Say Permaculture!

August 11, 2010

July 3, 2010

June 25, 2010

May 13, 2010

April 30, 2010

April 2, 2010

Fresh, juicy spring at its finest: pink columbines sweet to taste, onion blossoms beckoning busy bees, furry fennel tickling faces

Yummy plant guild: Curry leaf tree (Murraya koenigii), Swiss chard, garlic, Dittany of Crete, peas, Italian parsley

Week 12

March 27, 2010

 

Hanging out with Dave Jacke (Author of Edible Forest Gardens Vols. I & II), Ethan Roland (Appleseed Permaculture) and friends

Week 11

March 20, 2010

Week 6

February 12, 2010

Through all the rain, the foodforest held up beautifully.  Fruit trees protected young sprouts, mounds absorbed inch after inch, and peacocks went about their peripheral nibbling. 

We managed to finally make our way to zone 5, the lesser traveled area of the garden.  After months of neglect, our curiosities got the best of us.  What does the soil look like now adays?  What thrived below ground.  Last year around this time we had planted a few sweet potatoes, which had made a beautiful blanket over the area. 

Blackberries, too, had inched their way, sucker by sucker, from zone 4 into zone 5. 

In addition to the sweet potato, blackberries, nasturtium, mustard, and fenugreek, grapes had sprawled out.  Wanting to utilize their vines in an attractive way, which minimized space, we had partially conceived of an arbor.  The space just called out for a tunnel of some sort.  And now that things had grown in a bit, it was finally the perfect time.

Strolling about looking for curvilinar pieces of wood, we found beautiful items to work with.  A stump here, a wizard’s cane there, and a little bit of wire, and viola!  A little tunnel ready to host an outcropping of grapes.  We can already taste them!

Week 5

February 5, 2010

A heavy week of merriment in the garden, we spruced up and planted much.  With all of the clippings available, we decided it was the perfect time to apply our annual givings of mulch to the garden.  Generous bucket after bucket, new mounds and contours were set in place.

Seedlings we had started months ago were ready to set out.  Nasturtiums of all colors are throwing themselves whereever they can.  The sweet alyssum has opened her eyes again and is looking as fairy-like and as cute as ever.  Tomatoes happily keep doing their thing.  Arugula, sweet bitter arugula is popping up all over the pathways!  And celery too!

 New spiraling patterns are naturally coming together.  And its all looking a bit like the first inclings of spring time… 

Week 4

January 29, 2010 

The mating season for peacocks has just begun and Peacock’s FoodForest finally played this week.  Our friends at Barnhart School came by to check up on the FoodForest, to see what they could expect from a permaculture garden in January, the low point in Southern California’s growing season.  

 While most veggie gardens one might see around town have probably hit the dust by now, time to rip everything up, make it bare and start again, it was lush and green in our neck of the woods.  Why?  It’s not magic.  When you plant everything together: trees, shrubs, vines, roots, veggies, flowers, you will constantly have a full and beautiful garden.  

Most of those types of plants are perennials, meaning that they live on from year to year.  We look for long-lasting vegetables, long-lasting everything in the garden.  Um, but why?  

Well, we wouldn’t have nearly enough time to carry on with all the other projects SayPermaculture! has got up our sleeve if we had to keep starting over in the garden three or four times a year.  

Not to mention, we don’t know about you, but we’ve never seen those types of veggie gardens in nature.  Nor have we ever seen little gardeners complete with pruning shears and bottles of herbicides and pesticides that are spontaneously reborn in nature to take care of such gardens.  

Taking nature as our guide, we emulate her and take delight in her wishes with our co-help. 

 

So, with our annual spreading of mulch to keep nourishing the soil while our FoodForest is still young, we pruned and kept our clippings right on site.  We keep building the Forest up: in soil, in seed, in observations, and love. 

Week 3

January 22, 2009 

In your garden and in ours, this week it was all about water.  And finally, we got to the kind we adore most in the garden: rain water.  Such an improvement we noticed this year in our permaculture garden over last.  

In terms of keeping rain in the garden to let it seep in, instead of watching it flow downslope and away, we did scores better than the previous year.  Most water will just slick right off clay soil with no mulch.  A garden resplendent with mulch will keep the water locked in place right where you want it-underground. 

As tribute to our real workers in the garden, the pollinators, we include a monthly review on what’s been flowering.  In any permaculture garden, we want to make sure our pollinators have plenty to feed upon all year long.  This way, they’ll know they’ve got a reliable place to come and you’ll reap the benefits in productivity.  You can do the same in your garden, just do check once a month to make sure you’ve got flowers in bloom all around the garden. 

What’s been flowering this month: 

-Quince 

-Ginger plant ( something  riperian, Africa.  Check back soon.) 

-Holy basil 

-Thai basil 

-Tomatoes (left over from way back when, still harvesting too) 

-Oregano 

-Calendula 

-Nasturtium 

-Feverfew 

-Alpine strawberries 

-Malvaviscus arboreus 

-Shungiku (edible chrysanthemum) 

-Fennel 

-Blackberry 

-Alyssum 

What did we harvest this week? 

1.9 lbs of the following: 

-Collards 

-Kumquats 

Week 2

January 15, 2010   

With no special undertaking of our own, other than creating a hospitable edible forest, We’ve noticed new wildlife in the garden this week, more than We’ve ever seen before.    

We think back to last year at this time.  The garden really was just clods of clay, a big rose bush (3 Sisters), and a couple of gnarly Swiss chard plants.  When we took a big shovel to the soil to break it open, we found no worms, no life, nada.    

The top of the soil?  Well, it follows that part was squeaky clean too.  With a broom and lots of stomping all over it, just to get every last weed and leaf, nothing was left to generate life.    

When looking around at your garden or even public plantings along the center divider where you drive, see if it matches that if the soil top is wiped clean of debris, clippings, or mulch, see if underneath the soil is wiped clean of organisms as well.  Think of the  implications.   

We don’t need a shovel at all to get plantings in today.  Why?  Because we have a fat, I mean can’t get through the doorway fat layer of mulch and clippings that is constantly breaking down and enriching the soil.  And when we stick our hands in the earth, she is crawling with worms.  She breaths and we see her white mycelial network running along everywhere.   

This week we saw two new strains of mushrooms pop up, never seen before in the garden.  When we see mushrooms fruit in the garden, we know that we’re doing something right and rejoice.    

We can already tell that this year’s going to be amazing to watch and help co-create in the garden, along with, and foremost, nature’s wishes indicated via microclimates, weather, microorganisms, pollinators, peacocks and other small animals.   

What did we gather this week?   

• 5.8 lbs of:

   

-Arugula   

-Fennel   

-Salad Burnet   

-Swiss Chard   

-Stevia   

-Holy Basil   

 We also are conducting a formal seed ball experiment.  Want to know the details?  Find out in person during our upcoming event where you’ll also learn how to make your own FoodForest resplendent with worms and mushrooms on January 30!   

 

Week 1

January 5, 2010     

You might all be interested in learning about the basics of the garden before I get into the exciting details of what happened this week:     

Peacock’s FoodForest particulars:     

• Location:  Arcadia, California
• Orientation:  Westerly
• Dimensions:  55′ long x 16′ wide
• Age:  currently 51 weeks young
• Hydrated by: a Rainbird sprinkler irrigation system (arrgh) and supplemental ollas
• Mulched in:   1. homegrown and in-situ, 2. Zeke the Sheik’s magical mulch, 3. and a Kellog spec. mulch
• Nibbled on by:  approximately 20 peafowl (the perimeters at least), other small birds,  countless families of urban critters, but mostly by yours truly
• Covered by:   thick, 2″ gauge netting (though many, many small birds find it a safe place to nest and raise their families, and otherwise take delight in) 

So how much did we eat this week?     

• 21.8 lbs consisting of: 

-Malabar spinach     

-Young luffa sponge      

-Kumquats     

-Yacon    

-Italian dandelion     

-Swiss Chard     

-Thai hot peppers     

-Leeks     

-Bunching onion     

-Stevia    

-Rosemary     

-Several birdhouse gourds (collected, not eaten)    

This, our first week of the new decade, was extraordinarily busy:  bees, blossoms, birds, squirrels, sunlight, sweet guavas growing, and research, requests for seeds, readiness for abundance in the forest this year.     

Although all that is happening, veggie chips linger on the mind.  So here we will start.    

Over the last few months we’ve come to fall completely and deeply in love with… none other than kale chips.  If you haven’t tried, you must.  If you have children who hate to even think about eating anything green, you doubly must try your hand at kale chips.      

When we started making kale chips, we got so obsessed with them that soon the kale we had in Peacock’s FoodForest couldn’t support our habit.  So we branched out to collard chips.  And when we found that collard chips were just as fantastic, we tried Swiss Chard chips.  To our delight we ate to our hearts’ content of Swiss chard chips.      

Now that the winter season has the FoodForest in slow production mode, we decided to take a giant experimental leap into the world of bitter, bitter, b-i-t-t-e-r Italian dandelion chips.  And guess what?  They work too!     

We love greens, all greens, but Italian dandelion was too bitter, Swedish Bitters bitter, for us to regularly handle it in the past.  So the beauties just flourished and multiplied, their lovely magenta and hunter green blades ablaze and a-show in the garden.     

Not anymore!  Catch them while you can, because the fetish of the green chips continues and we’re confident that they’ll be a staple in your healthy household too.     

Want to try?  Alright, but look on only with the promise that you’ll let us know how much they’ve transformed your diet, how you’re feeling full of energy, and, dare I say, rather like the Hulk too?     

LEAFY GREEN CHIPS RECIPE    

1.  Cut greens into bite-size pieces:      

2.  Spread greens on bake-able dish      

3.  Dress greens with spices of your choice    

4.  Bake with pilot light on (or the lowest temp possible) until dehydrated and crunchy    

5.  Share first, eat the rest    

     

Notes:    

- Use a bunch of (washed) organic greens of your choice:  kale, Swiss chard, collards, dandelion    

-We prefer ceramic dishes to bake with.  Anything teflon should be removed immediately from the kitchen.      

-We use several combinations of flavorants:      

Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (a soy sauce like liquid, comes in a spray bottle, give a few squirts)     

Nutritional Yeast with lemon, Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute, and Pink Himalayan Salt     

A batter of Nutritional yeast, lemon, raw apple cider vinegar, Himalayan salt      

Remember your promise!  We had to start the new year off with this great info to boost your health.  Tune in next week as we explore Peacock’s FoodForest and the burgeoning cycle of life already taking place.     

Preliminaries

January 1, 2010     

Beginning this week we will be reporting for 1 year the ins and outs of my food forest at The Arboretum.  This month the food forest turns 1-year-old!  Follow us as we write weekly about our experiences in the garden, what we’re eating, seeding, and seeing.  Each month we will list a summary of the foods we’ve harvested, quantity of pounds, and a few words to characterize each 4-week increments.     

This blogproject will be especially useful to those of you doing permaculture here in Los Angeles, though everyone can benefit from learning about experimental techniques that prove to be successful, what plants (focusing on perennials) that are most plentiful, and any setbacks I endure, which you might then be able to avoid.     

We’ll be weighing the bounty that we harvest from week to week, offering food for thought here and there.  And pictures.  Lots of pictures.     

So check back by the end of this week for our first formal entry for 52 Weeks in Peacock’s FoodForest!     

§ One Response to The Peacocks’ FoodForest

• Leigh Adams says:

  January 6, 2010 at 12:13 am

  This is a luscious, juicy and delightful place to visit. Well done!