The Permaculture Podcast

In this episode, I use the question from Owen:

"Are there kinds of soil additives I should be using or should stay away from? Conventional wisdom is to look for balanced fertilizer, but I don’t know how much conventional wisdom overlaps with permaculture."

to look more broadly at using initial, imported, industrial inputs to create a long-term, sustainable, fertility system around four areas:

1. Collecting Organic Matter
2. Harvesting Household Waste
3. Using Biology
4. Cover Cropping

This is an overview of these ideas. If you'd like me to go deeper on any part of this in an upcoming episode, have thoughts of your own to expand on these ideas, or disagree with me entirely, leave a comment so we can continue the conversation.

This episode comes from Geoff's request to compare Solarpunk and Permaculture.

Suggested reading from this episode:

Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin's
Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk
The anthology: Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

This episode started with the question:

How do you approach working with clients and understanding their needs and goals?

Suggested reading from this episode:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

This episode is based on a question I received asking:

What is your design process? (site analysis, implementation, and how you approach a design)

Based on this, I walk through the three phases my design process has evolved through over time:

1. Collecting Everything
2. Refining Focus
3. Educating Clients

In this episode, I talk about something that we don’t address enough: the hard work of Permaculture is boring. It’s not heroic. It doesn’t make for a great YouTube short or video to add to your story. The pictures that come out of it are rarely art, or something you’d want to post to Instagram.

I hope this episode reminds you why we show up day after day, week after week, for the small, routine tasks of permaculture.

If you found this helpful, share it with a friend who might be struggling on their journey right now, so it can be a bit of encouragement to keep going, even when it’s tedious. 

Until the next time, spend each day showing up and putting in the work, as you care for Earth, yourself, and each other.