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Permaculture
Mar. 4th, 2023 06:43 pmI came across a post on building spiral gardens on Tumblr this morning, which reminded me that I really want to get into permaculturing my yard and garden in the next few years. We are extreme Hard Mode for gardening and especially for the kind of gardening I want to get better at, which is self-sustaining gardening that uses minimal commercially purchased soil amendments - our climate is very cold and very dry, with a short growing season, poor acidic soils, and in our specific case, a yard composed mainly of mining tailings. So it's not really the sort of situation where I can find the answers in a book, beyond general strategies. There just aren't really books for USDA Zone 1. (Although this one, on permaculture gardening on Canada's cold, rocky maritime coast, is fairly applicable to our conditions too, and is the book that got me interested in local, sustainable permaculture in the first place.)
Next summer I'd like to start working on water collection/retention (our yard is extremely porous and dry; I have to water constantly) and passive solar heating to extend the growing season. Linking mostly for my own purposes: I found this article on permaculture farm basic planning, this one on soil-building, and this water management article.
I have been extremely happy with my compost results over the last couple of years. That was one thing I'd always struggled with - we are also Hard Mode for composting because it's so cold - but I figured out a few tricks (such as pre-composting in black plastic tubs) and have been turning out some really nice, usable soil from kitchen scraps. We simply don't produce enough scraps to provide all my fertilizer needs just from our household scraps, but it makes very nice, fertile soil and it feels so good to turn trash into vegetables. Hopefully next summer I can take a few more steps towards making our garden more sustainable and self-sufficient.
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On a completely unrelated topic, I'm having fun with this Elfquest elf name generator, in large part because some of the names you can get are entertainingly ridiculous. Sometimes they're perfectly nice-sounding elf names. And sometimes you get Hamster, Frogbat, Birdsniffer, or (my personal favorite so far) Shroom.
There's also Convert your name to a Wolfrider name. (Mine is Lakelace, which I actually rather like. Pretty sure all it's doing is finding words in its database that start with as many as possible of the same letters, but that's still a nice result.)
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Edited to add: I also have open in a tab this article on a lady who went missing 30 years ago (apparently just walked away) and turned up recently in a nursing home in Puerto Rico. I feel like there's some fascinating story fodder here.
Next summer I'd like to start working on water collection/retention (our yard is extremely porous and dry; I have to water constantly) and passive solar heating to extend the growing season. Linking mostly for my own purposes: I found this article on permaculture farm basic planning, this one on soil-building, and this water management article.
I have been extremely happy with my compost results over the last couple of years. That was one thing I'd always struggled with - we are also Hard Mode for composting because it's so cold - but I figured out a few tricks (such as pre-composting in black plastic tubs) and have been turning out some really nice, usable soil from kitchen scraps. We simply don't produce enough scraps to provide all my fertilizer needs just from our household scraps, but it makes very nice, fertile soil and it feels so good to turn trash into vegetables. Hopefully next summer I can take a few more steps towards making our garden more sustainable and self-sufficient.
---
On a completely unrelated topic, I'm having fun with this Elfquest elf name generator, in large part because some of the names you can get are entertainingly ridiculous. Sometimes they're perfectly nice-sounding elf names. And sometimes you get Hamster, Frogbat, Birdsniffer, or (my personal favorite so far) Shroom.
There's also Convert your name to a Wolfrider name. (Mine is Lakelace, which I actually rather like. Pretty sure all it's doing is finding words in its database that start with as many as possible of the same letters, but that's still a nice result.)
---
Edited to add: I also have open in a tab this article on a lady who went missing 30 years ago (apparently just walked away) and turned up recently in a nursing home in Puerto Rico. I feel like there's some fascinating story fodder here.