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What would the long term affects be if I filled this hole with wood chips? Would it dry up? Decompose and turn back to mud? Trying to keep strangers out of my property using this as training grounds for mud riding.

Hello! This is my first post here, but I was hoping to find some guidance, so I’ll just jump right into it.

I’m putting together an orchard (apple, pear, plum, and sugar maple) with some fruits (raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, elderberry). The orchard area is attached to the duck yard.

Now, I don’t have the ducks yet (or all the plants for that matter – that’ll take years) but I’ve got conflicting information online. I’d like to let the ducks wander the orchard, but I’ve read that the nitrogen in their waste can poison young trees. “Young” is anywhere from 1-5 years, according to a quick Google.

The trees I have in now are 1-2 years old. The combined orchard and duck run are about 2 acres. Would this be enough space to diffuse the waste? Or would I have to block access to the trees until they were grown?

Thanks in advance to anyone who replies 🙂

As first a school teacher, THEN a permaculture teacher, THEN a board game fan, I have found dozens of board games out there with Permaculture themes…

…Some are more fun…. Some more educational… Some are terrible and aren’t worth buying. Curious to hear what others have found and recommend. 🙂

I’ll start off with 2 recommendations:

1) Reykholt – I played this yesterday for the first time and highly recommend. You are a farmer in the Icelandic town of Reykholt where geothermal energy allows for greenhouses. It’s a 1-4 player worker placement game where you race to farm the most goods and sell them”.

2) Ark Nova – I’ve only played this one once as well… it’s a bit longer and more complicated, but it has all sorts of “hidden curriculum” lessons… about society, zoos, and doing good onto the world. Essentially, you try to run a zoo but you lose if you try to only do good things (like heal and release animals or do research)… and you also lose if you only try to make money (have more animals in the zoo, higher admissions, etc). The winner is the person who balances both. Zoos are quite a controversial topic… this game lets to dive right into that + topics like financial sustainability. And you will learn all about different animals.

This is my garden, I’ve moved to a house in the countryside after a life in the city and in apartments.

What do you think of the space for a vegetable garden?

I have an enclosed rectangle.

I don’t know much about gardening but I’m determined to do something with this space.

This is my garden, I’ve moved to a house in the countryside after a life in the city and in apartments.

What do you think of the space for a vegetable garden?

I have an enclosed rectangle.

I don’t know much about gardening but I’m determined to do something with this space.

so i’ve been learning herbs and what they use it for and i also read reddit post likethis to see what bigginers are growing before going into advance stuff and i am wondering what is zoning and how do i find out what zone do i belong to i live in Texas. thanks for the help

Zone 7A/Long Island, NY

About 40% of our property is shaded by trees (Silver & Norway Maple) and massively overgrown with invasive plants like multiflora rose, poison ivy, English ivy, and some kind of obnoxiously thorny blackberry. Since it is the furthest part of the property from the house, it’s the least maintained. I’ve made attempts at clearing away the stuff we don’t want, but without having something to put in the open space, things return to the less-than-desirable status quo pretty quickly.

Can anyone suggest some quick growing beneficial replacements for that would help keep the unwanted things at bay so we’re not fighting the same battle year after year?

I would prefer pollinator-friendly plants since both the multiflora roses and blackberries get visited heavily when they are in bloom and I don’t want to impact that negatively. Natives would be nice, but not an absolute must. Dynamic accumulators and/or high biomass generators would be helpful as well, but also not a requirement.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

I did a mason jar test from two spots of my site. The one with a darker color is native soil that’s never been disturbed and I believe the darker color means more nutrients. Another one is imported soil.

However I’m unable to identify the 3 layers I’m supposed to be seeing: clay, silt and sand. I can only see two layers: sand at the bottom and a layer with finer texture on top.

Can anyone let me know I’m missing one layer in my soil? Or if it’s there but just hard to see?