Thinking About Next Year

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Coco Gordon on September 15, 2010 at 11:20am

Good luck with you idea David it sounds like a TSA team supported agriculture
cheers coco

Permalink Reply by David Braden on September 16, 2010 at 10:05am

Thank you for the good wishes coco. I just got another reminder about the need for this Leader/Learner relationship as it relates to:

The Compulsion to Till

I just got a notice from a Garden Coordinator advising the gardeners:

you must turn under all of your heads of your crops..this keeps bugs from infiltrating and puts all the nutrients of your crops back into compost...those who do not do this work will be charged a fee of $35 dollars to till and turn your soil

1 – pest insects only build up in a system if the predators are missing either through loss of habitat or pesticides.

2 – Nature builds soil by constantly adding a new layer of mulch. The old layers are all in a progression of decomposition and all of your soil organisms are adapted to that system. If you turn your soil those organisms can no longer do their work – and if you leave your soil bare, the first hard frost will kill all your worms.

3 – Turning the soil to compost the crop residue is unnecessary work and if done mechanically a waste of energy.

4 – Bare soil is exposed to erosion by wind and run off whereas this year's crop residue on top of the soil will collect more organic matter when the wind blows, hold the water as the snow melts, feed your soil organisms all winter, and give you a more fertile soil to work with in the Spring.

I don't know why people think a garden should be bare soil over winter – it looks lifeless and ugly to me. If anyone thinks you need to till the soil to garden check out any of our garden projects:

http://www.organiclandscapedesign.org/projects

Permalink Reply by David Braden on September 19, 2010 at 3:44pm

Seeing the currents in our lives: Currencies

Permaculture is about cultivating our relationships with the people, plants and creatures around us. We cannot control those relationships – each person, plant and creature will make its own decisions – the best we can do is try to influence those decisions. I have written before about how every neighborhood has unmet needs and unused skills. When we can find ways to use those unused skills to meet those unmet needs, we set up a recurring pattern of the flow of goods and services in our neighborhood that enriches its inhabitants – in much the same way that our gardening experience is enriched when we make provisions for the needs of our beneficial insects and pollinators. See: Living in Place.

Yesterday I attended a workshop about currencies, facilitated by my good friend Arthur Brock, who explores the way that our understanding of money interferes with our ability to understand the value of what is flowing (or not flowing) around us. Our gardening technique is about facilitating the interaction of many different plants and creatures – in the ways that nature designed them – and increasing the flow of what they collectively produce – nutrients and fertility. The team gardening approach we are suggesting is about the way that we add people into those flows – in the ways that nature designed us.

I have a new good friend by the name of Brok McFerron who runs a company called myGroFarm. I met Brok through this interest in currencies and Brok and I share an interest in finding ways to make visible the unmet needs and unused skills in our neighborhoods. I have invited him to join us here to see how our gardens might fit with his ideas.

Think of the flow of vegetables out of the gardens and into the health of people – and then the things that the garden needs to become more productive coming back from people. Just that flow is valuable enough – but now - imagine all the other flows we might be able to generate by the exchange of vegetables with all those neighbors who are not interested in gardening but have some other unused skill. And then imagine the flows of unused skills to meet unmet needs independent of the flow of vegetables – that happen just because our neighbors now know each other. We can make our neighborhoods more resilient, more self-reliant, by identifying the potential flows, making the offers to initiate those flows, and making the value of those flows visible – so that we can see the currents of value as they flow through.

Being aware of these flows – and your individual power to create them – is the first step to our realizing a truly permanent culture.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on September 24, 2010 at 10:24am

My good friend Larry Victor of Tucson wrote in response to the last post about his frustration with the sustainability movement in Tucson and to recommend the ideas of Paul Krafel about upward spirals in living systems. Here is my response:

I have not read Krafel's book but I highly recommend the video.

Krafel's small steps enabling nature to rebuild herself are similar to the "path" I am following. The common knowledge believes that change must come through a vote of Congress, or cannot happen without a lot of money, or requires someone else to do something. That is what we see in endless meetings about what we want the government to do, etc. Everyone wants everyone else to agree with them about a top down "solution".

As I said in the linked posting: Permaculture is about cultivating our relationships with the people, plants and creatures around us. We cannot control those relationships – each person, plant and creature will make its own decisions – the best we can do is try to influence those decisions. This recognizes that what flows through the system is generated at the level of the individual transaction - at the level of the many choices of individuals.

There is no silver bullet because one thing is related to another and every thing is related to everything else. Therefore, every problem is related to every other problem - they are systemic - and cannot be solved one at a time. Where we change the system is at the level of the individual transaction . . . each of the choices each of us makes.

Designing the Future is about creating these sets of transactions that feed the flows back into themselves - not unlike the small diversions that Krafel makes at the top of the drainage - at a level where the flows are created . . .

Here is the scenario:

We each have the capacity to produce value. If we can find a way to exchange that value with the consent of another person, plant or creature, we create a bridge and the value we produce flows across the bridge one way and the value we need flows back to us. Everything that exists in the entire living system on this planet is built up from these individual transactions - the process of the flow of value across the structure of the bridges we maintain. We cannot change the flows unless we change the structure at the level of the individual transaction.

We believe that money is necessary for these transactions - but we are all familiar with the alternative. We can own the capacity to produce what we need for ourselves. At the extreme there are those seeking self-sufficiency where a family would produce everything they need for themselves. That seems lonely and inefficient to me. At the other extreme all productive capacity is owned by companies operating at economies of scale - and no one has access to what they need unless they also have money (a job). In between there is this idea that we, as a community, could own the capacity to provide for ourselves. We could develop the know how to organize ourselves, at the level of the individual transactions, to provide for ourselves, developing "community sufficiency technologies".

I see the gardens as a foundation on which that technology can be developed. I look for interested individuals and try to set up a repeating transaction - build a bridge - between individuals and the garden. The existence of one bridge makes it easier to create the second . . .

It is slow work sometimes but much more rewarding than another meeting about what someone else should do. If I were you, I would look for someone in your community who is already practicing permaculture and offer to them the use of your property and your understanding of how we take these concepts into an abundant future - I am eager to have these experiments develop elsewhere and begin the exchange of "best practices".

Thank you for your interest,

Permalink Reply by John Powers on September 25, 2010 at 4:04pm

Hi, I'm John and I live in Western Pennsylvania. I am not involved in a Transition Town here, but am very interested in learning more about your experiences.

Many aspects of gardening how-tos are very local, but it's often hard to share and receive the 101-things good to know about gardening in your particular area.

Gardeners tend to be an opinionated lot and I think that much of that comes from hunches and rules of thumb.

Steve Johnson has a new book coming out called "Where Good Ideas Come From." In advance of it he's been giving talks. There's a TED Talk whic is a little under 20 minutes and a 4 minute RSA Animate talk (If you haven't yet seen any of the RSA Animate talks yet, it's worth watching just to see the clever white board animation.) Anyhow Johnson identifies how important it is for hunches to collide with other hunches.

I'm very interested in the experiments using deep mulch and drip irrigation. But I also know that there are many really important ideas and much wisdom in cultivated gardening. Organic Gardening Magazine has long run articles about deep mulch techniques as well as cultivated techniques. To an extent the tension between the different approaches is informative, but at some point a truce is useful so that gardener can share what they've discovered which may be relevant to both ways.

September in Western Pennsylvania is usually dry and we are especially so this year. We had adequate rainfall this season, but many more above 90 days than normal. So water has been an issue. How much more so for you in the high chaparral! Cultivated gardens can actually be good no or low water gardens. Certainly people exploring the deep mulch techniques don't need to learn about low water techniques for cultivated gardens. But arguing back and forth has the disadvantage of closing off talk about aspects of gardening you might share.

One of those aspects, especially in the fall, is seed sharing. I don't collect very much seed, but I do collect some and would be curious about what other people collect. I also appreciate trying out seeds others have collected. Years ago from the American Horticulture seed exchange I got a packet of Cassia marilandica or Maryland Senna. I planted about half of that pack and so far as I know never got any germination, so I forgot about it. This year I emptied the pack in my seed bed and got some fine little plants. I know exactly where I want to plant the little plants and will as soon as we get a bit of rain.

Even when people have very different approaches to gardening there are ways to share. My Internet was down yesterday. I don't have an ebook reader, but recently bought a used netbook and have been trying to find ways to make it attractive for my father to use. I downloaded an application for managing and reading ebooks called Calibre. Just to check it out I installed it on my desktop and went to Project Gutenberg to download a book just to see how it all works. The book I downloaded was Candide. Without the Internet to surf last night I read it. I last read Candide when I was in high school, my suspicion is that much of the bawdy humor was lost on me then. The book famously ends with "We must cultivate our gardens" which even for the no-till gardeners among us contains an important metaphor for all of us in the Transition Town movement. Ah, but here's the thing, I enjoyed reading Candide so much that I want more books. Project Gutenberg has many interesting books on horticulture.

One of the principles of Transition Town is to listen to your elders. Books written in the 19th and 20th century sometimes may have important information for us today, especially when we are trying to grow in water wise and non-chemical ways.

I mentioned "hunches" as well as "rule of thumb." Well, the rules of thumb especially apply to cultivated gardening. I think people nowadays getting into gardening have a preference towards intensive gardening; that is when they think of gardens they think of intensive gardens. But in the old days when people depended on their gardens for food, spacing was often much wider than we are currently conditioned to expect. The reason of course has to do with water.

Again pursuing the the deep mulch techniques this sort of gardening may not seem of much interest to many, but for others it is probably what's practical and really ought not to be discourages. Some of the resources at Project Gutenberg and the books on dusty shelves of second hand stores have good gardening information. And gardeners can take an interest in techniques even if it means bridging an ideological chasm.

Lots of folks don't have much money, even if there is some money, beginning gardeners often don't want to spend much until they see some results to determine the value in it. Drip irrigation is expensive and seemingly complicated. Water can be very scare or expensive for people especially if they depend on wells. Seeds are expensive. To know it's possible to do a little gardening with out spending much money is good for lots of folks to know. Helping people spend little money is helpful.

Part of the Transition process is beginning where people are. I think for those committed to deep mulch experimentation the idea of helping someone think about digging a garden is to simply encouraging the wrong thing. I don't really feel that way.

John Michael Greer has begun an ongoing learning course in becoming green wizards. You can use the search term at the blog to see the whole lot of posts so far, the first post is worth reading if you are thinking of following along. He also has set up a Drupal forum site which may be of interest even if you're not following along with the blog posts.

The forum is new something I wouldn't have predicted is how lively the Resource exchange is. Maybe existing forums are quite enough. But it seems something worth noting how eager people are to share and trade.

A big part of Transition Towns is getting people who don't agree on very much to talk--in talking people often discover they agree on more than they expect. Johnson's work on how good ideas come about shows how important it is for opportunities for hunches to collide. I like that notion because too often we imagine that such collisions are a bad thing, that there's something wrong with them. We think that of course because useless arguing is so dreadfully tiresome. There's a happy medium dependent upon mutual respect of persons so that ideas can flow and sometimes collide.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on September 26, 2010 at 7:25pm

Thanks for your insights John. I agree that traditional gardening has a rich heritage and valuable information to share. Somehow, none of your links seem to work - did you paste in the whole string in the link window beginning with the http://?

Anyway, one of the best reasons to use a no till, deep mulch, drip irrigated system in Colorado is that we can include perennials and ornamentals in the design - so that we are not necessarily looking to maximize the production of vegetables or use intensive planting. Where we are replacing lawn, we take all that water that was sprayed overhead, summer after summer, to keep the grass green and concentrate it on the plants we want that need more water than our climate provides - giving us more garden space - using less water - creating an increasing diversity of plant and animal life - and a beautiful landscape - in the same space that we use every day.

I want to spend this winter working out a "mashup" of the best information in traditional gardening about succession planting and companion planting with the best information from permaculture about guilds of plants that mutually support each other.

Permalink Reply by John Powers on September 27, 2010 at 1:04am

The links are strange. When I choose copy the link address and then pasted that into an address bar the sites work, but not as embedded links. I'm not sure why? Well, I checked other links and they aren't right, funny I copy and pasted all of them and still got some errors like a missing colon after http. Sorry about that.

Oh I"m convinced that the deep mulch method is very advantageous in many situations. I certainly applaud the work you are doing. My point is that in Transition there will be people with different beginnings and purposes and part of it is to let differences coexist.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on October 6, 2010 at 12:04pm

I went ahead and scheduled a meeting of the Garden Coordinators at my house on the afternoon of October 24. I will specifically invite those who are garden coordinators this year and those I know who might want to be Leaders or Learners next year. If you know of anyone who might be interested in any of those positions please feel free to invite them. See the Event posting for details.

I want to review and share tactics for building gardening teams and set out a plan for for supporting the teams in being efficient and productive in the 2011 gardens. I think that includes developing best practices for companion and succession planting, second year mulching techniques, and planning for distribution of the harvest to team members.

I hope to see many of you there. Let me know if you are coming, or if you can't come but still want to stay involved with what we are doing.

In Community
David

Permalink Reply by David Braden on October 19, 2010 at 6:53am

Something Larger than Ourselves

Remember the Garden Coordinator's Collaboration at my house, 1-5, this coming Sunday. One of the things I want to accomplish is a way of expressing how our gardens are a part of something larger. I want to help people think about how we are engaged in an historic process larger than ourselves.

We are, already, engaged with the people, plants and creatures around us in a way that we affect them and they affect us. It is our community. Our individual well being cannot be separated from the wellbeing of that community. This is about the things we can do, together, to improve that mutual wellbeing.

We are the people responsible for building the sustainable ways of doing things that allow our community to prosper into the future. That requires more and more people involved that understand that these gardens are a next step toward the kind of community we want . . . a community that can provide for the needs of all its residents . . .

Think about a pyramid organization – like Amway – except we are not a company distributing a product – we are the coordinators distributing an understanding of how to build these gardens – and this is not about making money – it is about making nutrients – for our soils, for our fellow creatures, and for us – for the health of our community.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on October 26, 2010 at 9:09am

14 of us gathered for the Garden Coordinator's Collaboration this Sunday and another 6 people expressed their regrets. I want to thank every one for their interest and look forward to working with you. Those of us able to gather had some great conversations leading, I think, in the direction of a coordinated effort to move our community in the direction of sustainability. 20 people can be a force in the world - particularly if we are able to leverage our efforts by implementing the team gardening plan we discussed.


My good friend Michael Anderson asked me why I use the phrase, No Weed, No Water, No Till, Deep Mulch, Drip Irrigated Gardening System, instead of something simpler, like permaculture, or lasagna gardening. My answer has to do with this being about something larger than ourselves. It is about creating new relationships in our community. It is about bringing nature home to live with us . . . instead of preserving nature somewhere “out there” at arms length. It is about making the nutrients to provide for all of the residents of this place we call home. It is not just another gardening technique that a given gardener might choose. It is about re-engaging all of us in producing what we need to thrive . . . it's about healing nature and ending poverty.

In furtherance of that goal, we are in process of working out the details in these four categories:

- Team Building
- Companion and Succession planting in a Deep Mulch System
- Second year mulching techniques and hugelkulturs
- harvest and distribution

We will be working out these details through e-mail exchanges . . . and I will do my best to report back here . . . but, if you want to be directly involved, please send me your e-mail and I will add you in to the discussions.

This is not something that I am doing, or something that any of us can do alone, and I have proposed three rules for how we go about this:

1 - everyone gets to make their own decisions;

2 - what ever we do is open to all residents; and

3 - we measure progress by the diversity of people, plants and creatures participating.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on November 6, 2010 at 3:20pm

The discussion in this posting is specific to the situation at the Grange Garden . . . and I am naming names :-) . . . but the issues will be similar to the issues each of you face at any garden that wants to move beyond individual gardeners with individual plots.

Don Studinski is working on job descriptions for the various positions we have talked about, which are, Garden Coordinator, Leaders, Learners and Financial Supporters. If I can paraphrase Don, the Garden Coordinator position is designed to interface between the gardeners, the land owner and the material suppliers. Someone has to decide about, and see that it happens that, beds are laid out and assigned to gardeners, fees are collected, materials are delivered, gardeners are gathered to build out the beds, and drip line is purchased and installed. Don has requested to be relieved of his Garden Coordinator duties so that he can focus on publicizing what Transition Westminster/Arvada/Broomfield is doing in the community, including the gardens.

Susan Bloomquist is ostensibly the Garden Coordinator at the Grange but she is not interested in such things as assigning garden beds, or collecting money from Leaders or individual gardeners. She says specifically, that “The best way for me to communicate with gardeners would be through signs at the actual garden. I am looking into this. My email response time is just too slow for many Transition people.” Susan wants to build out the perennial plantings and create a source for starts that can be used by people making the transition from traditional gardening to our techniques.

We have talked to Doug Nelson about being a Leader. A Leader would direct the activities of a group gardening a series of beds. Doug may be interested in this aspect, but his primary interest is in scientific documentation of the process we are using.

We have also heard from Julie Mesdag and Janet Kern about leading a team that would have plots at the Grange Garden. At the Collaboration, we talked to them about the need to decide how many gardeners they have, how many plots they want, and what materials they would need to be able to garden those plots with our technique.

I am thinking that we need to be less concerned with titles and job descriptions and more concerned with accomplishing those tasks that need to be accomplished if our gardeners are going to have a quality gardening experience in 2011. From what I hear from Susan and Doug about perennial plantings, I think the two of you need to decide what part of the garden you need for your perennials and finalize 1) what existing beds will be available for 2011 gardening and 2) what new beds can be built. With those numbers, we can determine what additional hay, manure and drip supplies will be required. With those numbers and what the Grange wants to do about the water, we can determine what we have to charge for use of each bed. With that number, we will need someone to step up and take on the administrative responsibility of assigning beds, taking the money, publicizing work days, and arranging for purchase and delivery of materials.

In the absence of anyone else stepping up, I am prepared to do any of those tasks that need to be done. However, I am now involved in 8 gardens and the Applewood Permaculture Institute will make 9. What I would prefer is that all those people who are interested in each garden take on those tasks that interest them and then divide among themselves the remaining tasks required to make the garden a success in 2011. Please feel free to respond here, or through the e-mail list – or, if you are shy, to me directly, and lets be clear about who is doing what.

Remember, this change in the way our community provides for itself is something bigger than any one of us.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on November 26, 2010 at 1:35pm

I thought you all might be interested in my new business card and yard signs promoting the conversion of lawn to garden:

The iris is almost the same as the one on the sign on my truck and I am having yard signs made up to match. Hopefully, over the next few years, you will see the signs popping up in neighborhoods all around town :-)

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