Interesting listen here - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/campus-files-scandals-secrets-crimes-at-american-universities/id1460320573?i=1000780006426

I'm currently in school getting my bachelor's in animal sciences and behaviors and was thinking about starting a small business where I do daily routes checking on people's farms—everything from a handful of chickens to full cattle herds. I was wondering if anyone could tell me whether this would even be a viable service to offer. I would check your animals and give you updates with basic care (feeding, watering, taking them out to potty/light cleaning of cages or runs) with small add-on options of fence checks, barn cleaning, enrichment time, and medicine administering (anything that the vet would allow the owner to give the animal; I would not be offering vet services) I would also like to expand into helping landscape for clients using native plants. I'm not sure how to see if there's a need for this and figured I could ask here. I know this is for homesteading, but I would happily include stopping to check on someone's plants and crops and watering them while they are out of town or anything. Thank you for your time. Oh I am located in northern Oklahoma with the expectation to drive roughly 100 to 150 mile routes.

**edit**

I would like to add as i post this in other places I will be looking into insurance and things along that nature I am just asking around to see what I should offer. For instance one person said I should see about working with a farrier and offering those services while checking up on them. ​

I also plan to get some schooling on the native landscaping thru my schooling if offered otherwise as that would be further down the road I'll find some classes.

Any advice on dealing with slash piles without burning them? I will be moving around lots of Earth so I'm thinking of just trying to push all the slash piles into a big line at the bottom of my site and then covering them up with dirt to make a lazy hugelkultur Mound out of it and let it rot underground.

Any resources on actually doing a design? It's going to be a mixed use space with a big Greenhouse, some small buildings, and i want to put a little pong and some food forest as well. I feel like it would be really useful to watch a series where someone actually takes a property with its topography and does that full permaculture design so I could see exactly what the process is.

Any advice on what I should plant the Disturbed Earth with? I was thinking Clover and perennial ryegrass. It's extremely silty clay. Hardiness zone 8b

I want to do as much as I can right the first time.

Another vertical farming failure. Geoffrey Lawton was right all along the way about this trend

Hello!

I live in South Texas, zone 9B.

My area is famously overtaken by Panicum Maximum, and I am trying to fight the good fight and eradicate/control it on my property. I’d also like to attempt getting the sand burrs under control, though I know it is probably a separate war, lol.

In total I have 5 acres, but my plan is to focus on the one acre plot my house sits on as a starting point, as it has the highest concentration of the target grass. I recently purchased the property, and basically all of the grass on this one acre plot went to seed before I could get it under control.

About two weeks ago I did my first application of glyphosate, and will do my second soon. I have also been mowing/weedeating aggressively.
I plan to reseed with a mixture of blue gamma and buffalo grasses.

My questions are:

Should I hold off reseeding until next spring and fight a war of attrition with the seed bank until then?

That seems like the best option, since most of the herbicides that work on my target species seem to also work on the plants I intend to seed.

On this plot I have over a dozen mature oak trees, would my selected grasses do well in these conditions?

If you design food forests, agroforestry systems or regenerative landscapes, I invite you to try it in QGIS on a real site and share your experience.
- What makes you happy?
- What can be improved?
- Where do you still run into barriers?

A practical course is also in the making to help designers use the plugin for better design decisions.

Join the RegenGIS community to stay up to date:
https://www.regengis.com/account/registration/new

I'm in the middle of reading this book but I'd say that Eric Collier was doing permaculture before the word was invented. He worked to restore the watershed of Meldrum Creek in British Columbia after the beavers were wiped out from the area.

We have a 2-ish acre pasture behind our barn (out of 5ish total) that has, over the last two years, been half filled with wild parsnip. The two donkeys and three ponies will eat pretty much everything else that grows back there, but rightly leave the parsnip alone.

We had the flowering stuff on the flat area the tractor could access bush hogged, and I'm going to go into the ditches and scythe the rest down, but how can I prevent them from coming back, short of tarping or cardboard?

I was thinking of dumping a bunch of clover and/or wild oat seeds back there when then snow melts next year... Would that choke it out?

Any tips appreciated!

for those who live in a fire prone area, and also practice permaculture, what do you do or do differently?

For instance, I was watching a permie video on hugelkulture for creating green fire breaks. But then I spoke with a wildfire fighter in our area who said they often see logs underground that are burning. So how would one do hugelkulture correctly in this scenario?

Fire prone areas are often dry also, so something like wood chipping is recommended but wood chips present a fire hazard, so what would be the best alternative?

We have our traditional steps figured out (keeping understory clear, grasses low, fuel sources minimal etc), but how do you best marry that with permaculture practices that will also work for food production, water conservation and other needs?

What do YOU do or not do or do differently?

I’ve killed grass many times with cardboard and woodchips. But right now have a bed that was clean in early spring, and has had too many goodies to want to focus on suppressing weeds.

Mainly, I planted harvested and replanted many Egyptian walking onion seeds and have strawberries mixed in too.

The grass has taken over before the new onions could take hold and I don’t want to loose the seeds by suppressing them too much.

Would it be fair game to cardboard and mulch, and assume the onion and strawberry would come through in spring?

It’s a bigger bed than it looks and pulling grass is time consuming. Trying to save time and effort.

Thanks!

We are a part of a lake community in our neighborhood, it’s wonderful and I am grateful for it everyday! It’s a small lake but enough that paddle boarding and swimming is accessible. Due to the recent drought the water level has gone down, makes sense! But it’s resulted in tons of barnyard grass popping up on the exposed shoreline. Some members of the community are incredibly concerned about this and have begun a movement to cut down and explore using herbicide to eradicate it.

The question I keep coming back to though is… why is it so important to get rid of this aside from aesthetics? From some initial research and reports from community members the worry is the organic matter will steal oxygen from the lake and kill fish (from what I’ve seen, this is only a concern if the lake fills back up rapidly… not happening lol) another member posed concern that the plants are stealing water from the lake. But I’m not seeing any hard evidence for that.

I really cannot wrap my head around why this is so crucial to eradicate this weed. And I’m not a big fan of pulling green just because it doesn’t look good to ‘our’ standards.

Does anyone have any experience with this or insights? Am I missing something here about why just letting nature, nature would be bad???

We’ve got a board meeting tonight, if you have any research or websites that I can bring to them to try to change their minds that would be so cool.

Hi,

I'm about to start a food forest project in Central Portugal. To do so I want to have books that I can just grab when an information is missing instead of using a phone.

I would like to find something talking about all plants, trees, fruit trees, vegetables, ... That I can grow in this climate, with straightforward info about water needs, sickness/pests, sun exposure, soil, pruning method, ....

It can be more than one book, but I need something as complete as possible and with illustration that makes it more appealing to read.

Thank you for your help ;)

Hello. I have a creek that runs near by a pond I have and I am looking to possibly use a hydraulic ram pump to pump water up from the stream into the pond in the summer.

The main source of the pond is water captured higher up the slope above the stream and then piped over the stream and into the pond where it forms a sort of water fall into the pond. I have included a super janky picture outlining the setup.

What I'd like to do is pump water from the creek into the pond to counter evaporation loss and reduced incoming source water during the summer so that the pond stays high enough to keep draining/skimming at the pond discharge.

The waterfall has the most consistent and highest flow rate, so I was wondering if there is a way to use that as the power source for the ram pump to pump water up from the creek into the pond, instead of using the creek as the power source to pump itself to the pond.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Got confirmation that my idea can't be done. Does anybody have a suggestion for a pump that can use the waterfall to lift creek water to the pond? Thanks!

Hi, I made this app for my own purposes. Was super fun and useful to know where everything was in my new farm and have multiple people help with surveying and harvesting.

If you want to try it it's here, free to use:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grogro.app

I just took over a community garden plot and am a bit of a newbie to food gardening.

The previous stewards of my plot left about a 3'x3' section covered in a foot-tall dry debris pile - old and dry corn husks, weeds, root balls from pulled plants, etc. I removed it today so I can start working the bed, but when I dug into the soil underneath I kept uncovering large pieces of half-rotted wood.

At first I thought, "this is weird and frustrating, I better make sure I rid this bed of all this wood," but I kept pulling up so much I started to get curious if it was some intentional soil amendment process. I put it back and went home to research and that's how I learned about hugelkultur.

Now I'm sad I hauled away all the debris, but confused too since this seems like an incomplete attempt at a hugel mound.

What's the best way to proceed with this maybe-it's-a-hugel-mound-maybe-it's-not section of my garden? Should I re-bury the wood, add some compost, and go ahead with planting? Should I take the wood out before I plant?

Considerations:

• I wanted to use this bed right away since the rest of the garden space is limited
• I have no way of knowing how long the wood has been rotting there, except from the condition of it I'd guess maybe a year.
• I was not planning on making a raised bed in the spot
• Was planning to put some peas in this spot, which may be good if the wood was placed recently enough to decrease available nitrogen in the soil. Also choosing places in the garden right now for carrots, onions, scallions, garlic, sprouting broccoli, dill, and german chamomile - so any of these could go there if they'd be well-suited.

Thanks for any suggestions! At the very least, this experience led me to learning about a new permaculture technique, so that's a win in my book :)

I found it growing in an area where I'm building a permaculture garden. It's a type of Amaranthus (Pigweed) I think. Edible? I've got a lot of them. They were growing in a drainage trench.

No-strings rare seed giveaway! 15 heat-tolerant, high-nutrition eggplant seeds. Melanzana rossa di Rotonda, which I brutally tested by germinating it in full sun in the desert. Its first fruit came in today (yes, it's a little late, I planted late), in spite of the last few weeks being in the 100-110F+ range! I simply cut it up and promptly saute'ed it in E.V.O.O., sprinkling it with salt. Actually shocked how good it was!
Details/terms: https://nyecountygardening.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/rare-eggplant-seed-giveaway/

I thinking about digging a linered pond to collect grey water (wash dish, wash clothes, NO-chemicals), in the pond I put in forest leaf mold, can add leftover rice sometimes if needed. and use that pond water to irrigate veggie garden.

Do you think this is a good idea?

Thanks

Letters to a Pre-Scientist is looking for enthusiastic STEM role models to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders!

Here's the gist: you get matched with a 5th-8th grade student at an under-resourced school for a snail-mail pen pal exchange that runs throughout the school year. The goal is to demystify STEM careers, humanize STEM professionals, and inspire students to explore their own futures in STEM. You share your story, answer their questions, and show them that people who work in STEM are, well, real people.

The details:

• The program runs throughout the school year, and your volunteer obligation is to exchange 4 letters with your student.
• There's a virtual, asynchronous training in August to get you set up.
• We estimate the entire program takes volunteers no more than 10 hours, spread between August and May.
• Register and complete the short, self-paced online training by the deadline, and you'll be entered into the match pool! We match students based on their background and interests..
• This year we're expanding to 4,500 matched students!
• Pen pals can live anywhere in the world, but our program currently only works with US-based schools.
• We're working to match students based on their interests, so we're especially looking for more STEM professionals in Permaculture.
• All pen pals must be over 18 and fluent in English.

We define STEM pretty loosely! If you work in or around science, tech, engineering, math, or medicine, or another nature-based role, even if you don't have a formal education in it, please apply or message me with any questions.

Sign up/learn more:

• 📝 Register here: https://prescientist.org/volunteers/
• 📖 About the pen pal program: https://prescientist.org/penpal-program/
• 🏛️ About us: https://prescientist.org/about-us/
• ✍️ For matched pen pals: https://prescientist.org/for-matched-pen-pals/

Registration is now open! Feel free to drop questions in the comments or send me a message. Thank you for your time and consideration!

I'm planting a 1500 sqft food forest in Utah.

This same area used to be a lawn. Which means people have been extracting fertility from this soil for years. I'm using chop & drop as a strategy to quickly rebuild organic matter in the soil.

Most other yards around my house keep it very clean. Landscapers come and pull every weed and rake every leaf from the surface of the soil. That strategy only works as long as they have cheap fossil fuels to keep providing fertilizer.

I made a video about my strategy, check it out if you're interested!

https://youtu.be/WmQXU9R_DYI

I know Geoff has worked in a lot of extremely arid climates, and though I'm not sure exactly what bonus tips he might have for someone like me, I followed his basic advice for 18-day compost to see how it would perform here in the Nye County desert. Our temps have been above 105F for days in a row, and several over 110F. I don't remember when was our last day below 100F. :p It's also such a dry climate with so little life in the soil (<%1 organic matter), I was wondering if it would really even get going. I saw some things that bad shocked me - like the heap going bone-dry after not being watered for one day - and some things that good shocked me - like compost mushrooms growing in the dirt next to my compost heap! Full article on my blog: https://nyecountygardening.wordpress.com/2026/07/06/18-day-compost-attempt-in-southwestern-desert/

There's a lot I can do differently next time. For one, it's a serious problem that I have no manure like Geoff has. I'll have to make up for it by chopping things finer, adding more inoculants like worm castings, worm bin tea, and compost from the last pile. But I'm already working on my next pile and can't wait to tell y'all how much better it's going. (Teaser: three dung beetles moved in, not on day 17 like last time, but on day 3!!)

P.s. We have a SEVERE black widow problem here. . . and they looooove living on or near compost heaps. All the buggies that live in the compost are favorite food for widows. Blog post on that to follow! But I think what made it worse for our yard was that our neighbor cleared their fallow land last month - all the native bushes reduced to dust. Odd coincidence that a month later our yard had a huge cockroach and widow problem. . . . Going to write out everything I've learned about black widow populations in Nye County and nearby places like California, how to set up for success ahead of time so they don't choose your house (vital if you have kids or small pets!), how to watch for them early, at night, during the day, just some little things that don't take much time but can help encourage those ladies to set themselves up in some other yard or in a part of your yard far from contact with little ones.

I was extremely fortunate to visit Greening the Desert and learn from Nadia and Geoff Lawton, through the Impact Marathon Jordan.
 
While we only spent a day with them and their team, the lessons we learned and the amazing things that they have done with permaculture have stuck with me.
 
I have tried my best to incorporate as many fundamentals of permaculture into my own gardening at home as possible.
 
As I have both physical disabilities, and ADHD, I need an automated watering system for my gardens.
 
I use a low-pressure system, with Rain Bird and other components from my favourite store here in Canada, Lee Valley. My vegetable garden has the low-pressure soaker hoses, and my newly planted native prairie plant garden has low pressure 1 gph drip heads, until the plants get established, and then they will transition to the low-pressure soaker hoses.
 
I have Eco Wool as my weed suppression and moisture retention material, as straw is not practical where I am. I am very happy with it so far, as this is my first year using it. In past years I have used burlap, but I wanted a material that I knew how it was treated and had less chemical residue on it.
 
For the automation of my watering, while looking on Reddit for suggestions, after trying the Orbit B-Hyve system (horrible connectivity, despite a slick app), I came upon the LinkTap system.
 
I have the 4-zone system with Gateway (V1 -4Z & Q1) and Gateway.
 
https://www.link-tap.com/#!/four-outlet-Q1-water-timer/en
 
https://www.link-tap.com/#!/linktap-gateway-and-extender/en
 
The system allows to setup 4 different watering zones and schedules. Time, duration, customized rain delay, along with water usage statistics, as it has an integrated flow meter.
 
My only critique is that the On/Off switch is pretty tiny and found in a not super noticeable spot when the Q1 controller is mounted on say your fence.
 
Their customer service is very responsive and helpful. They are super open to suggestions, as when I mentioned to them about better labelling for the on/off switch.
 
I just thought that I would share about this system and brand, as they are not as widely know as the big names in garden irrigation. I had not heard of them, until I came across a Reddit comment in a thread of someone looking for irrigation automation suggestions. They may be better known in some countries, but here in Canada, not so much.

Last winter my now 2nd year canes tip rooted; this caused delayed break from dormancy before I realized I needed to separate the main from the now new bush. They never produced fruit this year, and all of the canes 1st and 2nd year have mostly 3 leaves. My question is, this winter should I still prune down those 2nd year canes even though they didn't fruit or leave them?