PermaKent Permaculture Ideas of J. Kent Hastings

Geoff Lawton describes centuries of gardening experimentation in a tropical food forest in this video from Vietnam.
This family owned garden casually yields productivity without loss of the topsoil, killing the life in it with tilling, spraying pesticides and herbicides, and without the use of petrochemical based fertilizers.
Glad we’re not dumping Napalm and Agent Orange […]

Tagari.com
Sometimes you can be a prophet in your own land.
Permaculture founder Bill Mollison was recognized for his work educating millions throughout the world by leaders in his native Australia.
“Bill was awarded with the distinctive title of “Senior Australian of the Year 2010 – National Finalist” in a ceremony held in Hobart on November 23, […]

UrbanFarming.org
Little House on the Urban Prairie announced this exciting permaculture workshop (e. e. cummings style):
“urban ecology detroit presents a workshop with eric toensmeier - lessons learned from nuestras raices: permaculture for community and economic redevelopment, february 2nd from 10am to 2pm at the environmental interpretive center located on the campus of the university of michigan […]

Conservation
Refugees
In a recent podcast of the San Francisco radio show An Organic Conversation, with host Helge Hellberg, Guernica magazine and former Mother Jones journalist and now “investigative historian,” Mark Dowie, talked about his career and plans for his own radio show.
I enjoyed the German, Hellberg’s personal account of his experience twenty years ago when the […]

An item at The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia titled “How to Repair Our World” embeds a slick YouTube video about WeForest.
The video’s producer persuaded Stephen Fry to volunteer his time for narration during a chance meeting in Copenhagen (hence the “Fry-day” category and also because it’s still Friday in my local time zone).
WeForest encourages […]

Newsweek has a reputation for bias toward the Democrat party in the U.S. Browsing their website tends to support that notion, because of the anti-Fox News and pro-Federal Reserve articles. That Fed support is a bit much even for most Democrats. Job numbers are “growing” (still at 10% unemployment) and anything else the administration does […]

Conscientious Projector is hosting a free showing of Dirt the Movie in Tustin, CA this weekend (Sun., Nov. 9, 5 pm), which I plan to attend.
Here’s the Soul at Home location website with the Tustin address if you’re nearby and want to see the film.
There will also be a showing Wed., Nov. 18, 2009 […]

 I was surprised not to find Ruth Stout already here in a search of this blog.
Ruth lived from 1884 until 1980 and is famous for her planting method of essentially pressing seeds into the ground, which she prepared by covering with soft hay to protect from the sun, suppress weeds and keep the ground moist. […]

I was amazed when a grandmaster of Hollywood trivia attending a Libertarian supper club recently claimed not to have heard the term “permaculture” before.
It seems quite the trendy thing these days in political and cultural circles, but then I’m looking for it everywhere. Maybe folks will notice the release of the film “Food, Inc.” in […]

Finally making some seedballs to practice what I preach at Seedball.com.
Remembering that red terra cotta clay was the largest proportion of materials, I left an art supply place in a fool’s paradise with a heavy box of modeling clay, not the dry powder needed to make seedballs. D’oh!!!
Searching around the interwebs, I found others who […]

MTV movies blog
Sigal Ratner-arias reports that the Venezuelan Rain Forest Inspired ‘Up’, (the 2009 animated feature, not the 1976 Russ Meyer movie). Don’t get them confused when obtaining videos for family entertainment.
Friends remember the notorious weird Meyer film and say the new feature is great. Guess I’ll check it out soon. I won’t admit seeing […]

As a fan of Paolo Bacigalupi’s 2006 Hugo Nominated novelette, “The Calorie Man” (read it free in PDF), I found it irresistable to watch this TED Talk on the TEDTalksDirector channel at YouTube about the Millennium Seed Bank.
“The Calorie Man” is a 1984 type of story about a future run by corporations owning all food […]

Flies came in and transformed orange peels on waste lands over time, replacing invasive grass species and weeds with a lush forest rich in biodiversity. Daniel Janzen’s approach cost $3,000 per episode compared to $600,000 spent doing the same work with human labor and tractors. After orange juice is squeezed and oil from the skin […]

I get Google Alerts for terms such as “forest garden,” “permaculture,” and “seedball.” Whenever one of those is in the news or on the blogs, I get email. It’s useful to keep track of events and avoid missing things.
After reading the mail, I found a cool thing from March, 2007. This Flash presentation, converted to […]

A few years ago I stumbled upon The Global Ideas Bank and found an entry for “Forest Garden,” a project suggestion for growing food year round with “minimal labor” (it really said “labour,” actually — danged Commonwealthers). Seems plants grown together in different layers (roots, herbs, bushes, trees, vines, etc.), as in a wild forest, […]