guildfordcycads

We have a small suburban backyard with terraces (Northern California). I’m trying to optimize for fruit trees and would like to grow a few in the upper terrace that borders a pathway. I currently have two apple trees there that are planted too close together, so we will have to move them either way. Should we

• keep the apples in the same trellis but space them on either end?
• plant 2-3 espalier trees instead?

I have no experience with espalier but it seems like it would be the better choice for a narrow terrace.

Hello,

Since I have a piece of land that is mostly flat, with small mounds or indentations due to it being plowed two years ago, although it’s obviously not perfectly flat since the land which is of 3.3 hectares goes from 101m of altitude to 99m of altitude to the other longest side. I would like to understand how to create swales here. The contour lines are definitely there, since it cannot be perfectly flat, but they are difficult to identify because the fact that is flat, and because of these surface irregularities since it hasn’t been leveled, so I’m not sure how to identify the contour lines. Even thinking about using an A-frame, I’m not sure how to go about it.

I can identify a keyline, which is a line that cuts through some parts of the land where water runoff is clearly visible. What should I do there?

Is there anyone who can explain this to me and give me some guidance?

Thanks

When I stumbled across permaculture, in the form of a small hill farm many years ago, everything went click. It made sense to me and was pretty much the first thing that had done for me. I wanted in, but how? I ended up volunteering on that farm and a couple of others for the next couple of years before I started to think about how was I going to be able to do this in my own life, I was never going to be able to buy a farm, and this place where I had been was far away from where I came from, I knew I had plenty of challenges ahead of me. Jump forward a few years and I find myself living in a rented cottage in a small village in Wales where i had headed in search of like-minded people. The news I was hearing was that a local eco-centre was planning to host a PDC, the permaculture design course, and although at the time I thought I knew all about permaculture, as I had run a couple of farms designed through permaculture I signed up for the subsidised course not least to meet the other attendees. This was another huge turning point in my life and did indeed meet several like-minded soils, in search of similar goals as myself.

To cut a long story short, I made enough connection on the course to action the plan I had been hatching for the previous 9 months, which was to set up a housing co-operative with 8 members and leverage the small amount of savings we had between us to raise a commercial loan from an ethical bank to buy a run-down farmhouse, outbuildings and a couple of fields. That was 30 years ago, and I have since been the founder member of 3 more housing co-operatives, and I live in one now.

Somewhere along the line, 2006 it was I convened and ran by first PDC. I invited a couple of guest tutors to lead the teacher, but I soaked up every word of it and knew that this was what I wanted to do gong forward. If nothing else I felt I owed the world a payback for the huge boost the course experience had given me and the resulting networking and connections that had come from it. Life has taken many twists and turns since that time, and my youthful zest and optimism has been dented somewhat by intervening events, but the permaculture passion has held true, every project and venture I have since been involved with has taught me more and here i am all these years later, ready to convene my first full PDC since 2021. We will be embedded within a local farm, and working with people with a lifetime of experience in the field, it feels like the most positive thing I can put my energies into right now, so the countdown to the end of June begins.

Get in touch with me directly if you want to know more about this particular course, and we are planning a series of them, should the first one go well and according to plan, then there will be more. I have finally managed to get myself into the perfect setting to run these courses, and I have nearly 35 years of hands-on experience to draw on.