Permaculture adventures in Sector39

trying to make sense of living in a crazy time

Archive for category forest gardening

Autumn PDC

Aug 20

Posted by stevie in Green events, Wales, courses, energy, forest gardening, organic growing, peak oil, permaculture, renewable energy, sustainability | No Comments

The flier for the next Permaculture Design course is available for download here and we are already taking the first few bookings for it. I am especially excited about this up coming 2 week course as we are going to be at a new venue and working with some very interesting people. The plan is to be based at a local farm, which is very much in transtion and really an ideal place to be considering issues such as food security and the complexites of the challenges we are facing as a society trying to work towards sustainability.

Other new things we would like to try out include charcoal burning, as a way of exploring energy and value added produce, thanks to John Owen who will be leading that session. We will be visiting the garden project at Cwm Harry as well as old favourites like a trip to CAT and Sweet Loving Flowers, who have transformed an acre or so of sheep pasture into one of the most diverse and productive pieces of land I have seen. Lots more info about the course will be posted here over the next few weeks.

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Greening the Desert II – Permaculture in Jordan

Aug 3

Posted by Steven Jones in forest gardening, forest gardens, good teaching resources, organic growing, permaculture | 1 Comment

Permaculture techniques and ideas are taking root in the most water deprived country in the world.

Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East from Craig Mackintosh on Vimeo.

A great many people were inspired by the original Greening the Desert video, that looked at the potentials of applying permaculture design principles in one of the most challenging environments you can find.

Hyper arid, eroded, super hot and below sea level with saline soils as a result of irrigation with brackish water. Even under these harsh conditions the benefits and potentials of the system were there for all to see. The original project wasn’t properly maintained once the funding ran out and hasn’t reached its full potential, it has however survived well in the face of neglect and as a result a great many people in Jordan have in turn been inspired by the potentials of Permaculture.

This long awaited video goes back to the original site and follows the amazing developments which have happend since.

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Cwm Harry – Week 2

May 13

Posted by Steven Jones in Cwm Harry Project, composting, forest gardening, organic growing, permaculture | No Comments

Its a big deal for us here at Sector39, but we have been given the opportunnity to manage the back lot at Cwm Harry in Newtown for the next 5 months, hopefully there-by sowing seeds of a project that will last much longer. A chance that has come out of the blue pretty much, and from a slight change of focus for the project itself.

The vision is to develop this one acre lot into a forest garden nursary and intensive veg growing space. Utilising the compost and rainwater available for the Cwm Harry project activities and building. We have submitted a £10k capital grant application, to buy the kit we need basically, to launch what we plan will be a ground breaking community growing initiative. All the ingredients are there to create…

  • Forest garden and useful species nursary
  • Suppliers of produce for local veg and fruit box scheme
  • Develop profile fo the Cwm Harry project
  • Develop a micro allotment and allotment apprentice scheme, to support local growing
  • Supporting secondary activites, bee keeping, education, etc
cwm harry newtown

Cwm Harry Back lot, Newtown Powys.

Its a big industrial unit, with lots of composting going on inside – processing municipal and domestic biodegradable waste. Meanwhile the roof of the building itself gathers a large amount of rain water, so the challenge is to put those two key ingredients together, maybe add  ome people to to mix, shake it all up and we ought to be able to crate a thriving community garden and local food hub.

If you want to get involed or can help us in anyway then we’d love to hear from you. Use contact page on this website to get in touch.

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Introduction to Forest Gardening

Mar 23

Posted by Steven Jones in courses, forest gardening, organic growing, workhouse | No Comments

The next course we are running is repeat of the introduction to forest gardening course we ran near Borth last month. Its at the Workhouse, Saturday April 10th 10 -5 and its £20/ £15 for the day with a soup lunch.

It is a mixture of theory and practical and a perfect taster to find out wnat gardening with permaculture design is all about. The Food Forest and edible landscape are central applications of permaculture design and an area that is very rewarding to study. Its the gardening holy grail… a low input, low maintenance, high output & long lasting growing system.

At the end of the day you will feel able to make a start on your own food forest, or how to add layers of productivity to an existing orchard. And even if you are not a gardener it contains the central ideas of sustainable development.

Its a fun and imformative day and a chance to meet some like- minded people. The details and booking form are here.

Tforest garden practical

forest garden practical

These pictures were taken by Hannah for Ynyslas Community Supported Agriculture project.  It is an amazing place if you have nott seen it. As i understand it the gardens were built just over a 100 years ago, as a market garden to grow food for the crews working on developing the railways lines around here.

I really love the idea of BR building gardens to grow food for its workers.. it really illustrates how far we have changed in just 100 years.

Puts a different slant on the idea of food security and local food production . As such it makes a great link between ideas about food production over three eras. I tend to think of the pre-energy intensive world, to the 100 year blip of huge scale carbon combustion to the post carbon world that is looming large on the horizon.

Lecture in the Greenhouse at Ynyslas CSA

Steve Jones in action at the compost heap

Steve Jones in action at the compost heap

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New Advert

Mar 18

Posted by Steven Jones in Green events, courses, energy, forest gardening, organic growing | 1 Comment

SKills for sustainability advert

Skills for sustainability advert

I was thinking of running an advert in the local paper here… and thought I would keep it simple.. interested to know what anythinks of that.. is just a web address ok?  I was going  for as few words as possible and self explanatory.. or maybe I should go high tech and do graphics and stuff… but i thought in the local paper, keep it simple with a  catchycouple of phrases and a link was about right.. hmmmm.. answers on a postcard please.

The idea behind the courses is to develop the key skills we need to be able to develop strong local economies. Building low impact sustainable housing, growing food organically, micro scale energy generation appliances, developing edible food forests, bee keeping, tool making and the like. We have a great chance to develop this programme at the Workhouse hopefully, and the extremely positive experiences of the last few courses we have run have encouraged us to develop the idea further.

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Forest Gardening in Mexico and Wales

Mar 8

Posted by Steven Jones in Uncategorized, forest gardening, forest gardens, organic growing, permaculture, sustainability | 1 Comment

dragon fruit

Dragon fruit

Really interesting story on the Worldwatch site on forest gardens in Mexico.

Basically it seems agromonists tried to introduce Dragon fruit as a cash crop in a Mayan part of  Mexico some 15 years ago, but as soon as funding dried up for concrete posts and trellises required by their system the specialists left. The point is that the tradtional farmers adapted the growing technique to fit into their forest garden practices. Using living trellises of trees of their other crops to support the vine. So now the agromonists are back studying the traditional systems so they can learn from the farmers.

It is a real insight into how good ideas might take root in our post oil future. It is proof that these Mayan villages and their ancient agricultural arts are not just vestiges of a lost way of life; they are crucial models that could teach us “moderns” how to farm in ways that work with, not in spite of, our surrounding ecosystems.

So the link to Wales of course is that we running a short day introduction to forest gardening at Ynyslas on Saturday next. forest gardenins is a productive low maintenance system that can be adapted to suit any climate conditions on the planet. Many of the ideas have evolved from the tropics, Robert Hart famously adapted his forest garden idea from observations made in Kerala, in tropical India. Obviously with much less light and solar energy there is a need to adapt the system to fit our temperate climate, so the whoel area of temperate forest gardening is a very interesting area to be investigating. there are literally 1000′s of plants that love the forest edge situation, and careful use of light and spacing create fantastic opportunities for productive edible landscaping.

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