We’ve been planting trees in the field around our workshop. Four moringa (moringa arborea) and a mango tree. Moringa is a special tree and deserves it’s own separate blog post (when I get round to it). To save us having to water the plants each day, my colleague Caleb suggested we use glass bottles to do it for us.

After digging a small hole next to the plant, you fill it with water. Ensure the glass bottle, is fully filled with water, then tip it upside down and press it into the hole, pointing towards the plant. Water will be absorbed from the bottle as the soil and roots need it, so you only have to visit your plants every few days. It’s basically a low-tech drip irrigation. We are hoping the moringa trees will shoot up fast now. Apparently they can reach a height of 3 meters in a year.

Geoff Lawton is a permaculture dude of which we need more of in the world. We watched the first part of this video during the permaculture course - it shows how we can even transform deserts into green productive spaces. Very inspiring.

The spirit that moves through all things

Slow it. Spread it. Sink it… is the recurring principle for water management on land. So down the slope of a hill, you can apply this using dams, swales, plants, aquaculture, rainwater harvesting, shallow wells, mulching, animals drinking water, greywater systems and the soil itself, which when healthy is excellent at water retention.

During class, we took a virtual tour of some real life examples of urban water management. For example, in Los Angeles there is a government policy where new builds have to have zero rainwater run off. BedZED in South London is another example, where the permeable street scape ensures water can drain into the natural water table or be shepherded into wildlife ditches. Green roofs also help sponge up rainfall while creating extra habitats for wildlife, and another insulating layer for the building.

Swales

A few days ago I didn’t really know what a swale was, now I’m in love with them. They are basically ditches that capture water. They are dug on contour so that water can evenly soak and spread into the soil without causing any erosion channels. Swales were talked about throughout the permaculture course as a key growing strategy, particularly in arid lands where water is particularly scarce. We also covered gabions, a type of wall which controls water flows to slow erosion patterns. 

Swale profile by Reny Mia Slay, Introduction to Permaculture

Dirt! The Movie

In the evening, I watched the film Dirt. One of the things that moved me from the film was the plight of farmers in India. Under considerable stress, 200,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1997. One of the underlying causes is the rapid shift to heavy pesticide, coupled with rapid technological advances. With no guidance or support for dealing with these changes, farmers were poisoning their lands using chemicals that they were unable to afford.

Whilst cooking dinner that night, there was a partial eclipse of the moon. It was pretty special, although we didn’t fully realise that it was an eclipse until after it happened. With my new permaculture buddies, we chatted around the fire, feeling optimistic and excited about applying some of new knowledge from the day.

Permaculture: Methods of Design

“Permaculture emphasises the pattern of landscape, function and species assembly”.

We are getting into the meat of permaculture now. The theme of the day is Methods of Design. Here’s a summary of the process.

1) MAPPING

When getting down to a design, the first step is Mapping, taking into account the landscape topography, the hardscape, soil data, plant data, orientations, patterns of slope and so on. We did some practice of this using an A-frame. Another low-budget technique I’ve come across for surveying sites is a plane table. A GPS device also comes in handy here, but isn’t so good getting a detailed map of elevation.

2) ELEMENT ANALYSIS

In permaculture, you consider the elements in your system. An element might be a pig, a water tank, a house, the soil - most “things” are “elements”. With each element, you want to ask the questions: where does each element go? And what is the maximum benefit I can get from each element?

It’s best illustrated with examples. Let’s take cow manure, an excellent fertilizer that is often spread on fields to help crops grow. Firstly, cow manure can provide several more functions than working as a fertiliser. For example, it can be fed into a biogas digester, a vermiculture or aquaculture system. By doing this in the right order, the residency time of its usage is increased, and you soak the full potential out of the cow manure. This is the application of one of permaculture’s core principles: that each element must perform several functions.

Another good example is a water tank. Not only can it store water, it can also: serve as a structure for growing creepers up the side, provide shade, harvest extra water on the top, a thermal energy storage, a structural support for other elements and so on. 

The other side to element analysis is the principle that each function must be supported by many elements. So a required function such as shade could also be provided by elements such as fences, trellises, the house itself, and trees.

3) ZONE ANALYSIS

Zonation is about where the different elements in your system sit so that you have an energy efficient design. You consider issues such as the number of times you have to visit an element each day and the importance and priority of it. For example, when keeping chickens, you may have to visit them twice daily - so having the chickens 10 meters closer to your home can save you over 14km of walking each year. But of course, you don’t want your chickens to close to home, as they may smell or disturb your morning sleep!

Zones don’t have to be concentric and of specific sizes, they will depend on the shape of the landscape, the climates and the needs of the system. Here’s a diagram showing the different things you might find in each zone:

4) SECTOR ANALYSIS

This is about designing to optimise, work with, and benefit from the the external energies in the design. For example, the sun, wind, pollution, sound, flooding and dust. 

5) SLOPE ANALYSIS

Slopes are much more complicated than they first appear. Other than just the shape, you plan around nutrient flows, temperature gradients, thermal bands, the keypoint, different soil stratas and shading, to name just a few. This is essential for designing and particularly capturing water and preventing soil erosion. 

Photos from the rocket stove training session at Nyumbani Village (as part of the permaculture I’m blogging about over the next couple weeks). For a guide on how to make a rocket stove, check out our manual.