- SEEDS: As mentioned earlier, save all the seed from the fruit and vegetables
you buy: e.g. watermelon, rockmelon, tomato, passionfruit, capsicum. Try
planting out the soggy left over alfalfa sprouts. Save all the carrot,
parsley tops Umbelliferae and propagate these on soggy paper or
cotton wool (use whatever you have available, don't go out and buy it.)
Buy bird seed and plant it under a layer of shredded paper, straw (one
bale will go a long way this way), grass clippings. This will grow to give
you more seed, something edible and tasty and your first crop of mulch.
- MULCH: Don't plant until you have mulch. Mulch comes in many forms,
bills, dockets, junk mail, old rags, newspaper, cardboard (the mother of
all mulch), grass clippings if you have a rake and lawn, other peoples
grass clippings áre much better as they sometimes rake it and put it into
garbage bags ready for you instead of in the bin. These garbage bags can
store and compost the clippings for you while being used as weights to
hold down sheet mulch in the garden.
- WEIGHTS FOR SHEET MULCHING: Use heavy sticks, off cuts of wood, boxes,
potted plants, water containers, rocks etc., to hold the mulch in place.
This helps retain more water in the mulch and stops it from blowing away.
The weights can be reused once the mulch is moulded and stabilised.
- PLANTS: Walk around the neighbourhood speaking to people about their
garden, asking for snippets (take a bag and pair of scissors with you)
often they will give you plants to get you started. My advice is to take
what they offer with thanks - don't knock back something because you haven't
learnt a use for it yet. Except for highly invasive plants in fragile locations,
most plants will be at least be a pioneer species. Avoid growing plants
that are difficult to grow in your area until you have established a good
microclimate, rich soil and natural supply of fertiliser.
Collect seed and cuttings from plants overhanging boundary fences.
- PROPAGATION Try to be self reliant with propagation. Avoid hormone
powder remembering to accept some losses in the strike rate of cutting.
Hormone powder is for quick results as required by nurseries. Your plants
will have the best care and natural selection needs to play an active role.
You can be very successful without chemicals just as mankind was for thousands
of centuries before specialist manufactured chemicals.
ANIMALS: Do not install animals until you have fodder crops ready
for them and a means of protecting young plants. You cannot always
get rid of your animals as easily as you got them.
Animals need housing: this costs in time, resources and money. The
cheapest animal to house is the worm. Try starting out with worms,
they'll supply you with rich fertiliser, and are less time consuming than
compost. Dogs probably come next in terms of housing costs, they
can survive in a makeshift kennel, don't require protection from predators
but need space to run (hence some lawn or pasture), control and training,
attention and affection. They offer only a little security which is handy
given that plants/tools/chooks do get stolen or harassed by dogs and cats.
Next can be your portable 'lawn mowers' - Guinea Pigs (require housing
and protection) or Sheep (keep them out of the garden they'll eat
the lot!) 'Lawn mowers' reduce the current work load on a conventional
system of 'house and lawn and consumerism'. I know of an elderly woman
who has not had to worry about the lawn now for ten years, she lives in
a sub-tropical suburb and has one healthy rarely shorn pet sheep. 'Lawn
mowers' will give you more time to concentrate on modifications to the
system. Avoid hardhoofed animals on fragile soils e.g. horses in
the early years as they compact the soil and cost the earth during drought
and sickness. Never over stock, keep stocking rates to drought or similar
disaster level. Remember that the 'lawn mowers' will eventually have to
go if you are doing the permaculture job well. You have the options to
either eat or sell them. Consider Ducks, they are hardier than chooks,
provide eggs, love snails, eat a lot of grass and weeds and do less damage
to a young garden than chooks. Install your Chicken tractor when
you have numerous plants ready to be planted and matured fodder crops.
Or use chickens for large areas of lawn, they reduce need for noisy pollutive
mowing AND turn grass (and other inedibles/poor tasting edibles) into fertiliser!
They also reduce leaf litter in fire prone areas.
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