We sponsored and helped to organize the Northeast Permaculture Convergence this year to contribute to strengthening the Eastern MA permaculture community. During the convergence, Jessica was interviewed by Sevan at Bell Tower Foods who asked what permaculture is and how it can be used to grow food. His organization works in a mobile food-truck capacity to make local delicious food more accessible in urban areas of Boston. The first thought for many folks when they think of permaculture is food production, probably because the term, when coined, referred to permanent agriculture. Permaculture is now thought of and applied as framework for thinking about permanent culture, including but not limited to agriculture. David Holmgren visualized this in the shape of a flower (below) in his book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. Petals represent broad areas of focus within a wholistic interconnected system, informed from the center by ethics and design principles. Growing food is a great entrance point for many folks new to permaculture -- it's easier to get people excited about growing kiwis in Massachusetts than to talk about the evils of big banks, or the damage the industrial food system is doing to the land. However it's not the only possible point of attachment. This past year growing food touched upon all of these petals in an interconnected way - we learned how to take care of our well-being, try low tech human powered tools, not go to the grocery store to buy food, lower the toxicity of our food, among other yields.
After one full season, now the work begins to find new points of engagement on this flower, and winter is a perfect time to articulate goals and develop a design. What petal(s) would you focus your next year on?
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One of the more satisfying harvests we've experienced has been potatoes from our potato barrel. It's like digging for treasure. Unfortunately we yielded a very small harvest compared to what we've seen elsewhere online. Why? We're not 100% sure. It could be the black barrel retaining too much heat, the starter potatoes we purchased (and probably kept too long before planting), not enough/too much water, or not a good ratio/quality of potting soil and peat mix.
We're definitely going to try container potatoes again next season and play around with some of those variables. The potato barrel saved us some space for other crops, and prevented us from thinking about pests or diseases common with potatoes. We've heard from our friend Rachel at Elemental Green that a version has worked extremely well in her small urban garden in Somervill, MA. Here are pictures of what treasure we did get to harvest. |
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