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I bought one plant from Raintree Nursery five years ago, of the variety 'Profumata di Tortona". For the first two years, it produced tons and tons of runners, but no flowers, so that by the third year I had a decent sized patch of it. The third year, all the plants that were a year or two old bloomed extravagantly, but not a single blossom set fruit!

( the whole saga, including taste test )

loligo

So I added a few new plants to that bed that had the Hidden Gravel Surprise. First off, I discovered that there were roots growing both above and below the gravel layer, so breaking through the gravel beneath each plant as I planted them last year was at least an adequate strategy. But removing the gravel from the new planting holes this year was not easy. Prying out some of the larger rocks turned out to be pretty brutal on the stray roots wandering through the area, plus it totally disarranged the soil profile. In a rock-free bed I would have been able to just nudge the soil and any roots aside and slip the new plant in.

So my conclusion is that if you're going to do all your planting at one time, you can skimp on the effort and just remove the gravel below each plant, but if it's going to be an ongoing project, get ALL the gravel out first!

loligo

A couple years ago we bought a house that had originally been built by an elderly couple who loved gardening. They laid out flagstone paths and rock-edged beds and made some very nice plantings. But as they got older they had a hard time maintaining their garden, and then they sold the house to a woman who was a total non-gardener. She owned the house for five years, and she said that all the "gardening" she did was paying a mowing service to mow the lawn. They alternately ignored the flower beds or mowed them down to grass height.

So we have a real wilderness to revitalize! With the first bed that I tackled, I put down like six inches or more of sheet mulch (cardboard, compost, leaf litter, topsoil...) and then when I dug in to plant my plants, I discovered that the original owners had mulched all their beds with ornamental gravel. By the time the garden came into my possession, all that gravel was hidden beneath a half-inch to inch of soil. So I dug it out of each planting hole and did the best I could. But now I can't decide what to do with the other beds. Should I dig out ALL the gravel ahead of time? Or do I only need to remove it in the immediate vicinity of each plant, trusting their roots to grow out either above or below the two-inch layer of gravel, depending on whether it's a deep or shallow-rooted plant?

Some of the gravel is pumice, which might actually help the drainage of my very heavy soil, but some of it is some very smooth, dense rock that I don't know the name of, and the layer is very compacted.

Any thoughts?

purpletigron

I first encountered this self-seeding ('multiplier') biennial allium through the Heritage Seed Library of the HDRA - now known also as Garden Organic: http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/

Babington's leek

You can read more about the Allium ampeloprasum babbingtonii in the excellent Plants for a Future database, which has extensive information about thousands of useful plants which can thrive in temperate climates such as the UK.

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Allium+ampeloprasum+babbingtonii

Alliums are said to be good companion plants to fruit trees, Solanaceae ('nightshades' - tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, etc.), brassicas and carrots (e.g. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants). However, I do not yet have much personal experience of these claims regarding Babington's leek.

loligo

Now that we're in open beta, it occurs to me that I never really did a formal admin post. I am totally in favor of all members using this community for whatever permaculture-related purposes strike their fancy, with the exception of advertising -- if you want to publicize your permaculture goods or services, please run your post by me first (and I am very unlikely to approve it unless you are a long-time, active member of the community).

Personally, I would love to read about unusual plants that have worked well for people in permaculture plantings, but I don't have much to report along those lines, myself! Intro posts are always encouraged, and requests for advice are totally cool, too.

A thorough, well-organized tag system warms my heart, but my own tagging skills are sadly haphazard. Not that this community is likely to be so high-traffic as to need really hardcore tags, but I would be happy to give admin privileges to someone with obsessive tagging tendencies *g*.

purpletigron

Delighted to see this community already in existence!

I am on my pathway for a Diploma in Applied Permaculture, having completed the 72 Hour Design Course in 2007. I am based in the UK. I would be delighted to attempt to answer any questions which anyone may have about what those training courses offer.

I am vegan, so I am specializing in stock-free permaculture - this means that I do not include captive animals in my designs. Two leading UK vegan permaculturists are Aranya (see http://www.aranyagardens.co.uk/) and Graham Burnett (see http://www.grahamburnett.net/).

My favourite permaculture book at this stage of my pathway is Patrick Whitefield's Earth Care Manual (http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/the_earth_care_manual/) - focusing on temperature climates, it is the ideal starting place for many questions about creating sustainable human habitats in the UK.

loligo

This book is like a charming, light-hearted companion to Toensmeier & Jacke's much more hardcore Edible Forest Gardens. It should be of great interest to food geeks as well as plant geeks; I come from a whole family of obsessive foodies and there were a lot of things in here I'd never heard of before. It makes a nice coffee table book, too -- nearly every page has full-color photos.

Just about the only perennial vegetables grown in most American gardens are asparagus and rhubarb, with artichokes, sunchokes, and sorrel trailing way behind. But this book has a hundred more! There are edible plants here for every site -- sun, shade, bogs, deserts, you name it. They were selected based on taste and productivity, with the only requirement being that they're suitable for growing *somewhere* in the United States, even if that somewhere is just a couple square miles of upland Hawaii (a real example -- the basul tree bean).

I was expecting to find crops from Asia and South America that I wasn't familiar with, but what really surprised me were all the traditional European vegetables I'd never heard of before -- vegetables like skirret, sea kale, and Good King Henry, all of which became minor culinary footnotes after the introduction of all those shiny new veggies from the Americas.

I have yet to try growing or eating anything from this book (besides the usual suspects like asparagus, etc.). I actually have pokeweed growing wild all over my property, but since that one's toxic unless you cook it in a couple of changes of water, I haven't worked up the nerve yet. Oh, wait, actually I did plant Chinese artichokes last year (Stachys affinis)... they'll be ready to harvest this fall. I'll let you know how they turn out!

loligo

The first book I ever read about permaculture was Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway (which is coming out in a 2nd edition this spring). It explained the basics of the theory and presented some inspiring examples, but it was kind of short on nitty-gritty details, particularly regarding plants suitable for eastern North America. (Most English-language resources on permaculture focus on Australia or the U.K., because that's where a lot of the hands-on work has been done.)

When we bought our house a couple years ago, I knew I wanted to use permaculture ideas in revitalizing the long-neglected garden, but I just didn't know where to begin. I was actually thinking of hiring a permaculture consultant to get us started, much as that goes against my DIY ethos, because I was just *that* confused. But then I found Edible Forest Gardens, and suddenly I had all the information I could wish for.

It's a two-volume book. The authors say that vol. 1 focuses on Vision & Theory and vol. 2 focuses on Design & Practice, but there's enough overlap to make either volume useful on its own, should you happen to run into just one in a used book store. For example, a very practical aspect of vol. 1 is the lengthy appendix describing forest gardening's "Top 100" most useful plants. I actually found vol. 2 to be a bit tl;dr in places, when it comes to the design process, but people with a larger lot (or more site flexibility) might need a lot of the info that I skimmed over.

The highlight of vol. 2 is the Plant Species Matrix, detailing the properties and uses of over 600 species suitable for forest gardening in eastern North America. This is the kind of solid, specific information that I was longing for!

I was going to type out the inspiring introduction to vol. 1, which encapsulates a lot of the basic ideas of forest gardening in a nutshell, but then I found that a lot of that information was available at the authors' website here, so I encourage you to go celebrate Earth Day by reading it! It might change how you think about your garden forever!

loligo

Maybe before I dive into book reviews, I should provide some sort of intro post! The wikipedia entry covers the basics, albeit in an abstract way. The central idea of permaculture is to use our knowledge about the ecology of various natural systems to create agricultural systems that are as diverse, productive, and self-sustaining as possible.

I can't tell you what a kick it was when I first encountered this idea. You mean, I can take all those ecology courses I took as an undergrad, apply them to gardening, and end up with delicious food for little effort? Sign me up! There are other reasons why it was especially appealing to me, too: I live in an area with heavy clay soil, and I live in a shady clearing in the woods. Not an optimal setting for growing your typical tomatoes and zucchini. Permaculture landscapes don't *need* to be modeled on forests, but many of them are, so there was this whole body of research out there that could help me find edible plants that would thrive in my setting.

Permaculture is very much in development: there's still debate about how productive permaculture systems (particularly forest-based systems) can be (per acre, or per energy expended) in temperate climates. So if you had an empty plot of sunny land with rich loamy soil and you were trying to decide how to squeeze as much food out of it as possible, you'd definitely have to do some homework before making your decision. But in many other situations (including typical suburban yards), the permaculture approach has a lot to offer!

So, I'm curious: how much background do others folks here on the comm already have when it comes to permaculture? Maybe you've heard of it a couple times and just subscribed out of curiosity? Maybe you already have a thriving edible landscape, and can tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do with goumi berries? (Yes, I planted goumis, because everyone kept saying that they were one of the best fruiting shrubs for shade... but now what? *g*)

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Permaculture: Food From Sustainable Landscapes

Italian musk strawberries

more on that gravel...

a question about gravel

Babbington's leek

Welcome, everyone!

Introduction

Perennial Vegetables, by Eric Toensmeier

Edible Forest Gardens, by David Jacke & Eric Toensmeier

what is permaculture?

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October 2021

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