Permaculture Design - Edible Backyard NZ

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Permaculture Design

A collection of 16 posts

Preparing New Vegie Beds

Preparing New Vegie Beds

There are two parts to this: first up I'll show you how to work out the most efficient shape for your bed (fyi not necessarily a rectangle and defo not a square!), and then we get down to the business of getting it ready for cropping. In my

Learn Your Winter Landscape

Learn Your Winter Landscape

The shady, the sunny, the frosty, the soggy - how well do you know your winter landscape? Ideally, really well. Are the plants that need winter sun and warmth located in it? Take the opportunity! Winter comes but once a year. Timing is everything. Shady by itself means not much,

How To Grow Raspberries

How To Grow Raspberries

Awesome crops of awesome raspberries begins with a good setup, and so today I'm focusing you in on getting the basics sorted first: choosing a good location + a good variety. With this well sorted, their care is easy i.e. less pests and disease + better crops. From there

A finished no dig bed a la kath

My 3 Fav Ways to Start a Vegie Patch

Here are my three favourite ways to begin a vegie patch. All are variations of no-dig, and all grow brilliant vegies with no bought fertiliser. The only buy ins are greencrop seeds and perhaps compost, if need be. The first method, and my all time favourite is - "No

Are Raised Beds Your Best Bet?

Are Raised Beds Your Best Bet?

Timber edged, raised beds aren't a garden essential! For sure, they have their place, but in most cases - yes most cases! - your soil, your body, your plants + your wallet are better served without them. Simple, no-dig beds, without timber edges are easiest by far to work

Purple Sprouting Broccoli underplanted with redclover parsnips and red clover

Permaculture Design

Easy fertility! Reduce your compost needs

Homemade compost is the ultimate soil food - safe from herbicide/ pesticide/ fungicide residue and full of life! It may seem daunting to make all your own, but with a good setup you totally can. The trick is to incorporate fertility into your garden design. Team that with a good

a simple pallet compost bin

Permaculture Design

Easy peasy compost: A good setup

The trick to easily made composts is to have all the ingredients on hand, the bins close by the vegie patch and a hose near by. Easy peasy! 2 types of compost bin * A simple, 3 sided, pallet bin A couple of pallets slid over stakes do the job perfectly.

Simple Solutions For Too Much Surface Water

Permaculture Design

Simple Solutions For Too Much Surface Water

For best all-round health we set our land up so that water soaks both into our soil, and/or moves across our landscape to a place of our choosing. We don't want water to sit and puddle or pond anywhere near our food crops, so if after rain

heavy claggy clay is best left alone until it dries outtion

Permaculture Design

A Simple Drainage Test

Winter is a telling time in your soil health journey – from now through early spring you get to see your drainage in action. Those of you at the basemap phase of gathering info and learning your land – perk your ears on up! How wet are your soils? Drainage is absolutely

Introducing Guilds: The Easy Way to Garden!

Introducing Guilds: The Easy Way to Garden!

A guild is a team of plants, that support, protect and nourish each other, working together for the benefit of all. A guild creates stability and best health because the variety of plants above ground brings a variety of roots and soil life below ground. It's the smartest

captain-kidd-harvest

Make a Harvest Calendar

Before you buy fruit trees, make a super useful harvest calendar for a clear overview of the fruiting year. A big help in choosing varieties that stagger the harvest and spread workload. Before we map it out - lets double check you're ready to go. Tick off the

Hebes in front of a slat fence - a low shelter around the northern line of the vegie patch

Step by Step to Kickass Shelter

Shelter lays the foundation for a thriving food garden. What a difference to productivity when our crops are nicely tucked away! Today, I'm going to set you on the road to a handsome as, targetted and super low-maintenance shelter that once established, needs no pruning/ trimming/ fussing over.

Drone shot of edible backyard nz

Permaculture Design

Make a Basemap + Wishlist

Understanding your land and your climate first is key to you making sound placement choices. "...protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour" Bill Mollison (co founder of permaculture) wisely advises. Start by making a basemap - a birds eye view sketch or photo of your

Smart Edge Design Saves You Work!

Permaculture Design

Smart Edge Design Saves You Work!

This would be an easy post to skip past - the edge? what edge?! And yet its one of those foundational concepts that if you adopt, can save you loads of work and increase the fertility and life in your soils by miles. Planting up the outside edge of your

barefoot gardener

Monthly gardening advice

Mulched Paths - Oh Yes!

The first permaculture book I read was "The Permaculture Home Garden" by Linda Woodrow. Back in mumblemumble 1997. I read it from cover to cover one cold weekend in bed with my first baby, those were the days. I gobbled it up. Linda made so much sense. One

Walnut protected

Monthly gardening advice

Learn Your Land (And While You Do, Go Temporary)

When we arrived here we set up temporary fencing to keep the pigs in. Those temporary fences bought us time. Time to figure out how the grazing would work in with all the other stuff and time to understand those little details that keep life simple - like big roadside