I have a small piece of land in central Portugal, we’ve been developing the land using permaculture principles slowly over the last two years. I have a bit of a mystery… every few months or so I discover a dead mole in our garden / veg patch area. When it was one or two I didn’t think too much about it, but now I’ve found around 4… all the same size, with no visible cause of death. Clearly we’re not using any pesticides or chemicals on our land so I can’t imagine they are being poisoned.. unless we’ve planted something that’s poisonous to them. Any hypothesis here would be helpful.. submitte ..read more

I went to the store and i found trees and bushes i wanted to plant for spring. I googled them: all asian invasives. I wanted to grow catalpa trees and found out i cant tell the difference between a northern and a chinese catalpa and i’m trying to remember if i specified when buying the seeds last year. I tried to find anyway to distinguish, but wtf. Why are asian catalpas even here?? They look just like the northern catalpa but are slightly yellower in flowers? MY childhood tree i grew up with was cut down and i stole all the saplings i could from my grandmas yard and planted them on my proje ..read more

submitted by /u/AgroecologicalSystem [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

The tree fell and uprooted half. Our arborists tried to "put it back" and this is the most they could get it back in the hole. So many bugs inside are so happy?! What would you do with this situation? Cover with compost? Inoculate with mushrooms? I'm a total newbie and want to support habitat but also not look like a construction zone. submitted by /u/No-Horror5353 [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

I'm a long time vegetable gardener, but up to this point, I mulched with wheat straw and amended the beds with compost that I purchased and put wood chips between the rows. (I'm working on starting to make my own compost). I am just reading more about permaculture and am totally new to this. But it is occurring to me that I could have been making my own mulch THE WHOLE TIME. But, with gardening, as soon as timing comes into the picture, my brain has a hard time understanding things. I can do timing with starting seeds and getting vegetables in the ground at the right times. But with cover cro ..read more

submitted by /u/tyrophagia [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

I’ve been composting for a couple of years now thanks to William and Billy at PermaPastures farm videos. Added chickens this year and they are enjoying the rich biodiversity of the compost pile. I’ve added multi species grasses to my yard and directed patio runoff to my pollinator garden. I’ve got 20 Comfrey plants producing flowers this year and the chickens seem to love it. I’m trying to set up my “zones” where the work flows easy. I Know it’s just a 1/16 acre but it’s what I have to work with. I have two pear trees but they don’t produce any fruit so long term I would want to change that ..read more

I am working to turn my 3 acre home into mostly native habitat for wildlife with some food forest elements. On the north side of the property is a long sloped street that collects water from a bunch of cul de sac driveways, and it all currently flows downhill to a ditch that runs along the west side of my land. In clearing the land at the south end I realized that there are two drains on the street that are plugged / blocked. If I unblocked them, much of the water that currently goes all the way downhill to the ditch would instead flood into a lowland area at the NE corner on my property. Thi ..read more

Hi all. Wondering if anyone can clarify this for me? When discussing natives with experienced permaculture people I often get a bit of a scoff as if it’s not really a consideration worth bothering with. For example: do we need to worry about planting trees that are not native and might spread? do we add native grasses and flowers instead of more commonly used pollinator attracting plants? Hoping this isn’t too beginner for everyone. Thanks! submitted by /u/Mountaintop_Worry [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

submitted by /u/Houndguy [visit reddit] [comments ..read more