guildfordcycads

TL;DR: Heavy rains are washing away my garden soil faster than I can build it. I need your collective permaculture wisdom to help me capture and slow this water while creating productive spaces for food and animals.

THE CHALLENGE: This property is simultaneously blessed and cursed – 52 inches of annual rainfall (including brutal 2-3 inch deluges) on slopes that go from 10% to 30% before dropping into gullies. The water rushes through like it’s late for an appointment, taking my precious topsoil with it. Shallow bedrock + low clay content = pond construction seems challenging.

THE DREAM: Transform this into a productive homestead with:

• Multiple garden areas (I’m a row crop person, sue me 😅)
• Fruit tree orchard that actually stays planted
• Chickens, rabbits, and maybe goats on the area north of house
• Soil that stays PUT during storms

WHAT I’VE GOT FOR YOU:

• Detailed contour maps (one with legend, one blank for your designs)
• Size: 8.5 acres
• Elevation: 466-590 ft (124 ft drop – that’s a lot of energy to work with!)
• Orientation: North is up on the map

WHERE I’M STUCK: Swales seem obvious, but WHERE? Should I do terraces for the gardens? Should I do a hybrid of both? How do I integrate them with production goals? Are there other water-slowing strategies I’m missing? How do I turn this erosion problem into a water asset?

CALLING ALL WATER WIZARDS: Drop your ideas, sketches, or “have you considered…” thoughts below. I’ll answer any questions and am genuinely excited to see what this amazing community comes up with!

Legend to help with orientation

Blank page ready for your sketches

Howdy. I am a software engineer who recently got laid off (DOGE). While unemployed I have been working on a tool to help figure out the optimal garden layout. It has an emphasis on showing the position of the sun/shadows for different times of the day/year. I am looking for some users to help with testing. If anyone is interested in giving feedback, please DM me!

https://scrungy.com/

I’m going to be there inheriting and thus responsible for about 10 acres on the Oregon coast, just north of Tillamook.

This plot has been in the family since they ‘settled’ it (and the lake next to it). It was a farm for most of its history, but that stopped about 40 years ago. It has very bad drainage, and basically the only buildable parts built on. Around 10 acres of grass at the moment, it’s expensive to mow!

It floods during any real rain, and there no budget for improvements, just sweat. Creek runs along two sides, empties into nearby lake… beavers go nuts and being 1 block from the ocean, not much downhill.

I think permaculture is my savior here. I could turn this back into a much more natural system and stop fighting to maintain something not being useful at all.

Where do I begin? It seems overwhelming!

Hi! I am a student and finally, finally I have an outdoor space of my very own to start a garden! I love permaculture and want to get started on it, but I am a bit lost in where to start to see good results. I have a pretty small budget and most of the things I have gotten are recycled or seeds from plants I eat. I want to know how to design my garden properly instead of having a few random plants around. Is there any books that might help me? or a youtube channel? I have already read Gaias Garden as a start 🙂 but I feel like I have so much more left to learn in order to properly create a sustainable and rich garden. Any tips and recommendations are welcome! I also wanted to know how experienced gardeners handle seasons, how to prepare, how to remember what to start growing, how to design a garden ahead.

If it is helpful, I currently live in northern Europe. My small garden currently has Tomatoes, Paprikas (separated), basil, a small apple tree, parsley, alpine strawberries, corn, beans, and a native chili species from back home called aji amarillo! I also bought already grown up Gardenias and jasmines. Even though they are growing, I feel I have not been able to “integrate” all these plants together nor to grow them as fast as I could. I think part of it might be because I was quite shy in the amount of seeds I actually started with, and also that before, in my home country, I did not have to worry about seasons, so this my first time and many plants were not grown at the ideal time of year. Back home I could just throw some seeds in the ground and they were pretty much guaranteed to succeed because it was a tropical climate haha

thank you for all the help and reading this post :>

I planted a lot of black currants and tbh I’m really not enjoying the flavor. Anyone else experience this?

I have a bit of a caterpillar infestation on one of my perennial kales. I have two and other is fine.

Nearly every single leaf has had a chunk taken out of and some entire leaves devoured. Have found packs of them on the backs of leaves.

I appreciate they are park of the ecosystem but it’s a quite young plant and it seems to be struggling.

Have removed all the eggs / caterpillars I could find and removed the very damaged leaves (not sure if that’s the right thing to do)

Any guidance on how to manage this and protect the plant?

Thanks!