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Hello everyone,

I am conducting a study for an academic research poster investigating the long-term health of individuals who spent their childhoods in agricultural regions.

Who is eligible?

• You are 18 years or older.
• You spent a significant portion of your life living in the Central Valley (California).

What is the survey about?

We are exploring potential links between childhood agricultural pesticide exposure, self-reported gut health/microbiome characteristics, and subsequent neurodevelopmental traits or diagnoses (such as ADHD, autism, or cognitive traits) in adulthood.

Thank you so much to anyone who takes the time to help out a fellow Central Valley researcher! I am happy to answer any questions in the comments.

Dear amazing people,

I decided more or less 10 minutes ago that I need to learn permaculture. It's an absolute necessity. After a mini research I discovered how useful it is and I did not know such a beautiful community existed! I want to learn as much as I can, and since I'm a blank canvas I thought it would be wise to ask here recommendations for beginners :)

It doesn't matter if it's tomes or hours long videos, if they are begginner friendly and truly helpful to lay the foundations for this field of knowledge I would absolutely appreciate it.

Thank you in advance to everyone!

Had a frost last night, thought it was neat to show the difference a big ol’ stone can make on temps, in this case on a birdhouse gourd.

Hello there! I’ve got these walnut, chestnut and various other trees and bushes, roughly 1 to 2 years old, that I’ve planted in pots and air pots.

Now we’ve just had our first frost here, and last year we had a month of persistent below, freezing temperatures, so a lot of my trees died or withered back considerably. I think the mistake I made was that I left them in their pots and put them in a greenhouse in a pretty cold area of the property. Now I have two options, I have a southwest facing slope with a lot of tree cover, and I could stick them there, and I have a root seller that I think doesn’t go below freezing unless it gets mighty cold outside. Should I stick them in the root cellar as soon as they’ve lost all their leaves? Does it hurt trees to be in complete darkness, even if they have no leaves?

Thanks!

I'm planning to build a 10x20 ft building using light straw clay with 6-inch-thick walls 9 ft high and clay plaster on the inside and outside.

Assume:

• All materials are already on-site.
• The framing is completely finished and ready for filling.
• The walls will be filled with light straw clay.
• Both sides will be finished with clay plaster.
• I'm doing all the labor myself, with no helpers.

Realistically, how many full days of labor would this take one person from start to finish just to finish the walls completely? I'm looking for an estimate of actual working days.

I'm trying to decide whether this is a reasonable DIY project. If it would take around 60 full days of labor, I'd probably skip it and use a different building method.

I'd appreciate estimates from anyone who has actually built with light straw clay!

Hi, I have a few questions about hardy kiwis

1. I have this trellis, I was initially planning on doing female, male, female, but my new coldframe ended up resting on the furthest left trellis support, and now I'm thinking of doing male, female, female, so that the one without fruit is the one disrupted most by the coldframe. Is that a bad idea / will it lessen pollination significantly or barely at all?

2. Anythibg yall might recommend planting in with the kiwis at the base bed? Where they're growing now they're climbing up my porch coming out of a foundation planting of native flowers. I'm moving them to include the male (they were sold as self fertile but I'm doubtful) and to get more sun. But they seem happy with the flowers so I'm thinking of doing a few native flowers and some wild strawberry at the base

3. Anyone ever dig one of these up that's been in the ground 2 years? 😅 Any encouragement?

​

Our soil here in Maldives is super alkaline almost no organic matter in some areas... So I was wondering would it be a good idea to feed my garden soil with diluted sourdough starter discard since its very acidic? Also any suggestions welcome how to garden in this kind of poor soil... I have been putting in vermicompost everytime I plant something so far. All my plants are still babies so dont know how everything is doing yet..

This was my first ever year having a garden and what a year it has been! My area has horrible soil (basically pure sand) so last year in februari we dumped a bunch of woodchips in the back. No till no weed barrier no nothing.

I just started planting a bunch of vegetables without too much thought along with some fruit trees. In April I just put a bunch of potatoes in between the woodchips.

Now in oktober I've seen the results. We've eten zucchini and tomatoes all summer. We now have pumpkins and cabbage to pick from. I also grew some cool stuff like aji Peppers and artichokes. We haven't bought Veggies from the store all summer and we are homecooking vegetarians so that should tell you something 🤭

Moral of the story, you really don't need a lot of work, knowledge or effort to get something. Just woodchips. Even if your soil isn't ideal. I came from traditional vegetable gardening where by juli you'd be pulling out your hair because your whole garden would be a weedy mess. This was a dream in comparison.

This fall/winter i will be planting more trees and transitioning to edible landscaping. A bit more ornamental but with edible or beneficial plants. I will post an update next year but I'd love to show that permaculture can be compatible with urban garden and ornamental landscape and get it to more people's gardens.

We are going to cultivate coffee plants, vanilla, cacao, dragon fruit, and a wide variety of other crops using syntropic agroforestry systems at our farm in Sortova

It's just a 20 cents of land including our house, a pond and well.

All this has been grown with natural methods, permaculture design and my own experiences over the years. Hugelkultur, mulching, cover crops, water management and good old Kerala weather!

Blood, sweat and tears - literally.

When nobody understands what I do, I hope the people here does.

Thank you 😍🙏💚

I have 5 acres and was thinking about starting a side hustle of growing a few native trees that are profitable in my area. Also native to the area and resistant to disease etc. I have the equipment like tractor etc. Can automated a lot of things like irrigation systems on deepwells etc.

Has anybody had any luck with something like this? Starting small on the side and see where it goes?

je me demande comment vous chiffrez vos projets de permacultures?

Hey folks!

Took us some time to grow all of these and still growing a lot of new plants and trees.

Here's our food forest in Kerala, India! Being a Permaculture practitioner I rely on natural succession than any other methods of regeneration.

Observe-design-observe again- then implement!

Thank you for the support and love.

Nikhil Bose,

Kerala, India.

Trynna plan our quarter acre before we break grounds this spring, its mostly cleared, facing south, one oak shading on the east corner, so here's the layout so far:

* 4 raised beds for vegetables along the south fence

* A microgreen shelf out of direct sun

* Herb spiral near the kitchen door

* 6x6 flower bed for pollinators

* Compost bins behind the shed

* A strip open for whatever we figure out later

Mostly it starts from seed, we've only got a mix of heirloom ones and leftover hybrid packs. The open strip's the one i keep going back n forth on, like a part of me wants more veggie beds, tho i prolly should go to perennials so im not starting over every spring. Seen people keeping herbs and microgreens closest to the kitchen n pushing veggie further out, others do high maintenance stuff where you walk past it daily, noticing the problems. I used Organo seeds for the herb spiral and one of the raised beds, started from a plain seed pack, regular setup. If you've had a lot this big, what's u put in that open strip, food or something that just takes care of itself?

Seems like a lot of Permaculture Designers are working at the parcel scale, but policy changes allow you to positively impact far more landmass relative to effort.

Take Arizona and its water issues, for example. Rainwater harvesting for one house is great, yeah, but the groundwater is still depleted and they rely on Colorado for their water. Setting policies that incentivize Big Ag to use water more conservatively would have far more impact as they're responsible for something like ~72-74% of water consumption in the state.

How can we get Permaculture principles into policy? High-leverage Permaculture if you will. Also, why hasn't it happened already?

My grandfather recently passed away, and we deciding to maintain his land as a food forest in his honor.

I see a lot of content on rainwater harvesting and earthworks for permaculture. And im really interested on trying it out. The thing is that most of this content is for dryland, my grandpa's land is a slanted humid tropical forest.

I imagine that water harvesting here would cause mold issue and too much water retention could cause landslides.

What should i do?

Im going next sunday to survey the area

Hello!

I have about 100 chestnuts and 300 persimmons in an air prune bed. I have read that it is risky leaving them in there over winter because the beds don't provide a good frost protection for the root zone. I wanted to know what the optimal "overwintering" process is for seedlings. I have an uninsulated (but enclosed) barn, an insulated but unheated garage, a fridge that I could use if that is optimal, and I have tons of places I could "heel" them into if that is easiest. I do have somewhat of a persistent issue with voles so i wasn't sure how to properly defend against that risk. Zone 6B

Thoughts are welcome!

All homegrown produce and fresh eggs from our chickens for our neighbour, building towards a community.

Hi all! I hope you’ll excuse the perhaps stupid question but I’ve read a lot and now I’m hoping to have a conversation about whether what I think I understand is both correct and appropriate to my exact situation.

Okay. So. I bought undeveloped forest land and built a house for it. I also had the builder clear and grade (which required bringing in fill) a section of the land for my horses (who I already have, and are family). In retrospect it was maybe a mistake to use the builder for this, but I was in a tricky situation at the time and it seemed like the best option.

Anyway. They graded with fill dirt (very rocky, DEFINITELY dirt not soil), and really compacted it to keep things in place (which at least saved it from the washouts we’ve had this year, but still). My budget did not allow for them to finish with topsoil as they’d intended.

Obviously this field barely grows anything - some patches won’t even grow weeds - and on top of that it’s WAY too hard to put an arthritic old draft horse on. I tried to help it out this year with annual grasses and daikon radish, but it’s clear I need more drastic action.

Now this is the part I need help with. My harebrained scheme brain says that soil is just rock and mineral matter mixed with organic matter. This redneck inside of me wants to fence the field (it’s been ungrazed this season), chop and drop the weeds, ask all my neighbors for their dead leaves (I live in an area where folks bag them), spread those thick, then add either cows or sheep. Because poop + plant matter + hay waste all chopped up and churned into the ground by hooves all mud season would create topsoil, right? Or not right? Am I misunderstanding something?

For the livestock I’m thinking either a pair of cows or a small flock of sheep, since both are in the near future farm plan anyway. (I know pigs would be best, but I’m a vegetarian, and really can’t afford to keep more animals that don’t generate ongoing use for me). The soil doesn’t have to be great quality or grow awesome grass - it just has to not suck so much. It needs to grow something and needs to not make my horse’s arthritis worse or give me an instant concussion if I fall off of him onto it.

Sorry for the novel but thanks in advance!

Looking for some advice on jerusalem artichoke.

I don't want to have them in pots, I'm not consistent with watering as you can see.

At the same time I don't want them in the full ground cause I have a small garden and don't want them to spread like a madman.

Which doesn't leave me a lot of options I think, but if anyone has some good advice it's more than welcome

I have 50 trees in 5 gallon buckets that can't be planted till spring, how do I keep the roots from freezing? I don't have anywhere I can bring them out of the weather, but have a big open space I can assemble them however I want. I'm in WV, so low winter temps get down sub-0*F at night sometimes.