Letters to you

1.0  Description of Site

This report provides a design for a site which is an 1/8^th acre, suburban corner lot. This site is officially located in climate Zone 6, but in recent years, the area has warmed due to urban proximity, and has become closer to Zone 7.  The lot is adjacent to a small strip of green space across the street, where a small creek flows. 

The original soil types are primarily Glenelg Urban and some Baile Silt Loam from the creek. The slopes in the area are between 0% and small areas of 12%.  It is effectively a flat area with very slight slopes, bordered on several sides with a very sharp (but short, less that a foot) rise. This lot is the lowest point where the runoff from three city blocks converge at a T intersection.  There is a storm drain on the site.  The yard is very shady and is a small woodland retreat in the middle of the city.

2.0  Client Summary (Needs, Wants, Abilities and Skills)

The “Clients” for this design were ourselves. Both of us live at the site.

2.1  Needs

Our basic needs are for good quality air, water, food (for people and animals), clothing, light, shelter, other people (in moderation), warmth, and fuel.

2.2  Wants

Above all, we wish to have a beautiful sanctuary that feels safe and whose elements are balanced – not too much wetness or dryness, cool breezes, and privacy from the street. We live on a corner lot, so privacy is a consideration. The overall look and scent should be that of a woodland. We also wish to have adequate yard storage (a very small 4 x 6 shed should be adequate). This would be used to store the gardening tools and equipment. The shed should blend in well with the environment, and be constructed attractively and built with raised foundations that would allow it to last in a moist area. Other wants include being cool in the summertime, transportation and the fuel required for same, social life and interaction with other people, access to educational facilities and the ability to teach others as skills increase, an energy-efficient living space with redundant backup systems for water, food, and energy, adherence as much as possible to principles of Feng Shui and Permaculture, a garden that is both attractive and productive, and eventually, perhaps a large area of land that includes Zones 3, 4, and 5.

Also desired (derived from Client Interview ):

• Increased ability to sustain ourselves in the event that support systems fail (as they did in New Orleans).
• Optimum utilization of the land around 13200 Midway Ave. to produce food through use of tesselation and annidation. Use of guilds to increase yields.
• Rainwater recycling
• Greywater recycling
• Backup energy sources (hydroelectric, biogas, solar)
• Replenishment of the soil, nitrogen fixing
• Indoor composting (worm bin).
• Bee hives

2.3  Abilities/Skills
Abilities and skills include networking and outreach, gardening, computers, teaching, caring for children, communication, people,  inter-networking between people, editing, writing, gardening, synthesis, mediation, accommodation, sheltering, and animal care.

3.0  Baseline (Where we Are Now) and Where we Want to Be

3.1  Where we are now

Currently we are involved in retrofitting our home and garden to be as sustainable as possible, building up our knowledge base about permaculture, and introducing a number of edible plants into our yard's ecosystem.  We spent two years building up the existing topsoil layer with sheet-mulching, wood mulch, leaves, yard clippings, straw, compost, manure, and mycelium. Also added to the mix is used potting soil from container gardening. The result is that there are now areas of the yard that are very soil-rich and fertile, and the plants that are planted in those areas do very well, especially the areas that are myceliated. Using mulch, we created pathways with multiple keyhole garden areas along the edges. We researched the under-story that will live well with mulberry, maple, black walnut, white pine, and spruce, which are prevalent trees in the upper story of the yard. We attempted as much as possible to introduce plants with multiple functions so we could fulfill the Permaculture principle of Stacking Functions.

Existing Upper Story

The following trees are prevalent in our yard:  Maple, Black Walnut, White Pine, Mulberry, and spruce. 

Conservation (Energy): We took preliminary steps to insulate our home home to conserve energy, and to recycle our output so it can be reused by the systems within our environment. More needs to be done with insulation and weatherstripping to patch energy leaks in the house, but at the same time allow the house to breathe. We have also been changing some of the light fixtures to compact fluorescent and putting computers on surge-protectors that can be turned off to get rid of ghost loads.

Conservation (Water): To conserve water, we take showers instead of baths, and have attached water-conserving filtered shower heads to the showers. We recycle greywater by placing a bucket beneath each shower, catching shower water, and transporting it to the garden. However, the yard has more of a problem with being too wet rather than too dry, so the challenge is one of water conservation and storage of excess greywater and runoff until it is needed, rather than one of simple redirection.

 

Education: To further educate ourselves concerning Permaculture and sustainability, we are now completing a Permaculture Design Apprenticeship Certification course. This course will assist us with becoming more sustainable and allow us to assist others in this regard.

 
These activities have all been centered around restructuring our lives according to the ethics of Permaculture, which are Care of the Earth, Care of the People, and Sharing the Surplus. Study emphasis has been on sustainable building (cob, cordwood, etc.), and homesteading.

Care of the earth has involved trying to rebuild and replenish the damaged soil as much as possible using composted kitchen scraps, free mulch from the city dump,re-application of used potting soil, and mycelium. It has also involved working within the guilds of the trees that currently exist in the yard rather than removing things to force our way upon the yard. Finally, we are attempting to learn to work with the patterns of the land, while planting a diversity of plants throughout the yard, so that the yard maintains a natural, forest like appearance. This maintains the alive feeling of the yard, which is quite different from the uniform, orderly, and largely dead systems of conventional yards. Care of the earth has also involved seeking out local sources of food, to avoid the heavy footprint required by long-distance food transport.

Care of the people has involved attempting to increase our ability meet our needs for food, shelter, water, and energy using resources that are readily available from the land itself or are easily obtainable from the extended local environment. Using our stated 'wants' as guidelines, we're also attempting to maintain a good quality of life while staying within the confines of the Permaculture ethics. Because our garden is not at the point yet where it is producing a great deal, and there are livestock restrictions in Rockville, care of the people has also involved trying to find good local sources of organic produce, and raw dairy products and grass-fed meats, thereby avoiding the health problems associated with nutrient-weak, chemically contaminated dairy and meat products.

Sharing the surplus is occurring now, even though the design is not fully implemented. We obtain dairy products from local Weston Price Foundation affiliates, and we share any excess we have in the form of yogurt, Kefir, and cheese that we make ourselves using lactofermentation. We also ferment any fruits that our mulberry trees yield, and share the resulting meads. Finally, any excess fresh milk or produce that we have is shared with friends in exchange for dairy product delivery. (Our friends who are not currently employed pick up our dairy products and deliver them to us. We pay them and give them milk and produce, Kefir, cheese, yogurt, etc.) Surplus is also being shared in the form of information. Geoffrey is always looking for new and better opportunities to present workshops and facilitate discussion groups on what we've learned thus far about Permaculture and sustainable life cycles.

The approximate cost for all of the above activities was approximately $1000.00, including the Permaculture Design course and all the plants that were purchased throughout the past two years.

3.2  Where we want to be

We would like to plant a variety of guilds that would work well with the existing trees:

Maple: White dutch clover is a nitrogen fixer, green manure, and bee attractant does well with maple. Daylilies are biomass plants which are also edible. Russian comfrey is another nitrogen fixer that does well with maple, and has medicinal qualities. For edibles, there are wineberries. Hazelnut also does well with maple and provides wildlife habitat and will be used for privacy at the outer fence. This will also serve as food for wildlife. Goumi has edible fruit, is a nitrogen fixer, does well in the shade, and does well under maple. Goumi is in the same family as the autumn olive (readily available from Geoffrey's parents' land). Wild ginger is native to this area and grows very well in the wet shade with maple. Black cherry trees saplings are growing in abundance under our existing maple trees, so I conclude from this that black cherry is also a maple understory tree. It grows to 100 feet tall, however, so it will not always be an understory tree. I was unable to find what its own understory is. It has medicinal properties and is used to treat digestive disorders and sore throat. The fruit was used by the original inhabitants of this land to make pemican. Hickory also has been making inroads into the ecology, as have oak saplings.

Mulberry: Associated edible understory species includes hawthorn (Crataegus spp.), Herbaceous vegetation associated with red mulberry includes nettles, which is very good for medicinal tea (Urtica dioica). In the southern part of the range, red mulberry is often found in pastures and along borders of fields. Greenbriar also does well with mulberry. The leaves may be eaten in midspring when their leaves are tender.

Black Walnut: Unfortunately, this tree kills off a lot of other plants within 50 feet of its dripline due to chemicals that it produces called “jugelones”. We have several black walnut saplings in the south yard edge, and three mature trees on the north edge. This may be the reason it is difficult to introduce new plant species into the yard. However, the following plants do well with black walnut, and so should be considered for the back yard where there are three maturing walnut tree that is currently producing nuts: Sweet Woodruff, Jerusalem Artichoke, Daylilly, and Solomon's Seal. Fruit trees that will grow near black walnut include peach, nectarine, and plum. Annuals include squash, melons, beans, carrots and corn. Unexpectedly, a Rhubarb plant is doing relatively well near one of the saplings.

Pine and Spruce (Evergreens): Edible Morel , Maitake, Chicken of the Woods, and Chanterelle, Oyster, and Giant Puffball mushrooms purportedly grow well under white pine. We have never observed this to occur in our yard, however. Perhaps these mushrooms (being saprophytes) require *dead* pine. It should be noted that a number of poisonous mushrooms also grow near pine, so it is not recommended to eat any of the edible ones unless they are positively identified by an expert. Blueberry bushes also do well with the acidic soil around pine and spruce (at least the ones we planted are doing well).

Primarily, we wish to make room for edible plants while not harming existing plants.  We decided that existing plants had precedence over our designs. Oddly, several very large boxwoods mysteriously died just as we were beginning our design. This provided the opportunity for us to trim back the dead foliage and allow much more sunlight into the yard than was previously entering. We also trimmed a row of spindly privet hedge to encourage it to leaf out, and also to allow more sunlight into the yard. To replace the dead plants we are currently researching attractive, edible understory guilds for our existing trees. We have already planted many types of food-bearing understory plants that are shade-tolerant as well as compatible with the guilds described above. In other parts of the yard, we have also put strawberries, blueberries, black currant, and a variety of vegetables and herbs. Our main focus currently is experimentation and testing to see what will work with the ecosystem that has developed over the past 20 years, and the way that system has reacted to soil enhancement, mulching, etc.

We would like to take steps to introduce into this design as many as possible of the seven principles of Permaculture .

Repeating Functions: We are beginning by researching the installation of redundant systems that provide backup in case one or more of our life support systems become unavailable. Examples:

1. Wood heating backup: We are researching a small backup source of heating, such as a miniature wood stove. This can also be used to heat water and to cook. Our house also has a built in fireplace, which although not an efficient source of heating, is certainly better than nothing. The problem with wood as a fuel source in the city is that it is not abundant, but the number of people who would use it in an emergency, are abundant. Geoffrey is trying to figure out if a modified “rocket stove” might work in the space we have available.

2. Electricity backup: We are looking into various backups for electricity, for example, a small solar generator or PV panels for running appliances. We live across the street from a creek, which lends itself to the possibility of a very small (to scale) hydroelectric generator. The drawback is that a power cord would have to be extended from across the street, and the creek is not on our property leaving the generator vulnerable to theft. In an emergency, however, measures could be taken to use it when someone could supervise it if a portable one could be found. Any kind of generator will be relatively expensive, and will be considered an option rather than a main portion of this design.

3. Water heating backup: We are researching reliable, inexpensive ways to construct a passive solar water heater. See Appendix B (Resources) for references on constructing a simple passive solar water heater.

4. Water backup: For water backup, we plan to add rain catchment barrels to the downspouts, and to redirect greywater to the extent that this would be possible in an urban setting. We wish to construct a filtration pond in the back yard to catch the neighbor's runoff and some greywater. The pond will be planted with duckweed to prevent mosquitoes, and will be populated with mosquito fish. We determined that the slope from our neighbor's yard to ours is approximately 12% toward our yard, so water will naturally flow toward the pond location where we can collect it. The water may be kept in motion by means of a solar pond filtering system (see http://www.pondusa.com/pumpssol.htm). We also wish to learn how to construct a filter from scratch out of sand, gravel, and a container, in case carbon filters become unavailable. We are also planning to obtain a non-electric distiller to provide an alternative way to create potable drinking water.

5. Fuel backup: We are researching the possibility of alternate fuel sources, such as methane digestion. So far, the ones available online have been way outside our required scale limitations. We are attempting to educate ourselves to build one ourselves which will be small enough for our scale requirements.

Stacking Functions: This design incorporates the Permaculture Principle of Stacking Functions to try to derive the greatest benefit from a limited amount of space accommodating a limited number of elements. Examples:

1. Multi-Purpose Plants: Guilds with plant species that perform multiple functions in the garden will ensure optimal use of the available space (see the guild descriptions in Section 2.2.1).

2. Trellising for Annidation and also for shade and cooling: Trellises placed on the west (sunny) side of the house will provide something for tomatoes, maypop, and kiwi to climb on, and will also provide some shade on the hot side of the house during the summertime when the plants have leaves. In winter when heat is desirable, the trellises will no longer block out the winter sun. Trellising along the fence lines will provide both privacy and vertical growth area for edible vines such as grape or maypop.

3. Edible hedge: Hawthorn hedging will provide both privacy and protection (it has thorns), and will also bear fruit that is edible by birds and rodents. The hope is that it will protect the garden fruits and vegetables from birds and rodents by offering alternate habitat and food.

4. Roof as rainwater collector: Rain barrels on the downspouts will allow the roof to be used as a water collector in addition to its obvious purpose of shelter..

5. Wall as passive solar microclimate generator: The wall on the Southwest side of the house receives ample sun. The fact that the wall is white and facing another white wall amplifies this effect, and creates an artificial “south side” microclimate on the west side. This is the side where the trellising provides shade in the summer. The wall is also shelter and protection from the outdoors.

Reciprocity: This design incorporates the Permaculture principle of Reciprocity, which ensures that one portion of the system feeds another portion of the system and vice versa. Examples of reciprocal elements in this design include:

1. Composting: Output from the kitchen (scraps, etc.) feeds the compost piles. The compost piles, in turn, feed the gardens. The Garden products are then used in the kitchen to feed the people.

2. People take showers. Greywater from the showers feeds the garden bed. The gardens feed the people.

Conservation: The ultimate goal of this design is to reduce consumption by a substantial amount by using only what is needed and by eliminating the concept of waste. Examples include:

1. Extending composting to humanure – this may be done by means of home-made composting toilets such as those found on http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/, or by means of commercially sold composting toilets. This design favors the home-made toilets, which can be constructed by us, and which do not require electricity or special chemicals. They do require specific cover materials like sawdust to prevent odors, however.

1. Finding good outlets for recycling – The city's recycling program is a bit iffy – we have no idea where the plastic and metal are going or if the people recycling are engaged in sustainable practices. This design involves locating outlets for recycling metal, glass, and plastic that actually do what they say they are doing and which are local to the area. Items that we no longer use but which may be useful to someone else may be recycled by giving them away or donating them to a thrift store.

2. Ensuring that the house is properly insulated everywhere, and that energy leaks have been plugged.

3. Reducing power consumption – turning off lights, appliances, computers, and power strips when they are not in use. Turning off the central air and heat in the spring and fall, and dressing appropriately for any temperature extremes during that time.

Appropriate scale – This design is meant for a 1/8 acre plot in the city. The garden plots are sized to require no more than 2-3 hours per day, to accommodate the fact that both clients have other commitments. Funding needs to stay within current household income, because they do not wish to acquire any debts to implement the design. Therefore the design encourages do-it-yourself construction of elements as much as possible, and the more expensive elements, such as backup generators and solar panels, are listed as options rather than as part of the main design.

Diversity: The design incorporates many different plant species and avoids monocropping any of the garden areas. For example, one bed currently contains cabbage, cauliflower, wonderberry, nasturtium, and garden oyster mushroom mycelium (they're doing very well, too – they seem to be insect resistant). All beds are planted with a variety of plants in this manner. We are hoping that the combination of diversity and mycorhizal fungi will strengthen the plants and make them naturally resistant to being eaten by insects. Container gardening on the Western side adds to the sorts of species that can be grown.

Give Away Surplus: Hopefully if we get a big enough yield, we shall share with one and all. Until then, we'll share workshops, presentations, talks, books, and general knowledge...

 

4.0  Resource Assessment

The following resources are available to us right now without going out and purchasing anything:

 

• Water comes into the system abundantly
• Free Labor (us)
• Shade (cooling)
• Plant trading with local friends
• Compost
• Used snake bedding
• Junk mail (excellent source of bedding for small animals)
• Free mulch from the Gaithersburg Transfer Station
• Some sunlight on the roof
• A lot of dead wood all over the yard and the small park across the street
• Piles of yard waste that people discard that are available to whoever wants them.
• Cat hair, cat waste, humanure, nail clippings, shed skin
• Greywater

The following are resources that we can bring in if necessary at the present time:

 

• Raw dairy products from local raw milk distributors
• Organic foods from the local farmer's markets and organic markets
• Money from our jobs, other non-sustainable resources such as gasoline, natural gas, electricity.
• Internet connectivity and phones for communication and outreach