Reading Time: 4 minutes Whenever someone asks me to help them design their site, my inner designer says, “give me a topographic map of your site.” With a topographic map, I can feel the terrain and decipher what’s happening from a distance. I can see what the landscape looks like, how the water moves, where there’s a potential for […]
How to work with nature instead of against it to avoid hard work
Reading Time: 4 minutes This is a powerful quote, and in this post, I will illustrate with examples from my property how to implement the ‘working with nature’ permaculture principle in practice. Here’s the thing… We spend most of our days on our permaculture properties, working and thinking about what we need to do. There are always plants to […]
The five key features of a permaculture property (and how to design them)
Reading Time: 10 minutes Do you know what makes a permaculture property so unique? Well, it all comes down to the very heart of permaculture – the permaculture design. In contrast to conventional properties – i.e. homesteads, farms, or farmsteads, in permaculture, there is special emphasis on creating a masterplan for the site. This, when implemented, helps us be […]
How to Create a Food Forest Plant List Using a Permaculture Plant Database
Reading Time: 5 minutes Sometimes, finding the right plants for your food forest can be frustrating. What types of trees should be in your canopy layer? What N-fixing plant should you use? What types of shrubs will be suitable for your site? In my earlier post, I outlined the ‘habitat mimicry’ approach to selecting plants for your food forest. […]
How to design a Food Forest with Swales layout
Reading Time: 6 minutes In today’s blog post, I want to showcase the exact design process of creating a layout for a food forest with swales. But before we start with the process, you have to understand one crucial thing about your site: the slope of the land. You see, you can only install swales on gently to moderately […]
How to Choose the Most Suitable Plants for Your Food Forest
Reading Time: 4 minutes When it comes to growing plants in your food forest you always have two choices: Option 1. Adapt the plants to your site conditions; OR Option 2. Adapt your site conditions to the plants. The option of adapting your site conditions to the plants is definitely one where you’ll need to continuously put extra effort […]
How to prepare for climate extremes – my site observation method
Reading Time: 5 minutes What now seems normal would have been considered highly abnormal just a few years ago. I live in a continental climate with traditionally cold winters, hot summers and plentiful precipitation that’s equally distributed throughout the year. That probably best describes the weather we used to enjoy. But today the winters are not cold, the summers […]
7 Smartphone Apps That’ll Make You A Better Permaculture Farmer and Designer
Reading Time: 14 minutes Can you imagine your life as a permaculture farmer without a chainsaw… electric fence… plastic pipe… battery-powered tools…?Or can you imagine your life without being able to Google something when you have a burning question about your chickens, trees, various plant problems…?Well, it wasn’t all that long ago, and some of you can probably remember […]
