#permacuture

I am in a cafe. In between sips of our cappuccino I eavesdrop on a conversation at the adjacent table. It is a conversation between a woman and a younger man. It hovers around permaculture and political theory.

It is about healing something called the metabolic rift. But what is that? And how does permaculture fit into it? And what is permaculture’s relationship to political theory that they are discussing?

Intrigued, I listen in…

The metabolic rift and how to heal it: eavesdropping on a conversation https://medium.com/permaculture-3-0/the-metabolic-rift-and-how-to-heal-it-eavesdropping-on-a-conversation-2eda0c1a092e?source=friends_link&sk=bd7f8e28bde53a517c5c1ba082669e59

Yeah, I don’t know what to say: bad germination rate, bipolar weather, lots of hungry bugs ...

Things in the little grow lean-to have a really slow germ rate Unless you be a little marigold (go babies go). I mean, 14 days for a courgette/zucchini to germinate? Ptsz ! I got rhubarb seedlings by then! Radishes did their radish thing. Popped their wee heads up and just as fast, had them taken off by bugs. Only about 15% germ rate for the peas and I pre-soaked those things to give them a head start run. I’m not sure I want to try another set as I came across a nest of micelettes in the hay I keep for the hens (they are heeereee... and hungry). The autumn raspberries are monsters! The blueberries and the eldest white currants are looking like they are anemic. Their leaves are very strange. Either I got a disease or another unappreciated aerial spraying. Like wtf. Just stop.

Days are nicer and getting longer so the hens get out a bit more but yet, they don’t want to be out. They just fuss and want their meal worms brought to them promptly at four (teatime for hens, you know). I literally have to treat them like the kids, being real stern ‘go play outside’ and run them out with a stick ... then the hens want in the big house with me and sit on the back stoop and whine bc that’s what they do. So I have to herd them down the walk to the other end of the garden and tell them to stay there which they are semi compliant.

Flowers are blooming. Most the early bulbs are finishing up. The last of the tulips are passing. The Forget-me-nots, coral bells, jupiter’s beard and iris are taking off, The camilas are winding down but the rhodie is starting. The quince and the apples are glorious! The roses haven’t started but you can see the Lady Banks is going to be a riot of yellow in a couple of days -- just in time for a week long rain! I’m working on the rose tunnel out at the farm this weekend and feeling the need to overwhelm the project with plants instead of working with Time. Yes, I’m impatient.

I still haven’t down loaded pictures. I spent a couple of weeks being obsessed with the cloud formations, literally, my head in the clouds instead of my nose to the ground. So maybe instead of flower or garden pictures, there will be a series of clouds and sunrises.

PERMACULTURA 

Continuando con la silenciosa revolución en esta ocasión comparto una serie de 12 principios sobre los cuales se diseña una auténtica revolución cultural que sustenta un  proceso abierto para proveer a las necesidades de la gente dentro de los limites ecológicos del planeta tierra.

Recuerdo antes las  3 bases de la permacultura sobre las cuales se apoyan los 12 principios que hoy comparto. Las 3 bases son:

•     CUIDAR A LAS PERSONAS

•     CUIDAR A LA TIERRA

•     COMPARTIR EQUITATIVAMENTE

Por si antes no lo habías leído, así comenzaba en este blog los…primeros pasos en la revolución silenciosa.

El proceso de proveer a las necesidades de la gente dentro de los límites ecológicos requiere una revolución cultural. En el actual contexto histórico, resulta atractiva la idea de un simple conjunto de principios guiadores que tengan una aplicación amplia, incluso universal.

AGROECOLOGIA

La Agroecología está orientada a establecer parámetros para el manejo ecológico de los recursos naturales incorporando una acción social colectiva de carácter participativo, permitiendo de esa manera el diseño de metodologías para alcanzar un desarrollo sustentable. Pretende plantear un enfoque holístico y una estrategia sistémica que reconduzca el curso alterado de la coevolución social y ecológica, mediante el establecimiento de mecanismos de control de las fuerzas productivas con el objeto de disminuir las formas de producción degradantes, que ocasionan daños a la naturaleza y a la sociedad, generando la actual crisis ecológica. 

CONSEJOS

En las siguiente imágenes, se pueden encontrar distintos consejos sobre la cosecha, los cultivos colaborativos o asociación de ellos y como el uso de algunos “bichos” pueden beneficiar a las plantaciones. 

I'm not new at battling slugs, my Mom used to have it on our chore list as kids, since we ate from our yard growing up, no mercy "take the box of salt out there and get them!"

I've learned a lot more about them the last years, and find I can effectively reduce the population to manageable numbers in just a couple years of gardening at a new place.

Here's the thing about slugs: That slime trail that they leave is how they navigate, it's critical that a gardener patrols the perimeter of a garden area during the rainy season once it's warmed up.  If you can get the slugs before they create a slug trail highway into your beds, half the battle is won.

They hide during the sunny days, and forage at night or when it's raining.  SO get out there at night with a flashlight and get them!

I used to just step on them, only to find that by the next day there were a half dozen other slugs now eating the one I'd stepped on, or flies rolling in to lay their eggs.  The best method, and it might seem gross, mean or extreme....is to use bamboo kabob skewers and spear them, load up the skewer and toss it aside in you compost or garbage.

Be diligent in the spring, when the eggs that may have been laid in your beds are hatched and the tiny little bastards start going at your greens.  Use slug bait when you've planted out seedlings, and keep on your nightly patrols.

In a couple years you'll find yourself buying less slug bait, and shedding fewer tears over losing plants.

Plants on Vulcan What fragments of endemic plant life remain on Vulcan support the geological evidence that a great natural disaster occurred around 10 thousand years ago. 1, 2 Some plant orders are endemic to the planet in a way that would not be possible given limited means of transportation of progeny across continental deserts. There is also a fossil record of the ancestors of current plants in locations that would not support them now. 4 Populations on oases would behave almost like those on islands in the ocean, causing divergent evolution and unique forms of plant life. Plants confined to large oases are surrounded by deserts that are difficult to traverse, and populations would begin to evolve and fill niches in that location, becoming different from populations in other locations with which they would not cross-populate.3  However there is some limited transfer of plant material across and through deserts. Animals that carry seeds in their fur, feathers and dung are of course important. Many plants rely on shavokh to first consume and then carry seeds to new oases.4 Subterranean plants are a little known order on Vulcan, which take advantage of relative moisture and compensating for reduced levels of light in caves, lava tubes or just underneath the soil. Those who know the signs can gain emergency supplies of water  from subterranean plants by knowing where to dig.4 Carnivorous plants are more widely known about such as the d'mallu (vine) and sir-soss'im (tumbleweeds) 1 The soils in deserts can be rich simply because materials important to life decay, and then are not used due to a lack of water. This is no exception on Vulcan, which also has relatively young soils throughout the planet, renewed by frequent volcanic activity, even in the face of elevated levels of ionizing radiation from Vulcan's star as compared to Earth, which does damage soils somewhat. 4 Carnivorous plants are after nitrogen and copper that can be available from animals but even more importantly the water that is needed to unlock those resources. Almost all plants on Vulcan are adapted to elevated levels of salts in the soil that are of great interest to scientists on Earth. 4 Herbs, Poisonous and Medicinal plants 5 Gal-en-du'un - dream moss, a lichen that produces a smoke when burned that is narcotic to     inhale Birkeen - a sweet Vulcan herb, often used in flavouring water Saya - which makes an intoxicating beverage D'lechu - a fruit which is used ceremonially for it's narcotic juice Food plants 5 Barkaya marak - a peanut like legume made into soup Fori -  a vegetable Hirat - grape-like vine Kap-yar - a wheat-like grain Kaasa - a blue-green fruit Khara - a desert bush with edible fleshy stem cores Mashya - a tuberous vegetable Pla-savas  - the famous bluefruit Savas dukal-yel-travek - Globefruit Yon savas  - firefruit

Some more interesting plants can be found here: http://kirshara.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/the-dzhaleyl-script/