Permaculture: Design your Paradise

Before You Spray Neem: Seven Things You Must Know

The neem tree (Azadirachta indica) is an incredibly versatile plant with many uses. This is of course great news for permaculturists, a plant of many uses...

In India the neem plant is known as "the village pharmacy"--over 75% of Ayurvedic remedies contain some form of neem!--and lately the tree has also been called "the world's most researched tree".

But unfortunately neem is still little understood in the western world. Word about it is slowly spreading, but so is hype and misinformation.

Let's look at the most common use of neem oil: as an insect spray in the garden.

Neem oil is great because it is totally non toxic to humans. If used correctly it works wonders and it only affects the bad bugs while leaving the beneficial insects unharmed.

But only if used correctly! Look around the usual garden forums. What you read there shows most people don't have a clue...

Here are seven things you need to know before you use neem oil in the garden.

1. Neem oil is NOT an instant knock down insecticide.
   Neem does not kill insects or grubs instantly! It acts as a feeding repellent and it also interrupts their breeding cycle. Neem is similar to insect hormones. When insects take up the neem ingredients they "forget" to eat, to mate, or they stop laying eggs. Some forget that they can fly. If eggs are produced they don't hatch, or the larvae don't moult.
   
   Don't conclude neem doesn't work just because it doesn't kill everything instantly. Neem oil spray needs to be used regularly. Spray it once a week to once a fortnight and it WILL protect your garden from sucking and chewing insects.
2. Neem CAN kill honey bees.
   Neem is not toxic to honey bees or other beneficial insects but it can certainly kill them! Any oil you spray can coat insects and suffocate them. In that respect neem oil makes no difference between good and bad bugs: coat them with oil and they suffocate.
   
   To protect beneficial insects, only spray neem in the very early morning or late afternoon, when insects are least active. Once the oil has dried it only harms the bad bugs.
3. Neem CAN harm your plants. If a little bit helps, then more will help better. Right? Wrong! Any oil spray can burn plants. Again, use neem spray early in the morning or late in the afternoon, so it can dry before the sun hits it.
   
   Some plants are so sensitive, they don't need the sun to suffer. Having their delicate leaves coated with too much oil is bad enough. Stick to the instructions! Use the lowest concentration and do a little test application first. Neem oil is strong stuff. A little goes a long way.
4. Neem CAN harm aquatic organisms.
   This aspect is rarely mentioned. Research studies showed that neem ingredients can hurt many aquatic organisms, including fish and tadpoles. Luckily it takes more than just traces to do damage. Spraying near ponds is generally safe, but do not spray neem directly into the water.
5. Neem oil is NOT registered as an insecticide. In most countries neem oil is not registered as an insecticide or insect repellent. So the sellers are not allowed to call it that or to mention that it kills or deters insects.
   
   If you try to buy neem at the local hardware store, don't look in the aisle with the poisons. Rather look for leaf polish... Seriously, that's what one manufacturer sells it as. The easiest way to find it? Ask for it. But beware...
6. All neem oils are NOT made equal.
   Many people hear about neem oil, go to the hardware store or garden centre and buy some "neem plant spray" or "neem based insecticide" or other ready to use mixture of who knows what. Some of those bottles contain nasty chemicals with a bit of token neem.
   
   Few contain raw neem oil--the most potent neem oil--but rather a clarified hydrophobic extract. Those extracts are not as powerful as the raw or crude neem oil. The best neem oil to buy is raw, cold pressed, organic oil with a high Azadirachtin content. Azadirachtin is the main insecticidal ingredient and most sellers of good neem oil advertise the high Azadirachtin content. By the way, you are unlikely to find the raw oil at your local hardware store. Try health food stores instead!
7. Neem oil STINKS! The descriptions of the smell of neem oil vary. Rancid peanut butter, rancid garlic, rancid burnt onions... do you detect a theme here? How about garlicky peanut butter with some rotten eggs thrown in?

I'd say, just get some and come up with your own description. And get used to it. Because the stuff really works!

The Lazy Housewife: Tomato Preserving

People who enjoy growing healthy food often enjoy preparing and preserving it, too. I don't. In fact I hate anything to do with cooking, resembling cooking or reminding me of cooking.

That doesn't mean I don't cook. I live alone so I have to, and I'm quite capable in that department. But any advice from me relating to kitchen activities aims at only one thing: How to spend less time in the kitchen.

Having said that let's move on to tomato preserving. I can't grow tomatoes all year round, I don't know if anybody can. So I grow a year's supply in a few months, and preserve most of the crop.

Having read my introductory paragraph you can imagine that I won't be found sweating over the stove for hours, boiling, skinning, simmering and bottling the things.

Here's the easy way: Pick them, clean them, put them in a plastic bag as they are, and throw them in the freezer. When you want to use them take out what you need, and immediately give them a wash with warm water. They are still frozen solid, the warm water only softens the skin, which rubs off easily.

Voila, skinned tomatoes, ready to go in the pot for your pasta sauce.

Save Seeds, Save Money, Save the World

Part I: Save Money

I got back late last night from my second job, which requires me to leave town for two or three days on some weekends. So when I woke up this morning I went for a stroll through my garden to see how many new leaves, flowers and seedlings had emerged during my absence, and to enjoy the first morning light and the racket of the birds announcing a brand new day.

Just in time to save the very first ripe tomato of the season from the same birds! There it was, fire engine red, shiny and plump. I couldn't believe the birds hadn't attacked it yet, usually I have to pick everything half green, or  I end up with half eaten stuff.

The bush that carries that very first tomato is a ripper. From day one it outpaced all my other seedlings. It's bigger, stronger, and loaded with fruit. Spectacular. This is the bush that I will save seeds from for next year.

Most people I know will go and buy seed packets year after year, for the same boring varieties again and again. It's a shame, as saving seeds of many of our popular vegetables is so easy (more about that in part II). It also has many advantages.

First, you end up with loads of seeds. Having that many means you can be more generous when planting. Sow them direct and thin later. I often just throw them around in a few different areas where I'd like them to grow, and wait what happens. I always end up with more than enough survivors. Much easier and less time consuming then nurturing them in pots or punnets, watering, fretting over very single one, and then transplanting.

Second, you obviously save money. If you grow a lot of things, you save a lot of money. I use that money to try out new weird and wonderful varieties, and made quite some interesting discoveries. (My guess is you will hear about them sooner or later in future posts.) With the rest of the money I buy chocolate.

And third - in my opinion this is by far the most impotant advantage - you will over time breed varieties that are particularly suited to YOUR climate, YOUR soil, YOUR way of gardening. (In my garden that means varieties that thrive on neglect.)

Every seed carries a slightly different set of genes. The pollination of flowers is nature's way to take two lots of genes and shuffle them to create a new set. Just like you display some features of each of your parents, so do plants. And sometimes this new combination proves very useful.

Something in the gene set of my wonder tomato makes it particularly happy to grow in my poor sandy soil. It doesn't seem to mind being trampled by the dog, being subjected to droughts when the irrigation controller dies during my absence, or being blasted by our easterly desert winds.

Whatever genes are responsible for that, my chances of finding them in the next bought standard seed packet are slim. Seed companies select seeds to perform reliably in as big as possible a variety of circumstances. That means they usually won't excel in any.

If you have a plant that excels - flower, herb, or vegetable - keep the seeds. Every seed carries genes from that plant, and although these will again be mixed with the seeds from another individual - the one that provided the pollen - many of the seedlings will excel. Select the best for seeds again, and next year the neighbours will start leaning over the fence, trying to discover what secret concoctions you use to produce such stunning specimen.

But wait, there's more

People read this blog and they get back to me asking questions like:

Will you talk about food for people with cancer?
Will you tell me how to make my garden bug free?
Has permaculture to do with aquatic plants?
I never heard of permaculture, is it like biodynamics? Is it expensive?

What gave me the idea for this blog were all the people at my work, friends in town, internet buddies and other people I know. All of them are amazed that no matter what the time of the year, I will rock up at work or at their place with a bag of fresh fruit and vegies for my lunch, or a box full of the same for their fridge. I always have too much of everything I grow and I love to give it away.

Some of these people had a vegetable garden themselves at some stage, and they tell me it's too hard, too much work, too many weeds, and in the end the bugs ate everything anyway, so they gave up. The others think it's a HUGE effort to start a vegetable garden and you need time and money, and they don't want to spend either, maybe next year. But next year never seems to come.

So the initial purpose of this blog was to show people that you can do things differently. If you think ahead and design your garden right, it won't take much effort, it will mostly look after itself, and it will also be incredibly productive and beautiful and attractive to wildlife.

I created this kind of garden by designing it along permaculture principles. Some of them I have already shortly covered, and I will most likely talk about a few more in the future, and about how they relate to a vegetable garden.

But permaculture is not only about vegetable gardening. It can be applied to vegetable gardening, very well and with great success indeed. But there is sooo much more to it.

It is a set of design principles that can be applied to any situation, a garden, a farm, a community, a new housing estate. The principles aim at creating a system that is as close to self sufficient as possible. Minimal input for maximum return, while preferably using renewable resources and minimising the impact on the environment. Achieve a maximum result for the smallest possible change.

Sustainability is the keyword. Permaculture is a philosophy and a vision, of living on this planet in a way that ensures our great-great-great-grand-children will still be able to enjoy what we enjoy today.

Let me just rattle of some of the principles (in no particular order) as Mollison states them in his book A Designers Manual:

Responsibility for our actions and the outcomes, for what we leave behind. Take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.

Cooperation, not competition, is the basis of future survival.

The rules of use of natural resources: Reduce waste, hence pollution; thoroughly replace lost minerals; do careful energy accounting.

Law of return: Whatever we take we must return.

Care of the earth, care of the people: Provision for all life systems to continue and increase, provision for people to access those resources necessary to their existence.

Setting limits to population and consumption.

Buy the way, permaculture doesn't shun technology at all. If technology can help to achieve the desired outcome, go for it.

And here is another quote to make you think, it's one of Birch's six principles of natural systems:

Our ability to change the face of the earth increases at a faster rate than our ability to foresee the consequence of change.

For people who are interested in permaculture within a global context, I have added another book to the reading list. It's Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren, who founded the permaculture movement with Bill Mollison. (Though Bill seems to get all the credtit and David is forever referred to as 'the other' founder.) A lot of food for thought in that one.

To return to the initial questions: Yes, permaculture has to do with all of that and more, and at some stage or other I will be talking about it.

I am hoping to be set up in about two to three weeks so you can subscribe (free, of course) to receive a regular newsletter. The newsletter will be telling you which topics I'm currenly talking about, about new tips and ideas, and about what else is going on in the world that might be of interest to an environmentally responsible person (and those contemplating to become one).

So stay tuned! I'll be back.

B.

Turn Problems into Solutions

It’s one of Bill Mollison's most popular qotes:

“You don’t have a snail problem, you have a duck deficiency!”

If you see yourself confronted with a perceived problem, why not try and look at the situation from a different angle. Is there any way to use it to your advantage?

A common example is that low lying spot at the bottom end of your garden, where the water just won’t drain away.  Perfect location for a pond, or a bog garden with swamp plants. Thought about growing watercress, water chestnuts, or kangkong (a tropical water spinach)? How about iris, primulas and lilies? Many flowers are suited to boggy spots. The ducks you’re getting for eggs and to clean up your snails will love it, too.

Got an ugly wall? If it gets sunlight it’ll help you to grow frost sensitive species outside their range. The wall stores the heat from the sun over night and keeps your lemon or avocado tree warm.

So the builders left a pile of rubble behind? Any chance of turning it into a rock garden? Throw on some soil, collect a few better looking rocks to place on top of the rubble, and look on the internet for plants that like to grow on rocks. Now you have a feature instead.

When the builders cleared the area for my house, they left behind a huge pile of shrubs, trees, and grass mixed with soil. I don’t own any machinery to remove it and didn't want to hire any. Instead I planted a circle of coconut palms around it, (I live in a warm climate, just use species suited to your conditions), left an opening wide enough to back a trailer into it, and invited all neighbours to dump their ‘garden refuse’ there, instead of burning it or taking it to the rubbish tip. (Yes, that’s what they usually do with it.) The palms are thriving, I never have to mulch or fertilize them, and since I later interplanted them with suitable hardy shrubs and flowers you can’t see the pile anymore. Everybody is happy.

The principle of turning problems into solutions goes hand in hand with the idea of working with nature rather than against it. No point trying to create a lush tropical garden if you live in a desert climate. There are stunning succulents to add aesthetic appeal, and many useful plants that get by with very little water, like dragon fruit and pineapple, to name two delectable examples.

Don’t waste your money, time and energy by trying to force something that nature never intended to happen. Look creatively at what you have already got, try to see the benefits and look at ways to use the situation to your advantage.

By the way, this advice applies to the rest of your life as well. Next time you face a problem remember this principle and search for the good in the situation. It’s always there, all it takes is willingness to see it.

The Beans and Peas Myth

How often have you read that nitrogen hungry vegetables like salad greens or the cabbage family should best be planted in a spot that has previously been planted with peas or beans? The cabbages are supposed to make use of all the nitrogen that the peas and beans have fixed.

A few explanations for inexperienced gardeners:

Nitrogen is one of the most important chemical elements for plants. If there is not enough nitrogen available in the soil they will look pale and their growth will be stunted.

Legumes - all peas and beans are legumes - are plants that work together with soil bacteria called rhizobia, to 'fix' nitrogen, meaning chemically convert the nitrogen in the air to make it availble for the plant. By living in a symbiotic relationship with the rhizobia - the rhizobia live in nodules in the plant's roots - the plant is supposed to meet its own nitrogen needs, fertilizer is not required. In addition, when the crop is harvested and the plant cut back to ground level, the root nodules should release all the valuable nitrogen for following crops.

This is great news and all permaculture designs make extensive use of native legumes to increase the nitrogen level in the soil, but there is a hook.

The relationship between the legume and the rhizobium is highly specialized. The kind of rhizobium suitable for a certain plant will usually be found naturally in the soil in the area where the plant originally developed, after all they developed together.

Well, most of our beans and peas have originated in Europe, so if you live in America or Australia don't expect the required rhizobium to automatically be present in the soil, most likely it's not, and if it is, then probably not in sufficient numbers, (the latter is even true in Europe). That means you will have to fertilize your beans and peas just like any other crop, and growing them makes no difference for the following crop at all.

The other option is to inoculate your beans and peas. Inoculant is the matching rhizobium in a liquid or powder form. It should come with instructions on how to coat the seeds with it before planting. Once present in your soil the rhizobium will happily live there for several years on its own, so if you plant beans again in the same spot a few years later they'll be just fine. This is the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to supply nitrogen to plants.

There's one more option, I'd like to call it the permaculture option. There are many native legumes, trees, shrubs and other kinds. Since nobody ever fertilized them they had to make do by themselves, so they developed these relationships with the rhizobia. If you grow a legume that's native to your area the required rhizobium will be present in your soil.

Use the natives as a cover crop, as an in between crop (talking both time and space here), slash or prune them regularly, get creative and find ways to incorporate them into your garden design. They don't need looking after, they just spent thousands of years adapting themselves to your particular soil and climate. As they grow they work for you, by converting the nitrogen in the air into nitrogen for your plants. No need to buy inoculant, no need to buy fertilizer, and no need to spread it. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Do I really HAVE to? An experiment.

One of the many things I love about my permaculture garden is that it mostly looks after itself. To me that is an essential feature of a garden. It's not that I don't want to spend time in it. When I do find time I always find a million things that I can do or plant or change, but I don't HAVE to.

I've never much liked anything I HAVE to do. Man, did I hate school. And I think today I hate my day job with a similar passion. It pays good money, mind you, but it seems such a waste of precious time. I'm not interested in what my employer is doing and selling. Not at all. I want to write, I want to travel, and I want to enjoy my garden.

So I decided that things will have to change, and this blog is my first step to an employer free life. The plan is simple enough, just look at the three things I like and put them together. I'll travel, and as I travel I write. And when I'm home I garden and write, about my garden and my travels.

Simple enough, really, except English is my second language and I'm not a naturally gifted writer. I'll have to work hard at becoming a lot better before I make money that way. And as every writer knows, unless your name is Danielle Steel or Stephen King, the chances that you are gonna get rich that way are awfully slim.

So I have to find a way to make money that doesn't impact negatively on my mood and energy as my day job does, and that doesn't restrict my traveling, and I think I have found exactly that.

It's an experiment, and it might just make my dreams come true. It's even called an experiment, the '60 Day Experiment'. It's a course showing you how to set up an online business from scratch and make money. You don't need a product to start with, you don't even need advanced computing skills.

Thank god for that, too. I hadn't touched a computer in four years when I bought my laptop, and that was only 4 months ago. (Yeah, when I had this brilliant idea to become a writer). It's now only three weeks into the course and this blog is the result. And they say you can't teach an old dog any new tricks.

The people doing the experiment are also a great group and I made new friends all over the world. (Isn't the internet great? You see, this is all new to me)

The best part about it all: The course has really reconnected me with my dreams, which had been pushed aside by the hazzles of daily living and office politics and the like.
I feel I'm finally heading along the right path, taking huge steps, making this the life I want it to be, where I only HAVE to do things because I decided I WANT to do them.

I'll keep you updated on my progress. In the meantime, why don't you check out this course? (Especially if like me you'd love to fire your boss.) Is your life exactly what you want it to be? If not, you can change it, you know?

I have to go now and plant more sunflowers. I say I have to, but really, I go because I want to. Sunflowers are my favorite, favorite flowers and you can never have to many of them.

Hope your garden grows well!
B.

Give peas a chance

This is a poster by the Seed Savers Network , a fabulous Australian Organisation founded by Michael and Jude Fanton. The text on the poster reads as follows:

"Australians once planted 65 varieties of pea. Now it's less than 10. Yet the future of our crops, let alone the nutrition, taste and pleasures they give us, can only be guaranteed by biodiversity. Help preserve plants."

It was American naturalist, photographer, and organic gardener David Cavagnaro, who introduced Michael and Jude to the USA Seed Savers Exchange, and inspired them to start the Australian network. Bill Mollison, the Australian 'father of permaculture' had always supported the American network, and offered lots of encouragement when Michael and Jude started out in 1986. Similar Organisations also exist in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France.

Everybody who is serious about conserving our environment for future generations should be concerned about the demise of old-fashioned varieties of useful plants and vegetables. And everybody can help.

The two links above are a good place to start if you are looking for more information about the whys and hows of seed saving. You can find many helpful books on gardening and seed saving, seed saving tools, and of course seeds. And at the Australian site you can order my favorite poster as well.

Rainbow Chard

To be honest, flavorwise I prefer true spinach (Spinacia oleracea) over silver beet (Beta vulgaris) any day. I also like to use the tender young spinach leaves in salads and find silver beet a bit tough for this.

But I still grow lots of silver beet every year, and if you look at the picture you'll easily guess why: It makes such a striking feature in my kitchen garden.

Silver beet is also referred to as Swiss Chard, and the colored varieties have names like Ruby Chard (pictured above) and Rainbow Chard. Rainbow Chard is a mixture with yellow, orange, pink, purple and red stems.

Silver beet has another advantage over spinach: It is a lot more heat tolerant and is a good substitute during the hottest months of the year when your delicate English spinach fails.

The seeds of silver beet are large and irregular shaped, and every seed will grow into multiple seedlings. I start them in small pots and separate the seedlings when they are big enough to handle. By then they also show their true colors, and I can find the perfect spot in my garden where they will complement the surrounding foliage and flowers, instead of causing hideous color clashes.

A word of warning: Silver beet is one of the greediest vegetables around, its appetite for nitrogen is insatiable. To look and taste its best it should be planted in fertile humus rich soil, and then still fed regularly with a high nitrogen fertilizer such as pelleted chicken manure.

Do that and you will enjoy an edible colorful display for many months.

Permaculture Principles IV

Multiple Functions

No living being can function on its own. It's true for you and for everything in your garden. So it makes sense to not look at the elements in your garden as isolated objects, but to look at the connections. Still, many gardeners don't take advantage of these connections, though it can be easily done by placing together elements that mutually benefit each other.

The easiest way to get started here is to try and think of three uses for every element in your garden. I can usually come up with at least five, but three is enough for beginners.

A tree can provide fruit, provide shade, and act as a windbreak.

Dill an be used as a herb, the flowers attract beneficial insects, and add visual appeal to your garden.

A hedge can provide fruit, privacy, and shelter for wildlife.

A pond can grow aquatic plants, hold fish, and attract birds and other wildlife.

A wall can give privacy, support climbing plants, and store heat (important if you want to grow frost sensitive plants in cooler areas).

Look at what every element can provide, and what it needs, and then put elements together (here we talk about relative location again), so they support each other. I'll give you one example:

I mentioned in a previous post that I always put my compost piles under my favorite fruit trees. Not only does the pile feed the tree, but the tree shades the pile and protects it from drying out. Instead of a compost bin I use a circle of wire mesh to hold the materials in. I position the circle so one side gets sunlight, and on that side I grow tomatoes or cucumbers, using the mesh as a trellis. The plants provide shade for that side of the pile, and without any fertilizing or attention they invariably thrive and I get a bumper crop. Of course there are also flowering herbs growing under the tree, we covered that. The insects they attract do the pest control and help with pollination. Once the vegetable plants have finished bearing I pull them up and throw them on top of the pile, no need to cart garden refuse around.

To return to the multiple functions, the tomato in this example provides you with fruit, shields the pile from the sun, hides the pile from your vision (since a loaded tomato bush looks a lot better than a pile of half finished compost) and in the end provides nutrients for the tree. Get it?

The tree, compost pile, herbs and vegetables in this example all work together and look after one another, and that means less work for me. Remember, I'm so intrigued with permaculture because I'm lazy. All I do in the end is pick what I need for my pasta sauce and salad. I only wish I could find somebody to cook it for me!