Act fast, and you can get up to 30 free pawpaw seeds that have been pre-stratified and come with instructions for planting.  Just go to this link:

http://www.biodiverseed.com/post/110077470558/the-biodiverseed-paw-paw-project-free-seeds

From the BiodiverSeed page, “The Kentucky State University Paw Paw Program gives out free Paw Paw seeds, in batches of 10 or 30.  I am making another mass-request on February 20th. These seeds will be pre-stratified, accompanied with instructions, and ready for planting. If you have requested seeds and not received them yet, enter in this round of requests.”

Last Saturday was bitter cold, but for tree-lovers in Philly, it wasn’t cold enough to keep us indoors.  The Philly Orchard Project held a Fruit Tree Pruning workshop at Grumblethorpe in Germantown.  (Fun Fact: Grumblethorpe built as a summer residence in 1744 by Philadelphia merchant and wine importer John Wister.  The Wisteria Plant is named after John Wister.)

Grumblethorpe is a historic building with a large vegetable and herb garden, a fruit orchard, a chicken coop, and a greenhouse.  We started the day in a classroom learning some terminology and basic techniques.  Next we ventured out into the orchard where the instructors Phil and Kevin demonstrated how to prune a few trees.

There was an unexpected participant in the class!  This handsome cat hung out for most of the afternoon.

Grumblethrope has a Fruit Wall, which is a series of fruit trees planted next to a trellised wall.  The trees are pruned so that only the branches in the plane parallel to the wall are allowed to grow.  These branches are trained to grow along the trellis wires along the wall to create a wall of fruit in warmer months.  This type of technique is called espailier.

We also learned about pruning shrubs like blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry shrubs.  Each different type of plant has different pruning needs, so it was useful to get that variety in the class.

The end of the day was frigid cold, but it was a beautiful setting hidden in the city.  Thanks to Phil, Kevin, Grumblethorpe, and the Philly Orchard Project for the great class.  For info about future Philly Orchard Project events, check out their event page, or the Philly Permaculture calendar.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, there’s going to be a Permaculture Design Certification class happening at Heritage Farm in West Philadelphia.  There is a great team of teachers to facilitate the course, and enough students have already registered to activate the sliding scale pricing, where the price drops for each additional student to register.  If you don’t want to attend the full PDC, the first weekend session is available as a stand-alone Intro to Permaculture class.  Get more info here!

Email susq.pc@gmail.com to register.

This month we’ll be screening a feature on Backyard Permaculture design from the Australian television show, Gardening Australia. This should give you some ideas for planning your Spring garden projects. This should also be a good introduction to those who might be new to the ideas of permaculture design. Bring some food to share. Doors open at 6:45PM for food sharing. Movie starts at 7 with a short discussion to follow. This is a FREE event!

Learn about some interesting permaculture techniques, concepts, and design principles.

Facebook Event

The second Permaculture Movie Screening and Potluck will be Monday, January 5th from 7-9PM at the Repair the World Office at 4029 Market St. Philadelphia, Pa.  We’ll be screening a lecture given by Toby Hemenway, the author of Gaia’s Garden.  The lectue is titled, “How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and The Planet, but not Civilization.”

Hemenway is a frequent teacher, consultant and lecturer on permaculture and ecological design throughout the U.S. and other countries. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Natural Home, Whole Earth Review and American Gardener. He is an adjunct professor in the School of Graduate Education at Portland State University, a Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and a biologist consultant for the Biomimicry Guild.

This lecture is a great background on how our society came to be what it is, from a historical perspective that looks thousands of years into the past, before capitalism, imperialism, or agriculture.  I think this is a great video for anyone who wants to understand why permaculture is necessary, and how it can help transform our society.  We’ll follow up the movie with a short open discussion.  Join us, it’s going to be a great time!

https://www.facebook.com/events/372866819554857/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

This Sunday I joined about 30 other people at the North Philly Peace park for a group discussion and potluck focused on transforming our culture into a more permanent, compassionate, and harmonious community.  We gathered around a large campfire to discuss what a more ideal society would look like, and ideas about how we can get there.  Other hot topics were neighborhood gentrification, police brutality, and political structures.  Many people spoke about their own efforts in their communities, and it was a great opportunity to network and meet people making a difference.  Overall, it was a beautiful afternoon with some of Philly’s most revolutionary thinkers.  I believe this will be a seiries event, so when I hear about the next one, I’ll add it to the upcoming events tab above!

https://www.facebook.com/events/1644375242456050/

I just found out about Seed-balls.com, which is this awesome website where you can purchase seedballs filled with seeds of a ton of different native plants, flowers, edibles, and medicinals.  They’re only $1 each, with discounts as you buy more.  The shop is apparently run by a woman who does this as a hobby for the benefit of local habitats.  Super awesome.

When you join the newsletter, you get a free seedball!  To top it off, they have a %15 discount until the end of the year.  Check it out!

For the discount:

1. Visit http://seed–balls.com/.
2. Type “sowsomejoy” while on a page. This is a hidden function, there are no boxes to enter the code- just type it into the ‘air’.
3. 15% discount will be applied to almost all items on the site. If you make a typo, just reload the page, or visit a different page and type sowsomejoy again.

At my local library, I found (left to right) Growing Gourmet & Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets, Integrated Forest Gardening by Wayne Weiseman, Daniel Halsey and Bryce Ruddock, and Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got an Amazon Wish List full of permaculture books.  I frequently have more books than I can read, but I eventually get around to the important ones.  Anyway, this starts to put a hurt on the wallet, and I’ve recently found a genius way around it.  The public library!  Doh!  Why didn’t I think of this sooner.  The library in my town is connected with a few other nearby libraries, and they have a bunch of books on permaculture, mycology, and gardening.  They even have some documentaries that I’ve wanted to see, like Dirt!  I encourage you to get yo’self a library card, and invest that book money into your permaculture work!

Here are some really cool resources for open-source technology for farming and permaculture:

 OpenFarm.cc – Openfarm is an in-development webapp that might be the wikipedia of farming and gardening.  They’re creating a user-updated site (like Wikipedia) that will allow people to populate info about plants that they’re familiar with.  There’s even sections for permaculture-specific growing info.  This looks like it’s going to be really cool once some more of the plant information is populated.  You can get involved with the development of the site on their OpenFarm.cc Development Forum.

Open Source Ecology – Open source ecology is the group behind the Global Village Reconstruction Set, a DIY guide for building everything you’d need to restart civilization.  Check out the TED talk about the project here:

Farmhack.net – Farmhack is a community where farmers post “hacks” or technology that they’ve developed to farm easier, or cheaper.  Some cool inventions include the Farm Bicycle, and the Culticycle, shown below.

Farm Bicycle:

Culticycle:

Finally, here’s an interesting video about creating an open-source permaculture design method.  I can see how this type of thing might be useful for experienced permaculture designers and also for people who haven’t ever heard of permaculture.  It encompasses many permaculture concepts and techniques, and it could act as a guide for things to consider when developing permaculture systems: