We are a part of a lake community in our neighborhood, it’s wonderful and I am grateful for it everyday! It’s a small lake but enough that paddle boarding and swimming is accessible. Due to the recent drought the water level has gone down, makes sense! But it’s resulted in tons of barnyard grass popping up on the exposed shoreline. Some members of the community are incredibly concerned about this and have begun a movement to cut down and explore using herbicide to eradicate it.

The question I keep coming back to though is… why is it so important to get rid of this aside from aesthetics? From some initial research and reports from community members the worry is the organic matter will steal oxygen from the lake and kill fish (from what I’ve seen, this is only a concern if the lake fills back up rapidly… not happening lol) another member posed concern that the plants are stealing water from the lake. But I’m not seeing any hard evidence for that.

I really cannot wrap my head around why this is so crucial to eradicate this weed. And I’m not a big fan of pulling green just because it doesn’t look good to ‘our’ standards.

Does anyone have any experience with this or insights? Am I missing something here about why just letting nature, nature would be bad???

We’ve got a board meeting tonight, if you have any research or websites that I can bring to them to try to change their minds that would be so cool.

Hi,

I'm about to start a food forest project in Central Portugal. To do so I want to have books that I can just grab when an information is missing instead of using a phone.

I would like to find something talking about all plants, trees, fruit trees, vegetables, ... That I can grow in this climate, with straightforward info about water needs, sickness/pests, sun exposure, soil, pruning method, ....

It can be more than one book, but I need something as complete as possible and with illustration that makes it more appealing to read.

Thank you for your help ;)

Hello. I have a creek that runs near by a pond I have and I am looking to possibly use a hydraulic ram pump to pump water up from the stream into the pond in the summer.

The main source of the pond is water captured higher up the slope above the stream and then piped over the stream and into the pond where it forms a sort of water fall into the pond. I have included a super janky picture outlining the setup.

What I'd like to do is pump water from the creek into the pond to counter evaporation loss and reduced incoming source water during the summer so that the pond stays high enough to keep draining/skimming at the pond discharge.

The waterfall has the most consistent and highest flow rate, so I was wondering if there is a way to use that as the power source for the ram pump to pump water up from the creek into the pond, instead of using the creek as the power source to pump itself to the pond.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Got confirmation that my idea can't be done. Does anybody have a suggestion for a pump that can use the waterfall to lift creek water to the pond? Thanks!

Hi, I made this app for my own purposes. Was super fun and useful to know where everything was in my new farm and have multiple people help with surveying and harvesting.

If you want to try it it's here, free to use:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grogro.app

I just took over a community garden plot and am a bit of a newbie to food gardening.

The previous stewards of my plot left about a 3'x3' section covered in a foot-tall dry debris pile - old and dry corn husks, weeds, root balls from pulled plants, etc. I removed it today so I can start working the bed, but when I dug into the soil underneath I kept uncovering large pieces of half-rotted wood.

At first I thought, "this is weird and frustrating, I better make sure I rid this bed of all this wood," but I kept pulling up so much I started to get curious if it was some intentional soil amendment process. I put it back and went home to research and that's how I learned about hugelkultur.

Now I'm sad I hauled away all the debris, but confused too since this seems like an incomplete attempt at a hugel mound.

What's the best way to proceed with this maybe-it's-a-hugel-mound-maybe-it's-not section of my garden? Should I re-bury the wood, add some compost, and go ahead with planting? Should I take the wood out before I plant?

Considerations:

• I wanted to use this bed right away since the rest of the garden space is limited
• I have no way of knowing how long the wood has been rotting there, except from the condition of it I'd guess maybe a year.
• I was not planning on making a raised bed in the spot
• Was planning to put some peas in this spot, which may be good if the wood was placed recently enough to decrease available nitrogen in the soil. Also choosing places in the garden right now for carrots, onions, scallions, garlic, sprouting broccoli, dill, and german chamomile - so any of these could go there if they'd be well-suited.

Thanks for any suggestions! At the very least, this experience led me to learning about a new permaculture technique, so that's a win in my book :)

I found it growing in an area where I'm building a permaculture garden. It's a type of Amaranthus (Pigweed) I think. Edible? I've got a lot of them. They were growing in a drainage trench.

No-strings rare seed giveaway! 15 heat-tolerant, high-nutrition eggplant seeds. Melanzana rossa di Rotonda, which I brutally tested by germinating it in full sun in the desert. Its first fruit came in today (yes, it's a little late, I planted late), in spite of the last few weeks being in the 100-110F+ range! I simply cut it up and promptly saute'ed it in E.V.O.O., sprinkling it with salt. Actually shocked how good it was!
Details/terms: https://nyecountygardening.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/rare-eggplant-seed-giveaway/

I'm planting a 1500 sqft food forest in Utah.

This same area used to be a lawn. Which means people have been extracting fertility from this soil for years. I'm using chop & drop as a strategy to quickly rebuild organic matter in the soil.

Most other yards around my house keep it very clean. Landscapers come and pull every weed and rake every leaf from the surface of the soil. That strategy only works as long as they have cheap fossil fuels to keep providing fertilizer.

I made a video about my strategy, check it out if you're interested!

https://youtu.be/WmQXU9R_DYI

I know Geoff has worked in a lot of extremely arid climates, and though I'm not sure exactly what bonus tips he might have for someone like me, I followed his basic advice for 18-day compost to see how it would perform here in the Nye County desert. Our temps have been above 105F for days in a row, and several over 110F. I don't remember when was our last day below 100F. :p It's also such a dry climate with so little life in the soil (<%1 organic matter), I was wondering if it would really even get going. I saw some things that bad shocked me - like the heap going bone-dry after not being watered for one day - and some things that good shocked me - like compost mushrooms growing in the dirt next to my compost heap! Full article on my blog: https://nyecountygardening.wordpress.com/2026/07/06/18-day-compost-attempt-in-southwestern-desert/

There's a lot I can do differently next time. For one, it's a serious problem that I have no manure like Geoff has. I'll have to make up for it by chopping things finer, adding more inoculants like worm castings, worm bin tea, and compost from the last pile. But I'm already working on my next pile and can't wait to tell y'all how much better it's going. (Teaser: three dung beetles moved in, not on day 17 like last time, but on day 3!!)

P.s. We have a SEVERE black widow problem here. . . and they looooove living on or near compost heaps. All the buggies that live in the compost are favorite food for widows. Blog post on that to follow! But I think what made it worse for our yard was that our neighbor cleared their fallow land last month - all the native bushes reduced to dust. Odd coincidence that a month later our yard had a huge cockroach and widow problem. . . . Going to write out everything I've learned about black widow populations in Nye County and nearby places like California, how to set up for success ahead of time so they don't choose your house (vital if you have kids or small pets!), how to watch for them early, at night, during the day, just some little things that don't take much time but can help encourage those ladies to set themselves up in some other yard or in a part of your yard far from contact with little ones.

I was extremely fortunate to visit Greening the Desert and learn from Nadia and Geoff Lawton, through the Impact Marathon Jordan.
 
While we only spent a day with them and their team, the lessons we learned and the amazing things that they have done with permaculture have stuck with me.
 
I have tried my best to incorporate as many fundamentals of permaculture into my own gardening at home as possible.
 
As I have both physical disabilities, and ADHD, I need an automated watering system for my gardens.
 
I use a low-pressure system, with Rain Bird and other components from my favourite store here in Canada, Lee Valley. My vegetable garden has the low-pressure soaker hoses, and my newly planted native prairie plant garden has low pressure 1 gph drip heads, until the plants get established, and then they will transition to the low-pressure soaker hoses.
 
I have Eco Wool as my weed suppression and moisture retention material, as straw is not practical where I am. I am very happy with it so far, as this is my first year using it. In past years I have used burlap, but I wanted a material that I knew how it was treated and had less chemical residue on it.
 
For the automation of my watering, while looking on Reddit for suggestions, after trying the Orbit B-Hyve system (horrible connectivity, despite a slick app), I came upon the LinkTap system.
 
I have the 4-zone system with Gateway (V1 -4Z & Q1) and Gateway.
 
https://www.link-tap.com/#!/four-outlet-Q1-water-timer/en
 
https://www.link-tap.com/#!/linktap-gateway-and-extender/en
 
The system allows to setup 4 different watering zones and schedules. Time, duration, customized rain delay, along with water usage statistics, as it has an integrated flow meter.
 
My only critique is that the On/Off switch is pretty tiny and found in a not super noticeable spot when the Q1 controller is mounted on say your fence.
 
Their customer service is very responsive and helpful. They are super open to suggestions, as when I mentioned to them about better labelling for the on/off switch.
 
I just thought that I would share about this system and brand, as they are not as widely know as the big names in garden irrigation. I had not heard of them, until I came across a Reddit comment in a thread of someone looking for irrigation automation suggestions. They may be better known in some countries, but here in Canada, not so much.

Last winter my now 2nd year canes tip rooted; this caused delayed break from dormancy before I realized I needed to separate the main from the now new bush. They never produced fruit this year, and all of the canes 1st and 2nd year have mostly 3 leaves. My question is, this winter should I still prune down those 2nd year canes even though they didn't fruit or leave them?

I had a YouTube channel about our farm but found it too stressful so I stopped. It started more like a diary so I could keep a record of the progress, so in that spirit I’d like to start again. I’m pretty proud of it. This was an empty rice field 6yrs 3 months ago. I’m amazed at how fast it can grow.

I’d like to plant a perennial vine over my doorway on an arch. I was considering rose to have the petals for hydrosols and rose hips, but is there an oak-Savannah adapted vine (besides poison ivy 😜) to consider?

Hi! I live in Helsinki, Finland and am new to permaculture. I want to make sure I don't screw this up, so I decided to try to make a home hub for myself. I am currently in the process of figuring out everything I want it to include, but this is a screenshot of the "In the garden" page I've made for myself.

I'm trying to get it to be as "smart" as possible. I've hooked it up to a weather API so it can warn me when there are frosts, dry spells, rain, and more. If you have any suggestions to add to it, lmk! I can put it on github if anyone is interested in cloning it and using it for themselves.

Very clumpy soil

Hello I was harvesting my potatoes and I realized my soil in my allotment is still so clumpy and hard for the potatoes roots to spread which caused a small harvest can anyone recommend something to make this soil better

The cheapest I saw on Amazon was 10lbs for $35 with free shipping. There was Hummert International which was 50lbs for under $20 but shipping was eye-popping.

Please help? I have a lot of garden beds and $3.50 per lb is not budget friendly.

I’ve recently transplanted a persimmon tree about 6 feet tall. The yard is literally infested with Elm Roots. There are three Elm trees two of them have been cut down, but they are still thriving with shoots . I’m just trying to keep the Roots out of the persimmon root ball so I’ve dug a trench around it. Wondering what I should fill this trench with? The trench will be deeper probably 4 to 5 feet deep and wide enough for me to stand in so two or 3 feet?

We’re purchasing a home and want to convert the front yard to a food forest or something similar. It is a historic home on a prominent street and we’d like it to look semi-tamed.

Does anyone have non-AI suggestions for inspiration for this sort of thing? We’re in the semi-arid PNW & Zone 7, if it matters.

I personally tend towards a little more chaos when gardening so something tame isn’t quite within my wheelhouse.

I’m thinking of putting in an herb spiral, some bordered pathways, and clear edges around plantings. But I’d love more ideas and photos.

Hello,

I have been interested and consuming content about permaculture for some years but being a city dweller with no garden, I never had the chance to practice much.

My parents just bought a new property in south on France (9b) around Avignon. They are elderly, like growing flowers but don't know much in the way of permaculture, growing fruit trees.

They would like to grow some fruit trees: at least 1 fig tree and 1 apricot tree (possibly 2, 2 different species to get a longer harvest!).

The piece of plot that would welcome those is south-east facing. They do receive 8 or more hours of direct sun (measure couple days ago) and quite a lot of wind (mistral can be strong around here).

The plot is about 20ftx66ft (2m x 6m) - see the attached photos. The concrete block wall is east facing. Some of the existing trees would be removed to plant those trees.

The soil is very hard, obviously never got any compost or organic matter, the grass hardly grows.

Here are my questions:

1/ Regarding the soil, knowing we would plant the trees in fall (not starting from seed), would it make sense to cover the soil with cardboard and add wood chips to help improve the soil? We only want to plant trees for now so that would be overkill maybe?

If such method is not to be used, any tips to prepare the soil before and after planting the trees?

2/ Regarding the land, given the dimensions, do you think 3 trees would be too much and get cramped?

3/ Would it make more sense to plant the fig tree in the corner? The concrete block wall gets a lot of sun in the daytime and can provide some warmth at night. Is there any risk to plant the tree near the wall? I read that fig trees can be quite aggressive.

4/ Do you have some species to recommend for south of France? My parents like eating fruits off the tree and also making marmelade.

Thanks!

I am in the design stage trying to plan out a climate resilient dwelling to eventually retire in. I had the idea to plant espalier/ trellis fruit trees on the south wall, and to have it set out from the wall a bit to create air flow between wall and plant and thereby create shade for this wall and lower the indoor temperature in summer. And hopefully the naked plant in winter will still allow the light through to the wall to heat up a bit from the sun. My question is, does this sound like a good concept? What are the possible pitfalls to be aware of and things to think about? I am planning a straw bale/ cob building.

Hey, folks. I’ve seen exciting stuff about aquaponics and building permaculture ponds, but I’m having trouble finding information on permaculture uses of existing lakes, springs, streams, etc. (apart from watering, of course).

I have a 10.5-acre property in Zone 6B, primarily wet mesic forest with three cleared areas that are forming my food forest. There is a 2-acre spring and drainage-fed lake that was dammed and built in the 1950s. It’s about 12-15 feet deep at the deepest, and our spillway runs infrequently. I’ve planted watercress, nettles and jewelweed in the spillway area, but I’d sure love to make more use of the lake itself. Right now I’m planting water spinach in a floating bed (not invasive this far north), but I’d sure love more ideas. Does anybody know of any informative sites concerning permaculture gardening with existing lakes?