Permaculture Diary and Calendar
DVDs/Books, For Sale — by Gordon Williams December 20, 2011
The new year will soon be upon us, but there is still time to get your hands on the 2012 Permaculture Diary and Calendar so you can plan and keep track of all your events and activities.
Comments (0)Food Forest Workshop at the PRI’s Zaytuna Farm – September 21-23, 2011
Courses/Workshops, Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Land, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Trees — by Gordon Williams September 5, 2011
The 3-day Food Forest Workshop at the PRI’s Zaytuna Farm, starting September 21st, is drawing near. Book now to secure your place.
This Black Sapote (sometimes called chocolate pudding fruit) sits in a pool
of light coming through foliage of surrounding support species
One of the main concepts of Permaculture is that of growing perennial plant poly-cultures that don’t require planting every year and provide for many of our needs such as food, fiber and fuel. This is a more regenerative approach that builds soil, instead of destroying it through repeated cultivation, and saves us from so much hard work.
By applying ecological principles through design we can assemble the species from which we wish to obtain a yield in a way that mimics nature so the system is productive, resilient and beautiful. Each different plant in the system fills a role and a niche and leaves little space for ‘weeds’. Productive vines, trees, shrubs, tubers, herbs and ground covers are all assembled as if they were a natural forest.
Put simply, it’s a food forest or forest garden.
Comments (1)Food Forest Workshop at the PRI’s Zaytuna Farm
Courses/Workshops, Food Forests, Plant Systems, Trees — by Gordon Williams July 13, 2011
Would you like to have food for your family now and into the future — food that is truly fresh and packed with flavour, and food that doesn’t cost the Earth? Would you like it to be grown in a way that not only doesn’t destroy soil, but builds it instead, so that people can be fed long after you’re gone? Would it be asking too much for this food to be grown in a way that cleans the air and the water as it passes through, and which contributes to climate restoration?
What you need is a food forest.
Once a rainforest, then cleared for timber and grazing land, a food forest now
grows around this old decaying stump from the original forest.
Tucker for Travellers
Community Projects, Land — by Gordon Williams June 20, 2011
The Arts Factory backpackers resort in Byron Bay, New South Wales, has just been blitzed by an efficient team of Permaculturalists taking part in a five day course focusing on bringing permaculture designs from the page into the landscape.
The Arts Factory backpackers resort sees travellers from all over the globe come to relax and soak up the sun and surf. During their stays they chomp their way through countless meals consisting of food that might have travelled just as far as they did. In an initiative to reduce the impact of these food-consuming hordes of travellers the Permaculture Research Institute has provided a helping hand to set up a kitchen garden.
Comments (2)PRI Ridge Point Dam Earthworks
Conservation, Dams, Earth Banks, Irrigation, Land, Material, Natural Swimming, Swales, Water Harvesting — by Gordon Williams April 7, 2011
On the 31st of January the Permaculture Earthworks course at Zaytuna Farm began with good weather and a group of enthusiastic students ready to see the process of laying the groundwork for functional rainwater harvesting features in landscapes. During the week a variety of works were conducted across the property, including a new dam and swale, swale pipe crossings, building site levelling and, to make everyone’s life a little bit easier, the excavator divided some clumping bamboo.
The first task for the 25-ton excavator was to construct a ridge point dam connected to the end of an existing swale, so as to increase catchment. If the dam were to be built independent of the swale it would not naturally fill. The primary purpose of this dam is to increase the volume of water stored on the property at a height where it can be gravity fed to areas below for use.
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