Seeds As StoryTellers: Colonialism, Biodiversity, Queering Agriculture, & Human Genome

How to Start a Small Permaculture Nursery and Grow 1000s of Trees by Yourself

FULL article at "How to Start a Small Permaculture Nursery and Grow 1000s of Trees by Yourself" written by papprentice. May 10, 2015.

 

In summary, several actions must be taken and research required to start a small-scale permaculture nursery:

 

Fruit Trees are propagated by grafting or budding a desired variety onto a suitable rootstock. Trees can be also propagated from seed, but then it will not grow “true” to the variety of either parent from which it originated.

You can learn about propagation by reading books, watching videos, attending workshops and learning from skilled orchardists.

Start by analysing what grows in your area and understand your local biome, consult other growers to see what works locally.

Think about what you want from your trees and what your goals are – is it for juice, jam, cider or fresh fruit?

Buy pre-grafted trees to take cuttings from, or get scion wood from other people’s trees and by trading with others.

Grow your rootstock from seed or buy just one and clone it. If you have capital buy rootstock in bulk.

Set up a small home nursery or plant directly on site, you can start as small as you want and expand gradually.

Start seeds in buckets, seed pits, nursery boxes or nursery beds, and, if needed, graft on later.

Use nursery beds and a standard nursery setup to grow vast amounts of trees and transplant on-site later.

Living in the Garden of Eden





photo source



 

If you're following the blog, you may have noticed in my latest post on Guerrilla gardening and seed bombing, I have recently become interested in this idea of growing food everywhere, and to feed everyone in need.

The Garden of Eden is an expression from the Bible. Mentioned in conjunction to the Garden of Eden, is that the Lord blessed us with all the trees and plants we needed to thrive. Of course, I'm not a religious person, but I like to think of this as a concept to your own backyard.

I am here to say I think it is possible to create this kind of world-- living in the garden of Eden-- where the Earth is entirely covered with plants, natural architecture, and sustainable technologies.



Paul Gatushi, Back to Eden gardener

 Many couples and communities have already created this vision. Paul Gautschi, a permaculture gardener, does in fact believe in god's garden of Eden--which influenced his decision to move from California to Washington, to grow an orchard and food forest in his backyard. He has an influential documentary titled Back to Eden (video), where he advises gardeners to sheet mulch their yard with compost and wood chips. Paul says that god told him to grow food by building the soil like the forest floor. In past posts I have shown videos of Paul Gautschi and his garden--and I recommend listening to him because he has great advice: Back to Eden Garden Tour & Fruit Orchard using Permaculture.

Some internet friends have relocated to Costa Rica, Hawaii, and Florida to grow tropical fruit.  I have listed other homesteaders and gardeners in the links under "Sustainability & Gardening sites" (to the left of the page), like Terra frutis, Ardent Light, and Banana Sanctuary. Other internet friends have transformed their backyard into a food forest, for example my friend Victor, Carrie, Val & Eli, and John Kohler.



Val Hermann, Florida permaculture gardener

One could survive almost completely off food they grow on a 1/4 of an acre, even a 1/10 of an acre. Val Hermann, featured to the left, and her partner Eli are growing a condensed and thriving food forest on a 1/4 of an acre. I highly recommend videos of their garden, which I have posted here.

A big California suburban family is growing a food forest on a 1/10 of an acre of land. They are completely off the grid; and run their cars off of vegetable oil, eat only from their garden, and have solar panels. You can watch the video here for inspiration.

I'm not convinced there is an overpopulation problem where we cannot feed everyone. In fact few people of the world own and control the rest of the world's resources. Humans, specifically Americans, have single handedly deforested precious, sacred land for coal, gold and diamonds, palm oil, wood, plastic, oil, gas, factory farming, and the list goes on. Now animals and plants are endangered, threatening to be extinct. Water, soil, land and air is contaminated. With what little we have to share on this planet, you would think we would want to protect it, keep it clean, and cultivate more plants.

My partner and I are also working towards building a food forest. To do this, we build the soil like the forest floor. This process grows bigger, and more nutrient rich food that is resistant to diseases and pests. By mimicking the natural process of composting and sheet mulching, vegetables and fruit can be ethically grown, without killing animals, insects, microbes in the soil, without using unsustainable machines, petrol oil, and chemicals.

If the Earth's water covers 361,132,000 km2 and land covers the remaining 148,940,000 km2, water covers 71 percent and land covers 29 percent. With that 29 percent, people could be covering land with fruit trees, fruit bushes, flowers/herbs, and vegetable gardens to provide food for every person on this planet.

Lets make this happen, together~