Lucy Zhang translating Permaculture for a new audience

With just over 1.33 Billion people in 2010, China is fast growing into a world super-power.

Although traditional Chinese farmers practiced various forms of Permaculture  for thousands of years, a lot of that culture is fast disappearing as China modernizes its Economy. When it comes to Permaculture taught and practiced in China, there doesn’t seem to be too much in the way of books or videos on the subject.

But that may all soon change.

It was a surprise for us at Ecofilms to get a message from Lucy Zhang who lives in the Guangdong Province of China wishing to volunteer her services to translate Geoff Lawton’s  Introduction to Permaculture Design  DVD for a whole new Chinese audience.

Lucy tells us that, “For the past two years, I have been exploring about natural health/diet, sustainable eco-living, and spiritual growth.”

“Now as a “free-style fruitarian” (if it makes sense), one of my dreams is to build a little food/fruit “Garden of Eden” on Earth following the permaculture ways, and to spread the seeds of green living around as I walk my own path.”

In fact Lucy through her Chinese blog as been busy translating all kinds of things.

“My blog is in Chinese,” she says, “with various articles I’ve written and translated out of my own passions.”

Hopefully Lucy’s passion for spreading Permaculture throughout China may catch on and find a whole new audience. We’ve sent her a copy of the English subtitles and Lucy is determined to have it completed next month right in time for a new release.

“It would be a great honour to be part of your wonderful work” she said, “and a “permie pioneer” in China.”
 

The Urban Permaculture DVD is finally shipping directly from Geoff Lawton’s website www.permaculture.org.au

One of the interesting segments on the DVD deals with a home swimming pool system that was converted to grow over 100 silver perch fingerlings.

The owners insisted that they do not feed the fish anything else rather than the natural algae that was already growing on the surface of the walls and fittings of the pool.
To get the fish up to appear at the surface of the swimming pool – so we could film them, Geoff Lawton threw pieces of bread to attract the fish. Remarkably the fish appeared in excellent health and were growing strongly. You would have thought that were wasn’t enough protein to enable the fish to grow and prosper.

Not only were the fish living off the algae, an excellent source for complex Omega 3 fatty acids, but the fish  were also living off mosquito larvae and other small crustaceans that appeared in the water. Not only small larvae but rare frogs were now also visiting this swimming pool.

What makes it more remarkable is that this back yard, is located under a busy flight path in Sydney Australia, yet the natural system was able to regulate itself and run as normal.

You can read more about it here.

This 55,000 Litre Swimming Pool is converted to a small fish farm using very little energy

Here’s something you might not have considered. Duckponics. It may not be for everyone, but if you keep ducks and you want to do aquaponics without fish then perhaps you might consider this interesting alternative.

Aleece Landis better know as TCLynx on various aquaponics forums apart from running fish and vegetable systems decided to apply her knowledge of aquaponics to cleaning the water for her growing menagerie of chickens and ducks by running the fowled water in her “duck pond” through her gravel growbeds and raise a few plants at the same time.

The ducks also get a bonus. They can nibble the leaves through the netting that surrounds each grow-bed.

Aleece shows you her system in this short You Tube video.

The idea of using the manure from ducks to water the vegetable garden isn’t new. If you look at how Permaculture people use the same concept to run duck nutrients to their fruit trees and even their vegetable gardens, you’ll see that running water through a tap system downhill can be just as effective.

However, you will need to replenish the duck pond every time and if water is scarce on your land then you might need to consider a small low energy pond pump to recirculate the duck water.

Certainly the water in Aleece’s galvanized duck pond was sparkling clean and fresh looking.

Urban Permaculture DVD Front

If you’re a student of Permaculture and want to know how to implement Permaculure Design into your small Urban Garden then you should check out this DVD when it gets released in October.

World Premiere in IPC10 Jordan

Its been finished for some time now but we have held off publishing it until it gets it’s “world premiere” at the 2011 International Permaculture Conference being held right now in Jordan.

Geoff Lawton is keen to show it off as well as getting feedback from experienced permaculture teachers attending the event. At Ecofilms we are always concerned that we give as much solid information to the Permaculture student and that we haven’t left any vital detail out.

Geoff was very keen to show as examples in the DVD, simple solutions to complex problems. Low tech solutions you can do yourself like how to harvest rainwater and feed it to a series of cascading water features that collect your grey water and help feed productive fruit trees and animals.

How their nutrient flows can be directed creatively to feed a small backyard food hedge. Its those Permaculture relationships we were interested in showing.

Those interconnections are not very apparent to many people and in this DVD Geoff spells out those micro-connections that many people just do not understand.

As Geoff likes to say, many people are switched onto their ipods and and internet techno-wizardry. Capable of tweeting and face-booking the latest craze, but are totally out of depth when it comes to understanding the intricate relationship of nature and ecology just outside their bedroom window.

Its into this outdoor space that people need to reconnect and switch on, in order to live sustainably with minimal impact on the world around them. Thats what the Urban Permaculture DVD is all about.

Urban Permaculture DVD Back

The DVD shows you various small Permaculture garden with Geoff explaining how they function and interact with other elements. Then we go on a Permaculture Garden Blitz.  Geoff and a team of students renovate an extablish garden – the permaculture way over a period of three days. The client wants food security and to grow as much at home as possible. Geoff and his team plan the ultimate food growing solution.

You’ll get to see how it all shapes up.

The DVD runs for over 90 minutes and is ideal for the Permaculture student wishing to implement their own design and is looking for creative inspiration. There’s also an extras feature where Geoff plans out on paper the bones of another urban consultancy and the solution that good permaculture design can bring.

Thats the sort of thing we wanted to bring you.

Watching Geoff Lawton enter an unfamiliar environment – away from the classroom and into the natural domain and watching him plan his way to sustainable abundance.

Its like being there.

Urban Permaculture DVD

• PAL Format
• Region Free
• Over 95 minutes of quality information

Price: $39.95

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"Only on edges do we see fertility"

A couple of years ago whilst shooting the Food Forest DVD with Geoff Lawton he remarked how “only on edges do we get fertility” or words to that effect. At the time that phrase didn’t really make much sense to me but when you stop and think for a moment how nature creates soil – those words begin to ring true.

We hear a lot about soil degradation and soil erosion but we hardly hear about simple methods of building soil – the positive solutions we can go about to build fertility  back into landscape.

According to Permaculture teacher Geoff Lawton, the fastest way to create soil is in shallow lakes and ponds through anaerobic activity.

Organic matter is transformed into soil – but its a slow natural process.

A decorative pond in your garden is more than just an ornamental feature or a place for frogs and fish to congregate. It can also be a soil creation mechanism as Geoff explains in this you-tube clip.

Seeing soils being created in the most unlikely places is something not many of us seem to notice but it does go on silently day in and day out usually in damp and dark places where the fertility of carbon and water is captured and held – the edge factor!

Apart from zinc-alum guttering, soil creation goes on in the most unlikely of places. Storm water drains and channels have some of the best soil found along the edges of culverts and overflowing creeks. Anywhere it seems where water can collect and organic matter be allowed to accumulate. It goes on silently drip by drip, leaf by leaf with the odd worm arriving to add his mark in his new home.

Originally we were going to include this clip in the Permaculture Soils DVD but we honestly ran out of space and time and there was plenty of other stuff we wanted to go through. There are faster ways to build soil and Geoff is confident that by harnessing a little moisture, nitrogen in the form of fertilizer and some carbon – you can actively make good quality soil in your garden and grow fresh food as well.

But spare a thought for edges – without them all that top soil would blow out to sea…

It looks like a white camel with a fat hump on a pillar but in actual fact its a hot water system. Rocket Stove technology has been around for many years, dating back to ancient China as a method of central heating, but this rendered mud brick construction is used out in the field near the student camping area at Zaytuna farm.

This Rocket Stove also has a wood drying cabinet below

We’re outdoors filming the last sequences for The Urban Permaculture DVD at the Permaculture Research Institute in Australia and managing director Geoff Lawton points out his new toy.

Washing his hands in the outdoor sink he demonstrates how well it works. Upright timber that looks like thin fence palings or tomato stakes are standing upright and a warm fiery glow. A great idea I think. Only the last few inches are burnt and the stick burns down like a candle, falling down under its own weight.

In the cold winter air, its comforting to stand next to this quiet system as it burns very little fuel. The strange hump contains a 44 gallon drum that is the engine of the water heater system. We’re impressed. Geoff always has something interesting to show us.

Geoff explains the benefits of using a rocket stove to heat your hot water. Very little timber is used he says, in fact only one fifth the timber is needed to harness the energy used in traditional stove hot water systems.

The rocket stove is an ingenious system that radiates hot air around the thermal mass of a water filled drum. Inside the water filled drum is about 18 metres of tightly coiled copper pipe that will turn cold water into hot. Its the water in the coiled pipe that will be used in the house. The water in the drum transfers its thermal mass energy to the coiled tubing. Low tech solutions like this are terrific to see. There is very little smoke out of the flue. We think of our own increasing power bills as Geoff points out the timber drying and storage cabinet built into it.

By now we’re getting hungry. I mention to Geoff that I have an improvement on his design. Could he also turn this into a pizza oven as well? Now that would be an even better idea – suited to good permaculture design. One system but with many alternative functions. The essence of good design

There are many different rocket stove designs. For some reason they appeal to Permaculture people who always hanker for good innovative design that is also energy efficient.

You can visit Milkwood Permaculture for even more innovative uses including a hot water shower system.

Rocket Stove technology like this could also be used in many unexpected ways. If you’re into aquaponics – imagine a system like this to heat the thermal mass of your greenhouse to keep the water at an ideal temperature and the fish happy?

Bacteria slow down activity in colder weather so a cheap system like this could keep your system at optimal condition and also be very cheap to run.

Update

Access hole to the drum

Just an update to this story, if you decide to build a rocket stove, two things you may need to know. You will need add some kind of blow-off valve as pressure will build inside the drum and the water temperature will need to be regulated so as to not scald people with boiling water – or indeed explode!

The other thing to be aware of is that you will need to cut an access hole in your structure to reach the screw-on lid on your drum and top up water lost through evaporation or condensation.

A while back we posted a story about Penny Pyett’s straw-bale chicken house that was specifically designed to muffle the sounds of roosters crowing. Raising roosters in the city is always was a problem with the noise. How do you keep the peace with the neighbors from all that early morning crowing? Lets face it – city roosters like to start their crowing at first light, well before the morning rush hour even begins.

Well, Permaculture teacher Penny Pyett from Sydney knew the frustration of raising hens without roosters. Hens will lay eggs without a rooster but because the eggs are not fertilized, you have no chance of raising baby chickens.

So Penny decided the solution was to overcome the rooster noise problem. She overcame the problem and built the solution with a majestic straw-bale construction that muffles the sound of early rooster crowing. Her chicken house was warm in winter and cool in summer. It was designed to meet the needs of the chicken with a high roosting platform for the hens to escape predators like foxes. But will it pass the noise test?

We got Permaculture guru Geoff Lawton – who is also a dab hand at rooster crowing to test out her chicken coop. Lets see what he has to say?

You can try and overcome the problem of roosters annoying your neighbours by sound proofing your chicken coop. Some people have stapled egg cartons to the inside of the chicken coop to dramatically dampen the noise level with limited success. If you have the patience and are prepared to build a straw-bale chicken coop, this construction by Penny Pyett is a beautiful example to try and emulate. Penny’s coop sits inside a food forest garden where the lucky roosters are able to lead the hens into the forest, make merry with them and live a long and happy life far from the torments of their inner city neighbors!

This clip is part of the Urban Permaculture DVD which is over 90 minutes long and jam packed with terrific solutions to practical problems of wanting to live the Permaculture lifestyle but on a limited space and size constraint – The Urban backyard. There’s a surprising lot you can do with small space constraints. The limit is just with your imagination. You can grow a lot of food in a limited space, providing you have availability to some sunshine and electricity. The solutions are at hand…

Its been a whirlwind trip over the last six months putting the pieces together for what is to become The Urban Permaculture DVD with Geoff Lawton.

Nothing goes quite according to script and yet making a video like this is a bit like herding cats. Its chaotic. Like walking into a jungle of vines, monkeys and snakes, you are not sure where you are heading or if the whole project will sink into a disaster.

Permaculture is a bit wild and rampant and just when you think you have it all figured out, neat and tidy-like and have it organized and in the bag – a spanner gets thrown into the works and you realize there is so much more to the story that can be told in 90 minutes.

We haven’t even scratched the surface. So what’s it like herding cats with Geoff Lawton?
There’s always a surprise in store.
Its like taking a adventure walk into the forest or a trip in a canoe down a mysterious river that no one has seen before.

An Example: We visited a community garden the other day to talk about growing food in tanks.
Shooting that segment went well when Geoff noticed something growing wild in the corner of the field. He picks up an insignificant little plant with a small number of pink flowers. “This is Herb Robert.” he whispers, “We can discuss this if you’re interested in putting this in the film.”
So we do, and he gives a rave on the medicinal power of three insignificant looking plants that most people would overlook or trample on – like I did – and why we should grow them in our Urban Gardens. This becomes a small chapter in this film on the power of growing your own medicinal herbs. So thats what its like filming with him. Happy accidents abound like serendipity. You have to be in the right spot to see them – and take advantage of what they have to offer.

Geoff Lawton points out Herb Robert

And so it goes with Geoff. If I write a script – he wont read it or says he’s too busy. Occasionally he will paraphrase it in his own words and improve the idea spontaneously in front of the camera. But what you are getting isn’t a pre-written massaged permaculture textbook spiel that’s been nutted out days before and delivered mechanically. Thats not how it works – but something that is spontaneous and unrehearsed, wild and instinctive. Geoff says he doesn’t know where the words come from. But his impact jumps out on the screen. One minute he talks about the aphrodisiac effect of eating quail eggs and the next he’s got his hands covered in azolla and extolling the virtues of algae. Thats Geoff Lawton. The camera likes his untidy and scruffy appearance. From out of all this chaos – order is formed. or is it in the edit? (We can’t give him too much credit.)

Geoff admits we are nature. We are part of it all. We are not separate from that very essence. He also loves fishing. He prides himself on being a good fisherman. Making a film with him is like going fishing. You are not sure what “catch” you’ll bring back as you set off for a days adventure. But coming home after a days filming, and looking at it all on the editing timeline, the haul is always unexpected and interesting. Dark and mysterious…

The film is 98% done. Geoff would like to show it first at a special screening at the 10th International Permaculture Conference in Jordan later this year. Look out for it when it comes out around September. Its packed with good ideas. We are also editing a bundle of extras to go with it on Geoff planning a few backyard gardens.

Sometimes you see something and you think “Wow! Thats a great idea.” We came across this very simple and easy to build greenhouse at Rosina Buckman’s backyard. Rosina has some terrific tips mentioned previously here and here.

Most greenhouse designs are overly complicated with lengthy instructions and steel engineering that makes them unaffordable to most people wishing to have something in their backyard to grow their seedlings or indeed even a basic shelter to cover their aquaponic systems from the rain, wind, birds and insects.

Star pickets are cheap to buy

Rosina points out where the star picket is inside the polypipe

Yet this one idea is not commonly found on the internet.
The Polypipe Greenhouse.
All you need are around 8 star pickets and a length of thick industrial strength irrigation pipe to make a Greenhouse of approximately 3 meters by 7 metres. Very easy and cheap to build too.

Star pickets are also called steel fence posts in some countries. They come in a variety of sizes from 900mm right up to 2400mm in length.

Buy the taller steel picket and hammer them into location in your desired spot in the backyard.

Polypipe comes in various sizes

Polypipe comes in a range of sizes. Do choose one that is wider enough to slip over the steel picket.
The polypipe Rosina uses fits snugly over the picket and slides down about half the length of the picket.

It is then arched and connected over the other picket. Bird-netting is connected to the pipe with large size zip ties.

Surprisingly there is enough tension to support most bird netting or greenhouse shade cloth. Rosina Buckman’s Greenhouse has been moved around the garden four times and has stood the test of time.

Steel picket and polypipe greenhouse

The beauty of building your greenhouse this way is that you can change the shape and length to fit any shape in the garden.
It doesn’t necessarily need to fit a standard hoop greenhouse either.
Rosina has some very creative uses for the polypipe and some people use them as a trellis for all kinds of climbing plants.

Polypipes have been around for a while and were commonly in irrigation. But here they have found a different use altogether. Many permaculture people use polypipe to build dome shaped Permaculture Chicken tractors.
These dome shaped constructions certainly required a little bit more work but as mobile chicken coops they are light enough for one or two people to move and drag around the garden with chickens intact. They don’t rot and if you decide you don’t need the structure anymore – you can cannibalize the parts for other purposes.

Using mobile chicken tractors are discussed in Geoff Lawton’s “Establishing a Food Forest” DVD where the chicken tractors were used to manure a field and moved incrementally and a food forest was sown behind it. A wonderful idea with minimal effort.

This polypipe and star picket structure supports a climbing vine.

They say nine out of ten people that ultimately get ducks into their gardens first started off with chickens. So what are the advantages of keeping ducks?

The popular perception or myth is that ducks need a large expanse of water; they make a lot of mess; destroy your garden and their eggs are large and oily.

But that’s not necessarily the case.

Urban Permaculture: Excess water collected from the duck coop is diverted down a swale channel to feed the garden

Its true domestic ducks do like to spend 10% of their time in water but the duck pond can be replaced with a child’s plastic paddling pool or even an old spa bath found out the local rubbish dump if you limit your ducks to just a few per household. Ducks love to attack snails and slugs and will keep the garden free of most insect pests. They’ll do less damage to your garden than chickens but will enjoy nibbling on young fresh seedlings so limit their activities around the backyard by netting new garden beds or at least fencing the ducks off from sensitive garden areas.

Duck eggs are larger than chicken eggs and the yolks are larger as well. Their eggs are well suited for baking and contain more calories than the average chicken egg.

Recently when filming with Geoff Lawton The Urban Permaculture DVD we came across a number of ducks in a small urban backyard where the owner had used excess rainwater harvested in a tank from the roof of the coop and directed the water to flow into an old recycled spa bath that had now become a duck bath.

Ducks would swim in the tub and naturally muddy and fertilize the water.
Excess water from the duck bath would flow down a small swale system that the owner had cleverly built. The duck nutrient would flow, soak into the mulched beds and feed the fruit trees grown on either side of the channel. With some clever planning and minimal energy use the owner managed to organize her garden into a soak that caught free nutrient flow – all powered by the activities of ducks. Its not rock science at all. But many people can’t make the obvious connections when it comes to harnessing relationships between animal systems and vegetable needs.

Sometimes the more simple the idea – the better it works. The ducks have a small tub to fertilize the water and that runoff with nutrients is diverted to an orchard of fruit trees. Economical and an efficient use of a simple concept is a good example of permaculture design.

Ducks are beneficial to the environment too. There is some evidence that they can reduce the amount of methane gas production in rice paddy fields due to their paddling around, rooting for grubs and stirring up the water!

Of course ducks in the rice paddy are not new concepts.
In his book “The Power of Duck” Takao Furuno writes about his life as a rice farmer in Japan.
He had been struggling with his fight against weeds in his organic fields. Recognizing his problem as an opportunity, he started thinking of the weeds, bugs and snails in his fields as duck food, turning his problems into a solution.

He ended up with a bounty of rice – thanks to the ducks helping to aerate the water with their paddling and their ability to gobble up snails and nibble at the weeds and fertilize his rice plants. Takao got the added benefit of tasty duck meat at the end of his journey.

Sometimes a little creative planning is all thats needed to enable a successful outcome and ducks are just one animal system available to the clever permaculture designer.