The land I’m looking, a Mediterranean desert, gets if we’re lucky, 90 mm of rain (3-6 inches) in a year, spread out along 5 months.

Soil is in rough condition. 8 pH and sandy loam

Locals I talk to think I’m crazy, saying it’s too dry, even if I harvest all the rainfall.

Goal is to harvest semi arid fruits.

Question is, can I make a reliable food forest, assuming typical rain harvesting is done? Or will it require supplemental drip watering from imported water?

Is there a grass/meadow/plant blend that brings together the best of permaculture while offering a green carpet for kids and pets? Ideally something that is tough, flowers, deep roots, and drought resistance that gives somewhere for toddlers to play?

If this magic blend does not exists to be bought, does anyone have recommendations of a blend I can source and mix myself? Could be a fun experiment! Zone 7B PNW, Canada.

Edit: in Canada

What can I get involved in to learn and participate in regenerative agriculture / polyculture / permaculture?

I live in Greece and am surrounded by hundreds of acres of olive groves with just bare soil or weeds such as oxalis underneath. I feel there’s such potential in taking them a step further along permaculture principles.

Does anyone have examples of using existing olive grove as a permaculture project? Maybe turning it into a food forest? I realise this could cause issues with harvesting and machine access, so thinking small scale projects.

Or examples of planting a permaculture garden with lots of olive trees from scratch?

Would love to see some ideas — from anywhere. 🫒

Thanks ☺️

Hello, I’m a 35 year old male who has a no till market farm. I’m consistently wearing out my boots after 6 months to a year doing lots of shoveling, walking 20k steps a day and squatting tons. Anyone have any suggestions? Looking for some more flexible probably than the normal hiking/work boots I’ve been getting. I have been buying from REI which has a year long warranty so I’ve been basically exchanging my boots. Although good financially I’d live to find some boots I could trust more and get more time out of

Our neighbors built an ugly 7' fence along the west side of our back yard to keep in their unruly dogs. The area along the fence gets the most sun in our yard and would be the ideal spot for a garden, but electric, gas, and cable lines run directly underneath. My plan is to build a series of 8' long by 3' wide by 2' tall raised beds to eliminate the risk of hitting a utility while gardening.

The plants would be on the east side of the solid wood fence. We're in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US - zone 7a.

What is the best way to plan the space behind the raised beds? How close should the beds be to the fence? I don't want to damage the fence and I'm terrified of putting them too close and creating an inviting habitat for rodents and snakes.

What can/should be planted between the fence and the beds?

Is it safe to carefully plant espalier fruit trees between the beds and train them to camouflage the fence or would the roots be dangerous to the utility lines below?

Would a row of shallow rooted berry bushes work with 3' of space behind the raised beds or would the shade from the raised beds inhibit their growth? What about fruiting vines such as grapes or hardy kiwi or climbing rose bushes planted between the beds and trained along the fence?

I'm new to this and would be very grateful for any suggestions. Thanks!

Has anyone here used their Bio-Pellets?

I’m not looking for fertilizer as much as I am soil amendment on crappy clay soil.

I’m calling them today in Fort Worth Texas to discuss options and price.

I’m just a dreamer with a crappy city lot, but would love to utilize them (depending on price) as I try to take a more active role at my parents ranch as they get older.

“I deeply believe that people are the only critical resource needed by people. We ourselves, if we organise our talents, are sufficient to each other. What is more, we will either survive together or none of us will survive.” - Bill Mollison

I’m autistic and highly introverted. I manage to spend time at home with my wife, and I visit my Dad every now and then, and beyond that I really struggle to socialise. It’s not that I’m terribly bad at it, but it takes up all my energy. Too much socialising leaves me tired, stressed and overwhelmed.

A lot of permaculture writing (such as the quote above) focuses on community being critical to a healthy permaculture system. Care of People is one of the core principles.

I know the theory around permaculture is not some heavenly scripture to be followed by everyone in the same way, and it’s ok to pick and choose the values that work for us each as individuals, but the value of community really does resonate with me, both in terms of teaching and learning from others, building a movement to move the world to more sustainable practices, and the practical side involving barter systems that promote resilience (e.g. via crop diversity across different people within a community, sharing of specialist skills, mutual labour etc).

So in theory I value and want to be involved in a local community - one that’s bigger than just me, my wife and my dad - but in practice it just feels like it’s against my nature and I’m forcing something that’s painful for me.

I’m interested to hear from other introverts involved in permaculture. How do you think about community? Have you found manageable ways to incorporate community into your practise, that you find less exhausting? Do you just do the community stuff even though it wears you out? Or do you have your own more isolationist value system that’s compatible with your personality?

tried searching but could not find much about it

wondering how to prevent roots from cloging the system

​

thanks

I know this has been talked about in circles, but I'm really struggling with committing to a decision. I'm zone 4b in WI USA. Roughly 34" rain/per year and about 48" snow/ year, but lately more like 30 to 40" of snow. We commonly experience much less rain in in El Nino years. Experienced a severe drought last season. I have 2 acres of pasture on a north facing majority 10% slope. Loamy silt soil. We are a cut flower farm. And I want to start expanding into woody ornamentals. I'd like to establish an agriforestry system using a diversity of shrubs and trees and herbaceous layers for both harvesting production and for ecological benefits. I'd do alley grazing between plantings on contour.

I'm struggling with whether it's worth putting the time and resources into swales in this context. We do get a fair amount of precipitation most years and it a north slope. But I'm concerned about resilience in the ocassionally very dry years. Throwing this out there to see if anyone has something else worth considering to help me make a decision.

I have not had much joy through this forum, my posts either dissapear or are removed for failing some of the rules. Why cant we link to our own content? anyways.. i keep trying, do get in touch if any of this is of interest...

I am based at Treflach farm on the Welsh / England, Powys/ Shop border. It is a regenerative farm where we have been teaching permaculture and offering horticultural therapy for many years. My involvement sas always been a bit off and on, but i really want to build it into something much stronger, the potential is here, the farm has great infrastructure, good location and they are very cool people. With some help i think we can go much further .. it is such a great opportunity. The farmers family are fully stretched basically but if i can bring in more people/ energy/ resoures then the potentials is there for so much more.

I am planning to run a PDC there in Sept/ Oct also, this should give us something to build on. since 2020 I have been building a garden there, and it is starting to look really great.. there are classroom space,s social spaces and parking and camping.. so please reach out to me if any of this is of interest, i love to collaborate with the right people.

i dont live at the farm, but in a nearby village, where i am slo involved in housing co-operatives and am active in the local community. I also teach permaculture in East Africa with links to farmers, teacehr and refugees there, it all links together is some wider way!

Hello, I am a student preparing a presentation on permaculture. I was wondering if 'companion plants' could be made artificially. is there anyone who knows about this?? I am quite desperate

Libro had a BOGO sale recently and I picked up Silent Spring and The Secret Life of Trees. I had already read about half of Silent Spring but tailed off at the end. I’m re”reading” it now and it struck me how much of the 2nd chapter sounds like it comes from a permaculture book. I’m pretty sure I could copy edit it down to be the first chapter to one.

Silent Spring is over 60 years old, and it blew up at the time. The permaculture book turns 50 this year, and I can’t help wonder how many of the seeds of permaculture were planted in Bill and David’s fertile minds by reading her book.

If I understand the no-till motivation correctly, the concern is that that tilling exposes raw soil to the sun and too much oxygen, which kills critical soil life.

Would tilling but then immediately covering with compost and then mulch mitigate that downside? Would that protect the soil life? If so, you'd be able to get the short term benefits of tilling without the long term damage it causes.

For reference this would be on something like a 15x20 garden bed, not as it pertains to massive monoculture farming or whatever.

Of course I could be missing something obvious. Thanks!

What is the permaculture way of dealing with anthracnose specifically on mango trees? All solutions I've been told so far involve chemical spraying. Is there a natural effective way to deal with it?

First time posting in this subreddit, thanks for hearing me out. I have 11 acres i am working on. Much of it is in an eroded and degraded state. Lots of gullying, hardpan clay, invaded heavily with sumac and red cedars. Like most land around here there are tons of deer but no keystone herd ruminants or large predators to maintain a healthy prairie, so i anticipate that left alone it would only continue to degrade. However, i have been there two years and every time i go out i also find several new species of natives. Many of which are diminutive and of little use to me, but interesting and kind of unique. I have dug several swales and started introducing shrubby legumes, key native pollinators, and the like, taken out much of the sumac and an increasing number of cedars, and more. I recognize that typically the next step is to increase the number of cover crops and chop and drop biomass accumulators, bring in large amounts of compost and/or mulch, or bring in grazers like goats. I'm hesitating over disrupting the unique flora i keep finding on the site. I know it's probably sentimental, the land will only degrade further without intervention, and move towards the woodland state that has already taken over the lower half of the property, shading those species out, and what's even the point of doing this if i don't make the big moves needed to bring in the fruits, nuts and vegetables that make permaculture so useful and exciting. Yet, once i pull the trigger there's no going back. Has anyone here wrestled with this? Is there an elegant solution to preserve the soil seedbank, or do i just need to bite the bullet and let it go, leaving the matter of natives to the large acrage dedicated preserves?

Looking to learn more about and possibly join a active community if that's a thing. New Yorker here.

Hi everyone, I’ll be starting my PDC this coming Fall, and I can hardly wait!

As we all know, Mollison’s Design Manual is pretty thick. I like to listen to books; I find it more relaxing, and it helps me avoid eye strain.

Unfortunately my iOS won’t do Voiceover for the chapters of the PDM that I’ve downloaded to my kindle. The newer iOS has another “speak screen” function and that doesn’t work either.

I can’t find any YouTube videos of it being read aloud either.

Would anyone happen to have any resources? I’d love to relax on my porch and just listen to the text.

Thank you in advance!