Permaculture adventures in Sector39

trying to make sense of living in a crazy time

Archive for March, 2010

Yurt making from coppice wood

Mar 27

Posted by Steven Jones in permaculture | 3 Comments

steam bending fire

Jones the steam, running the fire for the steam box

Yurt making from coppice wood is a great short course. The challenge of making and finishing the central yurt wheel, shaving, shaping and finishing the roof struts and trellis wall section brings in several different disciplines and contains many of the core skills for green woodworking. It takes a bit of team work and application but its also a good excuse to get together meet some new people and have a chat and fun whilst learning something new.

poles

Processing yurt poles

It takes 106 poles, a roof wheel and a door to make a full 18 foot yurt. One group who came on the course ordered in a full set of poles and set about preparing them a smuch as could as well and completing their wheel over three day weekend couse. If you want to do the same on ths course please let us know in advance as much as possible. Ritchie is also offering some one day intro to green wordwork sessions , where you can make a stool and a shaving horse and get a feel for working with the tools. Another really positive aspect of working with green wood like this is that it is possible to use hand tools and ones that are easy to get a feel for working with.

bending the larger wheel

bending the larger wheel

The tricky bit and the part needing the most specialsit tools is bending the wheel. Wood, when still fresh like this, when heated will go very soft and bendy, for a short while, giving the opportunity to reshape it around a former. The longer the wood is clamped in position the longer it will hold its shape. This technique of steam bending is key to using wood to make more complex shapes. it is not difficult to do, but needs a bit of preparation to set up.

The steam box we are using is self made.. and is basically a long thin chest with a hinged lid on the smallest face, which has been insulated with a foil material. This was our first version, and mark is thinking to make smaller one next time, which would need less steam to heat it up.

In the course of making 9 wheels and a set of roof ribs and trellis we burnt a lot of coal and wood and used several gallons of boiling water, so it was a significant amount of energy, so we could do with coming up with a more efficient system really. But this still works very well and is good enough for occasional use like this.

view

The green woodwork camp set up

The course takes you through the key steps need to manufacture the variuos component parts of the yurt. It is then a matter of repeating some of this several times over to manufacture all the parts, which is easily done after the course back at home.

The main stages are shving poles for roof ribs and trellis, shaping and preparing the ends of those and bending them to shape. there is a lot of shaving and sanding and finishing to be done as well

The ring needs to be bent and then the 2 halfs joined with copper rivets. It can then be measured and drilled with holes, which later have to be burnt with a burning morticer to make square holes, which will become the roof rib supports.

burning mortice

burning mortice, turning a round drilled hole to a square one

To complete the wheel it has to be braced, to give it the strength it needs to hold the yurt together. The bracing rods have been shaved and bent in the steam box, before being fitted to the ring, which is drilled to recieve them. It is very satisfying to see the last pieces snap in to place.

The next Yurt making course at the Workhouse will be in the autumn, and look out for some Green woodworking one-day classes coming up in the summer

wheel

course participant with their wheel

yurt wheel competed

Mark, course lead tutor with the completed wheel

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Gardening course 4; Roots

Mar 27

Posted by Steven Jones in courses, organic growing, sustainability | No Comments

Found myself doing my homework in the back of the calss 5 minutes before this weeks lesson! hah somethings never change.. trying to do better this week!

Roots. The key point is that roots need well prepared soil. They dont like manure as it will make them branch and fork, but they do appreciate deeply forked fine soil allowing them to be straight and deep.

organic growing course

Weeding and loosening the subsoil

Bed 5 of our 6 raised beds in going to be our roots beds and we start preparing it by firstly removing the weeds. Without disturbing the soil too much, like turning it over we fork up the sub soil loosening it and removing anu obvious stones. We then piled the ebst top soil we could find from the mound that has been left for us to use by Stuey’s landscaping works.

So there is a key point here about compaction and water logging. Its the whole point of the raised beds. Especially here at the Workhouse with our high clay soil there is an issue of soil compaction. The point being that compacted soil has no air in it, cannot breathe there for the essential soil mocrobes are not active. It then of course cant drain, and you end up with a heavy weet soil that roots cant penetrate and all the nutrients are locked up and not available as the is no microbial activity in the soil as their is no air for them to respire.

clayball

Compacted clay wont allow the soil to drain

Once we have developed the soil and protected in a raised bed tehn we should never have to dig it like this again. If we had wanted to go for a no dig method then we dould have had mulch it over with soemothing like cardbaord, to kill off the weeds, or weaken them at least, then grow a deep rooted green manure crop, like clover over the winter , to break up the subsoil. It would then be ready for us next year.

worm

These guys do all the work for you

Healthy open soil will be full of life, and therefore teh essential plant nutirest are cycling and becoming available to the plants, and kept in the top soil, where roots can reach them.

We are planting Roots in this bed, carrots and Parships, we are also gowing to put in some beetroot and leafbeet, as they dont really need a whole bed of their own. We have now raked the soil into a fine tilth of small soil crumbs ready for sowing into. We have also prepared some especially fine soil which we have sieved , to cover the seeds with.

Roots are very delicate and dont not eanjoy being scratched and stressed in course soils, especially of course when they are young.

fine tilth

A fine tilth of soil

So the whole idea of the work we are investing here is to create the right conditions for soil microbes, worms and roots.

For the parsnips we dibbed a deep conical holes and palced 3 or 4 seeds in each hole. the idea being that parsnips have a poor germination rate, so we will select the storingest if we get mroe than on in a hole. We then fill up the hole with the fine sieved soil, this gives the parsnip the best chance to grow long a straight. These can be left to grow all year, and will keep in the ground right through the winter. the only thing is to harvest them before they start to grow their second year cycle when they will go woody in the centre.

parsip holes

Parsnip holes, carefully spaced

For Seed Saving, save the best 2 or 3 parships and allow them to flower and set seed. They are spectactualr flowers and will of course give you lots of seeds for the next year. If you dont want to upset your rotation of beds, you can dig up the snips for seed and put them in a plant pot, as they are growing from the energy stored in the root.

Pests and companions plants.

We are going to be planting carrots in the other half of this bed. We are going to broadcast the seeds mixed with sand, as they are very small so it makes them easier to handle. Where as we can carefully spaced our parsnips we will have to thin out the carrots by hand as they grow. especially when thinning they can be vulnerable to pest attack. The carrot root fly is attracted by the smell of the carrots, which is released when thinning them, so companion plants to help protect the carrots can be anything with a strong smwell of its ownnfusing the pest. Onions and chives, tansey being good examples, They cont have to be in teh same bed, maybe in moveable pots amongst them. Also carrot root fly flies very close to the ground so barriers, raised beds and other techniques can be very effective deterrents.

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Gardening course part III – Seeds

Mar 27

Posted by Steven Jones in courses, organic growing, permaculture | No Comments

18th March; Well we planted our first veg on the 3rd part of the OG course, starting off with hardy peas and broad beans, sown directly into one of the beds we have made. We talked about spacing between the seeds and between the rows, allowing light and room for the fully developed plant. The broad beans are planted in pairs so the plants can support each other and not fall over in the wind.

The idea is to plant these early, so there is still time to plant a follow on crop once we have harvested the fist flush of peas and beans.

Seed catalogues

Seed catalogues

Some key points on seeds, esp for organic growers. Many of the varieties offered are different. This is a lot to do with the characteristics of the various varieties, organic strains having to survive on their own more.. without inputs of chemicals of course. Perhaps another key thought is that we actually want more variety, longer flowering and harvesting cycles. Where a large scale producer might want a whole field to ripen on the same day, the opposite is true for a gardener, who wants to be able to pick small crops over many weeks.

Heritage seeds. Importance of maintaining older seed varieties, for generating new crosses and retaining various characteristics. Garden Organic, formley the HDRA have a specialist heritage seeds catalogue to help promote special oder varieties

The harder the outer case of the seed the longer they tend to last… leeks and parsips don’t last long, where as peas can last 10 years or more. Its all about water retention, seeds to contain a small quantity of moisture which is vital for it remaining viable. So they can dry out in the thinner skinned seeds. Storing them in a hot place like the greenhouse will also kill them as they will dry out completely. Store seed in a cool dark and dry place to avoid this.

Potato chit

Potato chit

We also started chitting our seed potatoes for our first earlies. They are breeding increasingly blight resistance potatoes, not as great eaters as some, but perfectly alright for mash etc. Blight is the key limiting factor in growing potatoes, which actually give us more calories per square metre of ground than any other vegetable.

Blight is triggered by a period of humidity, so late july to mid august they are very vulnerable to it.

In blight areas, it is the first earlys to concentrate on as they are ready before the blight season starts. It is humidity that triggers the blight to release it spores.. 3 days of humidity usually in August. It can carry 4 miles on the wind, the first sign being the leaves turning black, if spotted they can be cut and removed immediately,. The rotting spuds smell very bad and all must be removed and disposed of to prevent spread of the fungus.

We also planted onions and garlic.. shallots white and pink, early planting garlic.

Planting onion sets

Planting onion sets

Peas were meteor and broad beans

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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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Food Inc

Mar 17

Posted by Steven Jones in organic growing, sustainability | 1 Comment

Food Inc at the Workhouse

Food Inc at the Workhouse

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Organic Growing session 2

Mar 13

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

Course tutor Emma Maxwell

The second session of our 20 week course on organic growing,… it was brilliant to pick up a couple more members for the course this week – we have passed the minimum number required for it to progress for the funding, and its still not too late to join in if you want, – we are running this weekely session right through to the end of July its a 3 hour a week workshop – a chance to talk about it, do it , try it at home. So, organic gardening is all about healthy, open soil well fed with compost. It is all about feeding the microbes and worms, and keeping the soil open, free draining and not compacted. Hence the reason why we are building the raised beds.

Soil, well its the key ingredient isn’t it. So what are the main types.. well the first and main way to tell soils apart is the size of the rock particles it is comprised of – Emma showed us a range from course sand, to fine clay. Pretty much all soils (in termperate climate) fall on a line between sand and clay. A mix of the two, the other key variable being the humic content, the amount of dark, decaying organic matter that it contains.

Clay soils, with small tighly packed particles also hold water and nutrients much mor than sand, Where as sandy soils are free draining and warm up much more quickly in spring. So both types has relative advantages, and of course what you are really looking for is a good mix of both. A decent content of humous is of course essential as this contains many essential plant nutrients and allows the soil to act as a sponge and hold on water and not dry out too quickly.

soil particles sizes

soil particle sizes

Illustrated by the box of balls in the picture, bigger particles have much bigger gaps, so water obviously passes through more easily So the first we did was to judge the clay – sand content. So sqeezing a small amount of soil into ball and then rolling out into a sausage between your fingers really gives a feel for its stickyness, and feel for the particel sizes. Also placing a sample in  jamjar of water and leaving it to settle out gives a good indication of the character of your soil. The other key test of course is Ph, the acidity/ alkalinity of your soil will make a difference as to what you can successfully grow.

litmus test

Litmus test - a very alkaline soil from a sample taken locally

In certain conditions nutrients can be locked up in the soil, they may be there but are not available to the plants, so it is important to have an idea as to its levels. We used a cheap kit from a gardeni shop, more accurate analysis can be had by sending a sample away for mineral content analysis as awell as PH.

With 6 riased beds to fill the plan is try out different techniques with each one, so we get the feel and experinece of them,  the first one we are going to good old fashoned double dig bed. Grandand allotment gardening style is how i see that, its always important to get your basics right.

The principle is this, remove the top soil, the richer darker more friable and fertile part of the soil, 10-15 cm, say and then fork up and loosen the firmer more compact and stonier sub soil, covering over with a layer of well rotten compost or manure, then replacing the lossened topsoil back on top. Its a chance to remove any big perrennial weeds, and feed up the soil whilst avoiding mixing it up and disturbing it too much.

Having replaced the topsoil we covered the sil with fleecey garden fabric which will help warm the soil and also protects it from the sun. The plan is to plant hardy peas and beans in this bed next week.

double dig

double dig

Its great to be out in the spring sunshine and meeting some great new people.. I am excitied about the idea of having a course like this spread over 5 months, I am more used to working at the intensity of a residental 3 day or even 14 days course, so hese bight size chunks of 4 hours a week is a whole new experience for me. I am promising myself to keep up this blog and record our weekly progress, adn keep a record hopefully of what we have learned. I am very welcome an input from any of my fellow students out there..

finished raised bed

The finished, double dug raised bed, with protecting fleece cover

It feels like a good exercise to keep an on line diary of the whole growing season… and hopefully should create an interesting record.

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Organic thursdays…. organic Growing Pt1

Mar 8

Posted by Steven Jones in courses, organic growing, permaculture, sustainability, workhouse | 1 Comment

Measuring the beds

Measuring the beds

We held the first part of our 20 (60hr) week organic gardening course at the Workhouse on thursday, and we will be running this for the duration of the growing season right up to the end of July. Its 12.30-3.30 every Thursday, designed so people attending can collect kids from school and to support you throughout the growing season.

It is not too late for latecomers to join us for at least a couple more weeks and we will update anyone who has missed some of the content. The first session went very well and I am hopeful that this will be a great course. I already feel like I have learned a lot.

We are building 6 new beds  and will be planting them up and managing them as the practical part of the course, so you will get the theory and the practical experience of growing. Its a simple system, tried and tested.. the beds are 1.2m wide, so you can easily reach over it without have to stand on the soil. There is a path every 3m which also reduces the remptation to jump over the bed to get to the other side. the long paths are 1.2m wide, which is plenty wide enough for a wheel barrow or wheel chair and the short paths are 1.5m which allows extra width if required for access.

The key thing being that we must not stand on the soil as it compacts it and negates all the the hard work done on preparing it in the first place. Especially in organic systems we are relying on soil microbes and earthworms to maintain the fertility and as these all generally are oxygen breathing organisms them we dont want to squash all the air out of the soil.

New raised beds

New raised beds at the Workhouse

A point about raised beds… they dont need to have boxed-in sides in wood, slate or whatever.. and having sides has certain advantages and disadvantages. At the Workhouse where we occasionally have big public events and all sorts of other activities it is important for us to make it clear where people can and cant walk. So by building very clear defined beds we should be able to accomplish that without having to use keep off signs and other unfriendly things like that. Good design should show where you can and cant walk. So we do aim to build a nice boxed in beds for this reason. Also as Emma Maxwell, the course tutor pointed out, they also look better if they are for example down to green manure, it looks more purposeful and less like a bunch of weeds, again a consideration for a public place. But if you jsut want to mound up the earth with no sides, then its your call.. its less places for the slugs to hide and less work for you, so you decide.

There are still places available and its only £30 for the whole 20 weeks if you are on tax credits and there is a 100% grant available for those without any level 1 qualifications (eg g.c.s.e)..at full price its only £110, so its only about £5 a week!

If you are interested and maybe have some questions then please just get in touch!

organic gardening course

studying in the spring sunshine

The Workhouse is an interesting place to be thinking about sustainability and the challenges the transition process is going to throw up for us. Basically back in the day when the place was populated by paupers much of the work they were engaged in at the Workhouse was in maintaining themselves. Anything they could not produce for them selves had to be levied from taxes which of course was never popular.

As I understand it each 20 parishes had to fund a Workhouse, so they were never happy about the idea of paying for people to be idle. They did all sorts of work there, like unpicking old rope and breaking stones, but i suspect more of it was to do with self maintenance; growing and preparing food, making, washing and mending their clothes and all that stuff. So they were engaged in their own kind of local economy, albeit for different reasons.. but it is a poignant reminder of the realities we might be faced with in a post oil world.

For many the Workhouse is a history project, preserving the past, and not forgetting how our society was, not really that long ago.. for me it is very much a sustainability project, learning from the past.. and a key lesson is that community and a strong local economy is what is at the heart of sustainability.

Much of the potential for the project down there is to use to build the sustainability agenda into local community.. weave that thread back into our daily and local lives.

Growing and sharing food, managing the landscape, recycling resources and trading with each other as much as we can for things that we really need. It might start with growing a few vegetables but for me the vision is about extending that through co-operation to housing, business and finance.. But lets not get ahead of our selves… its back to learning the 4 course rotation and relearning our gardening principles on this course and that is not a bad starting point.

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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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Its Yurts Next

Mar 3

Posted by Steven Jones in Uncategorized | No Comments

Shaving yurt poles on a home made brace

Shaving yurt poles on a home made brace

Well actually as I write this its the first part of the 20 week organic gardening course. But we are booking for the next 3 day yurt making course at the moment, coming up on the 19 20 21st of March.

There is plenty of oppotunity for people to catch up with the 20 week course even if they miss the first one or 2 classes. Buts its 12.30-3.30pm at the Workhouse starting Thursday this week and then onwards until July. We will miss out the school holiday weeks, which is 3 times .

But yes otherwise it is Yurts next which is three days of green wood work, steam bending and making to keep your own yurt wheel, whilst working on the the other sections as well, picking experience and training in all the skills required to make your own versatile low impact dwelling. It is a very satisfactory and rewarding experience with no special experience required. This is one of our most popular short courses.

We are also offering a special 2 day introduction to green wood working on 17th and 18th with some coppice work and hopefully making some green wood working jigs and tools. There are a couple of places potentially available on this, which is a new course and is being designed and run for a specific customer, but we could offer a couple more places if required.

I am very excited already about the May PDC.. and we are taking bookings for that as well, there are still places but we have had a fair amount of interest.. We are planning practicals and visits for that at the moment and have got some very interesting people coming along so far.

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