Here’s a bunch of notes on stuff from Permanent culture, or Permaculture:

1. Ethics (Holmgren): 1. Help the land. 2. Help people. 3. Distribute surplus. And some principles: See whole systems, apply feedback (pay attention and adapt), recycle waste, maximize edges, use small and slow solutions, “the problem is the solution,” perennials are better, and the only limit to yield is the imagination of the designer.

2. Plant comfrey under trees. It’s a great dynamic accumulator, blocks grass, and edible, especially the flowers. Dynamic accumulator = a plant that accumulates valuable minerals and puts them in the soil. Also great under trees: dandelions, figwort.

3. Protect young nut trees with thorny shrubs (gooseberry is good). By the time the tree bears, it shades out the shrubs. Or plant fruit/nut trees in an existing thicket.

4. Cattail and jerusalem artichoke are the fastest biomass builders.

5. A use for thistles: fill a barrel with water, stuff it with thistles, wait until it gets bubbly, and you’ve got “green manure tea,” which is roughly the same as compost tea, a natural liquid plant food.

6. A use for Goldfish in the garten: keep them in the rain-harvester barrel and they’ll eat mosquito eggs.

7. Radish seed pods: better than radish roots and the earliest spring vegetable.

8. The largest organism on the planet is mushroom. Grow and eat mushroom. Drink beer and listen to this !

9. Guinea fowl eat ticks and yellow jackets, and muscovy ducks mow grass. Your ducks won’t fly away if you feed them well.

10. Keep some pests around to feed and attract predators of future pests! And instead of fighting big pest population blooms, wait for them to crash naturally. (Like civilization!)

11. Start food forest now !

12. Natural pond sealer: put a bunch of organic matter in the pond, thrash the water around, and it forms an anaerobic watertight seal, called “gleying.” Pigs can do the thrashing.

13. To dig up a stump: jam some food down under it and get pigs to dig for it.

14. Propagation trick: cover scattered seeds with heavy tarp, watch, and when they begin to sprout, in the evening remove the tarp and replace with a sheet.

15. Grafting: Rootstock should have sap flowing, top part (scionwood) should be dormant.

16. Budding (move bud from one plant to another): Bud doesn’t have to be dormant, doesn’t have to go where bud was. Bud source should be first year growth, young enough for cambium to peel, old enough to snap when bent.

17. Coppicing: cut at slant, in winter when dormant.

18. Pears and medlars can be grafted on hawthorn roots.

19. Ribes species (currants, gooseberries), and also rose and willow, can be propagated just by jamming a stick in the ground in the fall.

2o. Willow shaving tea encourages branch cuttings to root. Shave stem/leaf node, soak in cold water, dip cuttings in.

21. Trick for germinating new apple varieties: spread out juicing pulp under dirt. Trick to test a new variety by making it bear fruit young: tie the top of the tree down so it’s bent horizontal like a branch. But this permanently stunts growth!

22. What’s the deal with tree trunks painted white? It’s to keep them cool in spring so they leaf later and don’t get frost-killed.

23. Permaculturists are more forgiving of “invasive” species than some ecological factions. There’s a whole book called Invasion Biology: Critique of a Pseudoscience, arguing that so-called invasive species are “merely symptoms of ecosystem damage, actually helping to heal the planet.” Also the anti-invasive movement is closely allied to Monsanto and other poison-sellers, and their language sounds just like Nazi race talk applied to plants.

24. Deforestation is happening faster in Japan than in the Amazon!

25. Iodine is less toxic than chlorine for sterilizing water. Grapefruit seed extract is best. Polyethylene is the least toxic plastic for pipes.

26. Bottle window in cob or cordwood wall: cut tops off two bottles (need special tool), fit bottoms together, coat with foil, stick in wall.

27. Great idea if you have a lot of cedar: roof of overlapping planks.

28. Cedar inner bark for fiber: strip from recently downed tree, soak 2-3 days, pound between rocks.

29. If wind is strong enough to generate energy, it’s strong enough to be a nuisance (or vice versa).

3o. Great ideas: Straw bale urinal — just pee on a straw bale and it will turn to good compost. Scatter seedballs with a giant slingshot! Use buried phone book as slow water releaser. If you scatter buckwheat, deer will eat it instead of your other plants. Sprinkle baking soda to block slugs.

31. Warnings: Never sheet mulch on dry ground — wet it first! Horse manure is likely to be full of invasive seeds. If you kill a weed, and leave the niche, nature will fill it with the same weed, or a worse one!