If you shift your focus from planting only for yourself, to planting for a whole non-human community, you will discover that you receive more. As you feed pollinators, so they will feed you.
Ever since I completed my Permaculture Design Certificate, I’ve been searching for ways to engage the public on Permaculture garden design and various environmental topics. I did some consultations, started writing articles, and gave workshops on topics ranging from seed saving and sprouting to no-trash challenges for school kids. I’ve been studying herbalism, foraging,
It’s that time again, the time when the rains come, and the plants turn brown, their flowers going to seed. It’s time to collect and save seeds. Seed saving may be the most neglected element of gardening. Every winter, most of us feast our eyes upon the pages of seed catalogs, drooling over the
The practice of Permaculture is grounded in ethics and principles, and many new permaculture students get bogged down by them, impatient to move forward and learn the actual design system. “Why all this philosophy?” they ask. “I just want to learn to design amazing gardens and grow a lot of food.” It’s easy to
Every year I do a species inventory of my garden. I make note of which plants are growing where, and how well they tolerate the level of sun, the soil, and their neighboring plants. Sometimes I discover that plants fail to thrive in our clay soil; such is the case with our blueberry and
If we look around us, we can see evidence of environmental degradation. We might see a stand of trees that has been chopped down. We might have friends or relatives who have lost their homes or towns to a wildfire. Perhaps we hear about the extinction of a species we know and love. Now
You can go ahead and call me a nerd, and it would be true. I engage in many nerdly pursuits and thought patterns. When I’m driving my car, with my phone charging, I find myself wondering if charging my phone in the car lowers the car’s performance just a tiny bit, so that the car
It’s that time of year! The time when I take stock of my seed supplies and decide what to plant, when to plant, and where to plant. In past years, I’ve usually planted whatever I wanted, just for the joy of tasting new varieties and species, but these days I’m feeling external pressure to anticipate
The Dirt. A few weeks ago, after pondering all the chaos in the world, I decided to sow seeds for winter crops like beet greens, hardy lettuces, arugula, and cilantro. The rains hadn’t yet come, so I knew I was in for some hard work. I took my shovel and hori knife and turned
All summer long I was terrified that my house would burn down, in fact, not just my house, but my whole town. Every day I scanned the weather reports, hoping against hope for rain. When I went on a trip, my husband had to stay home, in case of fire. He’d be home to
