Tag: permaculture

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5 Ways to Save Money and Save Planet

Live Better. Lower Costs

Save money and save your environment with simple tricks to eat healthy, get smart-productive, be comfy and chill, enjoy being active and waste less. Permaculture is intentional design to create a truly sustainable culture.

Here a few design ideas to slip into your lifestyle.

1. Save Your Health

Consider what foods you love. And find an easy way to grow them. Lets make a cup of tea. Fancy lemon grass and ginger? That’s easy to grow.

And I love eating basil, so I grow it in a wicking pot with a cage over the top. I use worm poo as the soil in the pot and the basil is bursting with flavour. This small design cycle is simple. The Food Scraps go to the > wormfarm then > to wicking pot with basil seed then > to plate. Whereas farmed basil has a more complex and expensive pathway to grow and transport the basil. And it quickly looses flavour.

Eating healthily reduces costs in medical bills and loss of productivity. Not to mention our enjoyment of life.

2. Get Smart-Productive

A food that is self sustaining and very cheap to start in a warm temperate region is sweet potato. Buy a fresh sweet potato, let it sprout in the cupboard, cut off the sprouts with a small section of the tuber and plant it close to the surface of the soil. We can cook the leaves as well as the new young tubers. The cycle is Tuber to > soil > perennial food supply > better water retention and organic matter in the soil > more tubers.

Not only are you getting years of free food, you are improving your environment by protecting soil from erosion, holding moisture in the soil for cooling in summer and creating habitat.

To take this a step smarter, grow indigenous ground covers. In our area Dianella, Pigface and Warrigal greens are a smart choice.

And to take this food to a greater level of sustainability, cook it in a solar oven or rocket stove.

Be Comfy and Chill

Design to capture cooling breezes in summer and deflect frost and cold wind in winter. Explore your microclimates (inside and outside the home) and create shelterbelts.

Enjoy More Action

What activities do you love doing? Find a way to incorporate this into your lifestyle design. I like walking, so I have put in a labyrinth of garden paths. I make time to walk to friends places. And I campaign for better walking routes, water stations and public toilets. Continence Australia has developed a national public toilet map.

bushwalk

Recently, a design client said she liked running. Her running group share ideas, fresh food and observations about the local area. And as a bonus, active people need less heating.

Finding how to hook in to our passions and curiosity helps us build a better future.

Photograph in Beechworth hotel. Victoria, Australia

Waste less Save More

Do a quick audit of what you throw away. This will help determine how you can waste less resources and money. I know we throw away plastic from purchases. If I can buy less, I will have less plastic in our system. I also know that I throw out old clothes so when I buy clothes I ensure that they can be composted. The worms love some clothing for insulation and laying eggs.

learning to glaze old windows save a lot of money and provides opportunities to be creative.

For the past 30 years we have used our paper waste in the garden. We sheet mulched more than half an acre to suppress the kikuyu (saving hours of mowing each year), and now we use paper mâché to gently reshape the landscape, building path edges and swales with paper.

Join the Live Discussion

April Sampson-Kelly, a Permaculture Elder with over 30 year of research, writing, implementing, designing and living with Permaculture principles will give us hands on experience with solar ovens, heating tricks, seed saving, wicking without plastic and making gardens from paper waste. 

April Sampson-Kelly

Bring your lunch to enjoy at the Eco Garden after the workshop. After lunch April will be speaking on Climate Change Adaptation at our monthly gathering at the same location. 

If you’re not yet a Permaculture Central Coast member, you can join us by visiting:
https://permaculturecc.org.au/… Annual Membership fees are $20 for an individual or $30 for a family. Join today and enjoy access to all our events!

Get your ticket here

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Dr Kim Loo on Permaculture, Joy, Wellbeing & Medicine

Dr Kim Loo is an active carer. She is inspired by her Permaculture garden, her Permie pod helpers and her patients. Kim is a member of Doctors for the Environment and other climate advocacy groups. She has noticed a big shift in people’s appreciation of the connection between health and the environment. In this interview she shares a lot of great ideas and encourages us to get active and finding joy.

What does Permaculture do for you?

Dr Kim Loo said “well I suppose in a way because my family are Buddhists and in a way it kind of aligns with Buddhism anyway in terms of the principles and the concepts, And it was just lovely to actually finally go to Permaculture and realize there’s a whole lot of people who are aligned with what I line with which is to protect nature work with nature and rewild my garden. I’ve never been super structured with my garden. I get edible plants that grow in outside areas. I leave them alone.

I’ve been a Doctor for 35 years now. We’re actually about to have our 35 year reunion from Sydney University Medical School. Health can’t be seen in isolation. Because health is impacted by all the systems around health. And the way that I approach health is the way a lot of my friends, who are doctors, approach Health.

Core of health – Biological and Social Determinants

We look at the core of health and the biological determinants of health. So, I ask what their family history is: whether there’s any vascular disease, whether there’s an anxiety depression, diabetes, cancers. Then I look at their health in terms of what they currently have how they live.

Then I also actually look at the social determinants. Because the social determinants of health is super, super important. My mother’s a social worker. So, being really cognizant of social determinants is really important. This includes where people are born, where they live, where they go to school where they work. And really how a person is supported. This framework determines how well they recover from any sort of mental or physical illness.

Commercial Pressures on health

And also then I look at the commercial determinants of health. This includes the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, gambling industry, the processed food industry and the fossil fuel industry. All these industries are powerful Industries. They have deep pockets. And large marketing teams who don’t consider the health of the population. I ask ‘do they have gas at home inside the house? Indoor gas can cause asthma in kids and sensitize them for house dust mite. And I ask people to consider little details like not to idle near school drop off and pick up because their kids will be sucking in all that air pollution.

Environmental Determinants

And then I look at the environmental determinant of Health which is clean air water healthy soils, stable climate and a healthy ecosystem so you look at where they live do they have a space for walking in nature. Do they have a garden when I see a patient to look at all these determinants of health.

“If you don’t understand how people live,
you can’t actually look out of them effectively”
Physician Dr Kim Loo

How can people live well?

People can live well if they have to have somewhere safe to stay. And they can adequately keep warm when it’s cold and keeping cool when it’s hot. They have people around them to support them. And they have access to fresh food and skills to process fresh food. Because fresh food is more expensive than processed food. And wellness is also about how much they move during the day. A lot of people are quite sedentary. So, it’s good to get people to be ‘behaviourally activate’. Also, wellness depends on how they sleep.

Finally, we live well from having something that brings joy. With a hobby people thrive and not just live.

Advocacy for Systems Thinking

I’ve been in systems advocacies for the last 10 years so because it can feel quite overwhelming when you realize it is a systems problem. Because not everyone completely understands this. And there’s so much disinformation at the moment around. I encourage all my doctor friends. I’m in doctors for the environment. We do multiple things including trying to insert climate change into the medical curriculum in all the universities we have a sustainability team that looks at emissions from the really the hospital sector 7% of emissions in Australia from the healthcare sector. Not many people know this.

We also have ethical investment arms where we do internal lobbying and shareholder activism. A lot of banks own fossil fuel shares. We also continue lobbying for every single tree that’s going be cut down because the loss of biodiversity in Australia is terrible. So, we work with other groups like World Wildlife Fund.”

Kim Models Wellbeing

Kim continues “My tea each day is lemon Myrtle and lemongrass ’cause I’m trying to wean myself off coffee. I show it to people and they say ‘oh my God it smells so nice just to have create your own tea from your own garden. Once you establish this, it’s cheap. Instead of buying bags of drinks you are actually getting stuff from your garden. There’s a lot of groups that working together in alliances. This wasn’t happening 10 years ago. Now there is a network of people working together which is a great thing. Every time we have a local permaculture pod get together, sitting down eating with other people, we are creating a community of people who understand and care.”

Learn more about creating a lifestyle that is healthy for you and the environment. Enrol in our Permaculture Courses.

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Plan a Natural Irrigation System

It is easy to move water across the landscape without pipes or hoses. Natural irrigation simply uses gravity. This video tutorial shows us making an irrigation channel on site. Lets dig in and move the conversation beyond swales and trenches.

We used a simple A frame to map out the contours. Yes, you can buy equipment to do this, but A frames can be made with very little expense. And when you use the A frame regularly you get good at it.

You also get a feel for the slope and have a visual estimation of what you think each contour line should look like. Rowena explained how she saw how the contour hugged the landscape. “Well, I’ve just gotten down low, closer to the the ground so that I can visualize it. I’m visualizing the slope of the land and where the water is running and perhaps where we could capture it. It feels like it’s wrapping around um at the base of a hill.

Moving the topic of swales, trenches and channels along

In previous tutorials I have explained the difference between a trench a ditch. And how a swale is a similar to a ditch that sits perfectly on the contour. It catches water and it allows it to seep deeper into the soil.

On the other hand, a keyline irrigation channel can look almost the same but it it’s used to move the water slowly out from the wetter areas to the drier areas. So, the swale a trench a bit like a long bucket with holes in it we don’t have any plastic lining in it we need to be really precise because the swale sits level on the Contour it catches the water and it allows it to seep through the soil. Sometimes I check if the swale is level and not leaking by filling it with water or checking it on raining days.

Grant Lubyckij testing then re-digging the swales to create irrigation channels at Gillys Kitchen Garden in Otford
Grant Lubyckij testing then re-digging the swales to create irrigation channels

Check and Plug Leakage Points

Rainy days are perfect for checking for leakage points. Sometimes I check if the swale is level by filling it with water or checking it on raining days. Digging a channel requires a little bit of preparation. You don’t just mark the contours. You need to do the mathematics and mark a fall from that contour. [I’ll show you how to do that]. But the good news is that extra bit of preparation means that the irrigation is self-cleaning. This is because as the surface water moves along, it washes out loose debris.

Comparison of Swales and Irrigation channels

Swales hold the water but channels move water from wet gullies to dry ridges. This is a small part of the key line a method that was pioneered by PA Yeomans Snr during the 1950s. His method has rehabilitated many large farms around the world. At the end of the video I showed ways to apply this gravity fed irrigation system to regenerate a site.

Two Ways to Move Water in a Channel

The two ways to use gravity to move water across the landscape are: 1. having the trench with a slightly downhill direction and 2. Digging deeper to get to where you want to go. Grant Lubyckij is re-digging the swales here at Gilly’s Kitchen Garden in Otford. One area of the garden was always dry. We plugged up the leakage point on that garden and Grant re-dug the swale deeper to convert it into a channel and get the water to move in the opposite direction.

Tiffany-HENBURN
Exercise Your Mathematics Mind

Simplified Mathematics for Channel Irrigation

Imagine you’ve walked across the slope of a hill when you walk across the contour. One foot is slightly lower than the other. But, we’re feeling pretty balanced. Whereas, when you walk uphill you can feel pressure in the heel of your boots. And when you walk downhill you’ll feel pressure on the soles of your feet.

A Steep Slope

When we drop downhill by 1 m in height for every meter that we’ve gone across the slope we’re walking down a steep path. Most landscape standards call this a slippery slope and you would be advised to install hand rails, retaining walls and steps prevents people falling.

A 1/3 Slope

Now, let’s imagine you’re walking across open fields going downhill as you walk. You’re walking across a slope but you go down only 2/3 of a meter instead of the whole meter. It still feels like a slope but by landscaping standards it doesn’t require steps or a retaining wall that’s called the 1/3 drop. This is a slope of 30°.

The Goldilocks Slope 15°

We all know that the easiest way to get down a steep hill in a very open space is to go slightly downhill as we travel across. Now imagine you drop downhill by only a third of a meter or yard for every meter that you walk across. This gets us the magical 15° off contour. You feel like you are gently gliding.

This gentle slope is sufficient to enable rain water to travel along without causing erosion.

Overcoming Obstacles

If you find that there are trees or rocks in your way you might need to do a combination of deeper digging and going off contour.

keyline channels and bare garden beds Grant and Tim market garden

Grant and Tim have now developed a productive market farm using these natural irrigation technique skills.

When we work with nature, we are giving nature a chance to recover and repair.

Learn more about Permaculture with us at PermacultureVisions.com

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THE FUTURE OF PERMACULTURE

Permaculture is continually expanding. It is building skills, experience, knowledge, tools, strategies and design thinking. As we learn from and collaborate with nature we get smarter. And we explore systems for a truly sustainable future that allow systems to regenerate. In this interview with Richard Telford, creator of the permaculture principles icons and leading publisher, discusses the future of permaculture.

Interest Changes but our Knowledge Keeps Expanding

Interest in permaculture waxes and wanes with the need for it. During the pandemic there was a really strong need for permaculture. Then it changed. Richard explained “I think people felt Permaculture wasn’t so relevant because the system was coming back together…or it appeared so. People felt, I guess, more secure and then the demand for permaculture.. waned.”

In fact, Permaculture has pioneered many things from compost toilet systems to the powerful Transition Town movement. What will the future bring?

Our Knowhow is growing

Richard continues “the future for Permaculture is brightest when the system is shaky. But I think for people who really want to live a life that’s rewarding. hands-on, connecting with nature and the Earth, and to community then there’s a lot that permaculture has to offer. But I don’t see that the majority of people are particularly interested in that. So, for those of the of us that are on that path it’s fairly steady. And I think we’ll see big fluctuations when the need arises” says Richard.

Resources for a Better Future

But you know we’ve been creating these amazing seed banks and developing these systems for a long time I’ve been doing it for years. There’s a valuable source of information and experience that can be shared with other people when it’s needed when it’s valued.

Give it a Go!

Richard has been a Jack/Jill of all trades. “I built this house and had no idea how to build a house. It was that whole thing about wanting something to happen. And being passionate and making it happen. Even though you don’t know how to do it. And [it’s about ] finding the right people to work with. We’ve got a couple of boys that were home-schooled most of their time when they were younger. And we found the only way they really learn is when they’re interested in something. And I think it’s the same with me. When I’m interested in building a house – I’ll build a house. I restored a car (the old Kombi). I did the fibre-glassing and mechanics and upholstery. And all those things because I wanted to make it happen. And same with creating the permaculture principles website and designing the icons. Any of these things. I was really driven by seeing a need. And I wanted to make that happen.

Stepping Into the Unknown

I feel like I can do anything that I’m really passionate about now. At least give it a really red hot go. So, I really want to encourage people to have a go. The best way to do it is to find somebody local and work with them…. I’ve got a number of different mentors around town. And I ask questions! We used to talk about empowering people helping them feel that they could give it a go. And then people are starting to say ‘oh you know they really need to get an expert for this’.

I think it’s important to be good at something that you can earn a living from. Get really good at something that other people will value. And for everything else – just have a go yourself. Because if you if you don’t have to pay someone else for doing it – often you’ll do a better job. And it’s money you don’t have to earn yourself. And you come out of it with skills and experience. Often, it’s very rewarding.” [Richard Telford]

Step into your better future. Learn more with us at PermacultureVisions.