Becoming a part of the Earth

When the average Joe first becomes aware of permaculture, he or she usually decides that it's a good idea. I mean, gardens, healthy food, natural medicine, as long as you don't go and join a cult and live in a yurt it should be fun right?
Not everyone goes all the way. For me, permaculture has been a lifelong journey and it didn't stop in the garden. Permaculture became a part of my life, and then I realised that I had an obligation to become a part of permaculture's life. In other words, you haven't really started living if you have not yet started giving back to the system thatyou were born a part of.

Lately this idea has been carrying reaaly far, making inroads into how I live my life and what investments I choose to make. My house now has at least one geo thermally regulated area, using the soil around the walls to insulate the rooms. We have sluiced the run off in the street directly into a system of swales and channels that feeds the deep soil in our garden. We did this in an effort to be rid of the massive water bills an urban farm can run up.

Every aspect of my life is becoming integrated with the planet I live on and that just feels so good. It's difficult to know what will happen to me next, as my realisation of the life I feel is right continues. A constantly expanding positive cycle of my influence on the world around me. Everything is only part of everything else, it all fits together.

I love Permaculture.

Intelligent eco friendly landscaping here in Johannesburg.

Thermodynamics and landscaping 

Designing buildings for improved thermodynamics, like the wofati building design (click on the link for an explanation) which does not require heating or cooling is an important part of greening your way of living. My dream home and garden consists of many inter-related systems feeding into each other with no waste of water, heat, nutrients or organic material.
The old way of building and of land contouring for agricultural and other purposes has to go, and it has to go soon. We just can't afford to waste like this. Johannesburg can be a much better place, but first we have to rethink the urban landscape.

A Dream Garden

My dream garden consists of intelligent eco-friendly building design in conjunction with storm water contouring to provide the best possible environment for plant and food growth. Permaculture permeates everything in the end, which is why we even end up talking about the design of your house and what happens to the water that flows out of it. Shaping the earth, for drainage, irrigation and temperature control is wise, Wallipini greenhouses, energy efficient dwellings in the earth and drainage contouring can make your lifestyle totally sustainable while reducing your need for money. I hope the tips and links I can offer are helpful and please do remember to visit www.positivecycle.co.za if you have not already done so.

Practical tips on building a Wallipini Greenhouse.
 

• Faces to the north in the Southern Hemisphere.

• Space between a double layer of plastic, above and below the roof structure allows the sun’s rays to penetrate while providing thermal insulation. Creating a warm, stable environment for plant growth.

 

• PVC pipe can even be fashioned into a structure if the greenhouse is not too large.

So many plants... the value of diversity

 If you can imagine what might happen to a whole field of cabbages, growing as far as you can see all around you, should a pathogen to which that particular type of cabbage is particularly vulnerable happen to strike, then you will quickly be able to realise the value of a diverse field. When the cabbage has, say, origanum and spring onions as neighbours and the next large plant in the planting plan is a brinjal, rather than another cabbage, then there is a barrier between our first sick cabbage and all the others of its kind in the planting plan. This means that although a pathogen might find its way onto one of your cabbages, that is not to say that your entire cabbage crop will be affected. In fact it is quite possible that some of the companion plants around these hypothetical cabbages vulnerable to infection may destroy the pathogen. Certainly other aspects of the bio dynamic system will be destroying pathogens and reducing the likelihood of infections. Not only is bio dynamic soil full of the most diverse array of micro organisms possible but the earthworms and associated microbes at work throughout the soil will be progressively removing or destroying pathogens as healthy germs are added to the soil. This diverse approach, addressing both microbes and macrobes is what creates the rock solid stable agricultural system that is bio dynamics. Building soil rather than depleting soil.should be the goal and diversity is what makes it possible. A diverse garden orfield, to put it simply, is worth far far more than the sum of itsparts.

Food is medicine

No, Positive Cycle has not gone ayurvedic, but we do have something to say about the condition your body is in at any point in your life, and how closely related that is to what you have been eating. For the baby boomers, it was an accepted reality that you ate meat and veg, sometimes fish, all thoroughly cooked. When you got sick, the doctor was able to supply you with all manner of chemicals that were supposed to make you get healthy.
Today it is becoming clear that this approach is not only flawed but indeed the cause of much of the discomfort and disease that even affluent people are all to easily afflicted with in what was supposed to be a better and brighter future.

Gardening, and especially food gardening, is such a wonderful way to learn about the value of diversity and also of natural relationships. How all the little bits of nature work together to create life that sustains itself. Diet works in very much the same way. Eating foods that complement each other, and that are in their natural and unprocessed state, is exactly what produces the diversity of beneficial microorganisms in the gut without which good health never even gains a toe hold. It follows perfectly logically that in order to gain control of anything going wrong in the body, we need to address the food that our bodies are trying to function on. If you are developing a tumour, it seems inescapable that your body must have been damaged by something it encountered. Something small even, but to which your body was unable to respond in a healthy way.

What this really means is that for true health, it is necessary to think preemptively. Treatment is possible using foods, we all know about thyme and sage with ginger for the sore throats and the wheezes for example, but if you eat your raw broccoli, sprouts, seeds, cauliflower crumbles (delicious) and you pick what you eat on the same day, from your local environment, you are providing your body with perfect food. Food that almost never triggers a damaging response like a tumour in your body.

Organic Gardening Service

Gro4u is Positive Cycle's action team. An organic gardening service. We come out to your home and assess your soil, conducting a thorough soil analysis, after which we prepare bds accordingly and plant and maintain an organic vegetable garden second to none. We plant herbs, vegetables, fruits, nuts and berries. Transforming your garden into a wonderland of culinary delights.
We like to imagine ourselves as ' the gourmet gardeners'. We also take pride in the appearance and designer garden appeal of our garden installations. It's very satisfying to make an out door space not only beautiful but productive too.

The Positive Cycle Garden.

The joys of a well established and thriving food garden cannot be overstated. 

It revolutionises your lifestyle and puts you in a position to take charge of your health. 

Not only that but it is also so very restful to spend time in a thriving garden full of plants absorbing the sunlight and producing fresh food. Daily.

 It is nothing other than a habit to keep on going to the shops to buy food. Even if you don't have the time to prepare beds and set up organic recycling systems like compost heaps it is quite possible to find someone else to do it for you. Just think, how much of your food budget goes on produce? Vegetables and fruits, the most important part of a healthy diet can be grown in your own garden, better than they can on a farm. it is simply a question of know how.

 Positive Cycle operates a service called Gro4U.
An expert comes out to your place and assesses your garden before proposing a design for you. The design will be accompanied by a maintenance plan which can include instructing your own staff in the art of caring for a food garden.

Don't be mistaken, food gardens look very attractive too. Any visitor to the Positive Cycle garden in Auckland Park in Johannesburg can see for themselves how food plants and herbs can be used in conjunction with ornamentals and indigenous plants to create a wonderland of delights with a fully functioning ecological balance of its own. Gardening is no longer a hobby. Vegetable gardening has become an important part of many people's lives.