The Cube Tasting Kitchen, Parktown Girls and a really great little food production system.

Parktown Girls is a really great school. This is a well known fact if you are an old Johanessburger (to be held distinct from old Johannians, who of course are keener on St Johns, another fine old Johannesburg school.

And Because they are one of Johannesburgs finest old educational institutions they are of course right on top of the task of keeping up to date with modern environmental concerns.

They're keen on showing the girls attending their school just what is involved in growing food the healthy way. The project goes further than that though, since this particular school veggie garden has some swanky connections. They're going to be supplying their produce to the Cube Tasting Kitchen in Parktown North. So a lesson in microeconomics then too. Actually I mustn't sound patronising, these days microeconomic enterprises of this nature are turning into what an old school entrepreneur might have called 'a regular little cash cow'.

Fact is, people pay high prices for quality organic produce and anyone prepared to do the research, learnhow and then plan and execute a food growing project can actually become self sustaining at least, if not really very profitable, quite rapidly. It is all about having just the right know how at your fingertips and that last sentence is what Positive Cycle is all about. In a nutshell: Positive Cycle strives to ensure access to quality bio dynamic know how. In a world full of GMO, unlikely corporate promises and growing global food insecurity, knowing how to get the earth to produce a varied and healthy crop is becoming more valuable each and every day.

Hotels and Restaurants and their food waste in Johannesburg

In other areas of this blog we have looked at food waste, without addressing the tremendous volumes of wet waste produced in commercial kitchens, like those in guest houses, restaurants and hotels. Although Johannesburg restaurant kitchens may set out to waste as little as possible, in order to maximise profit by minimising wastage, there is nonetheless always a large amount of waste, and historically that waste has been among the worst managed.

We are collecting bins of anaerobicallyfermenting wet waste from businesses, hotels and restaurants. We've had to price our offering low enough to make the whole exercise make sense to a profit driven business owner but we are able to say that this is one little biodynamic training company that is putting a hang of a lot of food waste back into the soil, and in some of the areas that need it the most too, like Hammanskraal and Soweto. Bare soil and sandy roadways can easily be replaced with paradise, if more and more people learn to build the soil back up out of all the organic material we ordinarily waste and allow to be processed in ways that are not really acceptable from an environmental point of view.

The Quest for Unscarred Organic Produce.

How many times have we heard it repeated that producing perfect looking and tasting vegetables and fruits with organic or biodynamic methods is impossible and that we have to accept a certain amount of damage if we want to avoid using chemical or poisonous interventions? It has been repeated so often that we now all tend to accept this information as a confirmed fact.

Positive Cycle, ever keen to push the limits of our methods, would like to prove otherwise. We know that with the right investment in time and energy spent creating optimal soil health it is not only possible, but also cost effective, to produce perfect produce in an organic garden or farm setting. In the early years of Positive Cycle we all tended to assume that absolute perfection was not really natural. We no longer believe that, having seen such amazing results in gardens older than three years, where organic, bio diverse practises have produced a perfect environment. It's been quite an eye opener not just for our clients, sponsored beneficiaries and learners, but for us too. To be quite frank, you haven't lived until you have eaten perfect organic produce, grown in 100% optimal conditions. It gives you a new definition of just what food is.

Feeling doubtful? If you haven't seen it for yourself, you will, but it can be done. We are not saying that it is easy, just that it can be done. We feel it is important to make people aware that unscarred organic produce can be grown by farmenrs and home gardeners alike. Many people shy away from the idea of organic agriculture because they are accustomed to looking at unblemished harvests from industrialised chemically orientated farms. Proving that perfect fruit and veg is possible without chemical intervention could change the game. Changing perceptions that are currently limiting the growth of biodynamic gardening and agriculture is our goal and perfect fruit and vegetables will go a long way to achieving that.
Like to find out how? Come and learn with us, follow the link to see our workshop schedule.

Good Living Soil

Planting 'digger' plants which grow roots and leave air cavities behind them when the roots die is part of how we achieve a stable and constant balance of soil water and air. This kind of idea gives us really rich and living soil in the end, because the longer you leave soil organisms undisturbed in a perfectly aerated soil with enough water and organic material, the richer and more fertile your soil becomes. Just keep feeding from the top and if you planned well enough for drainage, and your original soil make up of clay like and sandy particles is well balanced, the soil in your beds will become a living cornucopia of every kind of nutrient and useful molecule that a whole range of plants will need. A properly living soil, as opposed to the periodically reactivated soil on an industrialised monoculture farm, is the ultimate goal of a biodynamic farming system. All products of the growing and harvesting of plants and animals of all kinds can be used to feed the soil. Using Bokashi bins (anaerobic fermentation) and compost heaps and worm farms being fed bokashi processed solid waste we can turn any organic material back into soil. Easily. So it is easy to see that the creation of good soil is ultimately a cycle. We like to think ofit as a Positive Cycle. Feeding soil that has been allowed to develop naturally. Reaping the bumper harvests that result from growing crops in living soil. Returning what we don't use to the soil to be used again as a new harvest. That's how we survived all these millions of years.

Good quality soil

Soil is a mixture of clay like and sand like particles. These serve as a substrate in which the life processes of microbes take place. These tiny creatures 'eat' or 'process' organic material, changing its molecular state. The resultant material in the soil is what plant roots are able to absorb. So having the right amounts of air, organic material and water in your soil, with the best mixture of sand and clay like particles is ultimately what gives your soil the capacity to grow. It is what determines how much growth takes place, how vibrant and active the whole system of your garden is or can become. The life of planet earth is in the soil. Making and building soil is something every person on the planet should take some level of responsibility for. You can start with a compost heap and add the proceeds of a bokashi bin and a worm farm to your soil as well. This sounds gross to the uninitiated but is really not. What's gross is the level of food waste that humanity indulges in without ever considering the obvious consequences.

It is important that we look after this life. Too few people understand how bacteria 'fix' nitrogen in soil, how Oxygen, water, nitrogen and living creatures are all involved in an endless cycle and the more material we remove from this cycle by not reintroducing it to the soil the more tenuous life on planet earth is going to become.

To keep a variety of healthy microbes in soil it is necessary to feed them with as wide a variety of organic materials as possible, further than that, if your planting arrangement, the pattern in which you have companion planted your crops, herbs and barrier plants, is diverse and varied, your soil health and structure will stabilise into an optimal condition, resulting in growth and health that is unsurpassed. Adding manure to trigger nitrifying reactions in the soil is a common practice, it is however advisable to allow time to prevent contamination by manures.

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.

So much has been written to try and answer the question: what exactly is permaculture? We can say that permaculture is the use and reuse of all aspects of an organic garden. The way it all fits together, uh. Well maybe it's best if we describe something that permaculture aspires to. You take one of the oldest life forms on earth and examine how it operates. look at trees. If we could get our man made systems to work with a quarter of the efficiency demonstrated by a tree we would be doing very well indeed.

Trees manage to transport their water from below the surface of the soil high up into the air by capilliary action. Trees are able to resist attacks by predators by providing such a bountiful supply of food energy that feeding animals is rather a part of the tree's life cycle and not a loss suffered by the tree at all.

Permaculture, in essence, tries to operate a farm in the way that anatural system might operate. A tree is an unbelievealy efficient way of making material and energy out of sunlight and soil. So as you learn the ins and outs of permaculture. As you learn to work with compost and bokashi, with a diverse selection of plants that work together rather than against each other's purposes. Exchanging nutrients in natural balanced cycles of decomposition and regeneration. Look to the trees. You can't go wrong when you emulate the plants themselves in order to create, nurture and foster plant life.