Farm & Garden

Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, town planning, rewilding, and community resilience. The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated…

When European settlers arrived in America in the early 1600s, the Iroquois had been growing the “three sisters” for over three centuries. The Pueblo and other tribes of the mid and south-western United States had been growing, especially corn, for centuries before that. The type of corn grown was a…

Over the last 100 years we have lost over 75% of our agricultural diversity.  In past generations, farmers would save and share their seed with one another, thus ensuring biodiversity and autonomy.  Now that over 75% of our global seed supply, like our food supply, comes from corporations where some…

The definition put forth by the Global agricultural authorities is: “Food sovereignty is a food system in which the people who produce, distribute, and consume food also control the mechanisms and policies of food production and distribution. This stands in contrast to the present corporate food regime, in which corporations and…

Hügelkultur (usually transliterated into English as “hugelkultur”) is a method of gardening that has been used for centuries in Eastern Europe and Germany, often as part of a broader permaculture system. Hügelkultur is a mound bed or mound culture. It is a horticultural technique where a mound constructed from decaying…

by Donald Craig, 2019 Celestial Planting Calendar Article Shortly after humans started clearing forests for agriculture, they found it necessary to plant windbreaks to compensate for the benefits lost by the removal of the forests. Some of those benefits include: •  Protection of buildings due to slowing down of winter…

Re-Posted under Home Gardening, Organic News & Environment by Nan Fischer on August 7, 2018 Permaculture is a philosophy for a sustainable, holistic lifestyle. Ecological researcher and writer, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren coined the term in 1978. They combined the words permanent and agriculture to create permaculture as a system of ecological farming. They later changed it to permanent and culture to include the social needs…

If you are a backyard gardening, flower gardener, market gardener, permaculturalist or a farm and you are not composting – ask yourself why not?  If you are concerned about the nutrient value of your soil – are you composting?​ What is Compost? Compost is decomposed organic materials, such as leaves,…