Category: Permaculture

I Made a Delicious Snack From My Sour Cherry Harvest

Obviously key to any permaculture system is picking varieties of plants that are productive, and the sour cherry performs really well in our area. My pie cherry tree, a Montmorency, produced abundantly this season. The fruit is kind of tart to eat out of hand, though some don’t mind. I like to dehydrate the fruit so they can be stored for longer. They can be sweetened for an easy snack, trail food, or ingredient in salads. There’s nothing better than local fruit, and these cherries a loaded with flavor.

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3 Rare and Easy-to-Grow Permaculture Plants You Might Not Know About

At Dancing Rabbit we are always looking for new useful plants that will grow in our climate and soil since it can be challenging given the poor land we inherited. I’ve been trying out many in the last two seasons. Two of these plants are new to me and one I’ve grown for many years and find a vital part of my harvest every year. I was really surprised by how easy these were to start from direct seeding outdoors. I’d tried them indoors the previous year with minimal success. See my other video from last year of me starting a number of permaculture plants.

How to Easily Start Fig Cuttings for Temperate Permaculture

A lot of people don’t know that figs can grow in a lot more places than the tropics. You see them in California and Florida, but there are people that get fruit off their fig trees every year here in northern Missouri. Of course, the trees do die back to the ground every winter, but they still come back and produce a crop every season. If you have a greenhouse or hoop house in a temperate region, your figs won’t die back to the ground. I knew someone who had a full-sized fig tree in their passive solar greenhouse in central Wisconsin.

In this video I show you how you can easily propagate your own figs trees. It’s really easy to turn one fig shoot into several fig trees in a short time, and within a couple years you can be harvesting fresh figs even in northern regions.

Making a Sleeping Potion From Fresh Valerian

Despite the benefits a city can offer, city life can be stressful and polluted with both noise and light, all of which means people are having more trouble sleeping than ever. I used to have insomnia all the time when I lived in the city, and even when over the counter sedatives wouldn’t work I found that the gentle effect of a homemade herbal tincture would do the trick.

I made a valerian, hops, and chamomile tincture blend that served as a great sleeping potion to relax me enough to help me drift off at night. This spring I found a bunch of volunteer valerian growing in my garden so I thought it was time to make some more sleeping potion. I sleep really soundly most nights at Dancing Rabbit, but I figure I can send some of this to friends who live in the city, and it’s always good to have some on hand just in case.

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.

My Permaculture Yard Really Surprised Me This Spring

I made it home to Dancing Rabbit and I found my fruit trees were blooming abundantly, but they still needed pruning. This is a little tour of what was happening in my yard (or warren at DR) as far as my permaculture plantings. In the last couple of years I’ve planted many new useful plants even as the established fruit trees have come into full production. One of the great things about permaculture is that minimal care is needed to maintain plantings, if it’s done right. Pruning my trees is pretty much the only care they need during the season, aside from some pest control. I don’t have to work up the soil, weed, or even water. And these trees will produce more fruit than I can even use myself.

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