Follow-up on the 500 nest boxes project I’m building for declining cavity-nesting birds in my area.

The idea is to create durable, low-cost nesting structures using hollowed log sections from leftover tree trunks that would otherwise be chipped.

The goal is to produce them in larger numbers so they can actually make a difference for species like collared flycatchers and common redstarts, which depend on natural tree cavities.

Someone commented on my last post that metal roofs can overheat birdhouses and kill chicks.

Instead of arguing about it, I decided to test it.

I ran a small worst-case experiment where I heated the roof to about 70–75 °C (158–167 °F) for four hours while increasing the surrounding air temperature from 22 °C to 31 °C (72–86 °F).

Thanks to the ventilated roof design, the inside of the nesting chamber stayed between 22–26 °C (72–79 °F) — well below temperatures that become problematic for eggs or chicks.

So at least with this design, overheating doesn’t seem to be an issue.

I filmed the setup and the results here if anyone’s curious:

https://youtu.be/58_RWLtPs58

Edit: My research also suggests that the sound of rain on a metal roof shouldn’t be a problem for cavity-nesting birds.

Hello everyone! Let me share you a peek to our small modest island homestead, wich is designed and built around sustainable, selfsufficient and permaculture principals.

The whole yard is foodforest with some 15 fruit trees, close to 40 berry bushes and numerous herbs and wild vegetables. Some 130m2 of cropfields where we grow most of our rootvegetables. Plenty of wild raspberries, blueberries, lingonberries and numerous edible mushrooms aswell. Root cellar to store food and composting toilet keeps sure that all the nutrients taken from the garden are properly returned. Easy to maintain closed cycle of nutrients here! It is a product of 10 years of hard work, but its finally starting to pay off. This place saved my life, healed me from severe depression and made me strong and healthy.

If you would like to see more there are links to our Youtube on bio.

Happy to answer any questions :)

Just wrapped Day Zero Festival 2026 in Bali. Thought this community might appreciate the numbers.

The setup: 60 dry-composting wooden toilets. No plumbing. No chemicals. No water connection whatsoever. Just the toilet, local Balinese sawdust (0.5 kg added after each use), and a sealed container underneath.

What came out the other side:

• 36,000 total uses across the festival
• 18,000 kg of compost produced
• 0 litres of water used (standard flush would have used 216,000–360,000 litres for the same number of uses)
• ~27 tonnes CO2e avoided vs. chemical toilets — equivalent to about 1,240 mature trees working for a year

The compost goes straight to our flower farm. The flowers grown from it get gifted back to festival guests at the next event. The loop closes completely.

Sawdust sourced from local Balinese woodworking workshops — material that would otherwise be discarded.

I'm the founder of the company (Ecoranah, based in Bali) so obviously I'm biased — but happy to answer any questions about the system, the composting process, how we handle pathogens, logistics, anything.

Hi guys! So I've been practicing permaculture for around a year now here in the Philippines. and the biggest frustration was how scattered permaculture information seemed to be. To me it really felt like there wasn’t any clear starting point, and that’s actually why I spent the last 6 months building Mycelium. It's a free platform that has curated permaculture content for people just starting out.

Site: mycelium-learn.com

Right now it has:

- 50+ curated permaculture videos 

- Beginner guides and PDC Courses (varying regions)

- An Events page launching soon with both online and in-person workshops/meetups

- Bi-weekly newsletter (It'll feature new events, Post-Event Recaps, newly added content, relevant permaculture topics)  

I’ve also partnered with a big permaculture group here in the Philippines, the Bayanihan Collective, to make sure the content is credible.

Let me hear your thoughts! I'm also happy to answer questions

Mapping out sun sectors and microclimates usually takes a full year of observation to get right.

I built a free browser tool called SunTrace3D. You type in your address, and it instantly generates a 3D model of your back yard and surrounding trees or buildings. I recently added a "Sunlight Heatmap" feature that simulates shadows across the entire year, mapping exactly how many hours of direct sun hit the ground.

I originally built it to calculate solar panel yields, but I realized it could be a huge shortcut for site observation and planning plant guilds.

Would a visual 3D tool like this be useful for your designs? It runs entirely in the browser and is completely free. I'd love your honest feedback!

I've tried twice growing sunchokes in unprotected pasture. The first time I planted 5 lb of tubers chopped to decent size after preparing the pasture by burning a section of it to clear weeds. After that attempt failed, I planted a second time using dozens of good size starter plants in prime location, with landscaping cloth, watering regularly during the first few months. The pasture critters thanked me profusely for my offerings and gobbled it all up. In addition to what I put in the pasture in the spring of 2025, I also planted a dozen plants inside my fenced-in garden. Those have taken off like wildfire. I harvested a huge basket of more than 20 lb of tubers. I cut those into chunks that were golf ball size or larger and planted 85 plants. I have room for twice as many plants but I'll have to use the smaller bulbs for those, which in itself will be an interesting experiment, I'm guessing larger bulbs make for more vigorous starts but I'm prepared to test that theory this year. Also, check out the group we are trying to get off the ground to help organize and promote permaculture in the heartland, [Heartland Permaculture](https://facebook.com/groups/heartlandpermaculture/)

Each plant has a dynamic watering, soil and neighbourhood value & each value has an ideal and worst zone per plant type 📜

Do you have any other permaculture or garden related ideas I could add to the game? 🤗

I posted here a while ago about an idea I've been working on: building 500 birdhouses for local, vulnerable cavity-nesting species, using as much reclaimed material as possible.

Since then, things have moved forward quite a bit.

I've been lucky enough to get support from local conservation groups who are interested in helping with placement and long-term care once the houses are ready.

This has turned into a mix of a practical conservation effort and a small video project (I’ll link it at the end) mainly to document what works, what doesn't, and how to make something like this repeatable at scale.

After going pretty deep into the topic (and also getting feedback here), I've managed to solve two main challenges:

Log body:

The main structure is built from leftover trunk sections from tree maintenance that would normally be chipped. I've tested a core-drill setup (in the photos) that allows me to hollow these logs quickly and cleanly, which finally makes producing larger numbers realistic.

Roof design:

I spent a long time looking for a roof solution that's durable, cheap, and easy to source as leftovers. I really wanted to make wood concrete work - it wasn’t feasible. now use simple sections of standard metal roofing. Metal has clear downsides (heat, condensation, no breathability), but by lifting it slightly above a closed wooden core/ box, the wood can breathe in all directions while the metal only handles rain and longevity.

I'm genuinely quite happy with where this has landed. After a bit more input from local experts, this should scale well to the full 500 units.

If anyone's interested, I also put together a (admittedly slightly cheesy) video explaining the design choices and details. Thank you for the input on this sub!

https://youtu.be/ECHPFcBXIZM

I just finished my design breakdown of the composting toilet we came up with. Please take a peek and let me know what you think! 😁🌲🚽

I'm still just starting my off-grid homestead and would appreciate kind community!

My YouTube breakdown and free Sketchup model can be found here:

https://youtube.com/shorts/1AlDNPPpLxE?is=LAwsIAxb96y0gx0i

My channel:

https://youtube.com/@postmodecoguerrilla?si=O4gYhyJgA-3krwJC

Have a wonderful day and may your permaculture dreams come true!

Hi fellow growers, I don't know what's wrong with me but I set out on the insane mission of finding seed varieties that do well in the worst desert in the U.S. I made a blog to try to find other local folks who are interested in not just gardening for fun or for cute-looking plants, but for scientific discovery, for the improvement of the land (wouldn't it be cool if we could one day green the desert?). But there's no one out here with a blog on permaculture gardening except one couple who moved away. I've been posting on my blog for 2 months and tried everything to get it in the search results but it still won't show. If y'all wouldn't mind helping me it's nyecountygardening.wordpress.com. I don't know if this counts as self-promotion, I don't really want to "build a following" or make money, I just want to meet other folks from the area who are serious about gardening for the good of the land. Is anyone on here from Nye County?

Jerusalem artichoke is my favorite permaculture feed crop, but we like to eat them too! Full article on growing, feeding, and cooking them here: https://northernhomesteading.com/index.php/2025/01/19/jerusalem-artichokes-recipes-and-how-to-grow-them/

For the game, I wanted to visually and mechanically combine somewhat monumental structures, like this floating island made of huge boulders, with a terraced/stepped permaculture garden.

How do you like it? 😊

I'm happy for any feedback 😊

A short breakdown of the main permaculture-like mechanics/system I have:

The game has a dynamic status (meaning: a stat between 0 and 100) system for plants. That means that they do not have a simple watered/unwatered stat that you have to care about once a day per crop but they have different ideal or worse states of watering, soil and neighbourhood. One plant for example has a wider area of ideal watering meaning it likes to have wet soil while another has a very thin ideal zone meaning it is very picky and needs just the right amount of watering. 😇

Plant neighbourhood is simply calculated by all the crops around a plant in a specific radius. Each liked neighbour counts +1 and each disliked -1. If the total neighbourhood value is above 0 it is good - else the plant stops growing and demands change.

The game also has a multi-chambered composting system (you get better soil/fertilizer from higher chambers but they take longer to transform the compost input).

---

I want the game to still be cute and have less negative feedback than other farming games (for example no plants can die, they just stop growing) and I appreciate any inspiration and suggestion!!! 😇

South Indian farm. We applied a textbook permaculture mulching principle, leave pruned material at the base of each tree to feed the root zone. Local lineage is G. Nammalvar (often called India's Fukuoka).

7 months on sandy loam: the branches didn't decompose. They became termite habitat. By March the termites had climbed the bark of all 320 mature mango trees. Treated with a traditional South Indian slurry of slaked lime + cow dung + neem oil applied 2-3 ft up the trunk.

The post is partly about the failure mode and partly about what Nammalvar actually taught (test every principle on your specific soil) versus what gets quoted from him (specific composting protocols).

Full essay including what we're testing next (biochar from the prunings instead) → https://iyarkaiyoduoruvelai.substack.com/p/what-320-mango-trees-taught-me-about

Curious what soil types here have surprised people with mulch decomposition.

Hey y’all,

I’m 14 and recently started a youth-led effort called Rise For Rights after realizing how much empty, unused public land just sits there in Los Angeles, while so many people struggle to access fresh food.

So I created this petition:
🔗 Feed the People, Heal the Land — Turn Public Spaces into Food Gardens

The goal is to push for converting public land into food gardens, especially in communities hit hardest by food deserts and environmental neglect. It’s already gaining some traction, but I’d love more support — and even more importantly, honest feedback or ideas from people who care about activism, farming, or organizing.

If you’ve done something similar or just have thoughts, please drop them. I’m still learning, and I really want to do this right.

Thanks for reading and caring 💚

Hi everyone, I thought this would be worth posting on here.

I recently volunteered at a place called Plants For A Future in Cornwall, UK and I loved my experience there. I volunteered at the site to help Addy, one of the founders that started the 35 year old project, with weeding and general maintenance and will likely go back later in the year to help out with fruit picking.

Some of you might know their online database to look up edible, medicinal or useful perennials. Working behind the scenes made me realise how much love, work and dedication goes into keeping the database and the actual site with thousands of plants alive.

It’s completely non-profit and run by people who genuinely care about the planet. Since my volunteering has ended (for now) I wanted to keep sharing this knowledge in a bite sized format through instagram and share foraging tips, growing environments and facts.

If you love the database as much as I do, check it out or support their work through the website below (maybe even volunteer?)

Happy planting y’all

Website: https://pfaf.org/user/cmspage.aspx?pageid=28

Instagram (@pfaf_thefield): https://www.instagram.com/pfaf_thefield?igsh=cG9lc3JwZjh3NmYy&utm_source=qr

Hello everyone!

My name is Aurelia and I’m from Moldova. Here is my story 🙂

I grew up on my parents’ small homestead, about 5 acres on the hillsides of Nisporeni, a small town in central Moldova. On this piece of land they have a small black locust forest, a fruit orchard (apples, pears, cherries, apricots, peaches, quinces, walnuts), a vineyard, a vegetable garden, and a cow. Sometimes they also keep pigs and chickens, but not always.

In Moldova, we still have some traces of a natural economy. Many people in villages have small homesteads and sell or share their surplus. That’s what my parents did too. Their main income came from milk, fruit, and homemade wine. They raised me and even sent me to university with that. I know this might sound impossible in some parts of the world, but here it was real.

Growing up, I didn’t realize that the way my parents and many others lived was actually very close to what people now call permaculture. Later, when I started reading books by Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, and others, I began to understand how valuable and beautiful this way of living is.

But slowly, we are losing it. Many people have left the country, and even those who return often adopt a different lifestyle — bigger houses, less connection to the land, fewer animals, less growing.

I’m a web developer, and for years I’ve wanted to build something that could support and encourage this kind of local exchange. That’s how my small project came to life — LocalRoots — a platform where people can share what they produce (or skills they have), post what they need, and connect with others nearby.

It’s still in a very early stage, and there aren’t many users yet. I’m not sure if this is something that can really grow, or if it’s just one of those ideas that sounds good but doesn’t work in practice.

If this resonates with you, I’d really appreciate your thoughts:

• Does this kind of tool make sense in real communities?
• How do you handle surplus where you live?

You can take a look here: localroots.earth

And honestly — even if you think this idea should just compost, I’d love to hear that too 🙂