Among those benefits, growing food in backyards, community gardens or urban farms can shrink the distance fruits and vegetables have to travel between producers and consumers – what’s known as the “food mile” problem. With transportation’s greenhouse gas emissions eliminated, it’s a small leap to assume that urban agriculture is a simple climate solution.

But is urban agriculture really as climate-friendly as many people think?

Our team of researchers partnered with individual gardeners, community garden volunteers and urban farm managers at 73 sites across five countries in North America and Europe to test this assumption.

We found that urban agriculture, while it has many community benefits, isn’t always better for the climate than conventional agriculture over the life cycle, even with transportation factored in. In fact, on average, the urban agriculture sites we studied were six times more carbon intensive per serving of fruit or vegetables than conventional farming.

However, we also found several practices that stood out for how effectively they can make fruits and vegetables grown in cities more climate-friendly.

Community gardens like Baltimore’s Plantation Park Heights Urban Farm provide a wide range of benefits to the community, including providing fresh produce in areas with few places to buy fresh fruits and vegetables and having a positive impact on young people’s lives. (Photo:  Keres/USDA/FPAC)

What makes urban ag more carbon-intensive?

Most research on urban agriculture has focused on a single type of urban farming, often high-tech projects, such as aquaponic tanks, rooftop greenhouses or vertical farms. Electricity consumption often means the food grown in these high-tech environments has a big carbon footprint.

We looked instead at the life cycle emissions of more common low-tech urban agriculture – the kind found in urban backyards, vacant lots and urban farms.

Our study, published Jan. 22, 2024, modeled carbon emissions from farming activities like watering and fertilizing crops and from building and maintaining the farms. Surprisingly, from a life cycle emissions perspective, the most common source at these sites turned out to be infrastructure. From raised beds to sheds and concrete pathways, this gardening infrastructure means more carbon emissions per serving of produce than the average wide-open fields on conventional farms.

Capturing rainwater from gutters to feed gardens can cut the need for fresh water supplies. Water pumping, treatment and transportation in pipes all require energy use. (Photo: Minnesota Pollution Control Agency)

However, among the 73 sites in cities including New York, London and Paris, 17 had lower emissions than conventional farms. By exploring what set these sites apart, we identified some best practices for shrinking the carbon footprint of urban food production.

1) Make use of recycled materials, including food waste and water

Using old building materials for constructing farm infrastructure, such as raised beds, can cut out the climate impacts of new lumber, cement and glass, among other materials. We found that upcycling building materials could cut a site’s emissions 50% or more.

On average, our sites used compost to replace 95% of synthetic nutrients. Using food waste as compost can avoid both the methane emissions from food scraps buried in landfills and the need for synthetic fertilizers made from fossil fuels. We found that careful compost management could cut greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 40%.

Capturing rainwater or using greywater from shower drains or sinks can reduce the need for pumping water, water treatment and water distribution. Yet we found that few sites used those techniques for most of their water.

2) Grow crops that are carbon-intensive when grown by conventional methods

Tomatoes are a great example of crops that can cut emissions when grown with low-tech urban agriculture. Commercially, they are often grown in large-scale greenhouses that can be particularly energy-intensive. Asparagus and other produce that must be transported by airplane because they spoil quickly are another example with a large carbon footprint.

By growing these crops instead of buying them in stores, low-tech urban growers can reduce their net carbon impact.

3) Keep urban gardens going long term

Cities are constantly changing, and community gardens can be vulnerable to development pressures. But if urban agriculture sites can remain in place for many years, they can avoid the need for new infrastructure and keep providing other benefits to their communities.

Taqwa Community Farm in the Bronx, New York, has provided space to grow fresh vegetables for the community for over three decades. The farm composts food waste to create its own natural fertilizer, reducing its costs and climate impact. (Photo: Preston Keres/USDA/FPAC)

Urban agriculture sites provide ecosystem services and social benefits, such as fresh produce, community building and education. Urban farms also create homes for bees and urban wildlife, while offering some protection from the urban heat island effect. The practice of growing food in cities is expected to continue expanding in the coming years, and many cities are looking to it as a key tool for climate adaptation and environmental justice. We believe that with careful site design and improved land use policy, urban farmers and gardeners can boost their benefit both to people nearby and the planet as a whole.

Jason Hawes is a Ph.D. Candidate in Resource Policy and Behavior at the University of Michigan; Benjamin Goldstein is Assistant Professor of Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, and Joshua Newell is Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Urban Agriculture isn’t as Climate-Friendly as It Seems. These Best Practices Can Help. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

A new study from the University of Sussex conducted a two-year survey of urban farmers in Brighton and Hove, neighboring seaside towns in England with a combined population of around 300,000. A total of 34 people were surveyed on their yields, some using backyards, others using community gardens, balconies and other ways that urban gardeners squeeze in space for growing crops.

On average, the farmers were able to harvest about one kilogram of fruits and vegetables per square meter of land, which is on the low side for small-scale farmers, according to one Rutgers University study. But it is still roughly comparable to small farmers, and the Sussex researchers do note that some spaces were far more productive, up to 10 kilograms per square meter—depending on the skill, experience and specific crop choices of the home gardener. It’s also worth noting that those 34 were the minority of those who actually reported their findings; 160 originally signed up to do this, and it seems sensible that only the most serious gardeners would file their reports.

RELATED: This Urban Farm Is Small But Mighty

Urban farming has been studied in the past, with similar findings. Small-scale urban gardeners tend to have surprisingly high yields, use much less pesticide and fertilizer than commercial farms, and are very efficient in their use of small spaces. But they’re also extremely inefficient in their use of materials (like inputs) and labor. A home gardener laboring over a few Swiss chard plants might get pretty good results, but the cost of those plants—which were maybe bought as seedlings and are more expensive than seeds—means that the overall efficiency is not especially high.

This new study focuses on the upside: high yield, high-quality crops. But there’s an equally interesting extra component here. The researchers also asked the respondents to mark down pollinators they found, and they found a lot, somewhere around 2,000 pollinators. It isn’t particularly likely that urban farming, especially in those very dense cities where space is at an extreme premium, like New York City, can make any holistic dent in food security. But the pollinator aspect is fascinating and urban gardens could provide a lifeline for pollinators that would otherwise struggle.

The post Urban Farming Can Actually Be Pretty Productive appeared first on Modern Farmer.

I owe tremendous gratitude to my friend, Laura Marie Neubert from Up Front and Beautiful, who spent hours upon hours teaching me not only about basic gardening techniques but also introducing me to the science behind urban permaculture. We decided it would be a great experience to create a permaculture garden on my property. Laura designed my gardens and was the project manager, creating three separate areas that each had a specific objective.

The upper garden was designed as a heat sink with a glass roof, perfect for growing tomatoes—and tomatoes we grew. There were six different varieties, including my favorites, Cascade and Sungolds. We also planted cucumbers and squash and included other features such as a rainwater collector, native bee houses and a worm compost, which were all intended to complement our plants the way nature intended.

In the lower garden, we planted Romano beans from the same seeds my father brought over from Italy some 60 years ago. We put in a few radish plants and Elysium flowers to attract beneficial insects. On my back deck, we planted a variety of leafy vegetables and herbs in stainless steel planters.

Our gardening experience was an overall success. I enjoyed my fresh tomatoes, cucumber salads and green beans, steamed with garlic and olive oil just like my mom used to make. It was convenient having my herb spiral close to my kitchen entrance, too.

We did learn a few things, however, that will come in handy for next season. We’re now preparing to plant winter vegetables. I’ve been told that when designing a permaculture garden, one needs a full year of experience to fully understand the landscape, all aspects of the weather, temperature and ecosystem before deciding what should grow where. As this was our first year, we didn’t have the benefit of hindsight.

We discovered that we weren’t getting as much sunlight in the section with tomatoes as we had originally thought. We cleaned up the dead foliage from the plants to allow light in and ripen the remaining tomatoes. However, next season, we plan on planting some of the vining tomatoes elsewhere (with the exception of the cherry and Sungolds, which did very well) and use a lower bed in the upper garden for other vegetables such as onions, beets, garlic and squash. We will plant the other tomato varieties on my back deck, which gets more sunlight exposure, and perhaps plant earlier in the season. We did plant squash this year, but it didn’t pollinate, perhaps because there were too few bees. Next season, we will hand-pollinate them. Some of our tomatoes also experienced a minor deformity that was likely due to stress caused by the extreme heat we experienced in Western Canada this past summer.

The soil may have been an issue and Laura Marie is having the soil tested for some hard-to-pronounce bacteria. It’s more likely that it was just a case of too much saline in the soil. Given that we only created the soil beds in the spring, it may take a winter season of rain to clean the surplus salts out. Top-composting the soil in the fall should help.

We also plan to plant more pollinator-friendly plants and introduce native bee cocoons next March and April. This will be especially important if I plant dwarf fruit trees next spring as I intend on doing. Over the winter, we will be putting up walls under the heat sink in the upper garden. It won’t create a true hothouse, but it will protect the plants from wind, rain and extreme cold.

The Romano bean plants were a huge success. I harvested all I could eat during the two weeks they were at their peak. I vacuum-sealed and froze the rest, and I left some bean pods on the plants in order to harness their seeds for next season.

We are turning off the drip irrigation for the winter and will be using water from the rain collection barrel when needed. We will be planting our winter vegetables as soon as the new walls are up, likely sometime this month. Laura Marie has been nursing the seedlings in her hothouse. We will include arugula, winter kale, mustard greens, broccolini and radicchio. I am especially looking forward to the rapini (also called broccoli rabe), one of my favorite greens. I like to cook it simply with salt, garlic and olive oil.

All in all, it was a great first season. I learned a lot and, although I still have a lot more to learn, it is an enjoyable kind of learning. I am more and more convinced that gardening is a great way to relax. I feel a sense of immense achievement and satisfaction growing my own food. You can, too.

Visit MillionGardensMovement.org to learn more about the movement and/or to join it.

The post What I Learned During My First Year of Gardening appeared first on Modern Farmer.

A raised lavender bee berm planted atop a swale does double duty managing water and creating pollinator habitat

Permaculture design education suggests that a home site be walked and observed more-or-less daily for one full calendar year, before putting pen to paper, or spade to soil. Lovely in theory, but hardly practical for 99.9%? percent of people living in urban and suburban environments.

The observation and notation suggestion though, is a good one — essential even. As we experience more intense rain and drought events in all parts of the country, as a result of climate change, we are forced to think more about rainwater and snow melt, and how to manage it. Swales and rain gardens are simple permaculture installations that can help us direct water away from certain areas, and toward others, for use or for storage. And, they can be beautiful.

Early winter rain garden hides a downspot & diverter. Mock orange & creeping Jenny provide summer pollinator habitat

Now is the time, during this cold, wet season, so stand, sit, or walk outside on a rainy or wet day, and watch the water — where it comes from, how it flows, where it collects, and how quickly is dissipates. Ask yourself if you would prefer it ran another route or routes, pooled differently, dissipated more or less quickly, etc. Similarly, observe your outdoor spaces during times of water scarcity, shortage or drought. Take note of those areas that dry out quickest, sustain the most damage, or hold moisture and stay greener longer than other areas.

The good news is that we have ways and means of harvesting, storing and redirecting atmospheric water so that we can a) avoid wasting a precious natural resource; b) reduce irrigation frequency and volume, which will certainly reduce pressure on public infrastructure, and perhaps save money on utilities, and c) create or enhance natural habitat, grow produce, or create a cash crop such as the lavender shown above.

Swales and water gardens are two fabulous ways of collecting and managing rainwater that don’t involve the purchase and installation of rain barrels or cisterns.

Swales are rather like below ground ditches filled with a medium that absorbs and moves water to lesser or greater extent, depositing some, all, or none of it as it travels along a specific distance. A ditch or a trough can be a swale, but we would typically see such open forms of swales in rural settings. In urban settings, where real estate is more scarce, swales are generally below ground and invisible.

Perimeter swales/rain gardens nourish evergreen clematis & honeysuckle that shade and cool the house in summer

A rain garden is typically a final destination for directed water, often but not always located at the end of a swale, or series of swales, and sometimes above or beside a drywell or natural bog. The riparian edge of a pond can be a rain garden, if that pond is located at the end of a swale. Put very simply, swales harness and move water, and mitigate its flow-rate; rain gardens collect and retain water for a period of time, and use it to nourish biomass.

In rural areas, where there is bare soil and extreme drought and/or rain events, swales can slow-down erosion, and help capture lost soil for re-application. In urban areas, swales are used primarily to slow down and control the direction and dissemination of water.

Oftentimes, swales and rain gardens do nothing more that create a means of utilizing water that would otherwise disappear down a paved gutter or storm drain, to grow food or create biodiverse habitat for pollinating insects and birds. That in itself, is a huge win!

Where I live, in an established neighborhood with a long history of conservative garden design, but most definitely not of ‘conservation’, I was challenged recently to create water management solutions for our front yard that both worked well and looked beautiful.

Two lavender bee berms planted over newly installed swales manage run-off and provide 200ft of pollinator habitat.

Over the past few years, our 75 year-old country-lane-style neighborhood had changed from a heavily wooded, low-profile community of ranchers with extensive and mature gardens and no sidewalks or streetlights, to one populated by extremely large homes (some would call them McMansions) on near clear-cut lots with extensive impermeable hardscaping and paving. As a result of the removal of mature wooded areas and permeable surfaces, our property, located slightly downhill and downwind of the new construction, was newly exposed to extreme north winds, heavy water run-off, and significant, drain-clogging, wind-born debris.

The rustic nature of the original neighborhood forsook storm drains, so we had some serious drainage and water accumulation issues to deal with. Ironically, during the winter months, rainwater accumulation and run-off began overwhelming the same areas of the front yard that, during summer months, dry out severely due to abutment with hot, dry pavement. My original plan for the affected area — a three foot wide swath of unproductive turf that stretched 100ft or so along the road area — was to install drought tolerant plants like lavender and grasses in a large bed along the road, so that I could scale back on irrigation until such time as we could remove the lawn entirely and replace it with a pollinator-friendly lawn alternative.

Time for a new plan. Leaning heavily on the teachings of permaculture design, most particularly the principle of ‘the problem is the solution’, we designed two three-sided swales surrounding both patches of boulevard, each dug 18″ deep. We filled the swales with small round drain rock to allow for plenty of room for water collection and movement, and then build 12-18″ high rocky berms on top of them, at grade, in which to install drought-tolerant, heat-loving lavender, whose feet do not like being wet.

The swales now capture and move water slowly from the front of the property, along the width of the swale, dispersing it slowly as it goes, feeding the lawn and other plantings. The lavender, now in its second season, forms a magnificent raised pollinator habitat for thousands of bees, birds and butterflies, and provides a cash crop of beautiful cut lavender and lavender products. A double win!

The most popular application of swales in rural permaculture is to dig them them on contour on a gentle slope, and then pile the excavated dirt on the downhill side of the ditch, to form a berm. This works beautifully, but unless it is planted or otherwise landscaped, isn’t terribly beautiful to look at in an urban environment. Oftentimes, people incorporate swales into footpaths or paths between garden beds, and infill them with woodchips or gravel. Both of these ideas work brilliantly, though gravel can be very unstable (even dangerous) to walk on, and wood chips can be too informal for some design-restricted urban environments.

Elsewhere on our property, the management of excess water is much more difficult to manage, and poses a more serious threat. In our backyard, slightly below grade from our patio, water has started pooling in places where it once percolated down through the soil at the same rate at which it arrived. It doesn’t take a major increase in annual rainfall or, as in our case, surface run-off, to upset such a balance and instigate major changes in water pooling behaviour.

Recent extreme rain events & excess runoff expose a permaculture opportunity to create a productive rain garden

This particular backyard area sits directly above a dry well (gravel filled, landscape fabric lined pit) into which roof rainwater and excess surface water run-off feed through drainage tiles/pipes running under the patio. We quadrupled the size of the dry well just three years ago, and cannot expand it further without compromising established infrastructure. After much consideration we decided that the problem in itself will once again, become the solution.

This spring, we will create a large rain garden chock full of water-loving/tolerant, bog-loving/tolerant plants and medicinal herbs such as Labrador tea, watercress, rhubarb, asparagus, flag, iris, marshmallow, water mint, lemon balm, and other beautiful creatures. A newly laid set of reclaimed paving stones will forge a path, through a waist-high food forest, from the patio to the monkey bars. How perfect!

Rain gardens can be relatively easy fixes when perimeter drainage issues threaten the foundations of buildings, as well. It is very simple and cost-efficient to attach a short diverter to the bottom of a downspout, and direct the run-off away from the structure into a thirsty purpose-built rain garden, or rain garden and swale combination. Once plantings have matured over as little as a single season, the diverter disappears into the greens and no one is the wiser. Problem solved.

Like many permaculture installations and ideals, swales sound much more complicated than need be, certainly more complicated than they are.

I encourage you to pull on your rubber boots and don some raingear, then go outside in the rain and the wet, and walk slowly around and observe, and imagine an action plan for the spring. However small — with absolute certainty you can harness the awesome power of atmospheric H2O and channel it into something even more life-giving than water itself.

Do this again and again until you see patterns and possibilities; it will happen, it always does. At the very least, you will breath some fresh air and give a boost to your complexion.

Happy puddling!

The post Swales and Rain Gardens appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Even in winter and devoid of annuals, this garden remains luscious and green thanks to a moss mulch carpet

Moss is pre-historic, dating back over 450 million years, and can be found in one form or many on each of the seven continents. Moss is winter-hardy as it contains a natural anti-freeze, allowing it to bounce back even after being trampled flat when seemingly frozen. Moss does not need to be mowed, is not invasive (prolific, yes), and provides unparalleled natural erosion control. With its gorgeous pelt and low profile, moss acts a lush unifying force in a permaculture garden, softening edges and combining elements in a way that no other planting or installation possibly could.

Frozen moss trampled along this well-travelled footpath springs right back to life with the sun

I have always been drawn to moss, and was fortunate enough to wade waste-deep through it, in the magnificent old growth forests of the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve on Vancouver Island. Between the heady, ancient aroma that my footfall released from the living forest floor, and the super-oxygenated, antimicrobial phytoncides exhaled by the trees, it was all I could do to stay upright. In small doses those same elements live in my home garden, gifting me in wisps and puffs as I go about my business. These gifts are available to anyone who sees the value in letting nature takes its course, in the shade or part shade of the tiniest of gardens.

A salmon carcass left by a black bear feeds nitrogen down through the moss, to the trees in the old growth rainforest

I have raised vegetable beds, and several large container beds in full sun, and for many reasons, they do not contain any moss. The pollinator turf, lawn, part-sun beds, and ground-level beds that surround them however are home to masses of mosses of all kinds. I encourage this arrangement because I water far less, I weed not at all, and it is just so damn beautiful. In all of our ground level gardens and borders, regardless of what trees, ferns or perennials grow there, the soil is covered almost entirely by moss and naturalized ground covers like wild violets, bloody dock, false lily of the valley, bleeding heart, foam flower, and lady fern. The moss is encouraged to spill over onto pathways and pavers, covering rocks, terra cotta pots, and anything else slightly porous that stands in its way.

If you have no moss in your garden but would like some, it is very easy to propagate. First, make sure conditions are favourable and that the starter site isn’t too sunny or dry. Established moss can take quite a bit of sun, but you won’t get great results if you start out there. Damp, part-shaded soil on the ground or in a pot, works well as a canvas. Porous or rough surfaces like garden statuary, stones, bricks, pavers, work very well also. Search your neighborhood or town for some beautiful, healthy moss — check north-facing courtyards, wooded areas, aging wood piles — and take a few handfuls home (without damaging its environment). Shred or break the moss up into very small pieces, and mix it vigorously into some yogurt of buttermilk to form a loose slurry. Paint, rub or drizzle the moss mixture onto your target area, and wait, keeping the area lightly misted.

Mulching a trellised pathway with moss instread of woodchips keeps the area cool and looking beautiful

Soon enough, you will see a greening up. Be sure to keep your surface evenly moist but not soaked, until the moss is well established. I’ve done this many times on terra cotta and stone pots, and garden statuary, most particularly when the addition of something new and unblemished would look out of place in the gardens of our 72 year-old home. Watering high-traffic, moss-covered areas like the pathway above with a four to one mixture of water and buttermilk, in the spring and as needed, will help keep the moss happy and healthy.

Most recently I packed starter moss slurry onto both sides of a very long raised lavender bee berm built over a swale that I created around the perimeter of our boulevard. The lavender berm is rather like a 12″ high hill of living soil that sits directly overtop of an 18″ deep dry well that runs along the edge of the boulevard, set back from the road only 2ft. The installation is just one year old and still quite fragile as far as soil erosion goes.

Covering this raised berm with moss adds structural strength, prevents soil erosion, and discourages dogs from digging

We’ve been having trouble with neighborhood dogs walking over the berm and breaking down its walls. To fortify the soil structure and create a living green ‘crust’ of sorts along the entire surface of the berm, I’ve been adding an extremely watered down moss slurry fairly regularly. Patches of lovely green are starting to grow here and there, and I am certain that within another year the berm will be dog-friendly — covered entirely with moss, providing both habitat and structural integrity.

After just a few months, the moss slurry works its magic and patches of green appear along both sides of the berm

It seems counter-intuitive to plant moss on a sunny lavender slope, but since the berm is made up solely of organic compost mixed together with small cracked gravel, the moss grabs hold nicely, much as it would on decaying wood or the forest floor. Moss has no roots, rather it grabs hold with tiny foot-like rhizoids, absorbing water and nutrients primarily through its leaves, where it stores them until needed. Mosses are extremely resilient plants, happy to set up just about anywhere they can find water.

Ferns, goatsbeard, and bleeding heart pop up through the moss in the back garden, brightening its cool darkness

In her fascinating book ‘Gathering Moss – A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses’ author and Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology, Robin Wall Kimmerer, uncovers the magic, mystery, and life-giving nature of moss. “One gram of moss from the forest floor, a piece about the size of a muffin, would harbour 150,000 protozoa, 132,000 tardigrades, 3,000 springtails, 800 rotifers, 500 nematodes, 400 mites, and 200 fly larvae. These numbers tell us something about the astounding quantity of life in a handful of moss.”

In the small and dark back corner of our yard, where birds and squirrels nest in the hemlock and spruce, and the moss grows seven decades deep, there exists another world. I sit on the ground and inhale the ancient, heady aroma, and count my blessings.

The post Moss as Mulch appeared first on Modern Farmer.

This corner patio garden of raised beds, protected somewhat from the elements by a sloping 12ft high glass roof with two open sides, and temperature-hacked by the combined thermal mass of the stone floor, stone fountain, heavy pottery, and the thick cedar-clad lath and plaster exterior walls of my home, is a tomato lovers dream come true. This was evidence late September, when during a day of filming segments for his new Permaculture Series, Modern Farmer publisher Frank Giustra and I returned time and again to this spot to chat about his favourite subject, tomatoes. Sungolds in particular, are his favourite cherry type tomatoes, and mine too. If you haven’t tried these tiny bright orange explosions of sweet candy sunshine, you must.

Like Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon wine grapes, Sungold and other tomatoes benefit considerably from long warm days, supplemented by slow-drip solar heat delivered well into the night courtesy of low-slung stone. Growing grapes and tomatoes in rocky soil is of course one very celebrated way of capturing and storing solar energy for nighttime release, but stone pavers, stone planters, stone edging, raiser planters, buildings, and bulk water containment accomplish the same thing, to varying degrees.

Long past first frost, my heat sinked tomatoes are still ripening nicely on the vine, albeit more slowly than in summer

You can think of heat sinks as heat traps of sorts, or thermal mass solar batteries that store daytime heat for release after sunset, as the outside temperature drops below the temperature of the stored energy. A material’s capacity to hold and release heat, as well as the time it takes to release it, is determined primarily by its Specific Heat Capacity (SHC), and secondarily by its sheer mass. The higher a material’s SHC, the more heat it can absorb.

Precise release rates factor into the equation also, but as I understand and have experienced it, a higher SHC indicates both a longer heating up time, and a longer cooling down time.

It’s the longer, controlled cooling down time that I aim for, because I know that during the peak growing months, summer days are long enough for the solar charge to take place without complication.

Where I live in the Pacific Northwest, we receive about 2000 hours of sunlight per year, with the prime growing months of July and August each receiving about 300 hours of sunlight, with average day and night time temperatures of 70F and 57F respectively.

I live on the edge of a temperate rainforest on the side of a mountain about 500ft above the ocean, and while it is lovely and green, it certainly isn’t Mediterranean tomato country. Heat sinks therefore are my friends.

Heat sink math isn’t exact for home gardeners, but we can keep in mind a few simple facts and rounded figures to help us plan for maximum solar gain, or conversely heat mitigation.

• Thermal mass absorbs solar energy
• Stone and concrete absorb twice as much solar energy as soil
• Water (75F avg) absorbs four times as much solar energy as soil, and twice as much as stone (a sealed drum or large lidded bucket of water can keep a small unheated greenhouse temperatures above freezing in moderate climates)
• Wet soil absorbs twice as much solar energy as dry soil
• Black surfaces and materials absorb +35% solar energy than white surfaces

By combining one or more of these factors, we can hack summer well into early winter, which is what I have learned to do over several seasons experimenting with various combinations and arrangements of plantings on our back patio. The area of raised planters, where indeterminate Sweet 100s or Sweet Million and Sungold tomatoes are trellised to a height of 8-10ft, receives direct sunlight for less than six hours per day during July and August, yet yields one quart per day on average, from onset through early/mid November.

A large herb planter on casters acts as a mobil solar heater. Evenly moist soil holds twice as much heat as dry soil

The area occupies the inside corner of an L-shaped leg of the house, rests on a two-inches of stone pavers, and is surrounded by large concrete pots, heavy glazed ceramic planters, deep raised beds on casters, a heavy stone fountain/birdbath, a marble-tiled outdoor kitchen counter, and the thick walls of my old house. Three or four 6-ft long by 18-inch wide stock feeders on casters are planted with anywhere from 15 to 20 tomato plants that I start indoors and then pot-up in the greenhouse starting in April. The cumulative thermal mass of these elements collects and traps heat during the cloudiest of days, and babies the tomatoes well past the best-before date of tomatoes grown in exposed garden beds far from supplementary radiant heat.

I water the soil (organic compost) at the base of the tomatoes, keeping the leaves and fruit dry and blight-free. Two or three varieties of basil are companion planted along the front of the raised beds, about 1ft away from the tomatoes, keeping insects at bay but still leaving room for watering just roots. Basil is fragile, and overhead watering can lead to what I call ‘mold and melt’ very quickly, especially when the weather turns cool for a spell. My daily routine over the summer, during early morning garden rounds, includes a visit to the tomatoes to harvest just the ripe fruit (yes fruit, not veg). I place my hand over each fully-coloured tomato that I believe to be ripe and pinch gently just behind the blossom greens, at the point where the fruit meets the small stem of its cluster. If the fruit pops off/pulls away easily, it is ripe, but if not I leave it for another day or two.

I sort the fruit into Sungolds and reds, then at the end of the week I de-stem the tomatoes, cut them in half, toss them in excellent quality olive oil and confit garlic oil (you can use purchased garlic oil), plus sea salt and a pinch of Calabrese chili flakes, and I place them cut side up on parchment-lined sheet pans to dry only partially in a 250F oven for two or three hours, until they have given up most of their moisture and concentrated their sweetness. You can of course use a dehydrator to dry tomatoes, but if you want to involve oil and spices, oven drying is the way to go. Every quart of fresh tomatoes yields more-or-less one 8oz freezer container of oven-dried tomatoes in oil.

I top each packed portion with a generous pour of beautiful olive oil and a small wreath of fresh oregano or sweet marjoram from the garden, snap on the lid and a label, and then freeze them for use throughout the following year. It is hard to describe just how delicious these oven-dried beauties are, and how happy they make my family during the cold and dark months of winter. Serving suggestion: toss together with olive oil and parmesan or pecorino as a simple pasta sauce, chop and add to plain tomato pasta sauce, serve on fresh bread, use in place of fresh tomato for crostini, serve warm over baked brie, garnish soups or grilled veg.

This year, I left the vines happily producing and ripening fruit, though increasingly slowly as fall progressed well into winter. Two weeks into November, I harvested several quarts of still-green tomatoes, and cut the vines down to the soil level, leaving the roots intact to compost-in-place. I transplanted some Swiss chard in between where the tomato plants had been, and left them to grow slowly together with the mache lettuce (corn salad) that I’d started from seed in the bed, immediately after cutting the last of the basil at the very end of September.

I took the green tomatoes inside to off-vine ripen inside shallow brown cardboard boxes placed inside brown paper grocery bags. The ethylene gas produced by the tomatoes as they ripen stays inside the bag, hastening the process, while oxygen passes freely through the paper. After less than a week I was able to sort a sheet pan full of ripe red and gold tomatoes from the boxes and dry them whole, very slowly in the oven. The indoor ripening had fortified the skin just slightly, allowing them to oven-dry without bursting, in much the same way one would dry grapes for raisins.

The resulting ‘tomato raisins’ were unique to the process of off-vine ripening indoors, in itself unique to late-harvested heat sink tomatoes, stretching every last bit of hope and possibility from the plants and resources used to grow them. By utilizing five of the 12 Permaculture Principles, namely: observation and interaction, catching and storing energy, utilizing renewable resources, creatively using and responding to change, and producing no waste, I utilize heat sinks to make the best of our relatively short summer. Granted I utilized my electric oven to dry the tomatoes, rather then a solar dryer, but such is the way of urban permaculture — we must bend and adapt and do our best with what we have.

I utilize thermal mass to capture and store solar energy in many other places throughout our urban permaculture garden as well, and for many other purposes. Along the south-facing bottom edge of our herb spiral, a small raised lavender berm planted up against the brick facade blooms more quickly and more robustly than lavender plants planted just one foot further away from the brick, just above them, and lavender planted at the very crown of the spiral, blooms still later.

Staged blooming is advantageous to bees and other pollinator insects that rely on our garden for habitat, and I in turn rely on pollinators to ensure that the berry bed and dwarf fruit orchard located very near to the herb spiral, set fruit. Heavy concrete planters throughout the garden encourage early-blooming lavender as well. Stone and concrete pots and planters help keep soil moist between waterings, doubling its solar energy absorption capacity.

Anyone at all with an outdoor space of any size, can utilize heat sinks to optimize solar energy. A small concrete planter, heat reflected from an inside wall, even maintenance of soil moisture can enhance performance and productivity. Windowsill gardens qualify too, as these very same principles apply.

Heat sinks, thermal mass, earth batteries, heat beds, solar greenhouses and many other hot topics allow permaculture designers and permaculture farmers to lean hard on renewable, natural resources without upsetting or harming the environment. All of us, no matter how or where in the world we live, can lean in a bit too. We can change our relationship with the natural world and take one small step toward sustainability. The collective power of millions of small gestures can indeed make a giant dent in the universe, and reverse the trajectory of catastrophic climate change. Imagine.

The post Heat Sinks appeared first on Modern Farmer.

My spiral is about 7ft wide (2 metres) and 1 metre (3+ feet) tall. If the circle were flat, the plantable area would be about 38.5 square feet, but because the winding 14″-18″ wide bed is linear, running up at an incline to the centre top of the circle in a spiral pattern, there is a gain not just in real estate area, but in opportunity. From a bird’s eye view, an herb spiral looks very much like a snail or nautilus shell, shapes that are based on what is known as nature’s sacred geometry. Sacred geometry reflects the universe, its pure forms and the relationship between nature and man, the parts and the whole. While spirals in nature tend to follow the golden ratio, also knows as the Golden Ratio (Phi) or the Fibonacci Sequence in their rates of expansion, my herb spiral claims no such accuracy. Like all permaculture installations and systems, we mimic nature’s logic but we cannot match her accuracy or precision.

Harvesting chamomile flowers to dry for tea, southwest exposure, two months after planting

Permaculture co-found Bill Mollison formalized the design and construction of herb spirals, but it it was likely not his original idea. There is no ‘absolute’ right way to build an herb spiral, though Mollison’s recommended size and proportions do work almost magically for me. I do very little to maintain the plants in my spiral, yet they are so prolific that very many harvests are required over the season. I hang great bundles of herbs from the kitchen library to dry, for use in culinary and medicinal applications, and I share them with neighbours.

The premise behind an herb spiral is to create diverse growing environments for culinary and medicinal herbs at various elevations, utilizing various soil/drainage conditions, and various exposures to sun, shade, wind, frost, etc., and to utilize gentle slopes and bulk soil to slow down the natural movement of water, leaving just enough of it where it is needed, to maintain ideal growing conditions. With a little planning and patience, you can grow and harvest everything from angelica to watercress, and maintain a small bog or pond at ground level, on the deep shade side of the installation. I opted for a bog pseudo-creekbed like area, because we live on the edge of a temperate rainforest, and a pond would only attract raptors, racoons and coyotes.

Just one month after planting the spiral is filling in nicely – both productive and beautiful

Authentic permaculture herb spirals utilize stones and small logs found on site, and/or perhaps recycled bottles, broken cement, or found materials. In planning my front yard situated herb spiral, I had to consider neighborhood culture, decades old community design considerations, and also my neighbours (views and happiness). I built the spiral using traditional principles and scale, but with materials that were more sympathetic to established building and landscape architecture. Tumbled grey concrete bricks, diverted from another building site were put to good use in my garden and fit in nicely with the old bones of our 72 year-old home. I used mis-matched century-old red brick left over from a garden edging project, to fortify the hidden centre column of the structure, and to reduce the amount of higher-quality brick that I would need to commit overall.

Sketching your spiral in advance and wish-listing herbs is very helpful and gets the creative juices flowing

I did use some mortar, but very little, and only to ‘glue’ the horizontal surface of the bricks to one another. I left the vertical seams open for drainage, for migration of insects and tiny creatures, and to accelerate the growth of moss. The chore of removing moss from the driveway pavers over the winter, will become an efficient forage for the spiral. I plan to fill most of the vertical seams with moss, which should help the spiral retain water, and add an element of age, rather quickly.

Ideally and typically, herb spiral are built within permaculture zone one, within 10 feet of the kitchen door. This makes sense of course, as you will likely want to run out while cooking, for a snip of this or that herb. We moved into our home 20 years ago, and there was nothing but patio outside our kitchen doors. The back lawn was committed to swings and a small playing field, plus it is rather shady where the mossy grass is. Out front however, we get full sun almost all day throughout the summer, and we had plenty of room for an herb spiral. The fact that it would be 150ft or so from the kitchen door (permaculture zone two or three, typically), didn’t deter me. I love it so much, I am happy to make the trip out, rain or shine. Urban permaculture is after all, about adapting and re-imagining, doing your best to follow rural permaculture principles and ethics in imperfect conditions, and celebrating small victories.

My front yard herb spiral is far from my kitchen door but I’m happy to make the trip, visiting beds en-route
I started my build on bare lawn that had been ravaged by chafer beetles, and dug-up by raccoons. Using a string and bamboo compass of sorts to delineate the circle, I dug up and composted the sod. I laid about six inches of round drainage rock (not split gravel as it fits together tightly which is counter-intuitive for drainage), and leveled it out to grade-more-or-less. If you live in an area where ants are common, using sand as a base may send your spiral tilting and sinking in short order. After dampening the gravel, I laid a two-inch wide strip of thick sand-based mortar on which to lay my first course of damp bricks (damp, bricks stick together much better than dry), adjusting accordingly to fit whole bricks only. I then laid two consecutive layers, alternating the seams in a traditional brick pattern.

I let the bricks set for about an hour, and then used trial and error, creativity, and simple intuition to dry-stack design the spiral, ensuring that the bottom end of the ‘spiral’ ended on the north bottom side of the structure, where excess water would spill out in the boggy area. You could quite easily look at the structure I built, and create one of your own in a similar fashion, or elongate it perhaps into an oval. Once I was satisfied with my dry-stack, I deconstructed it, created a plan on paper, counting bricks and noting steps and orientation, then broke the spiral down and began building in ernest. I used lengths of 1×10 left over from building the garden beds plus two long levels, to ensure that I didn’t go off kilter. It was fun and easy to build.

Once built, I added a good six inches of drain rock around the perimeter ‘beds’ and took advantage of the interior column, to get rid of some large rocks and broken bricks that has been sitting around getting in the way. I knew which herbs I wanted to plant, and I left them guide me in creating unique soil and drainage conditions as I worked my way around the spiral, from south to east, to north and back to south; from bottom to top, and from exterior edge to the centre. I kept in mind that the vertical spaces between the bricks would weep moisture from the centre outward and also down, and I knew too that the thermal mass of the bricks would collect, reflect, and retain solar energy during the day, feeding it gently back to surrounding plants at night.

I used only large and small rocks, and broken brick for drainage, and organic compost to fill. In some places, where I wanted to place plants like lavender that don’t like wet feet, I mixed organic compost and small round drain rocks 50/50. In front of the spiral, facing south, I created as 8″ high berm against the thermal mass of the brick, and planted sun-loving lavender to attract pollinators.

A small watercress pond, sunk into the north end of the spiral is fed by water seeping through seams in interior walls

I moved many herbs from their pots on the sunny areas of the back patio, to the herb spiral, I grew others from seed, and I purchased some from a local nursery. Before committing to planting, I laid the pots where I thought the herbs would thrive, and set about filling in the blank spaces in between with herbs or pollinator attracting perennials like dwarf salvia, to suit. I built and planted the herb spiral in early May, and after just two months it was full and lush and looked as though it had been there for years. With all but the summer savory, the plants thrived. Summer savory is an annual, known to fade quickly and dislike wet spring weather, which we certainly experienced this year.

Every herb spiral would be different of course, but for the record, mine contains, lavender, three varieties of oregano, six varieties of thyme, chamomile, creeping savory, winter savory, summer savory, three varieties of sage, French tarragon, Vietnamese Coriander, Italian and curly parsley, sweet marjoram, Tuscan rosemary, lemon balm, lemon verbena, dwarf curry, and seven varieties of mint. Mediterranean herbs like rosemary, woody thyme and lavender were sited for sunlight, heat and optimal drainage, while tender herbs like parsley and cilantro were sited for part sun and a bit more moisture. Vietnamese did well in its mid-level north bed where its roots could stay cool and moist while its leaves drank in the sun. The oreganos were planted mid-level facing west, and they sorted themselves, reaching and hiding from the sun as suited them. Three varieties of sage, planted mid-level south, self-sorted as well. Nature is so clever.

To avoid having the mint take over, I planted each variety in bottomless pots, and I keep an eye on runners. At the far bottom north of the spiral, a small watercress pond happily collects spillwater before it flows over ultimately, into a a grassy bog containing the highly medicinal herb, Labrador Tea. I don’t include basil in the spiral because it is quite fragile, prone to burning and wilting, but primarily because I companion plant a huge amount of it with my tomatoes – enough for a winter’s worth of frozen pesto.

Just a few weeks ago, I harvested the last of the tarragon for vinegar, cut a final dozen or so bouquets of mint, lemon balm, oregano, and savory for drying, and harvested about half a bushel of rosemary destined for the dehydrator. I covered the rosemary and Vietnamese coriander stubble with a few inches of compost and then mulched it with clean garden straw. I hope to keep harvesting the winter savory over the cold months, but still mulched its crown with straw, just to be safe. It’s hard to say whether or not the hardy perennial herbs will return in full glory next spring. It will depend on cold and thaw cycles, the quality and measure of wind coming down from the snowy mountains, and the amount of snow (wet snow in particular), that nature sends us. I’ve done what I could and will hope for the best.

My big idea is to create a half-size herb spiral on wheels, to use around back, so that I can indeed have fresh herbs within 10ft of my kitchen door. I have one long cold winter to sketch it out and dream it up!

The post Herb Spirals appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The idea of in-situ worm composting is completely adaptable and portable, and I’ve since incorporated an abbreviated form of it into many raised and ground-level beds in our urban permaculture garden. As in all aspects of ‘urban’ or ‘suburban’ permaculture, it is necessary to bend, re-imagine or adapt fundamental permaculture ideals around an existing and most-often non-ideal, or at least non-conforming situation.

Dave loves eating juicy worms and crunchy bugs so I keep a weighted lid on the in-ground worm compost behind him

In many neighborhoods and most residential buildings, composting is either not permitted under community or strata regulations, or is simply cause for neighborhood revolt. In such situations, vermicomposting, in particular in-ground vermi-composting can save the day. Worm composts, when managed properly are neither smelly or offensive, and they shouldn’t attract the attention of unwanted pests.

I am not referring to the stand-alone, above ground worm composts that one can buy at garden centres and online, or the sort one can make from a lidded Rubbermaid container, though those are magnificent options for people without any outdoor space at all. Rather, I am referring to the creation and management of small below-ground worm communities that live in your garden bed or large container even, providing:

• food and refuge for thousands of compost worms
• ideal composting of green kitchen waste, and some garden waste
• nature’s best all-natural, high-nutrient fertilizer for the plants in your bed
• aeration of the soil in your garden bed
• a fun and educational family activity and responsibility

A black plastic in-situ worm compost is exposed after harvesting radishes, but typically the composts go un-noticed

When people visit my garden, the in-situ composts, the herb spiral, and the mini fruit orchard are the most popular features, but it is the in-ground composts hidden among the growing things that inspire immediate action frequently, to some degree. This of course makes me very happy, because the primary reason for my mid-life left turn into (urban) permaculture design was to inspire others to take action and make small changes. In situ vermicomposting is easy to get started. You will need:

• a dark, moist (not wet), stable environment that stays cool like dirt and doesn’t freeze
• several access/egress (entry/exit) points and a weighted lid
• a balanced, steady diet of appropriate organics
• shredded paper bedding (preferably unbleached brown paper or leaves)
• regular check-ins to ensure worms are happy and healthy
• compost worms commonly known as red wrigglers (Eisenia foetida or Lumbricus rubellus) are ideal, though regular garden variety worms work also

Compost worms are available at many garden centres and online from vermiculturists. Many communities that have recycling programs also offer compost worms and compost bins (not the in-ground sort), for sale. Certainly local garden clubs would know sources, or refer you to someone who does.

I wouldn’t typically compost viable tomatoes but these guys were badly munched by a resident racoon. Plenty to share.

In-site worm composts are small, typically one to 10 gallons in volume, which is very small compared to standard open composts. For that reason, I have one in-situ compost in each raised bed in the garden, plus a few in ground-level beds.

Each compost is drilled with about 100 1/4″ holes spaced evenly along all vertical sides to within no less than 2″ of the top lid ridge, and is sunk up to lid level in soil. Keeping the holes well below soil level, and the lid firmly in-place but not snapped shut, keeps contents from attracting wildlife, and odours inside where they belong.

I don’t have issues with stinkiness, at least nothing worse than what a pile of old grass would offer (and then only when the compost lid is off), but I am also careful to compost only raw greens and other organics.

Compost worms surface quickly to investigate the addition of partially decomposed brown paper pot pieces

Fill your worm compost only with:

• raw vegetables (except alliums) and fruit – my mix is about 80/20 respectively
• egg shells
• coffee grounds – I add only 20% of household grounds (the rest in garden waste bags)
• shredded brown grocery bags, newspaper in a pinch, or brown paper plant pots
• refuse from garden cleaning (dead soft leaves, flowers, etc)

I never add meat, dairy, oils, cooked vegetables (unless only lightly steamed), bones, citrus, onion or garlic or their skins, hard leaves, branch bits, or hard organics of any kind. Conventional wisdom says that compost worms don’t like alliums like cooking onions and garlic, so I don’t add them to my composts. Having said that, the worm composts in my beds containing leeks, onions and garlic are very active, and all areas within the beds themselves are impressively wormy, so I suppose my guys are fine with alliums. I haven’t run out of non-alium compost feed and am happy to divert my onion and garlic skin to the regular yard trimmings bag, but if I couldn’t do either of those things, I would experiment with small amount of garlic and onion and see what happens.

The point of all of this is poop, worm poop, or castings as they are known. Worm poop is gold, and worm poop tea is liquid gold. By incorporating worm composts in situ, we create an instant and constant supply of both. Since I use only organic compost as a planting medium in my beds, and my ground-level beds are blessed by well-aerated humusy soil, the exchange of materials into and out of the compost is easy and the worms do their own housekeeping simply by eating, pooping and wandering around. Uncomplicated transit in and out keeps the level of compost to a more-or-less constant and manageable level as the compost breaks down and the liquid and small particles move out into the bed soil, aided by the worms and insects that come and go. The worms deposit poop in their homes and also throughout the beds as they wander around garden partying here and there. If I had hard soil or plenty of clay in the soil, I would expect to have to empty the compost on occasion, or otherwise manage the quantity of inputs.

Worms are said to be shy, but mine are friendly and curious, surfacing whenever something new is planted

My worms are very curious creatures, and turn up in numbers without fail whenever I am planting seedlings or otherwise managing the garden. I swear they know me and like my quiet company. They are especially fond of my very young neighbours who visit regularly to check on ‘their’ carrots and radishes (even now, under row cover), and harvest anything they can reach, wash and munch on before heading back over the fence. Children love worms, and they love feeding them, so worm composts in-situ or freestanding are awesome projects to undertake at home, at school, even in the neighborhood.

My worm composts homes were intended for the tiny red wrigglers primarily (Eisenia foetida), the original starter batch (quart yogurt bucket full of inhabited vermicompost) gifted to me by my master gardener neighbour Yvonne. Those original wrigglers were descendants of the mail-order batch Yvonne and her young boys introduced into their indoor vermicompost bin over 20 years ago. Well-fed compost worms reproduce prolifically and quickly. I put all of the initial gift of wrigglers into just one of my in-ground composts, and as they multiplied I moved handfuls of inhabited compost into the other beds. I see very many garden variety worms and several of the larger Lumbricus rubellus wrigglers in my beds also, which means the composts are providing happy worm habitat and that word is getting around.

Installing buckets at the bed building stage isn’t essential

Worm composts are easy to make with readily available plastic buckets, and can be installed immediately in a patio planter, large container, or garden bed. I wouldn’t go any smaller than a one-gallon size bucket, which would suffice for a large planter or small bed, and I wouldn’t go any larger than 10 gallons or two five-gallon buckets in a 4’x’8′ bed. In use a single five-gallon black plastic bucket with lid in the centre of each of my 4’x8′ beds.

This ratio is based on nothing other than intuition and the bulk price I was able to negotiate for the buckets, but it seems to work just perfectly. I sized my composts when building the beds, but it isn’t necessary. You can easily sink buckets into existing beds.

You will need:

• a lidded plastic bucket that can be sunk into your container of bed more-or-less completely, leaving just the lid rim and the lid exposed. Recycled food buckets are perfect, just be sure they re clean and grease-free before using.
• a drill and a 1/4″ drill bit
• an inch or two of green kitchen scraps (see list above), and shredded paper
• red wriggler worms (or garden worms if that is all you have)
• a garden bed or large container full of soil

A few easy steps:

Drill 1/4″ holes all around and through the bottom

• measure two inches down from the lowest lid-rim ring on the bucket, and then drill 1/4″ holes straight through the bucket horizontally, spaced two or three inches apart from each other, all the way around the circumference of the bucket.
• do the same thing every three inches or so down the length of the bucket, alternating holes in a diamond-like pattern as you go. Drill a half-dozen, nicely spaced holes in the bottom.
• sink the drilled bucket into your bed or container, up to the level of the lid, but making sure it is on firm enough soil that it won’t sink when full.
• add an inch or two of damp shredded paper or newspaper, sprinkle over some chopped kitchen greens, crushed egg shell and a tiny bit of coffee grounds or spent tea, to start. Small bits are best, at least in the beginning, though to be honest, I prefer uniform pieces to share among my worm families so I chop my dense and fibrous scraps up regularly.
• another shallow layer of damp paper.
• keep the lid on with a rock or garden tool
• add greens and paper regularly in more or less equal measure, and water only lightly (don’t drown the worms), turning occasionally with a small garden fork or tongs, and be sure there is air space throughout.
• composts slow down in winter, and worms can freeze, so adjust feeding accordingly for your area and by observing worm activity. In cold locations, cover contents with a thick layer of fallen (non-glossy) leaves for insulation.

When I feel that I have overloaded on greens, I add some of the soil from the garden bed, and mix that in with some paper, just to lighten things up and make sure my little buddies can breathe and do their thing. They can live happily for up to 12 months, before they too become compost in situ. Such is the cycle of life.

Worms need kitchen greens, brown paper and moisture

Worms will eat one to two times their body weight per week, so if you purchase one pound of worms, you can expect them to eat up to two pounds of compost per week. This ratio will vary over time, with temperature, and at different times of year, because as compost evolves and develops its own biodiversity, microbes and other visitors will consume the organics as well. This is an awesome form of pre-digestion for the worms, and it makes nutrients available to plants and fungi.

I overheard my little neighbour Sophia ask her dad how the worms in the composts poop, and he told her, through their tails.

I’m not sure if he actually knew that or if it was a guess, but it’s true that a worm’s bum is at the far pointy end of its ‘tail’.

So now that you have the scoop on poop … happy vermicomposting!

The post In Situ Worm Composting appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact [that] it rains.” Radio broadcaster Paul Harvey got it right when he said those few wise words in 1978, during a Future Farmers of America convention.

In the Pacific Northwest part of the world in which I live, this soil (biology) + water = life equation is apparent all around me. The temperate rainforest and our coastal weather systems produce rich humus within a beautiful whole system of life, death, decomposition and regeneration. The cooler on average temperatures of temperate rainforests moderate humus decomposition rates, and the thick coniferous canopies regulate and slow the release of organic nutrients.

Humus is the dark organic soil product of the natural composting of leaves, twigs, dead animals and minerals, by micro organisms (bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, algae and protozoa), and organisms (worms, nematodes, mites, beetles, ants, springtails, etc), regulated by moisture and temperature. Soil organisms break down plant and animal tissue, bones and fibre, releasing stored nutrients and converting them into forms that are usable/consumable by plants. I took the photos above during a mushroom foraging outing on Cortes Island, where the temperate rainforest floor was springy from layers upon layers of decomposing material, adding to a thick bed of rich black humus that smelled of mushrooms and wet dog.

Sound familiar? Sound like composting? Exactly! Knowing this simple but amazing fact, and emulating nature’s incredible logic in creating, utilizing, feeding and restoring organic compost in all aspects of gardening, has changed everything for me. Seeing a cluster of mushrooms growing up through a bed of fennel and beans makes me happy, because I know that the fungi and vegetables have formed a mutually beneficial below-ground mycorrhizal alliance. To me, this is a sign of life and soil health, one that I see both in the garden and in the greenhouse, during periods of heavier moisture and/or precipitation, most particularly in spring and fall.

Rainy days in May invites fungal fruiting bodies (mushrooms) to share raised bed space with bush beans and fennel

I am not a biologist, botanist, mycologist or scientist of any sort, but like most permaculture designers, I am deeply intuitive, instinctive and dialed-in to nature and natural systems. It comes naturally to me, to emulate nature’s logic when and where I can, but also to accept that existing urban environments are largely disconnected from it. Thankfully, there are endless way in which we can capture whole natural systems and transport them in small chunks on their own, or together with other small systems, into our urban and suburban lives.

Organic compost is a product of one of those small systems. We are fortunate to be able to make some of our own compost, but many (I would venture ‘most’) people cannot make sufficient enough quantity to support regular feeding of their gardens. I have adequate square footage in my outdoor garden to have a large above-ground compost system, but in deference to the black bear, raccoons, skunks, coyotes, wild cats and other wildlife that inhabit the forest around me, I don’t. If you are interested in largerer scale composting visit UK market gardener Charles Dowding’s website. He knows what he’s doing.

I worm compost only, and in-ground exclusively, in raised beds, in closed and lidded systems that do not attract and negatively habituate wildlife, and that stay frost-free during the winter. These worm composts manage most of our green kitchen waste*, plus egg shells, a portion of coffee grounds, and some shredded brown paper. Many of our friends keep handsome purpose-built freestanding worm composts outside in the shade on their balconies or patios, taking them inside for the winter, continuing feeding in their basements, mudrooms or garages. Worm castings (poop), and worm poop tea are nature’s most magnificent natural fertilizers. *compost worms don’t love citrus, onions or garlic so I toss those into our yard clippings bin.

Curious red wriggler worms investigate bits of compostable pots newly added to the bin as a carbon contribution

Our yard trimmings are set out at the curb weekly in compostable brown bags, for pick-up and transfer to a community-based composting facility. Household (kitchen) greens are set out for pick-up as well, in separate containers, but because we worm compost, we don’t use the greens service. Residential and commercial pick-up programs for composting yard trimmings and household greens are critical to environmental health as they keep organics out of landfills, where, if buried deeply in anaerobic (without oxygen) environments, they create methane gas. When released into the atmosphere, methane gas is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas, than CO2 (carbon dioxide). Composting on the other hand promotes aerobic (oxygenated) decomposition into a useful waste by-product.

Compost from community and residential operations are used in and sold to commercial, parks and recreation, agricultural, and remediation clients, but as it is not organic, I cannot use it in my permaculture garden. I have a source for organic compost made by an organic farm collective out in the valley. The product is very well composted to ensure that weed and other seeds, plus pathogens like ecoli are killed at sufficiently high temperatures, over sufficiently long periods of time. Frequent turning and intense composting action break the inputs down impressively well, so the delivered product is quite light and airy, and finely grained. After I receive the compost by the tiptruck load, the steaming pile stays very warm for months on end, unless I open it up for use.

A great steaming pile of compost can stay warm for months on end. Warm compost can accelerate seed germination.

My raised and in-ground beds are filled with 100% organic compost at the outset, and I top them up each spring, and again slightly in the fall before winter planting. I keep about six bushel buckets full in the greenhouse, for use as a seed starter mix. I admit to being a bit of a control freak about seedlings and transplanting, preferring to start pretty much everything except carrots, parsnips and radishes from seed, in pots. Given that seeds have a less than 100% germination rate, I prefer to know how many viable plants I have to distribute in any given space, ‘before’ I commit to placement. This allows me to space the seedlings evenly and have no crazy-making blank spots. Weird, I know. I like symmetry, can’t be helped. I happen to have a greenhouse, but you absolutely don’t need one to start seeds in pots.

Also, I believe that environment is key to plants health and that plants should be raised in the soil they are born into. Starting seeds in fined organic compost, then transplanting them into beds of organic compost, really improves their odds. Unless a predator critter or my veggie dog @davetheyorkie digs them up, they make the transition successfully pretty much every time.

Fining compost by hand to use as seed starting mix is well worth the effort, as is sowing seeds in recycled pots

To prepare compost for seed modules or small pots ( I don’t use seeds trays but many people do), I rub small handfuls of organic compost between my palms, and drop it from a height (Jamie Oliver with chopped herbs style) of a few feet, into a rubber horse grain bucket. This action slightly separates the particles and aerates them slightly, without damaging the biology or drying out the soil. Tiny wee seeds then stand an excellent chance of breaking through the surface of the soil when they germinate, and they are born into a soil environment rich in nutrients that helps them grow into strong, healthy seedlings for transplant.

I understand that sterile soil mixes and synthetic soil mixes work well for many gardeners, but I know too that the germination failure rate for fibre-rich potting mixes can be quite high, if the surface dries out only slightly, developing an impenetrable crust. Screened (or palm-rubbed) compost on the other hand, due to its organics content, retains water extremely well, and is resistant to surface crusting.

Thankfully, organic compost is available at most garden centres, often at a lower cost per bag than sterile or fortified mixes. Many towns and cities have one or more sources of bulk organic compost available for delivery. Before I had enough raised beds to warrant bulk delivery, I would drive my SUV to the compost yard, and load up nine beat-up old five-gallon buckets of compost per trip, until I had enough. It was great exercise and if I made three trips, I could bring home one cubic yard of compost (one five-gallon bucket = 1 square foot more or less) in an afternoon. One 4’x8’x18″ raised bed equals 48 square feet and requires 1.5 cubic yards of compost (27 cubic ft in one cubic yard).

Potting-up for the third time. One-gallon pots afford Brussels sprouts room to grow while waiting for bed space

I have collected hundred of plastic pots of all sizes from 4oz six-packs to one-gallon over the years, and I use them over and over to pot-up in succession, everything from tomatoes to Brussels sprouts. For small greens and lettuces, I prefer to use the brown paper compostable modules. I like these because tiny roots break through the pot fibres, telling me when they are ready to transplant, and also because the pots are themselves compostable.

This fall, while I was waiting to receive delivery of some off-sale polycarbonate corrugated plastic sheets to use in the construction of simple coldframes for three of my raised beds, I was unable (too busy canning summer produce) to pot-up some Italian endive, wild mustards, purslane and spinach. I had sown multiple seeds per pot, intending to pot them up further individually, as they came of age, as I had done with the rapini seeds Frank had given me in September.

It didn’t happen that way, but because they were sown in compostable pots, I was able to peel down the by-then self-composting pulpy sides and gently break apart the seedlings for transplanting in their raised bed and some winter patio pots for friends . I tossed the pot bits straight into the in-bed worm composting bins, where they were immediately put upon by hundreds of red wrigglers, seemingly ravenous for carbon content.

Potting up in a timely fashion accelerates growth and strong core/stalk development, and a healthy and robust root structure. The difference between the properly potted up rapini, and the neglected endive was apparent. I decided to plant the endive six inches apart in rows spaced six inches apart, rather than the recommend 12-18 inches on 18 inches. I expect them to grow more slowly and need friends and family closer by, than they would have had I not been heedless. Just a few weeks neglect during cold weather can impact plant development significantly. I am confident though, that the endive will find comfort from fellow Italians Frank’s rapini, and make the most of their protected coldframe community.

Another benefit of using compost for seed starting is the compost tea by-product that is produced after watering more than one should. While I try to maintain a constant soil moisture and texture similar to moist chocolate cake, and water only minimally but consistently so that the moisture need not run through the pot, it happens that I forget or the temperature rises so much that extra watering is required. On those occasions, the run-though is nothing short of instant high potency compost tea, which I collect from the tray that the small pots are resting in, and set aside for future use. To let this precious liquid commodity dry up in the tray, would be such a waste.

And finally, on the subject of fragile seedlings, I’ve adopted an optimal way of watering wee sprouts in the greenhouse. A resource saving method that doesn’t bend tender shoots under water weight, or soak the soil unnecessarily. A bulk pump sprayer, intended for pesticides (which I of course would never use) but used only for water, sprays a beautiful fine, temperate rainforest-like mist that tiny green guys love. The one-gallon size tank full of water lasts seemingly forever. These sprayers are often available used on Facebook Marketplace and in thrift stores (make sure to wash them well with hot biodegradable soap and water, before using.

I look forward to the time later this winter, when the Italian greens are ready to harvest, and I can make our family favourite risotto with cambozola, apples and toasted walnuts, topped with braised rapini and endive. I will definitely post the recipe.

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I planted a tiny fruit and nut orchard of 18 trees, including two in pots, just over one year ago in our front yard, and those trees have done incredibly well. They seem content and I am very happy with how the trees fit into my garden plan, and the joy they have brought me and my family and friends.

Charming dwarf northern spy apple tree in an underplanted guild, together with a columnar apple and orange pippin

To be clear, my fruit and nut trees are of a particular sort known as ‘dwarf’ trees. Within that category there are many options and categories ranging from miniature bush size trees to semi-dwarf trees that reach 12-15 ft in height, to the more common dwarf offering that grow no taller than 8-10 ft. Most dwarf type trees you will find available for purchase are the latter type, and their size and shape can be further managed by pruning, and controlling how and where they are planted.

Six of our trees (three golden sentinel apple, three lapins cherry) are what are known as ‘columnar’ or vertical cordon trees. Through the magic of precision pruning, these trees produce fruit vertically along and very close to the trunk, as opposed to branching dwarf trees that produce fruit horizontally along branches.

Columnar trees are the stars of small-space fruit tree farming. Imagine a picket fence made of columnar apple and cherry trees; so beautiful and productive.

In our backyard, we have one especially beautiful older espaliered apple tree, producing gala, chehalis and gravenstein apples along three sets of paired horizontal branches grafted onto a central dwarf trunk.

Espalier and cordon (columnar, but at a 45-degree angle) are two very old techniques of pruning and shaping fruit trees to grow flat against stone walls and buildings. The thermal mass of the stone collecting solar energy all day and slow-dripping it back to the fruit at night works miracles. As urban permaculture gardeners we can this logic by placing potted fruit trees in front of masonry and walls of buildings, south-facing ones being optimal of course.

Dwarf fruit trees of all kinds are perfect for smaller space gardeners, because no matter how small the trees are, the fruit size remains standard. Dwarf fruit trees tend to produce fruit sooner than standard trees, often after just two to three years, versus three times that for standard. Through a process of ‘grafting’ conventional branches (top stalk) onto specific dwarf type rootstock (below) chosen for its hardiness and growth capacity, the ultimate size of the grafted tree is minimized. The tree’s growth directions and limitations are determined by the rootstock. The shape and branching of the tree is determined in large part by us.

In my permaculture garden, in three guilds of three trees each, I planted six apple, two pear and one crabapple tree (for cross-pollinating the apples). The trees were arranged in a triangular pattern, with equal sides of approximately 24″ in length. When siting the trees, I turned them to best advantage the sun and also each other, leaving as much of the ‘central open column’ at the centre of the triangle, between the trees, clear and devoid of any branches. When I was happy with the arrangement of and within all three guilds, I planted the trees in 50/50 native soil and organic compost (to mimic composted natural leaf litter) and then removed ALL branches that crossed over each other or into the air space of that central column.

It should be noted that if your native soil is inferior, you should amend the mixture to suit. Soil test kits are widely available. Instinctively, I did not stake my trees because I wanted to encourage strong root development quickly. Admittedly, staking is recommended by orchardists, especially in unsheltered or windy areas.

Creating and maintaining a central column is key to tree health as it affords ample sunlight, and allows for drying breezes to pass through and help prevent mildew and disease. Indeed you end up with somewhat 3/4th sided trees, but in groupings they are lovely to look at, and not at all unbalanced.

If you were to plant your trees in rows versus groupings, you would want to prune away only those branches that crossed over each other within their own individual frameworks (same reasons — to keep things dry, airy and sunny)

I keep my trees pruned to below 7ft in height, as that is how high I can comfortably reach to harvest the fruit, attend to aphids and general tree health, and prune branches twice annually.

Throughout the growing season, I check all of the trees early in the morning, to make sure I notice small changes or pests that require bio-management. This is the best time of the day for me. All is quiet, the birds are waking up, the grass is dewy and soft, and that garden-grower connection is at its strongest. In the morning I see everything, including those plants and/or insects that need help establishing or restoring balance within their habitat.

Borage and chamomile seedlings lag behind chives. Soon after, the soil was entirely shaded by underplantings

To aid in establishing balance and with respect to nature’s logic, we underplanted our dwarf tree guilds with beneficial perennial companion plants. These dual-purpose plants attract pollinators to ensure fruit-set, attract predator insects to feed on aphids and other pests, deter aphids and other pests, keep the soil cool through bio-mass mulching, feed the soil biology by contributing trace minerals and/or nitrogen, and produce edible herb foliage, flowers, seeds, etc. Some underplants are thought to emit ethylene gas which helps ripen fruit.

Practical urban permaculture suggests incorporating several different beneficial plants under fruit trees, and these range from borage to tansy. Where you live, which plants or seeds are available to you, and where you trees are planted, will determine your choices. I chose tall blue flowering borage in the centre of the circular column, medium height bushy chamomile in the middle of the circle, and low flowering chive around the perimeter. I love classic symmetry in garden design (hence, UpFront & Beautiful), so the peaceful, repeating aesthetic was important to me in the front garden. In our back garden, and for potted fruit trees, perennial underplantings are more casual and wild in arrangement.

Harvesting chamomile flowers for tea, leaving the blue borage towering in the middle, and chive around the edges

Nearby to the apples and pears, in a perpendicular arrangement, I planted another three guilds of dwarf trees — three plums, next to a solitary almond (anticipating its size in the future), next to three columnar cherry trees. The cherries did well as they were, as did the plums overall, but it is apparent that one of the plums must be moved in the spring, as it is commanding more space than I gave it. The culprit plum is a rather special tree that has five varieties of plum grated onto a single dwarf rootstock. By its nature, I suppose, it needs more space and grows more quickly than its guild companion damson and green gage plum trees. I should have expected this and will know better next time.

This first year of real fruit set, we ate and preserved a bounty of pears, apples, plums, and crabapples. The cherries were enjoyed pretty much by the birds, and the almonds require another year or two before flowering.

A lone Fuyu persimmon tree planted in a terracotta pot and underplanted with bait nasturtiums to distract aphids, is managing fruit very nicely as I write this at the end of October. Unexpectedly, almost invisibly as they do, the tree set a huge quantity of fruit early in the summer. As the season progressed and the tree self-limited its fruit production by dropping all but what it knew it could raise to maturity, the remaining fruit remained healthy and grew bigger and bigger. Today, the leaves are gone, and the fruit look beautiful, hanging on for dear life even through recent light frosts. I will leave the fruit on for some time yet as long as they remain strong and happy looking. Advice regarding off-tree (inside) or on-tree (outside) ripening is mixed, so I will watch closely every morning and decide for myself what works in my garden. If I get it wrong this year, I will know for next.

Just a few months ago in late summer, I planted two brown turkey fig trees, each flat up against a trellis upright. I had no hope of seeing fruit this year, yet both trees delivered a handful each of lovely soft figs. I will keep these fig trees pruned back hard, encouraging a low growing habit similar to the dwarf fruit trees. If the hard pruning goes well and the fig trees respond to training but still set fruit, I will apply what I learn to creating an espaliered fig hedge to separate the berry bed from the rest of the garden.

Around back, an espalier apple tree planted in an aluminum feed trough on casters, is underplanted with salvia (pollinator-friendly), chamomile (beneficial insects) and moss (insects/mulch). This small tree produces gala, chehalis and gravenstein apples in abundance, though we eat few if any of them. Now that we have the tiny orchards out front, I leave this backyard fruit, along with strawberries and some low-growing tomatoes, as bait for the squirrels and raccoons that we share our outdoor space with. The black bears that live in the surrounding forests don’t care for unripened fruit as a rule, so they don’t come around unless we leave ripened fruit or open compost as an attractant. With deference to our furry black neighbours, we are diligent about picking berries and fruit just left of ripe always, and we compost below-ground. This seems to work out just fine for us and for the wildlife. So far, so good.

Potted espaliered apple tree underplanted with salvia, chamomile, moss, surplus lettuce, plus a bee waterer

This wouldn’t be an urban permaculture story if it didn’t end in abundance, so this one does. Very recently, at the suggestion of my children who wanted to make the tiny orchard fruit last as long as possible, I made a gorgeous thick and savoury fruit butter of sorts for eating and gifting. I call it ‘savoury apple butter schmear’ with shallots, Indian spices and concord raisins. Schmear because it contains so many ingredients, and also because it has so many sweet and savoury uses.

The simple act of growing apple trees in an urban garden can bring such joy. Nothing tastes better

When my chef friend Robert Bartley visited last month to help Modern Farmer magazine publisher Frank Giustra and I can and oven-dry tomatoes for the Million Gardens Movement’s ‘Permaculture’ series, he brought along some beautiful Concord grapes. Like most gifts of food that I receive, those grapes set a whole chain of culinary events into motion. This time, it was oven-dried Concord raisins. Those raisins in turn inspired not just the savoury fruit butter of which they became an ingredient, but a whole program of creating and gifting unique home-made Garden to Table recipes (more later on that). Thank you Chef!

And finally, in the ultimate urban permaculture spirit of wasting nothing at all, the home-grown apple cores and peels are ruminating currently in muslin-covered glass crocks, on the kitchen table, slowly, slowly becoming apple scrap vinegar. Quite possibly, this vinegar will become an ingredient in next year’s schmear. To learn more about our Garden to Table traditions, and for recipes, visit the food gallery, which will take you to my @chefathand food page on Instagram. Very soon, I will have permaculture garden and life recipes on this site, and the @upfrontandbeautiful Instagram page will be up and running too.

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