My little garden is shaping up, planted a boy and girl Sea Buckthorn, with one pathetic yellow berry. We will see how they take.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippophae_rhamnoides

Found some bastard Peonies growing by the road on the remains of a demolished garden. Tore the roots out and planted them as well, they do say Peonies sulk for 3 years after you tear them out.

Some great ideas to replace decorative japanese garden plants with edible.

http://balconyofdreams.blogspot.com/

Replace Bamboo with Asparagus

Replace clipped pine with clipped rosemary

Time to consider some edible water growing food sources.

http://www.pfaf.org/leaflets/edibpond.php at Plants for a Future

Trapa natans – Water Chestnut

Acorus calamus / Sweet Flag http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Flag

Typha angustifolia / Reed Reed Mace

Water Spinach

Ipomea aquatica

Stachys affinis Chinese Artichoke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stachys_affinis

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Zizania+aquatica

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Typha+angustifolia

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Trapa+natans

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Sagittaria+sagittifolia

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Nasturtium+officinale

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Cornus+canadensis

Masanobu Fukuoka is a farmer/philosopher who lives on the Island of Shikoku, in southern Japan. His farming technique requires no machines, no chemicals and very little weeding. He does not plow the soil or use prepared compost and yet the condition of the soil in his orchards and fields improve each year. His method creates no pollution and does not require fossil fuels. His method requires less labor than any other, yet the yields in his orchard and fields compare favorably with the most productive Japanese farms which use all the technical know-how of modern science.

Instead of deciding which vegetables would do well in which locations he mixes all the seeds together and scatters them everywhere. He lets the vegetables find their own location, often in areas he would have least have expected.

Slow sand filter- filter your water with a simple sand filter to 99.7 cleanliness.

strange edibles

to end – this is wonderful

and some Swedish permaculture resources
swedish DN article on biochar
Sweden/ Sverige permaculture

Britain used to be a forested island, so a lot of the energy we expend in farming is just to stop it reverting back.

The farmland I am used to seeing is clumps of trees surrounded by fields. But a permaculture smallholding I visited in Snowdonia was just the opposite – a collection of small clearings in a mass of woodland.

Forest gardens are inspired by nature. The reason natural woodland is so productive is because it grows on many layers, rather like having half a dozen fields stacked on top of each other.

A forest garden imitates each woodland layer, but uses more edible species. The garden floor is covered with fruit and vegetables, and above them, the shrub layer is equally abundant.

A bit higher up are the fruit trees, such as apples, pears, medlars (a fruit rather like the crab apple) and quinces.

And then there is the canopy where those trees that aren’t producing food are serving other essential functions such as recycling nutrients through their root system and leaf litter.

Some plants are selected primarily because they attract beneficial insects – hover flies, for example, which eat aphids – so no pesticides are needed.

Surely this requires endless attention and work?

‘Over a whole year, an average of one day a week,’ said Martin. ‘A lot of that is harvesting. In terms of maintenance, it’s about ten days a year.’ Compared to running a conventional farm, that is virtually nothing.

But how much food does it produce? ‘One designed for maximum yield could probably feed about ten people an acre,’ said Martin. That’s roughly double the number we can currently feed from an average acre of conventional arable farmland.

The thinking is that a host of vegetable plots, allotments and smallholdings that require a minimum of maintenance because they follow nature’s own design principles could make up for the loss of industrial-scale farms.

article in the Daily Mail

I wonder what I can do about  permaculture in sweden