Category: Sustainable Agriculture

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.

Making wine from organic grapes: first steps

This was a pretty good year for organic grapes in my vineyard. We didn’t get a late frost and we had dry weather early in the season, which goes a long way toward ensuring there will be a good crop. That means I have enough grapes to make a significant amount of wine this season. In this video, I take you through the harvest, the fermentation, and the pressing of the grapes.

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Trick for Doubling your Corn Harvest

For a long time I planted small plots of corn in my garden and was disappointed with the harvest.  Often the ears wouldn’t fill out properly, missing kernels in spots or not filling out to the end of the ear. This trick helped me get full ears nearly every time and effectively doubled my harvest of food.  There’s nothing better that sweet corn in summer, except maybe getting more of  it out of the same space.