I've been reading Dave's Hugelkultur threads, and am very intrigued. It will be awhile before I can play with this, but I'll be lurking and reading to learn more. My interest is predominantly being wildlife friendly, and not having to break my back in the red GA clay.

Ive been interested in permaculture for several years now. But like most things (for me) I approached the subject backwards. In my real life I was an archeologist and one of my main tasks was to write environmental impact statements for government agencies. Most people who work with 'the environment' know that in reality it comes in ecological packages. Permaculture is the practical application of environmental ecology.

fiwit. I have dug the red clay along the Tennessee, Cumberland Rivers, and the Tombigbee here in Alabama. You don't have to dig it to grow plants on it. Just build a hugelkultur bed on top of it. (Just remember to provide for drainage).

hazelnut said:fiwit. I have dug the red clay along the Tennessee, Cumberland Rivers, and the Tombigbee here in Alabama. You don't have to dig it to grow plants on it. Just build a hugelkultur bed on top of it. (Just remember to provide for drainage).

That's why this forum interests me.

I participated in a permaculture workshop last year.
It makes very good sense to me, and while I can not adopt all of it on a city lot,
I can do small things in that direction.

Calgary Horticultural Society is holding another workshop in April this year.

I just joined the forums because I love the database of knowledge here and heard about the Permaculture forum on the Survival Podcast. I would suggest to anyone interested in Permaculture to read Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway.

Tom, I'm glad you're here!

I agree on Gaia's Garden. I love that book. Every gardener should have a copy.

Thanks, Dave... I'm glad you added a Permaculture forum

I have Gaia's garden, pick it up and read a chapter at a time. I'm hoping some of it translates to the desert (when I get there).

Welcome, Tom!

Hazelnut, does your first name start with a "G"?

Looking forward to participating in the Permaculture discussions here. It's life changing stuff for sure!

Thank you Milkmood and Dave for this forum.

I am also a TSP / MSB member, which is how I became aware of this wonderful website and podcast. Thanks for taking the wheel. Since becoming aware of the permaculture concept in its entirety, I have planted Pomegranate trees and plum trees. I am exploring the support guilds and trying to become familiar with more effective companion planting. I still have raised beds on my 8a North Texas corner suburban lot. I am not sure I can get around the raised beds (heavy black clay soil) and replace them with hugleculture beds. Still, putting punky wood in the bottom of the raised beds and heavy mulch have decreased the water requirements. I am looking forward to trick-or-treating for raked leaves over the next few months for my next (sort-of) hugleculture bed.

Sheryl. Yes. Hazelnut starts with a "G". I was gloria125 on Dave's old site. I like your quote that:

Science is not the answer, it is the question. Welcome to ATP.

"Science is not the answer, it is the question."

The best example I know of the scientific approach as it SHOULD be practiced came from a guy considered to be the world's foremost expert on Saturn, just as the imagery was coming back from the first Voyager.

He was transported with joy.

"EVERY thing we thought we knew about Saturn is WRONG!!!"

Every belief and theory that gave him status and prestige was proven wrong.
He was starting his whole career over, almost from scratch.
Any grad student had as good a chance of getting his or her name on the correct theories as he did.

But he was delighted, because now he had a chance to learn it all again, right, and discover more things about his favorite planet - truer things, this time.

He looked like someone about to do his honeymoon over again, but better this time.

I am reading Masanabu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution this after noon.

Exactly the same experience. A successful plant pathologist. No its all WRONG. Agriculture is WRONG. Science is WRONG. He decided to go home, and discovered the method of Natural Farming. He was so happy, all of his colleagues and friends thought he was nuts.

I think the eraser is a very important scientific tool.

>> I think the eraser is a very important scientific tool.

Lab benches should be inscribed: "Got humility?"

i forget where I read the claim, but someone claims that when the revolution in a field is too dramatic, like quantum physics, many "old school experts" never get the new ideas. The field is filled with conflict and roadblocks until the tenured dinosaurs and department heads literally die off. Then the field lurches forward as resumes progress.

i think it's worse when money is involved, i.e. an existing industry with money and beliefs invested in "the old way". Pride, prejudice, status AND money make formidable obstacles to progress. On the other hand, "radical claims require strong proof".

>> Masanabu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution

I just ordered it from Amazon. $12 with shipping, used.

You can read One Straw Revolution for free on pdf. The link is in the Secrets of the Soil thread.

I think the obstacles to progress you are talking about in science are what Thomas Kuhn called Paradigms.

In my experience the most serious paradigm that has occurred is the failure of much of the scientific community to understand living systems. The field of medicine in particular doesn't treat the human body as a biological system, and medicine is not taught that way in medical school.

>> I think the obstacles to progress you are talking about in science are what Thomas Kuhn called Paradigms.

Exactly, and I might have read the "dinosaurs / die off" comment in his book.

>> the failure of much of the scientific community to understand living systems

Good point. But you might be able to expand that with some validity.

"everyone's failure to understand complex systems"

"the difficulty of understanding 'systems' at all"

Natural systems are much more complex (and less intuitive) than invented systems like computers.

I think living things are much more complex than any invented things, and systems of living things - forget about it! my ambition would be to learn a little about them, and maybe in some millennium, get a handle on what NOT to do to them ... in the meanwhile, admit how LITTLE we understand them and approach them with humility and intuition as well as our best analytics and modelling. But humility first..

The author of "The Mythical Man-Month" pointed out that it was (at least) three times harder to develop a system as it is to develop a single product. it's hard enough to develop one complicated thing, but when you have so many things that you have a whole, interacting SYSTEM of them, the complexities transcend comprehension (or at least 'management').

Almost everyone has trouble thinking about multiple things at the same time, or guessing at what interactions might exist between and among multiple things.

Software engineers handled it in part by inventing a whole new field of "Systems Engineering". We let THEM worry about the larger, harder issues.

I don't know of anything more complicated than living things, except for systems of living things (e.g. ecology / environmental systems). or perhaps the combination of ecology, public policy and economics.

The two most important requirements are lacking for comprehending those: sufficient humility and sufficient intelligence. Bacteriologists are humble enough to admit that we don't fully understand bacteria. Virologists (I think) still have enough humility to admit that we have a lot to learn about most viruses. Chemists who pay attention to electron orbitals are very up front about admitting that the only atoms they can describe analytically is one neutral hydrogen atom - everything else is approximations and rule-of-thumb estimates.

But I agree with you - many doctors are too arrogant to admit there's anything they don't know.

And if you pay a publicist, he's SURE he can prove whichever side of any environmental issue you want him to prove.

And if you believe politicians (pause for sickly laughter), they know what's best for everyone.

>> You can read One Straw Revolution for free on pdf. The link is in the Secrets of the Soil thread.

I didn't notice that.

Speaking of humility ...

Oh, well. It's an ftp site that wants my username and password.
I guess I had to pay for the paper book anyway.

ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/...

This link takes me directly to One Straw Revolution. There is however a Preface, and the actual beginning of One Straw is on p. 43 of the pdf. No signing in required.

This is the Soil and Health pdf of One Straw

http://library.uniteddiversity...

The availability of One Straw in pdf format, free on line, was approved by Fukuoka because it is often used as a field reference. The pdf format meant that it would always be available to anyone anywhere.

Thank you! The second link let me download the PDF.

The first one gives me this message, but that doesn't matter.

Glad you got the right one. I wonder why you get that message and I don't. I hope you enjoy One Straw Revolution. It really is a pivotal work, plus it is essentially the basis of permaculture.