| Hi Keith! I'm a big fan of what you're doing with your forest. Thanks for sharing! Two questions: What were the parameters you considered when buying your land and how did you settle on that plot? And are there any food plants you've grown in the past that you don't anymore? | That's definitely a great question. To be honest we half lucked into this property. When I moved out here I just wanted a place in the country to set deeper roots down with the kids than the suburban place we had. We also just wanted life to slow down a bit. Our selection criteria was a decent house and a bit of land, and that's about it. |
| After I moved here, I started getting really into learning more about climate change and found this design science called permaculture, and it all started clicking from there. I started planting trees and gardens, and well, got kind of addicted. What started as 4 trees turned into almost 400 the next year, slowly, week by week as I kept planting and planting and planting like some deranged squirrel. |
| But this piece of land is really ideally suited to a project like this. It's bordered by a river that runs 365 days a year. The water is from an Artesian well, which is a pressurized underground natural aquifer. So the water runs constantly, and we have this free source of constant water. |
| The land also has many south facing hills, tons of wooded forest around which is great for stuff like grafting wild apple trees for deer, and collection of seed material to expand forest in wild places that are abandoned. It's really a great place of land for this project. |
| If I were buying a new piece of land to do this on from scratch, I think my highest priority would be a constant source of water like a river or stream. It's not mandatory, but it sure helps get things established faster. |
| As far as other plants that I started that I wouldn't grow anymore, I would say that I wouldn't focus so hard on growing "weird things". When I started I tried growing a lot of plants that were just outside my zone, such as persimmons. Now, I do that more as a one or two tree hobby thing, and I focus more on plants that are native and, well, have evolved to live and be hardy in my climate over millions of years. There's no point fighting nature when you can just work with nature. |
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| Thank you for the detailed response! I'm excited to continue following your progress | Thanks :_ |
| He was supposed to be smiling |
| :) |
| There, now he's happy |
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| Not a question but I just wanted to say that you are living my dream! Really appreciate what you’re doing and your impact on the environment! Huge fan from Vancouver Island, Canada 🇨🇦 | Thanks! |
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| aren't meadows and prairies just as important to the ecosystem as forests? | Yep, important ecosystems. But monoculture suburban lawns are not grasslands. |
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| How are you foresting suburban lawns? Sorry i must have missed something. | Well, I had no context to why you commented what you did, since the one you replied to had no mention of grasslands whatsoever. So I kinda had to guess where you were coming from. |
| I just agreed with you, because your point is valid, and wanted to clarify to anyone else reading the comment thread that grassland and grasslawn are two VERY different things. |
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| I’m a big fan of yours. Because of you, I’ve started a food forest in my front yard. I laid down contractor’s paper, then an inch or 2 of compost, then 6 - 12 inches of wood chips. I did all of that real quickly this fall, figuring that I can take the winter to figure out what to plant and how. 2 questions. 1. How do I plant in 12 inches of wood chips? Do you pull the chips back and plant in the soil? When do you put the chips back on? Right away or do you wait until it grows 12 inches? | Thanks that's so awesome to hear! I love hearing that new people are planting trees because they have seen my content. It makes producing it worthwhile (it certainly isn't financially worthwhile! haha) |
| Yes, you never plant in the mulch layer, because it will be nitrogen deficient as the carbon breaks down. The soil layer however only has roughly a 1mm top layer that is nitrogen deficient. So it's crucial that you get down to the soil layer for most plants. Stuff like nitrogen fixers like clover can be scattered right onto woodchips because they can access nitrogen from the atmosphere, but most plants will need to be planted in the soil, then recovered as they grow. |
| As far as when to cover it, just as long as you don't smother it. As it grows just cover around it. For trees, try to leave an inch around them bare, so that you don't encourage boring insects getting to them through the woodchips. |
| 2. Do you have any tips on sourcing fruit trees? I’m interested in saving as much money as possible but I can spend a little to save me a couple years. The U of M Extension says you should order them in October and pick them up in the spring but I haven’t been able to find a place that does this. I’m in zone 4b, Minneapolis. Thanks for doing what you’re doing. You’re making a huge impact. | 2) I try to get most of my plants local, to support local nurseries and get varieties that grow well in my climate. No real point me ordering trees from say South Carolina and saving a few bucks, but the varieties do poorly in my winters. I'd rather get a cold hardy tree from a local place. |
| That being said, I've bought from many places before: Treetime, wiffletree, green barn nursery, laurealt, cold hardy fruit and nut trees, grimo nursery, etc. |
| Edible acres (a fellow youtuber) also runs a nursery. He also has a link to some of his favorite sustainable nursuries in the description of This video here |
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| You rock! You even answered a question I had but didn’t mention about clover! | Awesome! |
| Have you ever thought about adding animals? You have fantastic content on your YouTube, I have watched most of your videos. Recommend anyone in Canada check out his YouTube channel!! | Hey Chris, thanks! Very kind. When I first started this, well, maybe not the first year, but definitely once I learned about permaculture, I really really REALLY wanted to get animals. Definitely chickens, but also pigs. They are just so incredibly useful. |
| There's a good saying that if you remove an element from a natural ecosystem, then you must then provide the value that this element was providing. For animals, it's cycling of nutrients in the decomposition cycle via their excrement. |
| Chickens perform just such a vital role for making healthy compost. A compost pile (such as I run) is tremendously valuable, but running the same material through the stomach of an animal will lead to much more chelated (bio available) nutrient in the resulting compost. This chelation is super critical for plants to be able to access the nutrient in the compost. |
| Animals, especially chickens, are probably number 1 on my list, but currently we're just so super busy with kids, work, etc. I fear, that even though I hear chickens are super low maintenance, that I wouldn't be an ideal owner right now for them, and I couldn't give them the attention that they deserve. |
| I also have a philosophy right now that anything I spend my time on must either end up fully automated and passive, be completely self relient and need no further input from me. This is because I feel it's critical that all my time gets spent to planting more trees. And if I put in systems that will require my time, then it will by very nature of it, limit the time I can spend expanding my forest. I would instead rather focusing all my time on expansion, constant unrelenting expansion, and once I hit the limits of what I can do on that front, only then will I start projects that will demand my future time. |
| For that reason, until life slows down a little bit, I'm going to keep the chickens on the backburner until I can be a good steward to the creatures. |
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| It would be interesting if (once you setup a coop for them) you could just leave the chickens and let them roam naturally throughout the forest eating what they find. That way it might encourage them to roam more helping to spread nutrients etc maybe. | Indeed, free range chickens is generally what people go for. There's a lot of people who will say they will destroy the herbaceous layer, and will also do a lot of damage to young tree roots with their kicking and scratching. For this reason, a lot of people use them in 2 ways... |
| 1) To tractor them through a grassland to prep it for initial planting. I.e. kind of use them like a reset on the land. They often combine them with pigs in this way, and use the animals like a natural fertilizing rototiller. |
| 2) To completely free range them, but through an established forest. Often combined with cows (they follow the cows 2 days behind them), in a system called Silvopasture. https://drawdown.org/solutions/silvopasture |
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| Awesome will check that out thanks, but sounds good. Right got you makes sense. Sounds cool. That's a cool little 'nature grouping', will check it out thanks. And yeah seems like once you get to certain sizes / growth of forests it opens up more options that are easier to implement (such as letting the chickens just roam around). The more I learn the more it seems to be that getting as much viable land going from day 1 as possible, as you need those big trees to be grown before other options open up (not to say you can't do stuff in the meantime but getting those trees in asap seems to be important?). Would be interesting to explore how you could do this commercially and scale up. For example having a someone manage x size of land for x years until y stage, then employ 1 person until z stage. Etc etc until you're 20 years down the line and have people employed for various things etc. Natural growth. What do you think? You mentioned you can see yourself going down that route. | Yeah, I think that the first years can be pretty manageable for 1 person, until harvesting start being a massive chore. I know I have planted thousands of trees in 1 day from seed, and maybe 200 or so when doing from bare root trees. That's just 1 day. |
| Most of the initial work is on a clear (even if it's just a mow, or a crip, or a thinning of existing brush), then a large organic material dump. If done with machinery, you can definitely do this on a massive scale as 1 person. Even just with a bucket and a pitchfork (my method), I've done acres of woodchips, literally thousands of yards of woodchips, every day of the summer for years. Just chip away at it. |
| End of the day, I think it just depends on what your timeline is. If you are in no rush, then you can go at it as 1 person and get a crapload done. If you want to get up and running ASAP, on a large scale, you'll definitely need help. |
| For those people who are by themselves, or just their family, I definitely recommend focusing small and setting that part up properly, and then slowly creeping out. I would recommend against trying to go too big too fast, and having it all kinda go unmanageable in the rampancy of summer, and losing a bunch of trees. |
| I'd rather someone work on a 50 square foot section, get that established strongly, and then use that section as the anchor to expand outwards from. |
| A smaller well managed space will vastly outproduce and outperform a mismanaged larger space. And I think we often go the larger route, and suffer for it. |
| Hi Keith, I've been watching your videos for a few months now, and I'm really excited by the work you're doing. We'll be house shopping early next year and then I plan to fully dive into permaculture! Do you have any recommendations on where to start to get a comprehensive view of what I would need to do, either one of your videos or another source? | In the OP there, I linked to a few videos that are good starters. I actually make an "essentials" playlist that is somewhere around 24 videos or so. I would make sure you watch all of those videos, starting with the topics you enjoy the most - how to get started, grass to garden guides, permaculture design philosophy, my 2 golden rules, etc. So much good info in those videos. In fact, many permaculturists would open a website and hide those behind paywalls as a permaculture course. I think that's silly though, we just need the information out there for people to use. |
| Another thing you can do is sign up for a free 52 week permaculture design course here: |
| https://www.freepermaculture.com/onlinecourse/ |
| I have no affiliation with them, but I just think that offering a $3000 course for free is about the coolest thing in the world. They believe what I do... that we need to make an army of tree planters, and we just want the information out there, so that people can start going and we get ACTION happening, and not just words and protests, but trees in the ground. |
| Do you sell the produce you make from the farm and if so any idea what sort of profit you're getting per acre etc? Do you think it's profitable for people to buy de-forested land, regenerate it, and then grow / sell the produce naturally grown and harvested or does that still require outside investment? Guess big question with lots of 'it depends', with the country's jurisdictions being a key one maybe? I've just started a college course in horticulture and the whole permaculture / forest farming / forest regeneration / bio-diversity regeneration area is insanely interesting so thanks for all your videos. | I actually prefer to donate most of my excess food, although I must admit this year with Covid we have been on hypermode canning and preserving as much food as possible so that we don't have to go to a store more than once a month or so for the stuff I can't make, or that doesn't make sense for me to grow (sugar, flour, rice, etc). |
| Also, my goal isn't to make profits, but my goal is to maximize how much I can expand this puppy. Tree systems also tend to take a bit of time to really kick in, and I'm in year 4-5 now. My production on this land is going to ramp up extremely quickly over the next decade or so, likely well beyond my capability to keep up, and I will likely have to think about hiring people, creating a business, and maybe even renting land and opening a store. Some people also sell to restaurants, since the fresh food just tastes miles better than store bought. |
| Infact, at a tour I ran last year, we had a restaurant owner show up, and after eating one of my black krims, he said he would buy every tomato I ever produced. |
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| For deforested land and regrowing it, there's tremendous value in that, especially if the land isn't fully cleared. Fully cleared land can be expensive, because it's better for development and agriculture. However, damaged forest land, like say, a harvested timber plot of "pines in lines" can be of tremendous value. Plant a few thousand black walnut trees on that, and inoculate stuff like shitake mushrooms under the walnuts, and you have a REAL investment there. |
| I hope I answered your question okay - feel free to ask another if you have any followup questions. And thanks for getting into this. Your education is going to be very useful in the future that we're walking into. Keep up the hard work, your life and work will have tremendous value to humanity. |
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| Hey thanks for taking time to respond. Yeah makes a lot of sense. Yeah that long wait factor seems quite key in those early stages. Yeah makes sense, I know the vertical farming companies in London (UK) sell their herbs to local restaurants because of quality etc. Amazing. Which profits could go to regrowing the fully cleared or even contaminated land (assuming it's more expensive to fix and or longer). Hey thanks! Feels good to be doing something more aligned with nature / something important. Thanks again. | Totally agree with all your responses/comments there. |
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| The soil in boreal forests is thin, this is a question I will like more information on. | Yeah, it's kind of what you get when you have plants (conifers) that don't drop their leaves. You get less soil building. |
| The fastest way to grow soil is by constantly dropping organic material on the soil. This is why plants like Paulownia Elongata can build soil so fast. (Not to be confused with Paulownia Tomentosa which is invasive). |
| Hello Keith! Though it's a dream of mine, I won't be purchasing or living at a large property anytime soon. Patio gardening for the next few years at least. What would you recommend working on / thinking about / learning in the meantime as I fantasize? Alternatively, do you have any recommendations for ambitious, permaculture-informed patio projects? | I actually think you are in the perfect spot to start getting a real education in this, and it will pay off bigtime. Someone starting from scratch with no knowledge is going to spend half their time spinning their wheels. Someone who takes a year to learn what they are doing, trying and failing, then applying those lessons to their final design will actually have a much more advanced system in a decade than the person starting and scrambling and flailing about at the beginning. |
| And there's a lot of things we can learn in an apartment with no land, but access to books and internet. Things I would prioritize the highest? |
| * Learn how to start plants from seed. You can do this inside a closest in a guest bedroom, or the corner of a basement or garage. I have videos on this: https://youtu.be/DeQjywi8Sss |
| * Learn how to propagate (copy) plants from hardwood and softwood cuttings. This is something that tends to take several years to get a hold of, and can be started from anywhere. Just take cuttings from plants at parks and try your hand at turning them into a new bush or tree. |
| * Learn how to graft. We can practice grafting apples on wild apple trees for example. I like to look in February for apple trees that still have apples on them. These are tremendously valuable for deer - food in their time of dearth. Take cuttings from those (called scion wood) and practice grafting those to apple trees that currently have no apples on them. Who knows, maybe you just helped the deer if your grafts take, and by the time you get a property, you will be a master grafter. |
| * Get out and ID plants in your local ecosystem. Learn their uses, their benefits, what eats them, etc. you will now have a library of information (and a knowledge of where to find free plant material for your forest!), and how to boost pollinators and pest predators, which will pay off massively as your trees thrive in a healthy protected ecosystem with a good predator insect population. I have a video on how to get started with this here |
| * Learn general theory stuff, like guild design. |
| * For patio projects, that's not my thing at all. I think I would rather you listen to other experts on that subject. Potted plants tend to need the human to constantly intervene. I'm all about the complete opposite. Handing the wheel to nature. |
| Hi Keith! Big fan, thanks for all the info you provide in your channel! I recently purchased a property that includes 2/3 acres of rather dense forest with tall trees, in zone 7a. I absolutely don't want to remove any of the trees in this forest, but was wondering if there is some way to still potentially grow some food there - any suggestions on what I can grow that would work well under almost full cover? There is wildlife that often visits this forest as it is not fenced, and I honestly don't mind sharing the food I grow here with them. | Have you checked out one of my latest videos on the drip edge guild? |
| https://youtu.be/Hdlm282DnxE |
| In this video, after I buy the new trees, I install them in a drip edge guild, and I talk about the fertility boost that the forest edge can provide. This is why forests expand from the edge out, because they just happen to be hyper fertility concentrators. |
| So I'm not sure about your land, but is there an option of using the forest edge and your expansion point, and just continuously expanding it outward from the edge? |
| If not, a really good way that you can maximize forest edge in a fully forested plot is to actually great glades directly inside the forest. This is a really good forest management practice in general, because what happens is that you clear a circle hole in the forest, and all of a sudden you get this flush of light down at the soil that wasn't happening before. |
| Now all of a sudden you have this flush of growth of the herbaceous layer. This adds a ton of "wetness" to help slow forest fires - as the previous situation was likely a bunch of dried old dead wood. Now instead you have lush ferns and groundcovers growing. |
| Now all inside this glade you can set up the next succession of your forest - changing a pine or cedar monoculture into a vibrant diverse ecosystem with oaks and apples and chestnut, etc. You will correspondingly get a massive flush of growth of natural beings that come to consume this food. Just make sure you plant enough that you get some also! |
| Then just keep making new glades and rotate through the forest, making more pocket glades each year, as you slowly change it into a healthier more diverse ecosystem. |
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| This is amazing advice! I will definitely first look into creating glades without removing trees, and if not, perhaps replacing a few trees at a time with fruit producing trees is something I can digest! Follow up question, the forest area also has a lot of vegetation growing at the base of the trees - any idea on what I can replace this with? I'm looking for something that will produce food and also survive in almost full shade. | Well, I would suggest first learning what you are replacing and if it needs replacing. Many things in nature are actually feeding critical insects and other beings. I would first recommend learning as much as possible about your native plants before you remove them. |
| As far as what enjoys being in partial shade in a forest, currants do really well in shades, as do most ferns such as ostrich ferns (fiddleheads). Mushroom logs would also be good to add in there. |
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| banestraitelbov: Understood, thank you! Girl_on_a_bicycle: Double check that it's legal to grow currants in your state/province/county! (I started shopping and realized it was illegal because of the diseases they share with native pine trees) | Thanks for this, I learned something new today! I had no idea. |
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| My grandfather has had a beaver take over about 10 acres of his property. They've built a good sized pond and lots of wildlife are returning to the area. | That's pretty exciting. I know they get a lot of flack for diverting waterways, but they are just trying to be their best beaver. |
| Hey Keith, Ive been watching your work for a while and I have some questions. English is my 2nd language. First of all, I am jn Quebec Zone 5. I was wondering what kind of land I should acquire. You seem to have a lot of wood area so Id guess that would be a good start. However, around here, people selling land sell higher because of the "cut it all down to make firewood and make a profit mentality". How did you acquire your land? What is a good price? I plan of living in a homestead in 5 years. We talk about this a lot. I make 70k+ ish a year, a few debts but nothing major, pretty good at not spending money. My girlfriend is a professional beekeeper and combined with our knowledge in broad biology (a degree + masters) I think we could pull this off. I also reoriented myself and I'm getting pretty good at manual work and metalwork. I am rambling off here but thanks a lot for providing unique content like this. It is very inspiring. | First off, you write in your second language better than 99% of people write in their first. |
| Yeah, wooded land is ideal for a project like this, but with some space to plant. See my response to another comment on the creation of glades if you end up being fully wooded plot. (do a word search on this page for "glade") |
| You are right that wooded lots tend to be cheaper to acquire. But most importantly for us, planting trees, is that the soil will have already been converted to a fungal dominated soil that trees love. So every tree you plant will have a better chance to thrive, versus say planting trees in bacterial dominated grassland soils. |
| For the financial aspect, I'm certain you could pull this off. The thing about a food forest, is that it may cost money to get it started, but it then GENERATES income via savings at the very least, and a passive income if that's something you want to do, selling plants, food, compost, manure, eggs, meat, etc. |
| For most things, the ROI tends to hover around 2 years. Stuff like chickens can be profitable year 1. Berries like raspberries will generate a profit the first year also. Trees, depending on how large you get them, will be profitable within 2 to 10 years. Young nut trees will take the longest to be profitable, but also will tend to be the most profitable longterm - especially nuts like black walnut where the tree itself may be worth 2000-4000 in a few decades. If someone is in a good financial position, there's not too many investments better than buying land and planting a bunch of $5 black walnut 1 year whips on them, and selling them in 40 years for a free retirement plan (which sequesters carbon and feeds nature in the meantime). |
| Hi Keith, I am on 7acres on a riverfront property in zone 5b. I am already off and running with some trees, shrubs, etc planted (about 30 varieties total) and we are in our first full year. I was wondering what resources or guides you came across for propagating various fruit trees, shrubs and ground cover? For example a lot of fruit trees or shrubs are on rootstock. Is that necessary for propagating them or can they grow their own roots and survive fine? Do you have a nursery or just plant things with random cuttings? | The ideal way is definitely to use rootstock and graft to them. For anyone that doesn't know what that means is that you can basically join 1 tree to another like Frankenstein. So you get 1 tree that genetically has super strong roots, but maybe poor fruit. Maybe that rootstock is insanely cold resistant. So you grow that tree, but then you splice on (via a cut and a graft) the variety of tree with good fruit onto it. Now you have this mega power root tree pumping nutrient into a mega power fruit producing variety. |
| The best place on the internet to learn grafting (in my opinion) is skillcult on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/use1sustainablehedonist. That guy is an incredible resource for grafting. He has a grafting series that I'm sure you can find, it's like 8 videos long and is some of the best stuff I've watched or read on the topic. |
| For other propagation, a really good youtuber for that is Sean over at Edible Acres. https://www.youtube.com/useEdibleAcres |
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| As far as "is it necessary", absolutely not. You can get trees to grow without doing it, it's just a matter of taking it to the next level. Maybe you get 50% success rate with yours, and grafted rootstock will give you 90%. Well, if it takes a quarter of the time to just take cuttings and jam them in the ground, then you'll get more trees using the brute force method. |
| I made roughly 100-200 free elderberry, currant, and haskap plants this year just by cutting a host plant, making cuttings from the branches, and jamming them in the ground. I got maybe 40% success rate overall, but stuff like the elderberry was more like 90% success rate. Peaches are like 2% success rate like that. |
| So it's good to learn that stuff, and the best way is just trial and error. You should prune your trees anyways, and make sure you use all those pruning cuttings to try to make new plants with. |
| Any tips for picking trees for your food forest? When I'm at nurseries I'm tempted by the bigger trees but it's just so much cheaper to buy younger ones. | I think getting a bigger tree that I call a "victory tree" can be a good idea when starting. But just get 1 or 2. The reason for this is that the tree is large, but it's root system in the pot is going to be severely stunted. This means that it's more likely to survive compared to a bare root 1 year old twig (a 6 inch tall "whip") but it's also going to kind of struggle it's whole life - or at least a very long time. |
| The payback can be almost immediate though, and that's a nice thing to have. You planted trees to get food, and this older tree will get you food faster. It will motivate you to plant more once you taste what fresh food tastes like. There is truly nothing like a peach that was on the tree seconds before you smashed that puppy into your mouth. |
| But overall, the way to go is with 1 or 2 year old baby trees, bare root. The reason for this is that the sooner you can get a tree in it's final position, the stronger it's roots will be in the longterm. Deeper wider more robust roots means more area of soil that the plant can get nutrient and water from. More resistance to drought, more pest resistance, just better bigger, stronger tree. |
| It's funny because some of my 1 year old whips are 5 years in age behind some of the starter trees, but they are already starting to pass them, just 3 years later. Fast forward another few years and you will think the bigger tree was older, but it will actually be the younger bare root tree. They will also be more resistant to high wind storms, due to having a deeper taproot, because that taproot didn't hit the bottom of a bucket and curl, it was allowed to drive deep into the subsoils. |
| Last thing, bare root trees are WAAAAY cheaper. You can get an apple tree from home depot for like 70 bucks, but can find bare root trees sometimes as cheap as 5 bucks. So when doing a large project, as long as you have patience, young bare root trees are the way to go. |
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| Where do you get the bare root trees from? I’ve been calling around to local nurseries and all I find are multiple gallon bucket sizes. Maybe now that I know the terms “bare root” and “whip” I can ask them. | Most nurseries only do bare root because transporting soil costs money. I'm surprised you are finding the opposite. |
| I posted a response in this thread about nurseries I use, and all of those ones ship bare root. Not sure if that was your question or another. But word search bare root and you will find it. |
| Hi Keith! I'm a big fan of your channel. How do you get your kiddos involved in permaculture, if at all? Any tips on raising children to be partners with the planet? | That's a great question and I'd love other people's advice! It's hard to get them off fortnite and out in the garden. We force it now and then, but we also don't want them to see it as a chore or a punishment. We limit times on electronics, but I think it's also important that they learn how to use them, because the world they grow up in will require it as an innate skillset. It's a tough balance for sure. |
| One thing that I HAVE found is that if the kids GROW the food, they are more likely to EAT the food. Putting a veggie from the store on their plate, and they whine and complain about having to eat it. But putting that carrot that they watered and took care of and pulled out of the ground, they actually get excited to try it. |
| People, if you want your kids to eat their vegetables, get them a garden and go out spending time together growing them with your kids. It works. |
| For the second question, I think it's something that grows as they do. You aren't going to make an 8 year old care about the planet, but I bet the same kid when THEY have kids, will really care. |
| I mean, if you knew me before I had kids, I definitely thought people like me were "tree hugging hippies". It's insane to me that I'm the same person as that idiot. |
| Your work is so appreciated. You've mentioned comfrey and J artichoke are well suited for many systems. If you could wish it, what would be the top intro perennials you'd like to see in northeast US/CA suburbia? Thanks! | Clover would be my number one. Just because it restores nitrogen to the depleted soils of our planet, and also feeds the bees. It is also hardy as heck. Clover everywhere. We really need to replenish our insect populations - as a matter of existential threat to our species. |
| Then I would say that I honestly don't care. I think people should plant what they enjoy to eat. If someone doesn't like Jerusalem Artichokes then they definitely shouldn't be planting them, because they'll be there forever. So try some first, say, in a pot, then decide if you want them on your property. |
| But as far as my favorites, I think it's gotta be trees. Fruit and nut trees, I don't care what kinds. They just provide so many calories for nature (and us). |
| For herbaceous layer plants, I think strawberry and asparagus are amazing. They last a really long time and propagate themselves super easy. They are also expensive in stores, so they make financial sense to plant. |
| For nature plants, I think asters are awesome - a suggestion from a really knowledgeable watcher I have, FormidableFlora. More from her, her words: "Let's plant wild senna to feed those wild turkeys, pussytoes to host American lady butterflies, bearberry for elfin butterfly larvae, etc? Or something altogether different?" |
| i'd like to plant trees for a living. im 53 years old and my joints aren't perfect, but i work physical labor jobs now and hold my own. do you think it's a reasonable thing to pursue? | I mean, it's definitely a worthy pursuit. And you are likely in pretty good physical health if you work physical jobs. Also continuing to be physically active can extend how long you are able. |
| I would say definitely, although I don't know anything about you. But I would think you can do it. There are likely tools you can get to help. I know people who plant 1000's trees per day for the forestry service and use tree plugs, have this tool they use that makes bending over not a problem. |
| That being said, I must say that I've worked out my whole life (not a gym rat or anything, but I'm an ex varsity athlete), and I think some of my best workouts have been hauling woodchips, turning compost, and doing farmers carries of water jugs up hills back and forth back and forth from the river to the upper gardens. I do this on purpose to stay as fit as possible doing something fun - planting trees is more fun than running on a treadmill - but it's definitely physically demanding. |
| As a consequence, I sleep really well!! |
| Hi, thanks for offering such an accessible channel, I've been watching for a while. My question is what do you think the greatest barrier is that is preventing permaculture design from entering mainstream agricultural thinking? | I think machinery and harvest. Permaculture is all about maximizing SYSTEM yield by maximizing photosynthesis through complex plant guilds. However, it's hard to run an apple harvester giant machine through a dense complex polyculture of apples and pear, plum, raspberries, lovage, sage, thyme, oregano and strawberries all weaved together. |
| For this reasons, permaculture large scale projects tend to be heavier on the human labour aspect (a pretty good thing considering the world of automation and job loss we are entering in the future), and less on giant machines running through 1000 acres of nothing but corn, like traditional agriculture does. |
| Many people will say that permaculture farms tend to be lower profits, but often that argument is flat out incorrect, but also it almost always ignores the soil cost of industrial agriculture. For example, if I made 10% more profits by mining my soil and turning it into a desert in 3 decades, was I more successful than the permaculture project that made 10% less profits, but whose soils actually INCREASED in fertility in the 3 decades? |
| And that's the problem right there. We're in this world that demands instant gratification, instant profits, shareholder reports that must maximize efficiency of the only thing they look at - short term. |
| Until we change fundamentally as a species, and start valuing the planet we live on, then we are going to struggle getting people to convert over to regenerative agriculture. We'll also not have a planet that grows food anymore. |
| the below is a reply to the above | |
| What soil test are you using to define your fertility? What is the soil type? | You know what oddly enough, I've never done any soil test beyond putting soil in a water bottle and filling with water and shaking it and letting it split into sand, silt and clay. And funny enough, the results are strikingly different in various locations. Almost full clay in the lower areas, almost full sand near the side of the house on the hill, and well, basically gravel near the house. |
| After getting really into Dr Elaine Ingham's work, I was going to send my soil off to a university to get it tested, but honestly just never made it a priority. Stuff is growing really well, and I just keep putting down organic material, and it gets better every season. So I just keep my focus on planting more trees. |
| How can people with small budgets in urban areas live that dream of permaculture, where land is too expensive? | I did a video just recently on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiIJkzahH1k. |
| There are also a lot of "plant on my land" style permaculture collaborations that you can get involved in. Land share programs. WOOFing. |
| For example, lots of elderly people would love to have someone come garden on their land. They get some free food, they have their land tended to and kept up for them as they lose the ability to take care of it themselves. You get free land to grow on, you just have to share some of your bounty. And let me tell you, the amount of zucchini I throw at people each year, sharing the surplus isn't really an issue. |
| So it's all about how much legwork you want to put in trying to organize something in your area. All these programs in other places were started by people just like you, who wanted to do something, wanted to make a change, wanted land but couldn't get it, and went about it another way. |
| So get calling people, put up posters in the local community center, try to find other permaculturists around you, and see if you can set up some kind of community or program that uses other people's useless lawns and turns them into forests and gardens, and shares the bounty. |
| Also maybe try to find some of those programs, contact their leaders and founders, and get tips from the true experts on how they did it, mistakes they made, how they would do it if they started fresh again, etc. |
| IIRC there are a bunch of programs like this in Florida and California. |
| Hey, I'm not sure if you are still checking this thread out or not, but another person asked a question that kind of relates to yours, and I go through and to a full design with them. It's not urban urban, but kind of urban/suburban fringe likely. Small plot of land though. You may be interested in checking it out: |
| https://www.reddit.com/IAmA/comments/jeaphl/i_am_keith_st_jean_or_canadian_permaculture/g9gukhx?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 |
