Farming – Page 5 – School of Permaculture

Permaculture Tip of the Day – Suppressing Bermuda Grass

By nicholas
October 1, 2014
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A permaculture design course will empower you to see that there is no such thing as a true “invasive” species. However, in small plots for vegetation such as kitchen and crop gardens – grasses have been known to be a nuisance. A few years of trial and error, we have found there are some highly […]

Permaculture Tip of the Day – Planning a Food Forest – Part 2

By nicholas
September 17, 2014
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Planning a Food Forest Part 1 found here. Most permaculturist learn very quickly that working with nitrogen fixing legumes and dynamic nutrient accumulators is paramount in planting and grazing systems. We are usually given the major species that work well in most climates and many permaculture courses teach, in great detail, which species grow well […]

Permaculture Tip of the Day – The Need for Case Studies

By nicholas
September 4, 2014
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As I listen to more and more talks on permaculture it becomes clear that case studies are a crucial element to reaching the main stream. Even if it is just logging and documenting a garden on your patio. A case study is not overly involved but is involved. It is about logging events that happen […]

Permaculture Tip of the Day – How to Plan and Develop a Permaculture Site

By nicholas
September 2, 2014
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What is often left out in much of permaculture teaching is the “how to install the design”. And not only what that entails, but steps in how to do it. It is most manageable when the design is implemented in stages and each stage should build upon the previous (an the electrical system works better and installs […]

Permaculture Tip of the Day – Veggie Tractor

By nicholas
August 25, 2014
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When designing a permaculture system we often make liberal use of animal tractors (a permaculture technique of putting animals into cells for a short period of time to feed, and then moving them to another area. This has a multitude of benefits to the land, animals, humans, and ecosystem). When we design a permaculture system with […]

Permaculture Tip of the Day – Where is the Nitrogen in Legumes?

By nicholas
August 19, 2014
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Nitrogen fixation, to say the least, is COOL! The design of nature that allows for bacteria to symbiotically align with legumes, and some other species, to deliver atmospheric nitrogen into the soil is a blueprint for the next phase of the long term food supply for humans. When we combine a technique called chop and […]

Permaculture Tip of the Day – The 4 Layers of a Pond

By nicholas
August 15, 2014
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When studying permaculture at any depth it is easy to be empowered with information such as every forest in the world has seven layers (learn more), or that prairies are layered too (learn more). Since design and order is not exclusive to land systems, we can see the order of life in every pond or aquatic system. The […]

Permaculture Tip of the Day – The 5 Layers of a Prairie

By nicholas
August 14, 2014
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Depending on where you live the word prairie can be exchanged with rangeland or grassland. The popular, and profound, work of Allan Savory and his Holistic Management has shown how large herding animals graze off of rangelands/prairies, and then are moved by predators, thus giving us a blueprint of how rangeland ecosystems function. This knowledge […]

Moving Past Organic Food into Nutrient Density

By nicholas
August 13, 2014
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Written by Nicholas Burtner, published by permaculturenews.org Many farmers and growers are in massive amounts of debt. Many still want to go organic but the time and red tape needed to do so will deliver them into bankruptcy. I have outlined a few steps a farmer/grower can take to move around the red tape and speed […]

Permaculture Tip of the Day – The 7 Layers of a Forest

By nicholas
August 12, 2014
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(Artwork by Graham Burnett from his book “Permaculture A Beginners Guide” – www.spiralseed.co.uk) Every forest in the world has a minimum of seven layers. (Some tropical and subtropical forests have up to nine layers and depending on how we classify layers, bacteria and fungus can hold additional layers as well). What is amazing is that when the order of life […]

Category: Farming