Permaculture for Renters :: regenerative design for the landless many || SEO.....

(This is the third post in a series about ways in which renters can reuse greywater. For a definition of greywater, and why it’s a good idea to recycle it, check this out. Here are links to the other posts in the series: 1 , 2)

Irrigating with Greywater

The daily volume of greywater produced by the average American (31 gal) is enough to irrigate about 227 square feet of growing space at 1/4 inch of water per day. That’s considerable area, especially on an urban lot!

But if you’ve created a system for collecting greywater (as suggested in this post), and want to start using it for irrigation purposes, don’t just start throwing buckets of greywater onto the vegetable garden. A more sanitary use involves applying greywater to pits filled with organic matter.

Manual Distribution to Mulch Basins

Most renters don’t have the luxury of implementing a fully integrated greywater system, so in lieu of a gravity fed distribution setup that passively conveys greywater from sink to landscape, we get to stay in shape by lugging buckets full of water to mulch basins. (Call the exercise a stacked function!)

Mulch basins are trenches, swales, or pits dug 6-12 inches deep and filled with a course, carbonaceous mulch material, such as woodchips. When greywater is poured into a mulch basin (as in the photo to the right), it is simultaneously purified by billions of micro-organisms, and infiltrated into the soil, which acts as another fine filter before the water reaches an aquifer or surface water body. Placed adjacent to (hopefully edible) trees, shrubs, and beds, mulch basins offer an abundance of year-round moisture that plants are able to slurp up before it sinks into the subsoil. All of this water that would normally go into a sewer or septic system.
Read the rest of this entry »

(For previous talk about container gardening, check this out.)

I keep having a lot of random thoughts and links that I want to get out to y’all, and not the time to develop each into a post of its own.  So here’s another batch or snacks for your brain…

Links

Life on the Balcony, a beginner container gardener’s wet dream, just finished a blog carnival about edible containers. Lots of good reading there. Check the rest of the site for more container gardening information than you could ever assimilate.

I find a lot of stuff on this site (aesthetically) boring, but it has a huge range of ideas. Check it out if you’re needing inspiration around different materials to make containers out of.

The ever-informative about.com has a section devoted to container gardening that I didn’t come across until just recently. Suprisingly extensive.

Books

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Fresh Food from Small Spaces by RJ Rupenthal, and Garden Anywhere by Alys Fowler. Both are superb books for tenant farmers, and while container gardening is a core focus of each, they explore other interesting topics as well.

Places to find great containers for the 2010 season:

For a lot of us in the northern hemisphere, right now is the time to be gearing up for planting, which means get your containers ready!  If you need cheap containers to re-purpose or upcycle, check out these places:

• Yardsales
• Estate sales
• Flea markets
• Thriftstores
• End-of-Season sales at nurseries (varies by region, generally November here in the Pacific NW)

There you go for now.  Happy gardening!

-LB

[image source: ...eeek! can't remember]

Randomly selected, assorted snacks for your brain:

Liquid Gold

“We all think of human pee as gross and something that ought to be vigorously “cleaned up” or sanitized. However, human urine is actually sterile (unlike faeces, urine is bacteria-free). This liquid by-product of our daily lives can be a rich food source if it gets into the RIGHT part of the right ecosystem.”

(quoted from submersible design)

Recycling urine as fertilizer is one of the easiest ways to participate responsibly in several major nutrient cycles.

For more info, and a lot of renter-appropriate strategies check out the book Liquid Gold: The Lure and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants. Author’s website here, Amazon.com listing here.
Read the rest of this entry »

(This is the second post in an at least three part series about ways in which renters can reuse greywater. For a definition of greywater, and why it’s a good idea to recycle it, check this out.  For the first post, go here.)

Following up from Monday’s post about greywater re-use using the p-trap disconnect method, here’s one about washing dishes in a water-efficient manner while capturing the washwater for flushing toilets (or irrigation, but that’ll be covered later).
Read the rest of this entry »

A reader recently requested a post with more resources for container gardening, specifically, types of containers to use, and where to get them.  I’m going to split it up into two installments: this post will discuss upcycled container ideas when visual aesthetics aren’t so much an issue, and I’ll follow up next week with one looking at containers to use when they’ll be subject to a more discerning eyes. (That follow-up post here.)

Here are some of my favorite things to use for container gardens when a rough, upcycled aesthetic is OK:

Read the rest of this entry »

(The following is for folks in temperate areas of the northern hemisphere.  If you’re in the southern hemisphere, read this again in six months.)

I’ve had a lot of folks asking me this month “What’s can I  be propagating right now?”  While the window for woody plants has largely closed until mid-to-late summer (at which time you can do budding and cuttings of many species), right now is a great time to be dividing perennials, especially culinary and medicinal herbs, and canefruit.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I was on a walk with my son and stumbled upon this sign (pictured right) on a lawn near our house.

The part of me that was raised in the suburbs, loathing every broadleaved ‘weed’ that popped up in my family’s manicured lawn, chuckled at what I thought was someone’s sense of humor: Who the hell wants free dandelions?!

But my flashback quickly wore off and as I returned to my senses, it occured to me: I was looking at a free salad bar, and whether the intent was sarcasm or not, someone had put a sign up so that I wouldn’t overlook it!

Try This:

It’s not only important for folks to remember where food comes from (soil/plants/animals, not grocery store shelves), but also that it is growing all around us, all the time.  So why not contribute a little informal signage to remind folks of this, and introduce them to the often unnoticed edibles that show up just about everywhere…

(If you’re here in Portland and haven’t seen Urban Edibles, check it out!)

(This is post 3 of 7 in a series, to see the post about the series, click here.)
I hear them over and over again, stories beginning with “The landlord won’t let us…”

As many of you have already discovered, it can sometimes feel like a crapshoot asking a landlord if you can do something as logical as digging up a neglected lawn to grow food.  One of Holmgren’s permaculture principles applies particularly well when working with landlords: start with slow and small solutions.  Instead of asking if you can tear up the entire lawn a week after moving in, you might consider asking if you can start with just a small portion, or maybe even just planting a few vegetables into areas that are already landscaped.

Once your landlord sees that you’re responsible and able to make good on commitments, they’ll feel that they have less to worry about when you want to scale up.  Work your way up incrementally, building trust as you go.

Here are some other ideas to consider:

Read the rest of this entry »

We didn’t really plan it.  It all started when I asked our neighbors a nonchalant question at their potluck in early February: “Can we garden in your backyard?”  Fast forward to this past Sunday, and we’ve laid the groundwork for a pretty magnificent farm next-door.

Over the season, I’ll be documenting hour for hour, dollar for dollar, and pound for pound our labor and monetary inputs, and food output (respectively) of the garden in its first year of establishment*. (Update 1/27/10 - I never kept any records…oops!)  I want to make a strong case to renters everywhere: you can plant a garden that saves you money, provides you with ultra-local organic food, AND helps you build stronger relationships with your neighbors, even if you can’t dig up your own yard (or don’t even have one to dig up).  Along the way I’ll be posting about my methodology, along with ideas about how you can use the same tips and strategies wherever you are.

Try this at home, kids!

I’m willing to bet that most renters who live in a residential neighborhood and are unable, for whatever reason, to dig up their yard, have someone on their block who is eager to have their lawn turned into a productive food-growing space.  With any luck, they’ll also be happy to swing a shovel and chip in on garden-related expenses (seeds, tools, etc.) as well.  So don’t wait!  Start asking your neighbors about their patches of sod that are just waiting to become a garden.

Happy planting!

(P.S. If you’re currently gardening on borrowed land, or are about to get started, send photos and stories to share@permacultureforrenters.com)

*While this has been done before, I haven’t found readily available documentation for an urban site using low-input methods.

(This is post 2 of 7 in a series, to see the post about the series, click here.)

(While not unique to renters, and probably not groundbreaking news to many of you, changing our behavior is essential to building a sustainable culture.)

Basic shifts in how we get around (less by car, more by bike, foot, or public transit), eat (more local), use energy (turn down the thermostat!), and consume other resources have enormous effects on our ecological footprint.  The design tools offered by permaculture provide a framework through which we can redesign our relationship to all of these things. Here are a few examples that utilize the design method known as Zone and Sector Analysis:

Getting Around

When it comes to changing our behavior as urban-folk, I really like the thinking put forth in Bart Anderson’s article “Zones and Sectors in the City” as a way of planning where we go and how we get there.  Anderson suggests that in urban settings, instead of labeling zones by their frequency of visitation, we can describe them in terms of the fossil fuel energy expended to reach them:

• Zone 1 - Walking
• Zone 2 - Biking
• Zone 3 - Public Transit
• Zone 4 - Car
• Zone 5 - Airplane

Read the rest of this entry »