Time to think about gardens!

It was not too long ago that our garden wrapped up for the year (just yesterday!), but already there are a lot of people talking about next year's garden projects. Living in a very cold climate challenges our gardening techniques and allows us time to learn and rejuvenate during a long winter.

While standing outside in a new dusting of snow, getting colder by the minute, a keen group of parents and interested community members stood in a potential new garden space. Due to the foresight of these members, permaculture was at the centre of our discussions. As a friend reminded me yesterday, there are 100 hours of planning for every hour of implementation in permaculture. Since "work is a failure in design" we want to make sure that our systems, be they water, paths, beds, or structures, will provide maximum output for minimal work input.

Through my experiences helping out getting a community garden established at Mount Royal University, gaging interest in my community in implementing a garden, and in attending various gardening workshops, I learned have learned of many sources of grants and additional information. Here are some sites to get you started on funding your new community garden or other sustainable project in Calgary:

Take Action Grant through Calgary Dollars

Fiskars Project Orange Thumb

Evergreen Grants

Calgary Horticultural Society

Home Depot

To find out more information about starting a community garden, check out these sites to give you ideas and support:

Tuscany Community Garden

Southwood Community Garden

The AREA in Inglewood

TONS of great support on the Calgary Horticultural Society's website

Start a free website or blog on Wordpress or Blogger like Tuscany did for their garden to document their efforts and raise awareness and support for the project you are embarking on. Print off pieces of paper to distribute to your friends and neighbours in the community and advertise in your community newsletter to drum up support.

If you come across more information for grants or other support, please leave a comment below to help other future community garden supporters!

Parts 2 & 3: People Care & Fair Share

People Care and Fair share were lessons that I learned under an apple tree last year during a pick for the the Calgary Urban Harvest. My husband and I joined the harvest because we longed for free, organic, local fruit that we grew accustomed to while living in Oregon. Not only did we have access to more fruit than we could eat in a year, we learned so many more things while harvesting.

Now that the fruit harvesting season is in full swing again, it has reminded me of all the lessons we learned picking apples, plums, and cherries. After harvesting the fruit from tree owners that would otherwise not use the fruit (earth care), we leave 1/3 of the harvest for them (if they want it), share 1/3 with the other volunteers fruit pickers, and donate 1/3 to charitable organizations. While picking we were building community, making connections, sharing recipes, life stories, and metaphorically weaving a support network of new friends. People Care.

Donations of fruit were shared with the Mustard Seed, Drop In Centre, Food Bank, and other organizations. There is no better way to start a day than dropping off fresh, organic, local produce to a charity in the morning before work! Fair share.

Have you figured out why I chose the title for this blog and my business yet? I believe than many of the world's problems can be solved under an apple tree and the complicated nature of permaculture can be easily broken down.

Bring your kids, friends, and family on our next harvest to share our experiences with the three main principles of permaculture: earth care, people care, and fair share.

What is a wicking bed and how does it work?

After learning about wicking beds in my Permaculture Design Certificate course (which I graduated from last weekend!), I had a hard time understanding how they worked. Here is a great illustration from Urban Food Gardens:

What did not make sense to me was how the moisture got up to the soil even after the water level drops. I had to make a model to demonstrate this purpose using materials around the house. Here is what I came up with:

This is reused container filled about 1/3 of rocks, a piece of landscape fabric, a reused piece of tubing down the side, then cotton from a pill bottle. To make the wicking of water more obvious, I added blue food colouring to the water before pouring it down the tube to fill the bottom reservoir. Additionally, I poked a hole just below where the rocks and fabric meet for drainage.

After an hour or so, here is what it looked like:

After 2 hours and a bit of compaction to make the cotton fibers touch each other better (shredded paper may work better) :

At 2 weeks after construction and adding water, the cotton has stayed moist even though the water level has dropped below the fabric level. The main idea behind this design is that the plant roots will grow down toward the moisture, hence stronger and more resilient. Watering from the surface produces roots that extend outwards (not down) because the whole container or bed rarely gets watered thoroughly enough to allow the roots to grow down. This design is particularly successful in very arid climates or for lazy gardeners who only want to water once a week or so.

I deem this experiment successful and now have a much better understanding for how wicking beds work.

Try this experiment with your children, then make a Global Bucket or larger scale wicking bed if you are so inclined!

Spring rains bring...

...opportunities to learn about water harvesting! The most important principle and design element in permaculture is water; how to direct it, make multiple uses of it, infiltrate it into the landscape, and have it leave your property cleaner than it came in.

A child's mind is an uncluttered, imaginative playground for ideas and innovation. Whereas as adult's mind is often cluttered with thoughts and reasons why something cannot work. As it is raining, go outside and ask your child how the water coming out of the downspouts can be put to better use than simply running into the grass or back alley.

Questions to ask:

1. How can we get this water to our vegetable and herb growing areas or to young trees?

2. How can we store this water for later in summer when it does not rain as often?

3. What else can we use the stored water for? (ie dog, feet, or tool washing)

Here are more resources to familiarize yourself with water harvesting ideas:

http://permaculture.org.au/2009/03/13/tackling-urban-water-runoff-in-a-sydney-suburb/#more-1161

Activities on swales and other water storing ideas coming soon! In the mean time, get yourself a rain barrel or repurpose your plastic garbage can into a rain barrel by just putting screen over the top to keep out the mosquitos.

Tree patterns

Something that children are very good at is recognizing patterns. Permaculture principles are also based around noticing patterns in a landscape. One of the most common patterns that children will be able to identify are tree or dendritic shapes.

Observe and have your child sketch what a tree branch looks like. Then lie on your back under the tree looking straight up the trunk and sketch the pattern. This is a dendritic pattern and can be found all around us. Look for a washed out bank of a hill, parking lot drainage, pictures of rivers, kidneys, lungs, blood vessels, and the nervous system. As you travel around town or go for a walk around the neighbourhood, point out a few of the tree patterns you see and prompt your child to do the same.

Here are some examples of dendritic (tree) patterns :

Let me know how your pattern observation goes and what your child notices that has tree patterns in their environment. Can you incorporate a dendritic pattern in your garden this year?

Meet the Blogger

Hi! My name is Sara and I am a certified science teacher who is obsessed with learning how to become more sustainable and passing on that knowledge to anyone I meet--especially children.

On our urban homestead, we are constantly striving to grow as much food as possible, preserve food by canning and dehydrating, and learning all that we can about permaculture to make our lot as productive as possible with minimal human input. With my passion for teaching children in combination with the foresight and guidance of Verge Permaculture, I am working on developing courses for children to learn the principles of permaculture in a hands-on way.

Check back weekly for ideas on how to help your child learn about permaculture and other sustainable practices that you can implement in and around your home.