Vital Permaculture Skill: Grafting Pears and Apples
Grafting is a vital permaculture skill to learn, and though it may seem complicated and tricky, once you get the hang of it and know the tricks, it is incredibly easy. It opens up a whole new world of potential for your plantings on your land. In this video I follow the progression of my pear and apple grafts through the season.
Harvesting the Smells of Permaculture
Permaculture is all about making the human landscape more natural and productive for our benefit. When people think about a permaculture harvest, they don’t often think about anything but the physical produce, such as fruit or vegetables. There is so much more that comes from our altering of the landscape to suit our needs. The delicious scents of plants might not be tangible, but the benefits they can bring to our lives are. Get out and enjoy them while you can, just like you’d enjoy homegrown sweet corn, or a wild persimmon.
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Permaculture Tour of Dancing Rabbit’s Orchard and Food Forest
The is a spring permaculture tour of the DR orchard, which was first planted around time the founders bought the land over 20 years ago. Parts of the orchard have gone in and out of production over the years, but some of the fruit and nut trees have been steadily growing and are almost to the point of paying off.
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The Cheapest, Easiest Market Garden Salad Spinner DIY
You can buy a small salad spinner to wash and prepare a small salad, or you can make a farm scale spinner out of an old washing machine, but for those in between amounts, there is another super easy and cheap method I’ve used with success for many years.
I mentioned my water system explanation video and here is the link:
This vineyard will grow THOUSANDS of pounds of veggies too
Part of sustainable food production is planting a diversity of crops. Permaculture promotes stacking functions and synergistic plantings of crops and perennials. Every season I make use of the space in between my rows of grapes to grow vegetable produce on a larger scale. This space is normally kept in grass or a cover crop, but this seems like a waste of land when it could be producing more food for sale or home eating. All that space needs to be mowed and maintained throughout the season. In addition, by planting vegetables I can reduce the competition for water and nutrients with the grapes since vegetable root systems are much shallower and less extensive than grass roots. Since starting this practice, I’ve found an increase in the productivity and vigor of the grapevines.