crop value of $5 Square Foot! ($200,000/acre).

Can you imagine if places like this started popping up all over the world? It would be one giant step towards self-reliance. Food self-sufficiency is a major step towards being sovereign. If you are not able to start your own garden, consider finding a community garden or hooking up with a small local farm.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfScfxkmWw4

link

[Cjay]

Edible Forest Gardens:
Dave Jacke Interview with Jill Cloutier of Sustainable World Radio


Interview link: http://www.permaculture.org.au/podca...e_Jacke_PC.mp3

Edible Forest Gardens! This powerful concept of perennial polyculture design is finally gaining wide recognition, thanks in part to people like Dave Jacke, author of Edible Forest Gardens, Volumes I & II.

Dave Jacke was in Santa Barbara recently for a program sponsored by the SBCC Center for Sustainability as a benefit for Mesa Harmony Gardens, a food forest in the making. If you missed Dave’s talk, or just want a review all the great material he shared with us, the interview is now available to listen to.

Dave Jacke is a longtime permaculture teacher and designer. In this interview, he talks about the history of forest gardening, its many benefits, and how gardening like a forest can enrich your life.

Source: http://permaculture.org.au/2011/12/0...e-world-radio/

[Cjay]

This is very useful information for all gardeners. Plants have likes and dislikes when it comes to growing right next to other plants. Find out what works and what doesn't work.


Companion Planting Information and Chart

An updated chart of basic companion plants we’ve grown successfully over the years

We recently received an e-mail from a gentleman in China looking for…

… what plants you may have in your garden that you can transplant next to your rose or your apple tree to see how they nurture each other over time.

As a result I thought I would post our own updated list of companion plants for him and anyone else interested. While I would love to say this plant or that plant are "best" I feel I must remind folks to keep in mind your climate, soil and many, many other factors that determine how well these plants cooperate together. Trial and error is the best choice to begin companion planting but the chart below should lead you in the right direction….

What is Companion Planting? A gardening method which makes use of the synergistic properties found in nature: cooperation between plants to achieve optimum health and viability.

Full details and chart: http://permaculture.org.au/2011/12/0...art/#more-6668

To be continued...

[Cjay]

...continued from previous post


Companion Planting Guide

IDEP’s Companion Planting Guide
Click here for full PDF
(Includes natural insect repellent tips)

Sometimes you end up wishing you had a resource at hand to make it easier to apply Permaculture principles. This was the case for myself when it came time to start thinking about beneficial groupings of plants and those groupings that do not go well together.

This is what I often find lacking with the current publications on offer from PRI and from those in the community. There is a lot of good knowledge locked up that could benefit so many of us in applying permaculture principles.

A simple A3 or A4 information sheet or booklet of a small number of pages is easy to mentally digest and take in and very handy to have as a reference, either printed out and hung up on the wall or on the computer when we sit down and start thinking about designing our gardens or food systems.

Full details: http://permaculture.org.au/2010/07/3...lanting-guide/

IDEP A3 Poster Chart (external pdf): http://www.permaculture.org.au/resou..._Com_Plant.pdf