No.33648[View All]
Old thread (v1):
https://leftypol.org/hobby/res/7136.htmlThe practice and principles of Permaculture are one of the most important tools for not only creating a sustainable socialism, but also for repairing the damage done to the global ecosystem by capitalism, and lessening your individual reliance on the current capitalist system.Permacultural practice and socialism are two very powerful allies, and learning about permaculture should be necessity for modern socialists and communists.
No.36351
Do I blog that I got wasted instead of working on the yard? Well, I did. It rained yesterday so I don’t gotta water shit.
No.36352
What's a good ground cover for an orchard in a subtropical climate?
No.36355
>>36352depends on the trees, depends on the specific region, find a native local plant that has some symbiotic relationship with the trees of the orchard. not only that, use multiple plants. use bushes or something. dont do monoculture
No.36401
>>36400Are there any community gardens near you?
You can do a lot with house plants, my neighbor has one that he moves outside when it's warm and at first I assumed he was transplanting a tree. its huge. That oughta suck up some carbon also it looks nice
As for creating an ecosystem; do you have a balcony? I'd stuff it full of native plants for the birds and bees to enjoy. Maybe make a little rain garden. If not my next thought is to look into making terrariums but if you're only objective is to contribute to improving the environment however marginally than that might not satisfy you.
No.36411
>>36400Anon, depending on your skills, you can do A LOT
I suggest going down to Home Depot and buying about 20 small flower pots and lining them up against the bottom row of your window. fill them with INDOOR potting soil (not outdoor, and NOT "organic", you don't want bugs, get the most capitalist processed shit you can find like Miracle Grow. Just trust me
Then start planting seeds. Go to the seed store and buy like 20 little bags of seeds. Plant them randomly in your pots and see what starts growing. Start planting the seeds from your fruits and vegetables and seeing if they sprout. Start collecting seeds from your local environment and growing them. It will help you learn the life cycles of your local plants
Let me be real anon, that window space is basically equivalent to a plot of land of that size. Its just much more limited and you cant build interlinked root systems as easily unless you use long trough flower beds, which id suggest not doing when you start. using individual flower pots will help you understand the water requirements of individual plants better, and prevent pest and fungus spreading
You can also build shelving units upward, or create a hanging pot wire system, to have multiple layers of pots all the way up the window, as much as your heart desires
Do not let yourself think you can't grow a healthy thriving and productive garden in that space, because trust me you CAN do it.
Start with succulents and do NOT hesitate to go ahead and buy some plants which you can't practically grow from seed, nothing wrong with buying plants to learn this process. think of it like, you are growing the plants in your brain, moreso than growing them by your window. those plants by your window don't matter. you can start learning NOW
No.36413
>>36411Also, start small scale at first. Learning to deal with mold, fungus, and pest bugs is your first priority honestly. You'll also have to revise your cleaning habits significantly, and start regularly dusting and vacuuming. So start small at first or it will get overwhelming and you will more likely fail
No.36419
>>36355Mainly fingerlimes, some macadamia trees as well. Region is eastern Australia, but that's the extent I'll disclose. Have taken over a rundown 5-acre farmstead, so keen to figure out what to plant.
No.36433
>>36411Thanks comrade.
I've started with a few succulents because it's a warm environment and they're tough and low maintenance, and I've managed to keep them alive for a few months so I think I'm ready for some herbs.
>>36401Unfortunately no open area that a bird or bee would visit. There are a couple of community gardens I can try visiting now that you mention it, so I can go see what's up there.
No.36567
u ppl think asking random people in neighborhoods if you can garden on their lawn is viable?
No.36612
How did our resident gardeners do this summer?
I managed to get 25 pounds of cherry tomatoes, 15 pounds of potatoes (still harvesting these) and 20 or so heads of garlic (which I'll be replanting shortly) stored away on top of what i've already eaten. Unfortunately the weather around here was not ideal this year- bone dry spring followed up with a very wet June and a relatively cool August. I appreciated it personally but my plants didn't and it rendered the rain water harvesting setup I put together last year pretty useless. Everything else that was planted (peppers, beans, radishes) was a bust
Next year Im going to plant way more potatoes and I want to give artichokes a go, supposedly the latter grows like a weed around here and are very a good source of calories
No.36617
>>36612nice. I've got a small list of crops I plan to plant next year, though I'm unhappy because I know I've barely started.
No.36635
>>36612nice job anon. have u considered permaculture? are u growing trees? u can even just grow them in pots if u didnt choose a location yet
No.36636
>>36617Remember you can plant some stuff in the fall too. Garlic for example
>>36635>have u considered permacultureof course. Most of the yard is wild with the 2nd biggest share being my perennials and only a small part (where I actually get decent sun) is for annuals, and even there I do a lot thats inspired by permaculture. I could go on all day about that- no till mulched hugelculture inspired raised beds properly orientated to the sun with swales as paths, a rain water harvesting collection system, no artificial fertilizers, no herbicides/pesticides- yada yada yada
>are u growing treesthe property on all sides is practically shaded out by trees so Im just putting in understory trees and shade tolerant bushes and ground cover, but yes there are two trees that I cant bring myself to remove despite stealing what little sun I have left (Im sure they have other benefits anyway) and Im also planting native trees on the northern end of the property.
I would like to get some plants in pots though, some of the best sun I have is in places where I unfortunately can't have a garden, and I would love some more indoor plants as well. I have the token ones but nothing special. They really lighten a room especially in a cold climate like mine
No.37206
leaves are falling
fall is passing
winter is coming
warmth isn't lasting
what winter preparation plans do you anons have? how was your harvest?
No.37643
its time to start reflecting and planning. what will yall do different next year in your gardens?
No.37644
>>37643declare war on the squirrels who stole all my peanuts
No.37646
>>37644dont worry, they either buried them so they will become compost, or ate them and shit them out so they are compost, they played a part in the cycle of nature and you will be better off for it in the end
No.37669
>>37644total squirrel death
No.37672
>>37670speaking of beavers, they fell trees all over a friend's property, dangerously close to his buildings at times. but he's a landlord so critical support to our beaver comrades
No.37673
>>37643Adding Jerusalem Artichokes to the rotation. In spite of the name they are neither form Jerusalem nor are they an artichoke. Rather it's a sunflower(?) that produces a delicious tuber and it's native to north America so hopefully it'll be easy to grow. Not sure if I like the taste of either this or the artichokes it supposedly resembles in taste but we'll see.
otherwise wondering if I should drop garlic in favour of more tomatoes and potatoes. I love garlic but it's so cheap where I am I dont think it's worth growing.
No.37674
>>37673Garlic is one of the best companion plants. It is good at repelling pests, small enough to easily fit, and easy to propagate. It's particularly good to plant alongside tomatoes since it goes will with them in sauces, grows lower than tomatoes, repels common tomato pests, and can enhance the flavor of the tomatoes. Tomatoes will absorb some of the chemicals of the garlic if they're planted together.
Other plants that go well with tomatoes
https://www.thespruce.com/companion-plants-for-tomatoes-1403289 No.37675
>>37674true though I'm pretty sure this is the case with all alliums ya? In which case my walking onions will do the job of being a natural pest repellent. Still you raise a good point, maybe I'll just stick the garlic in with the tomatoes? Can't say I've done any companion planting. I mean i did it out of laziness this year as I planted flowers, then decided I wanted a tomato bed there but couldnt bring myself to pull the flowers out so I let them coexist and while it made it a pain to prune and harvest, neither plant really seemed to suffer for it
No.37676
in fact the flowers acted a trellis for the tomatoes!
No.37677
>>37675You could grow whatever combination of garlic and walking onions you want based on what you intend to produce and harvest.
No.37756
>>37673>Jerusalem Artichokes From my experience, they are really easy to grow. They are nice in a soup, maybe with a few potatoes and a bit of leek and then blend it all up with some cream. You can roast them in the oven as well.
But they spread very easily, and they'll keep coming back year after year unless you manage to dig up every last bit of the plant. Which can be a bit of a pain in the ass if you need the space for something else.
No.40530
Spring is upon us, the bees are buzzing, the birds are birding. What will you plant? What have you planted? Are you ready for the harvest?
Have you planned well enough to make it through next winter?
No.40545
>>39606Fascinating. I like the fact that they're not focusing on cash crops, either. I guess they could sell the excess millet and sorghum, but that's not the point.
No.40546
>>35884True, but the wonderful thing about coppicing (and pollarding, but it's more limited) is that you can get so much usable timber out of a coppice. Everything from faggots (I mean bundles of sticks) to fence posts, if you're willing to wait long enough and have the right species. People even used to make houses out of wood derived from Coppices.
It's entirely sustainable too, and creates habitats mimicing Old-Growth or Ancient woodland. You can also have a Coppice with Standards, which is where you leave some trees uncoppiced (standard) and harvest them as and when. You could have these be big hardwoods or fruit trees, if you want to get some agroforestry going.
No.40555
>>40545If they allowed cash crops to influence this it would quickly corrupt the project and miss the point entirely. The cash crops would outcompete the alternatives since the people planting those would be able to reinvest the cash back into the project and grow the amount they were planting. Over time they would come to dominate and the ethos would shift towards typical cash crop production, which is to say maximally exploiting the land and failing at regenerative agriculture. Although this kind of project has a major defense against that dynamic: it's by nature using the least desirable land. Anybody trying to make money on cash crops would rather invest in growing somewhere more ideal. It might become a problem as the project continues if it successfully holds or pushes back the desertification.
>>40546IDK how viable coppiced wood would be for construction in the present day, at least for housing. It certainly has a lot of uses however, and would serve as a very useful component of a permaculture project, since the coppiced wood could be used for things like fences, trellises, retaining walls, hugelkultur, etc while being biodegradable.
No.40558
>>40530>Spring is upon usstill about a meter of snow where I live
>What will you plant?taters, sugar snaps, carrots, salad at the very least. none of the multi-year plants I planted took root. will try to pre-plant some raspberry and whatnot. I will also continue my hemp experiments
a friend of mine is interested in helping out this season. I told him he can plant however much he wants, I'm at no risk of running out of land that can be farmed with the tools I have
No.40560
>>40555I'm going to arrange what is basically a coppice by cutting down about a hectare's worth of worthless leafy trees, but for the purpose of feeding the local game (deer, moose) once they start sprouting fresh branches at grazing height
No.40611
>>40560make sure you divide the hectare up and do it on a cycle, then, as the wildlife will likely get through the patch you cut quite quickly, and probably wont give it time to recover if they aren't given another food source.
No.40614
>>40611they already graze other parts of it quite heavily with no ill effect, other than there being basically a hectare of knee-high shrubs
No.40616
>>40611also funny thing: I originally considered that shrub area to be completely useless and offered to sell it to some friends. but now that I'm into hunting I realize it's actually useful and I want to grow the local roe deer and moose population
No.40624
>>40617I hadn't though of that, but I suppose you're right.
I volunteered with my local wildlife trust about 10 years ago to help coppice a patch of woodland near me. I've been back once or twice since then, but not recently. I might go there on Saturday to see if I can find the old patch. I'll take some pictures share them here
>>40614That's the problem! If you want to coppice it, you'll want to let it grow back up before cutting it again. At the moment the herbivores are essentially keeping it as a grove or field, so if you want any kind of taller vegetation you'll have to fence it off somehow.
Having said all that, I'm not sure what type of habitats Roe and Moose prefer to live in. Roe definitely hide in woodland during the day, and I see them feeding in fields too, but do they prefer high forest, or immature woodland with a low canopy, like you'd find in a coppice after a few years of growth?
No.40625
>>40624>so if you want any kind of taller vegetation you'll have to fence it off somehowanon the entire point is to feed said herbivores. me and the neighbor have dubbed it "the buffet". I want them to become regulars, because my hunting stand is right next to it
>Having said all that, I'm not sure what type of habitats Roe and Moose prefer to live in. Roe definitely hide in woodland during the day, and I see them feeding in fields too, but do they prefer high forest, or immature woodland with a low canopy, like you'd find in a coppice after a few years of growth?they prefer border areas and young forests with saplings that are easy to graze (to the chagrin of forest companies). old forests don't provide much besides bark, which only red deer tend to eat, and we don't have any red deer where I live
No.40638
>>40625Alright then, it sounds like you know what you're doing. When you've done it, be sure to let us know how well it works (if the website still exists then).
No.40639
>>40638>if the website still exists thenwdym? also yeah I'll try to keep the thread posted on my land use shenanigans
No.40640
>>40639Just that these things can take a while, and there's lots of talk about how about how we're hemorrhaging users. It'll probably be here for years to come, though.
I look forward to hearing about your endeavours!
No.41156
Got my first compost pile up to 50C. Feels good anons. Won't use this pile in my veggies, but hopefully will make 70C with the next pile
No.41631
>>41156naisu. I've finally had luck with compost for the first time and I think the difference was not using the black plastic container and instead just piling it up on the ground. I'm guessing the container in full sun got too hot and dried things out whereas the pile is in the shade most of the time. The container also made it pretty much impossible to flip/mix it up occasionally but that alone shouldn't have prevented it from breaking down but rather would just slow things down (hot vs cold compost). Still didn't make enough to replace imports but it's nice to get some use out of grass clippings and kitchen scraps.
Speaking of compost the county gave everyone a green bin for free and collects organics biweekly. On the one hand it's nice for those people that don't garden but it goes to show how valuable your biomass is and Ill be damned if Im going to give it away just to have the city sell it back to me. That bin will be collecting dust in the garage
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