Turtles-Paradise

I love this sky-planter idea. It’s space saving, self-watering, and ideal for those in small living spaces. However, it does come with quite a steep price-tag… so here’s how to make one yourself.

How to make an upside-down tomato planter
How to make an Upside-Down Planter
Go Green: Upside Down Planters (re-uses plastic bottles)
Upside Down Gardening

There are several ‘zones’ outlined in permaculture, which go from the house right out to the wilderness. The purpose of each zone is different, and our level of impact on it is also different. I want to talk a bit about each zone and how we can simplify the way we work and live within it, and discuss simple ways of bringing each zone in alignment with permaculture principles.

Zone 2

Zone 2 is generally considered the garden. It’s an area that we still go to on a regular basis, and that requires our attention in order to thrive. It doesn’t need to be the patch of land to the back of your property – it could be an allotment, or a roof garden. Generally speaking, it’s going to be where the bulk of your food is grown – fruit trees, vegetable plots, chicken huts, and medicinal plants will all be put here. If you don’t have a garden, it might be the deeper pots on your balcony, the window-allotment, or similar. Zones don’t have to be a particular size or shape, and it’s important we don’t prevent ourselves from growing due to a preconceived idea of what a ‘vegetable patch’ looks like.

We can simplify this zone in the following ways:

• Pay attention to the shape of the space, the levels of light, the average temperatures and amount of rainfall, and the type of soil – before you start growing. Grow the types of foods that have always been grown in your area, and don’t try and plant your favourite exotic fruit tree that is going to take lots of time and water to look after.
• Garden to your own level of experience. Start small. There is nothing worse than spending a lot of money on seeds, plants, trellises, pots and special soil and then watching everything die. A tomato plant and some herbs is a garden, and you can make food from it.
• Develop your knowledge of companion plants. Get the plants to do the hard-work for you!
• Share the hard-work with others – start a community allotment, or get the kids involved in the back-garden.
• Perform maintenance work ‘little and often’.

Think about Wildlife

Humans share this planet with a massively diverse range if other life-forms. Due to our overwhelming dominance and cultivation of land, we have driven a lot of these life-forms to the margins, shrinking their numbers daily. Some we outright kill, through serious pesticides that poison far more than just insects. For others, we simply alter their habitat until they starve to death.

Your garden can and should provide a place where wild-animals, insects and birds can live. Encourage the diversity of life, by planting things designed to attract and nourish bees, butterflies, birds, hedgehogs, bats and so on.

Attracting the right sorts of bugs can help keep other bugs in check. For example, ants keep termites away. Ladybugs eat aphids. Birds and hedgehogs eat slugs. Let a natural ecosystem exist, and you won’t have to worry about pesticides and fumigation.

Saving your crops

Of course, if you attract lots of insects and birds, there’s a chance they might devour your hard-won fruit and herbs. Having had last years cabbage plants eaten in their entirety by a hungry pheasant, I know how quickly things can get decimated.

The quickest and easiest way to stop them is to do the following:

• Put netting over young fruit trees and bushes.
• Use physical barriers like raised beds to get them away from birds like ducks and pheasants.
• Grow lots of honeysuckle, and put out bird feeders. Give the birds other things to eat, and they’ll not bother with the fruit.

If anybody else has suggestions, please let me know! Managing pests and predators is one of the biggest challenges in outdoor gardening.

There are several ‘zones’ outlined in permaculture, which go from the house right out to the wilderness. The purpose of each zone is different, and our level of impact on it is also different. I want to talk a bit about each zone and how we can simplify the way we work and live within it, and discuss simple ways of bringing each zone in alignment with permaculture principles.

Zone 1

Zone 1 are the outside areas that we spend most of our time in. It is not, necessarily, the areas closest to our house. This zone contains our most frequently visited plants, that usually include herbs for cooking and any kind of instant cut-and-eat type leafy vegetable. It will also contain seedlings and plants that need a lot of attention in the form of watering etc.

You want these plants close to where they will be used. Herbs should be on the kitchen windows, or just outside the kitchen door. Seedlings should be on a path travelled every day – maybe the front walkway to your car when you go to work, or maybe the path to the chicken hutch for when you go to feed them. The idea is to minimise the effort needed to utilise them. You aren’t going to walk to your allotment three blocks down to snip a few sprigs of rosemary!

We can simplify this zone in the following ways:

• Grow a limited number of herbs and seedlings. Grow only the herbs that you actually use for your cooking – Ferm has written a great guide on ‘Herbs to Grow for Ethnic Cuisines‘ As always, don’t just grab the cheapest mixed herbs container from your supermarket – instead, really think about what you need and use.
• Use labels for plants so you remember what they are! I also like to write down some very basic info about the plant, e.g. ‘water often, full sun’ or something similar.
• Pick plants that are hardy and flourish with the minimum of attention. This will vary depending on where you live, but plants like basil, thyme, coriander, and rosemary are good choices.

Everyone can grow plants in Zone 1.

There are many people who don’t have gardens, or balconies, or patios. You might not have space for a full-blown vegetable garden, but most people can find the room for a window box with cut-n-grow again salad leaves, or a few pots of herbs.

Growing your own herbs and salad leaves can:

• Lessen our dependence on big-chain supermarkets that import food from countries thousands of miles away.
• Decrease the number of ‘food miles’ we contribute to, and accordingly lessen our contribution to pollution and the draining of our oil reserves.
• Increase the amount of nutrients we get from our food by giving us extremely fresh produce.
• Give you control over the growing conditions of your food; lessens your exposure to chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and other nasties.
• Connects you with your food, and with nature.
• Provides a feeling of independence and self-sufficiency

Even just one pot of parsley makes a difference.

There are several ‘zones’ outlined in permaculture, which go from the house right out to the wilderness. The purpose of each zone is different, and our level of impact on it is also different. I want to talk a bit about each zone and how we can simplify the way we work and live within it, and discuss simple ways of bringing each zone in alignment with permaculture principles.

Zone 0

Zone 0 is the home, where we live. It is the area where we have the most impact, as we design the entire structure around our needs. It is also the area where we can end up with the most clutter!

The home usually needs to fulfil a couple of functions:

• A place to relax, sleep, rejuvenate.
• A place to cook and eat.
• A place to store items of importance.

We have different housing needs at different times in our lives. At some points all we need is a place to sleep and maybe a toaster oven. Everything we own could be can be carried on our backs. In these cases, ‘home’ may just be your rucksack!

Later, we might have a spouse, children, a garden, pets and so on. We start to require a surplus of food, and so on. Our housing needs change.

Generally speaking, we can always live in a smaller house that we think we ‘need’.

Simplifying our homes is a difficult and emotional task. We have a tendency to acquire objects of sentimental value. We also sink time and money into hobbies and items that might no longer fulfill us in the present, but represent so much ‘investment’ that we feel like we can’t throw them away. We may hang on to unwanted gifts out of a sense of obligation, or keep equipment on hand ‘just in case’.

There are several methods we can use.

• Start with a room at a time, and clear all non-essential items into a box and store it. If, after six months, we haven’t needed to find and use those items, they can probably be tossed. You may want to apply a caveat for emergency and annual items, such as first-aid kits and thick winter coats.
• Give yourself a minimum number of items to purge, and go through the house with a bag tossing in anything you don’t want until you hit your number. Do this frequently, every couple of days or once a week.
• Get rid of one or two items every day.

Remember that items should be re-purposed, re-used or recycled in preference to chucking them in landfill.

In addition to taking stuff out of our homes, we need to stop bringing new stuff in. For every purchase ask yourself:

• Do I need it?
• Can I afford it?
• Is there something I already own that can do this job for me?
• Am I prepared to spend the time and money in maintaining and looking after this item?
• Have I considered the true cost of manufacturing and transporting this item?

You can apply delay methods to see if you really need something, or if you just want it. Put it on a list for 30 days, and if you still want it, you can have it.

Hobbies can provide an amazing way of stocking up on expensive equipment that then gets abandoned later. It may be you were really into oil painting at one point, and you still own an easel, a large number of expensive paints, and so on. “But I’ll go back to it one day” is a hard pill to swallow. Even harder is knowing how much all that stuff cost in the first place!

We can mitigate the effects of this in two ways:

1. Rent or hire to start with. I think this is a good rule to apple to anything where the equipment needed is costly; photography, extreme sports, mountain climbing. Later, we can decide whether to keep renting or go ahead and buy the equipment because we have found one of our true passions.
2. Join (or create) a group in which everyone contributes a monthly fee towards the cost of materials and equipment. This is especially good for things like gourmet cooking, painting, gardening, music and so on. The members may change, but the group will endure and continue to use the equipment. Just be sure you have enough members to cover the costs of everything and the cost of hiring a neutral storage space/work place. Some of the best examples of this are things like communal allotments.

When it comes to getting rid of old equipment for hobbies you no longer enjoy, consider donating the equipment to a school or to a group that works with disadvantaged people.

Zone 0 is a unique space that we all relate to in different ways. Spend some time thinking about what you want your space to contain. I don’t mean design and build your ideal 3-story mansion, I mean think about what kind of feeling you want from your home. Do you want it to be a quiet sanctuary from the world? Do you want it to be a place full of life and joy and good friends? Do you want it to be a place where you can work-out and eat well? What do you need to sleep well?

Then go about getting rid of anything that doesn’t add to that vision.

I got my two (subsidised) kitchen composters! They are excellent devices, and have several advantages:

• They eliminate my last major stream of waste that goes to landfill (food). Since I am lucky enough to live an an area with a great kerbside recycling scheme, all of my plastic, aluminium and glass gets recycled, and my cardboard gets composted. Since I don’t buy drinks in tetrapaks the only regular thing being binned was my food waste. But no more!
• They generate both high-strength plant food in the form of liquid, and decent compost to dig through my soil. I no longer have to buy potting soil and compost which eliminates an ongoing cost to my gardening efforts.
• They seal off my food waste completely, preventing access to insects that were using my rubbish bin as an easy source of food.

In short, they are useful and efficient devices, and I would definitely recommend them to anyone with a garden. If you live in the UK, you can check to see if you can get subsidised compost bins and kitchen composters at Get Composting.