Last year we expanded our vegetable garden three-fold by converting grass into raised beds. My plan for last autumn was to sheet mulch the last row of grass that receives any sun, making it ready for spring planting. Sheet mulching is the great, labor-saving method of converting any grassy-weedy area into a nutrient-rich garden bed [...]
Entries Tagged as 'permaculture'
Upcycled Burlap Bags in the Garden (and Farewell to Grass)
February 1st, 2010 · 17 Comments
Tags: garden, permaculture, upcycling, urban farming
Permaculture Happens: Adapting the Three Sisters
July 31st, 2009 · 1 Comment
While puttering in the garden the other day, I noticed that a couple of the Kentucky Blue Pole beans has escaped their proper pole, and were vining about the mammoth sunflower planted next to them.
I leaned over to gently unwrap the beans, and return them to the bamboo teepee I’d constructed for them and all [...]
Tags: garden, permaculture, urban farming
Stubble Planting: Hidden Worlds and No-till Gardens
July 17th, 2009 · 3 Comments
I’ve been perusing a beautiful new book by Barbara Pleasant, The Complete Compost Gardening Guide. Pleasant invites us into the rich underworld of our backyard soil, asking us to see it as a living food web, rather than a simple input-output system. In one of my favorite sections, she discusses the microscopic fungi that live [...]
Tags: garden, permaculture, urban farming
Pretty, Practical, Hippie Herb Spiral: A Permaculture Inspiration
May 28th, 2009 · 2 Comments
In their fun book, The Urban Homestead, Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen encourage our gardening efforts by telling us that “Nature is standing by, ready to help.” Just as often, though, I resonate with Michael Pollan who, in his literate meditation Second Nature, writes, “Nature abhors a garden.”
Permaculture offers a gardening philosophy and practice that [...]
Tags: garden, herbs, permaculture
