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How To Make Your Own Simple, Cheap And Toxin-Free Body Hygiene Products

August 15, 2020

Biodegradable Body Hygiene Products

Body hygiene products often contain a large number of dubious substances such as artificial perfumes, microplastic, silica, aluminium and a host of other chemicals that are harmful to the environment and to your body.

With our very simple and cheap alternatives below you can replace all your commercial products and do both your body and our planet a favour.

Body wash

You can very easily replace your body wash fluid with any natural soap. We just use olive-oil based Aleppo soap or Castile soap, but any other natural soap will do just as well.

Body scrub

You can dunk your natural soap in (used) coffee ground and start scrubbing. This method even cleans machine oil off your hands!

Shampoo

Aleppo soap & baking soda.
Image from thepermaculturecollective.com

There are plenty of recipes available on the internet, but after experimenting with a few we opted for the two simplest ones, give them a try and choose the one you prefer:

Aleppo soap: simply scrub a good amount of Aleppo soap into your hair and onto your scalp, then rinse thoroughly.
Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate): mix one tablespoon (or more depending on the length of your hair) of baking soda with one cup of water, pour it onto your wet hair, scrub it in, then rinse thoroughly.

Our experience was that our hair became oily and itchy when we first switched from chemical to natural shampoo, but after about a month our hair had adapted. We now only use natural shampoo and wash our hair only every fourth or fifth day and it looks and feels healthier and cleaner than ever!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Protein for the Plant-Based Permaculturalist

July 23, 2020

Protein for the Plant-Based Permaculturalist

A Parade of Pulses

Whether plant-based eating (veganism) is the guiding force behind your diet, or you simply enjoy having plant-based dishes just because plants taste good, there is something to be gained from experimenting with plant foods. In particular, pulses are great for providing some substance and protein to plant-based meals. And, for those omnivores amongst us, this doesn’t mean meat doesn’t exist, but that’s not to say you can’t enjoy (or try) a bean burger or some other leguminous treat every now and again.

My wife Emma and I have been vegans for nearly a decade now. Luckily, we came to the practice with a penchant for beans and rice. I, being from Louisiana, grew up with a myriad of this particular combination. And, having lived in Central America for several years, Emma also developed a taste for it. A pot of beans, a pot of rice, and some fresh vegetables has long served us as an ample and nutritious meal. Sometimes the combo comes out as soup, sometimes the items are plated separately, or sometimes the beans may become more sauce-like to be doled out over the rice. We might use Cajun seasonings, Indian spices, Middle Eastern flavours, Mexican palettes, or even Italian herbs. The trio has served us well for many years and has amazingly provided us with plenty of variety.

However, of late, we’ve been experimenting more. We’ve been learning to branch out, converting our beans and peas into new creations, things that have opened our menu. It’s been especially satisfying as summer has kicked in, and the heat and humidity has become overbearing, an atmosphere in which a hot plate of beans and rice often doesn’t sound all that appealing. For those interested—and if you aren’t that’s fine, no need to continue reading—I’ve compiled some of the new (and old) ideas we’ve been kicking around this year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Forest Garden Plants – Ground Cover Plants for Deep Shade

July 22, 2020

Forest Garden Plants – Ground Cover Plants for Deep Shade

Ground cover plants play an important role in the forest garden, protecting the soil, providing refuge for wildlife at ground layer, preventing unwanted plants from establishing and can provide some food such as berries or leaves.

Ground covers are easy to establish and can be very easy to manage. During this post, we’ll take a look at some of our favourite ground cover plants with a focus on those that are suitable for deep shade. We’ll provide an overview of the plants, how they are used, the wildlife they can attract, and how to propagate the plants.I’m defining deep shade here as those areas of your garden that receive two – three hours of direct sunlight each day. This may be areas on the north sides of buildings and walls (in the northern hemisphere) and under dense tree canopies.

Bugle – Ajuga reptans

Overview: Bugle – Ajuga reptans is a dense, mat-forming ground cover, spreading to 0.6m at a medium rate. It is in leaf all year, producing pretty blue-violet flowers from May to July on spikes that rise above the foliage at a height of around 30cm. The foliage can block the light from weeds inhibiting their growth. The plant is hermaphrodite and pollinated by bees and other insects. Easily grown in average, medium moisture and well-drained soils.

Uses: Excellent ground cover for large and shady areas. They spread freely with runners and establish themselves in areas that provide the optimum environmental conditions, ie, fertile well-drained soil in partial to deep shade. Medicinally, Bugle has a long history of use as a wound herb, helpful in stopping bleeding.

Biodiversity: The flowers are highly attractive to bumblebees, some songbirds and other beneficial insects.

Propagation: Through divisions if the plant becomes too crowded. Also easy to propagate with seeds.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to Build a Rain Garden to Capture Runoff

July 17, 2020

How to Build a Rain Garden to Capture Runoff

There are many reasons to build a rain garden. Rain gardens help filter out pollutants like bird guano from stormwater and turn them into nutrients for your garden. They help reduce the draw on local aquifers to irrigate our gardens and allow those aquifers to be replenished by the natural water cycle. Because of this, rain gardens are essential in the fight to reduce stormwater pollution’s impacts on river systems, which in turn, end up in our beloved ocean. Stormwater is one of the largest sources of environmental pollutants entering the world’s oceans today. Rain gardens can even help reduce the populations of mosquitoes and other biting insects who rely on stagnant water to breed. As climate change brings diseases like malaria further north, managing mosquito populations becomes less a luxury and more a public health necessity.

Apart from purely utilitarian reasons to build rain gardens, the hobby gardeners and organic farmers of the world will find that rain gardens also provide an opportunity to sculpt a beautiful new aesthetic which conventional gardens simply cannot match. To get started, all you need is a ruler, a level, and a calculator.

Doing The Math

Rain gardens capture the rainfall from impermeable surfaces that flows across your property. Then, using nothing more than the natural slope of the land it collects and disperses that water into the garden and out into the local watershed beyond. If done properly, this water should collect and drain away within 24 hours of any given rainfall. Of course, to capture all the water falling on your roof, driveway, patio, and other impermeable surfaces you’ll need to know roughly how much water to expect.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Polyculture Trial – Apple Polyculture vs Monoculture

July 12, 2020

Polyculture Trial – Apple Polyculture vs Monoculture

How Do they Compare in Terms of Costs, Soil Health, Biodiversity, Production and Time?

I’m so looking forward to the spring to meet our Polyculture Study crew and get back into the gardens. This season we’ll be shifting our focus to perennial polyculture experiments and forest garden yields.

During the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a new perennial polyculture trial that we’re aiming to start this April. It’s a long term comparative study looking at the input and outputs of growing an Apple tree in polyculture vs monoculture.

Thank you Simon Leupi for your feedback and suggestions on the study design, and to Chris Mallorie for discussing the trial with me, and working on the organic fertility and pesticide protocol.

During this post, I’ll present the trial garden and trial design, cover what we will record, and take a look at some of the shortcomings of the study.

So, let’s start with a look at the garden where we’ll be growing the trials.

Trial Garden Overview

Location: Shipka, Bulgaria, Southeast Europe

Köppen Climate Classification – Dfc borderline Cfb

USDA Hardiness Zone: 5b (conservative) – 7a (risky)

Latitude: 42°

Elevation: 565 m

Average Annual Rainfall: 610 mm

Prevailing Wind: NW & NE

Garden Area – 352m2

Garden Location on our Project Map – See here

We’ll be growing four trials on the plot as seen in the below image. We chose this plot as each trial will more or less experience equal environmental conditions. There is a very mild slope on the site from N – S and no slope W-E.

The plant we chose to feature in the trial is Apple – Malus pumila ‘Red Cap’

Here’s some info on this cultivar

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Integrated Pest Management – Part 2

July 10, 2020

Integrated Pest Management – Part 2

Suggestions for specific IPM techniques to help you obtain a yield

In part 1⁽¹⁾ of this article, we looked at the history of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and the spectrum of IPM techniques. In this part we will explore some specific ways to apply IPM with your own ecosystem, whatever the scale is of your growing, and whether you are growing annuals or perennials.

Start With The First Principle

In beginning our application of IPM techniques, it is helpful to first consider the environment within which your plants are growing, and the other creatures who already inhabit or are likely to inhabit it along with your crops. In doing this, we can follow the first permaculture principle and ‘Observe and Interact’⁽²⁾ with the already-existing ecosystem.

For example, on a piece of land in which you intend to plant a garden, you can ask yourself, ‘Who is already living on this land? Who is likely to arrive with the species of plants which I am including in my design? Which of the existing or potential inhabitants could be a threat to my crops?’

In an ideal situation, I would engage in this first stage before embarking on any planting. Observation of the environment can happen by sitting quietly in the space. After you have observed and noted what you perceive, you could augment the observation by researching online; for example, if you note the presence of butterflies you could try to identify the species and look up what they eat (during all of their life stages) to check if they could be a potential ‘pest’. To help you, you could use an insect identification website such as Insect Identification⁽³⁾ or Pest World⁽⁴⁾ (though these both focus on North America) or try searching for ‘insect identification’ in your area on Facebook⁽⁵⁾.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Enrich Garden Soils without Paying for Amendments

July 10, 2020

Enrich Garden Soils without Paying for Amendments

A big part of permaculture is building soil. The loss of quality soils is one of the largest, most prevalent concerns on the globe, and of course, without good soil, producing healthy food just isn’t in the cards. So, really, before we can fill those storage bins with winter squash or stuff the cupboards with canned tomatoes, we have to get to the task of building the soils in which to grow them.

Unfortunately, mass agriculture methods have stripped soils of their vitality:

Monocultures have the tendency to deplete soils of whatever nutrients the cash crop likes,
and then that cash crop is shipped away with all of those nutrients instead of being fed back to the soil to recycle them.
Large-scale tilling makes the soils susceptible to erosion via wind and rain,
and it also destroys the web of soil life that helps to cycle organic nutrients into minerals and fertility.
Furthermore, those organic nutrients are typically removed during the harvest,
Which is done with massive machinery that compacts the soil so that it has to be tilled.
That’s before we get into chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides, which are about as healthy to soil as living on Slim Fast shakes and antibiotics would be to our bodies.

Without further belabouring this point, which is easy to do, suffice it to say that permaculture approaches soils and food production differently. Nevertheless, inherited soils often need special attention on the route to recovery, and even well-looked-after soils benefit from extra nutrients here and there. After all, it’s difficult to recycle every scrap of food we take from a plot back into it. With that in mind, here’s how to enrich soils without constantly importing minerals and other amendments.

Dynamic Accumulators

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Integrated Pest Management – Part 1

June 24, 2020

Integrated Pest Management – Part 1

What is it and how can we do it as part of a balanced system?

In these times of global uncertainty and transition, where the globalised food system has become halted or reduced¹, there is a wonderful opportunity to begin practicing food sovereignty on a personal basis². This seems to be being put into practice in many places as growing one’s own food becomes more popular around the world³.

Being able to harvest and consume something which you have cultivated in the soil can be a very satisfying experience, from a practical point of view, as well as looking at it from the perspective of spiritual and mental well-being⁴. We can be seen as directly participating in the cycles of nature when we care for plants, especially if we choose to do so without the use of chemicals. Yet what if the beautiful vegetables we have so lovingly brought up are threatened by other creatures who also find them delicious to eat?

Permaculture practitioners have an answer to this: to intentionally include elements (whether plants or animals) in your garden which provides predators for those animals who would otherwise make your crop their prey. This technique, known as Integrated Pest Management (IPM)⁶, can be exercised in a number of ways, and there appear to be some important factors to remember when applying it with your crops, in order for it to be successful. This article will explore how IPM works, and how we can use it as part of a holistic design, while part 2 will give some practical examples to help with your own pest management on any scale; whether you are planting a few herbs on your balcony or have a large piece of land.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If you took to growing veggies in the coronavirus pandemic, then keep it up when lockdown ends

June 24, 2020

Veggie Garden — Photograph by João Jesus (Pexels)

If you took to growing veggies in the coronavirus pandemic, then keep it up when lockdown ends

If you took to growing veggies in the coronavirus pandemic, then keep it up when lockdown ends

The COVID-19 pandemic produced a run on the things people need to produce their own food at home, including vegetable seedlings, seeds and chooks.

This turn to self-provisioning was prompted in part by the high price rises for produce – including A$10 cauliflowers and broccoli for A$13 a kilo – and empty veggie shelves in some supermarkets.

As well as hitting the garden centres people looked online for information on growing food. Google searches for “how to grow vegetables” hit an all-time worldwide high in April. Hobart outfit Good Life Permaculture’s video on Crisis Gardening – Fresh Food Fast racked up over 80,000 views in a month. Facebook kitchen garden groups, such as Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, sought to share information and inspiration.

The Good Life

Given the many benefits of productive gardening, this interest in increased self-sufficiency was an intelligent response to the pandemic situation.

Experienced gardeners can produce enough fruit and vegetables year-round to supply two people from a small suburban backyard.

Productive gardening improves health by providing contact with nature, physical activity and a healthier diet. Contact with good soil bacteria also has positive health effects.

While Australians have traditionally valued the feeling of independence imparted by a degree of self-sufficiency, psychological benefits arise from the social connectedness encouraged by many forms of productive gardening.

Amid COVID-19, gardeners gathered online and community gardens around the world brought people together through gardening and food. In some areas, community gardens were declared essential because of their contribution to food security. Although Australian community gardens paused their public programs, most remained open for gardening adhering to social distancing regulations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Off-Grid solar 101

June 21, 2020

Off-Grid solar 101

Going Off-Grid for electricity can be one of the biggest challenges you can face and also one of the most expensive.

After doing a Geoff Lawton Permaculture design course in 2013 I learnt the secret to taking my family’s home off-grid in the city which I had been wanting to do for years and was constantly told I couldn’t.

You can see our Off-Grid house in Sydney in this video.

There is also the other element to going Off-Grid and doing it in a permaculture way.

For us doing it with low embodied energy products, using solar panels that would pay back their environmental footprint not just the bank account. Batteries that would last a very long time and also be choice that would make a difference for our children was very hard to get to the bottom of and talk to guys who could answer any of these questions.

Most sales guys just want to sell you a 6.6kw solar system because that’s the best payback period financially for most countries. I remember one guy giving us a quote and asking “ are you one of these greenie types?” You think maybe growing all your own food and the garden tour he got 1st would have quietly helped him answer that question in his own head.

Going Off-Grid for electricity and taking responsibility for your own power is one of the most rewarding things that you can do in my opinion. 3rd to growing your own food and harvesting your own water.

I created this Video to help people understand the basics of Off-Grid Solar and help you get your head around Off-Grid and how different it is to Grid tied systems.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Collecting Clean Water from Polluted Sources with Natural Filtration Systems

May 19, 2020

Lake — Image by Hasse Lundqvist from Pixabay

Collecting Clean Water from Polluted Sources with Natural Filtration Systems

Being involved with permaculture helps one develop a mild obsession (and that’s putting it mildly) with water. Long before I was a certified designer, just an avid reader of permaculture texts and articles, and a compulsive watcher of Geoff Lawton YouTube videos, I was looking at landscapes completely differently, with an eye that begged for contour lines and took aim at potential dam sites. I imagined this water feature connected to that one, which fed another downslope when it overflowed across a level sill, the entire countryside dotted with water storage and well-hydrated food forests.

One of the ideas I’ve always been excited about but never quite got my head around was using hard surface runoff from roads and/or polluted areas. It seemed counterintuitive to spend so much time developing natural, chemical-free permaculture sites then funnel tainted water onto them. Of course, in certain environments, any drop of water available is worthy of collection, but still… how could we? Well, I was recently watching some videos from the upcoming earthworks course with Geoff Lawton, and I finally got an answer.

We can set up natural water harvesting and filtration systems to make the most of dirty hard surface runoff, as well as provide us with both clean water and rich compost for our forest gardens.

Soakage Systems

The water catchments in this situation need to centre around soakage rather than storage. In other words, we don’t want to catch the dirty water in dams and allow the pollutants to remain in the water. Instead, we want the water to gather and soak into the landscape, where natural elements like soil and plants can begin to clean it.

Permaculture Alternatives to Waste-to-Energy (W2E)

May 12, 2020

Kowhai Festival — Photograph by author, Trish Allen.

Permaculture Alternatives to Waste-to-Energy (W2E)

Waste-to-energy (W2E), particularly incineration, is being promoted as a good alternative to landfills – it gets rid of all that plastic we use and generate energy, right? In this article I’d like to first outline what’s wrong with W2E and then talk about permaculture alternatives.

So What Is Wrong With W2E Incineration?

W2E is a continuation of the ‘take-make-dispose’ economy which lulls people into the belief that we can continue our wasteful ways without changing our behaviour. But we live on a finite planet and most environmental harm comes at the extraction stage – so why would we want to burn resources and get rid of them? It doesn’t make sense. We need to get away from an extractive to a regenerative culture.

There are multiple negative impacts of W2E plants, which are seeing many being decommissioned internationally. For example, the toxic ash that remains after burning still has to be disposed of in a landfill. This can be up to 25% of the original volume of waste material, but with more toxicity. So incinerators don’t do away with the need for a landfill, instead they require a landfill for more toxic and dangerous waste.

Aside from the toxic ash, W2E incineration plants create an on-going demand for waste to fuel the incinerator. They are very expensive to build, have huge embodied energy, and once built, have to run for years to get a return, locking us into a destructive system. Right now our planet’s ability to sustain life is seriously at risk. We cannot afford the luxury of investing in bad ideas.

Our young people are calling for Climate Action now and we have a major responsibility to urgently reduce emissions. Incinerators create emissions. New Zealand’s electricity is currently 80% clean (water, wind, solar, geothermal) so why would we want to start burning trash to generate power? It just doesn’t add up environmentally, economically or socially.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Permaculture and Money – Part 3

May 10, 2020

Permaculture and Money – Part 3

The Practice of Being Open

In part 1⁽¹⁾ of this series, we explored the relationship between money, psychology and violence, while in part 2⁽²⁾ we looked at some ways in which the stories we tell as a culture to do with money could be seen as encouraging destructive patterns of behaviour. Looby Macnamara would describe such destructive patterns as “spirals of erosion”⁽³⁾ and this part will explore in more detail some practical ideas for how we can transcend such erosive behaviours and create “spirals of abundance”⁽³⁾ instead.

Alternative Economic Theories

In parts 1⁽¹⁾ and 2 ⁽²⁾, I mentioned theories about the possibility of a moneyless society, or a society where money takes a different role, such as Sacred Economics⁽⁴⁾ author Charles Eisenstein and Satish Kumar, who among other roles was a practicing Jain monk as a child⁽⁵⁾. Both of these writers can be said to be influenced by EF Schumacher, whose book Small is Beautiful ⁽⁶⁾, published in 1973, critiqued the unsustainable model of resource and profit-driven industrialised capitalism, and recommends instead a philosophy of “enoughness” and appropriate use of technology⁽⁶⁾. Schumacher was himself influenced by Oriental thinking and in particular Buddhist ideas of moderation (see for example ref 7). In modern society, we can see an example of “enoughness” in practice in the Thai concept of “sufficiency economy” ⁽⁸⁾.

Peace Pilgrimage

The above examples show some ways in which alternative economic ideas have been influencing the world, and are somewhat encouraged in some mainstream societies. Yet if money is the very problem, it seems we need to explore more radical alternatives.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ways To Treat Wildlife Humanely When Creating A Homestead

May 5, 2020

Raccoon — Photograph by Pixabay (Pexels)

Ways To Treat Wildlife Humanely When Creating A Homestead

Beginning a homestead and trying to live as sustainably and being self-sufficient was once a lifestyle for a huge proportion of the population, but today this low-impact way of living is seeing something of a resurgence. One factor that can sometimes be overlooked when starting a homestead is the impact that this type of lifestyle can have on wildlife in the area, but by being conscious of the implications of the homesteading approach, you can take steps to ensure that you are living in harmony with the wildlife around your homestead.

Preparing The Area For A Homestead

Once you have obtained the land on which you want to build your homestead, one of the first steps is to try and remove and keep wildlife away from where you will be building. A temporary fence here can work very well, preferably one with a relatively small mesh so that even small animals cannot get to the building area and hurt themselves. If you are seeing signs of animal activity in this area, it may be worth speaking to an animal removal expert so they can be safely removed before you start the building work.

Building Your Homestead And Outbuildings

Building sites can prove to be great spaces for animals to hide and build their nests, so when you are building the homestead, try to leave as little material as possible around where animals could try to nest. When it comes to dealing with the debris, waste materials and other building materials, you should also try to ensure it is kept in a dumpster or debris skip before it can be disposed of safely. Otherwise, birds or other wildlife can get access to this debris, and could harm themselves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Permaculture and Money – Part 2

May 1, 2020

Permaculture and Money – Part 2

Living and Giving Abundance

In part 1 of this article series we looked at the curious concept of money and how it can be seen to be contributing to the institutional violence of much of modern society. This part will look at some alternative ways of viewing and interacting with money, while the next part will begin to explore some practical ways in which we can all begin living more abundantly.

Stories For A New World

In part 1 we explored the idea of transcending current modes of thinking or behaving, in order to engage in new ones. As John Paul Lederach points out, if we really want to find new ways of living then we cannot simply create a vision of a different place – we also need to be aware of where we are right now ⁽¹⁾.

As Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economics, put it,

“It is not merely our attitudes about money that must change…rather, we will create new kinds of money that
embody and reinforce changed attitudes” ⁽²⁾

A Change In The System…

Some alternative economic theories include ideas such as the creation of local currencies like the Bristol Pound ⁽³⁾, non-centralised currencies such as Bitcoin⁽⁴⁾ or bartering or exchange systems such as those put into practice using Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS), for example in Australia with the Australian Community Exchange System ⁽⁵⁾. All of these can be seen to represent important options for those looking to put permaculture into practice by moving away from the monoculture of solely using money.

Or Of The System?

However, such alternatives can be seen to still be based on the premise of exchanging for a fixed rate which is decided abstractly and therefore they still hold within them the inherent disconnection from nature and subsequent destructive tendencies which using money carries with it ^{(2, 6)}.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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