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.

Saving Seeds in Autumn in Gauteng as an urban organic gardener

Here are some general pointers to help you on your way to successfully saving seeds this Autumn. There are several basic types of seeds, those found in fleshy fruits, and those found in dry husks on grass stems, held up into the wind for dispersal are two examples. Origanum does this.

Pictured above are the seeds of origanum vulgare.

These types of seeds are ready to be harvested when they easily shake loose from the stalk.

It's a fairly simple matter to go into the field collecting wind blown seeds with a brown paper packet held over the seed stalks to collect the seeds loosened by just a little shake of the stalk.

Just remember to label what you collect.

Fruits are a little different, generally requiring that you wait until the fruits are properly 'seed ripe' before you harvest them. That means more ripe than when you would ordinarily be comfortable picking and eating a fruit.

Some fruits can be tricky. Very hot peppers for instance, they can require careful handling. Anyone who has ever rubbed their eyes (or picked their nose ahem) can tell you this.

So we put the fruits into some water and let them soak until it becomes easier to separate the seeds from the fruit.

Saving seeds is of particular benefit to the urban organic gardener if attention is paid to selecting the best plants to harvests from, plants that did particularly well in the local environment. In this way, by a process of selection, the seeds you save from your garden will begin to produce plants most especially suited to your own particular local environment.

Snazzy huh?

Vertical Planters and Urban Greening

Much has been said about the necessity of feeding the world. In fact, it's even the favourite refrain of our mortal enemy, the GMO giant, Monsanto. We need to feed the world, they reason, so we will have to design a new type of corn that grows in the desert. Ja Great thanks. Then we have to fetch the corn and take it to a processing plant after which it goes through various sytems interspersed with transportation between the different palces in which the processijng and packaging of corn based products takes place. That kind of agriculture is going to drive our carbon emissions through the roof, and for no reason whatsoever.
The truth is that there is plenty of food being grown, it just isn't always profitable to take it to the people who need it.

The answer to this seemingly dreadful and insurmountable truth is so elegantly simple that the corporations tend to use that very simplicity to scoff at bio dynamics and urban agriculture. Telling themselves and those they are hoodwinking that anything suspect about their creepy products is a necessry evil and a triviality.

The Urban environment is full of vertical spaces. With a little shift in thinking and a small investment, it is perfectly possible to have a large quantity of fresh produce available literally at your front doorstep. The tests have all been done. Successful gardeners and farmers already know how to grow food up walls. Years ago we tried ideas like bags on walls and perfected them. Transforming ideas like hanging planters and bags of soil into the very advanced vertical pocket system, fully irrigated and set to last twenty five years. That's a significant achievement. Having a wall of soil pockets, all watered by an irrigation system means that almost anyone can grow large amounts of food. Just picture the surface area of the walls in a city. Of course, the wall needs light, but that is the only real limitation and there are plants that can be grown in the shade too, like chervil.