Category: Gardening

2 Permaculture Plants You Can Easily Propagate From The Asian Grocery Store

Every year before the season starts I like to hit the Asian grocery store, not only to pick up my year’s supply of ingredients (since I live so far away from everything) but to get some plant stock to propagate for my garden. There are two plants I get every year–lemon grass and ing chai, or ong choy. Years ago I learned that I could grown my own of both of these useful plants from simple cuttings anyone can buy at their local Asian grocery store. Though native to tropical regions, these two plants have many uses and will produce prolifically, even in temperate regions. Like tomatoes and peppers though, they can only be grown as annuals in colder regions.

Urban Permaculture Oasis at St Pete Ecovillage

This is a more in depth tour of the garden with better quality footage to follow up on my previous garden and food forest videos.  I’m amazed at how free off pests this garden is.  It also combines fruit and vegetables in some places, so the plants can work together in true permaculture fashion.  During winter the peach and nectarine trees have no leaves, so the winter greens and brassicas planted underneath can get plenty of sunlight.  This garden produces abundant food for both the ecovillage and the surrounding community.

Incredible Food Forest at St Pete Ecovillage

I already did a tour of the garden at the ecovillage here in St Petersburg, FL, but I left out the food forest, which takes up a section of the garden space and features a collection of tropical fruit trees. Examples of food production like this illustrate how easy it can be to grow your own fruit, but they also make me realize how disconnected people are from their food that they choose to buy fruit from a store that’s been shipped across the world instead of growing their own. These things seem to grow themselves with little effort, and the reward is a bounty of fresh fruit that tastes like nothing you could find at the store.

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Amazing Permaculture Garden at the St Pete Ecovillage

It’s been a little while since I uploaded a video because I’m working all the time here in Florida. But now I’ve got a backlog of videos to post about what I’ve been doing in St Petersburg. This is a little tour of one of my first visits to the St Pete Ecovillage, which is a very newly established ecovillage in Florida with ambitious goals.

I love that in January and February there is abundant produce coming from the garden. There are fruits and veggies that ripen only at this time of year, but year round there is something coming from the garden. It was in a subtropical region that the modern form of permaculture originated, and Florida is perfectly suited to it. In just a month I’ve seen romaine lettuce go from seedling to harvestable heads. It’s truly unbelievable.

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Planting fall garlic and cartooning

I’m escaping to the garden in this video and planting my fall garlic. Garlic is one of my favorite crops because it grows well every year, it doesn’t get any disease, and it’s easy to maintain. You just drop the cloves in in the fall after most other stuff is done and it comes up first thing in the spring. By mid July it’s finished up and you can follow it with a second fall crop.

If you couldn’t tell, this footage was taken just after the election in November.