How did you all get on last month with your new found seasonal foods knowledge? Those of you local to me (Sussex) have a little help this month as i figured what better way to buy seasonal then to visit the local farmers markets, dates and times below:
Saturday 27th February, 10:00 - 15:00, Brighton & Hove Farmers market, George Street, Hove and the fourth Saturday of each month following.
Sunday 7th March, 10:00 - 15:00, Hove Farmers Market, Ralli Hall, Next to Hove Station and the first Sunday of subsequent months.
Saturday 13th March, Shoreham Farmers Market, East Street, Shoreham and the second Saturday of every other month.
There are others to be found in Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath, Worthing, Billinshurst, Petworth, Arundel, Chichester, Ford, Hassocks, Horsham, Midhurst, Slindon and Steyning, but i'm trying to encourage you to not travel too far for your locally produced fresh fruit and vegetables.
February Vegetables
Brussel Sprouts, Cauliflower, Celeriac, Jerusalem Artichoke, Kale, Leeks, Parsnips, Rhubarb, Shallots, Swede
February Seafood
Brill, Clams, Cockles, Haddock, Halibut, Hake, Lemon Sole, Mussels, Oysters, Salmon, Skate, Turbet, Winkles.
Opportunities are aplenty, so go out and buy fresh and seasonal. Yummy!
Friday 19 February 2010
Monday 15 February 2010
Classical Landscape Patterns
1. Consider the region your chosen design site is located in. Does the region match any of the landscape types discussed in this section? Is your site representative of this region? Is its climate temperate (cold), tropical (hot) or desert (dry)?
Our chosen design site is typical of the Humid Landscape. The South Downs are all gentle sloping hills that start 50 miles to the west near Portsmouth and continue about another 30 miles east to Eastbourne. The climate is temperate pretty much for the entire United Kingdom not just our chosen design site, with an additional splash of coastal-type climate thrown in. The actual physical design site location is well protected from the typical coastal hazards of sand, salt and the prevailing winds as it lies on a slope facing eastwards thus being afforded protection.
2. Provide an analysis of characteristic features and design implications for your design site’s region. This should include information and design considerations for rainfall patterns (water collection, storage and distribution), hazards (wind, tsunamis, earthquake, landslides, fire) and seasonal temperatures (length of growing season, crop potential, insulation requirements).
To the bane of most English-people, we do not suffer from a lack of precipitation. It’s a rare month that we do not have a measurable amount of rainfall. The primary consideration for our design site is how to store rainfall from the wetter winters in order to supplement the drier summers. A couple of above-ground water collection devices (such as water butts) should suffice for the area of land we are designing for, supplemented by our pond which will provide water to resident mammals, birds, reptiles and insects.
We have also designed swales into our overall design in order to encourage the (heavy) rainfall to not simply runoff but to seep down through the soil layers, thus benefitting all our plants throughout the site. At this stage, we aren’t sure whether the site would benefit or in fact actually need any kind of irrigation system, we will continue to observe as the seasons change. Collection and storage for the entire site will be to the west which is on the upper part of the slope, allowing for easier transport of water down the slope.
The region doesn’t face much in the way of hazards. Some coastal erosion can take place, but this is currently mitigated by coastal defences. Our site is far enough inshore to not face this hazard and at a high enough level to avoid any potential future flooding. Our main concern on such a sloped site is soil erosion. We already plan to mitigate this by planting plenty of root stock as mentioned before to bind what remaining soil we have on our site.
“South East England combines the highest average daytime temperatures found in the British Isles with the highest sunshine averages on the British mainland. There are between 25 and 30 inches (630 and 760 mm) of rainfall; and there can be high variation of temperature between day and night. The climate of the coastal districts is strongly influenced by the sea, which, because of its tendency to warm up slower than land, can result in cooler temperatures than inland in the summer. In the autumn months, the coast sometimes has higher temperatures. Rainfall during the summer months is mainly from thunderstorms and thundery showers; from January to March the heavier rainfall is due to prevailing south-westerly frontal systems. The coast has consistently more sunshine than the inland areas: sea breezes, blowing off the sea, tend to clear any cloud from the coast.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sussex)
Our main aim is to better understand the seasonal growing cycles of all crops on our site because if we plan this into our design scheme the region offers us a 12-month growing season. We should be able to keep the site in productive use January to December regardless of the weather.
The coastal climate is hugely favourable meaning that we are only limited to our soil type and intensity of sun at this latitude in the potential for crops that we can sow, grow and eat. As long as we are sensible and we research our choices thoroughly, we should have a site full of a large variety of crops.
With the exception of the current winter which has been “the coldest in over 30 years” (according to the Met Office), we rarely get harsh winters. Our winters are on average wet and mild with additional wet. We should be aware of some of the less hardy perennials that we choose and protect them as a matter of course with mulching or simply position them close to protective cousins like trees or hedgerows. The appropriate protection strategy will be zone dependent, zones 0 and 1 being where most foodstuffs will be cultivated thus being the focus of much of our protective thinking. Although mentioned above, the amount of rainfall offers benefits from a growing perspective; it of course can cause us headaches when trying to prevent rotting of any surplus we may produce. We ironically will need to find a way to remove moisture, when all other attempts in our design seem to work in the opposite direction, to protect crops. Proper dry storage will be essential. (http://www.vegetableexpert.co.uk/how-dry-store-vegetables-grown.html)
Our chosen design site is typical of the Humid Landscape. The South Downs are all gentle sloping hills that start 50 miles to the west near Portsmouth and continue about another 30 miles east to Eastbourne. The climate is temperate pretty much for the entire United Kingdom not just our chosen design site, with an additional splash of coastal-type climate thrown in. The actual physical design site location is well protected from the typical coastal hazards of sand, salt and the prevailing winds as it lies on a slope facing eastwards thus being afforded protection.
2. Provide an analysis of characteristic features and design implications for your design site’s region. This should include information and design considerations for rainfall patterns (water collection, storage and distribution), hazards (wind, tsunamis, earthquake, landslides, fire) and seasonal temperatures (length of growing season, crop potential, insulation requirements).
To the bane of most English-people, we do not suffer from a lack of precipitation. It’s a rare month that we do not have a measurable amount of rainfall. The primary consideration for our design site is how to store rainfall from the wetter winters in order to supplement the drier summers. A couple of above-ground water collection devices (such as water butts) should suffice for the area of land we are designing for, supplemented by our pond which will provide water to resident mammals, birds, reptiles and insects.
We have also designed swales into our overall design in order to encourage the (heavy) rainfall to not simply runoff but to seep down through the soil layers, thus benefitting all our plants throughout the site. At this stage, we aren’t sure whether the site would benefit or in fact actually need any kind of irrigation system, we will continue to observe as the seasons change. Collection and storage for the entire site will be to the west which is on the upper part of the slope, allowing for easier transport of water down the slope.
The region doesn’t face much in the way of hazards. Some coastal erosion can take place, but this is currently mitigated by coastal defences. Our site is far enough inshore to not face this hazard and at a high enough level to avoid any potential future flooding. Our main concern on such a sloped site is soil erosion. We already plan to mitigate this by planting plenty of root stock as mentioned before to bind what remaining soil we have on our site.
“South East England combines the highest average daytime temperatures found in the British Isles with the highest sunshine averages on the British mainland. There are between 25 and 30 inches (630 and 760 mm) of rainfall; and there can be high variation of temperature between day and night. The climate of the coastal districts is strongly influenced by the sea, which, because of its tendency to warm up slower than land, can result in cooler temperatures than inland in the summer. In the autumn months, the coast sometimes has higher temperatures. Rainfall during the summer months is mainly from thunderstorms and thundery showers; from January to March the heavier rainfall is due to prevailing south-westerly frontal systems. The coast has consistently more sunshine than the inland areas: sea breezes, blowing off the sea, tend to clear any cloud from the coast.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sussex)
Our main aim is to better understand the seasonal growing cycles of all crops on our site because if we plan this into our design scheme the region offers us a 12-month growing season. We should be able to keep the site in productive use January to December regardless of the weather.
The coastal climate is hugely favourable meaning that we are only limited to our soil type and intensity of sun at this latitude in the potential for crops that we can sow, grow and eat. As long as we are sensible and we research our choices thoroughly, we should have a site full of a large variety of crops.
With the exception of the current winter which has been “the coldest in over 30 years” (according to the Met Office), we rarely get harsh winters. Our winters are on average wet and mild with additional wet. We should be aware of some of the less hardy perennials that we choose and protect them as a matter of course with mulching or simply position them close to protective cousins like trees or hedgerows. The appropriate protection strategy will be zone dependent, zones 0 and 1 being where most foodstuffs will be cultivated thus being the focus of much of our protective thinking. Although mentioned above, the amount of rainfall offers benefits from a growing perspective; it of course can cause us headaches when trying to prevent rotting of any surplus we may produce. We ironically will need to find a way to remove moisture, when all other attempts in our design seem to work in the opposite direction, to protect crops. Proper dry storage will be essential. (http://www.vegetableexpert.co.uk/how-dry-store-vegetables-grown.html)
Thursday 11 February 2010
The Home Project
I feel it's my responsibility to draw your attention to this movie. Remove the voice over and it makes for a simply beautiful documentary of images from the air. Listen to the voice over and it makes a compelling case for action. It is beautiful, heart-breaking, uplifting and pretrifying all at the same time, but i implore you, please take the time to watch it and think about what is being said. Think about your contribution to the issues. Think about your life, the lives of your friends and the future lives of those that will come after us.
Whether you are touched or not, how can you fail to be, please pass this on.
"We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.
The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.
For this purpose HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. Europacorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because HOME is a non-profit film.
HOME has been made for you: share it! And act for the planet.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU&feature=channel
Whether you are touched or not, how can you fail to be, please pass this on.
"We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.
The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.
For this purpose HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. Europacorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because HOME is a non-profit film.
HOME has been made for you: share it! And act for the planet.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU&feature=channel
Monday 8 February 2010
Collapse Gap Revisited
Good Monday to you.
Two for you this week to get your heads around. Dmitry makes some comments on another article written by Richard Heinberg regarding collapse preparation of the last two superpowers US and China.
"What would make more sense than just trying to put off the inevitable is quite simply to build resilience throughout society, re-localizing basic social systems involving food, manufacture, and finance." - Richard's article can be read here http://www.postcarbon.org/article/67429-china-or-the-u-s-which-will.
"Since collapse is unavoidable, the obvious fall-back strategy would be to invest in local resiliency and self-sufficiency. Since neither government appears the least bit interested in such matters, it is time for us to recognize them for what they are to us: utterly irrelevant. Paying attention to national politics can only distract us from doing whatever we can as individuals and local communities." - Dmitry's comments can be read here http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/02/collapse-gap-revisited.html.
My own thoughts on both are that i'm heading in the right direction. We must all move towards a lower energy use future, whereby local communities provide as much as they can for themselves (remember permaculture 101, individaul Self-Reliance AND Community Self-Sufficiency). We can prepare ourselves for a more austere way of living. We can renew old friendships and seek out new ones. We can learn something new, this week, or this month, or this year, but learn we must! We can do so much now to help ourselves... the alternative is to wait and hope that our "leaders" will make the right decisions for us and provide for us when we can't.
Your call.
Two for you this week to get your heads around. Dmitry makes some comments on another article written by Richard Heinberg regarding collapse preparation of the last two superpowers US and China.
"What would make more sense than just trying to put off the inevitable is quite simply to build resilience throughout society, re-localizing basic social systems involving food, manufacture, and finance." - Richard's article can be read here http://www.postcarbon.org/article/67429-china-or-the-u-s-which-will.
"Since collapse is unavoidable, the obvious fall-back strategy would be to invest in local resiliency and self-sufficiency. Since neither government appears the least bit interested in such matters, it is time for us to recognize them for what they are to us: utterly irrelevant. Paying attention to national politics can only distract us from doing whatever we can as individuals and local communities." - Dmitry's comments can be read here http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/02/collapse-gap-revisited.html.
My own thoughts on both are that i'm heading in the right direction. We must all move towards a lower energy use future, whereby local communities provide as much as they can for themselves (remember permaculture 101, individaul Self-Reliance AND Community Self-Sufficiency). We can prepare ourselves for a more austere way of living. We can renew old friendships and seek out new ones. We can learn something new, this week, or this month, or this year, but learn we must! We can do so much now to help ourselves... the alternative is to wait and hope that our "leaders" will make the right decisions for us and provide for us when we can't.
Your call.
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Pattern in Design
1. Review the client checklist forms in Appendix four: Patterns. These forms can be used in conjunction with the forms provided in Appendix Three: Design. Fill in the Outcomes form for the site you previously chose for your project.
· Overall we are looking to design a self-sustaining site on a relatively new site that has had little previous work carried out on it.
· We are looking to make this a vegetarian project focusing on making the entire area an ‘edible’ landscape.
· The outdoors is very important to us, but we have no need for the traditional English lawn area. Getting outside, working outside, socialising outside is critical to the type of ‘lifestyle’ we are trying to create.
· The site’s size is limited so we must maximise the edges and margins.
· We want to experiment with forest garden ideas, as this is a highly productive and self-fertile system; we also grew up around the New Forest National Park.
· We want to use lessons from Earthship design and build, or at least borrow from the ethos of green building.
· Substantial grey water collection and reed filtration are also preferred. Composting toilets will also be our human waste disposal of choice.
· Due to the angled geography to the west aspect of the site, much of that side of the building could be part-buried improving insular properties. We’d like to include some geothermal capacity to the property to assist with warming.
· Recycled materials are to be used extensively.
· We want to have lots of experimental build ideas as the challenge is as important as the technologies available. Eco-build from start to finish.
2. Observe your chosen site. Note the functions taking place (how the elements interact with other elements in the system). Consider the functions and elements you want in your system and develop implementation strategies to create them. Fill in the Patterns form in Appendix four: Patterns. This may be difficult if you are not familiar with the site. Be sure to include any patterns of behaviour the client may have.
Patterns -Initial Comments
Frost covers most of the SW corner of the site. Because we are new to the site we have yet to observe how extensive this will be stretching over the rest of the site. - We’ve decided to mitigate this by positioning our property in this location.
Site has substantial angle and we must consider water retention policy we will employ. -Designing swales and a dew pond for over-spill collection from rainwater collection to be designed into the overall build to help minimise runoff problem.
Summer offers full sun to entire site. - We’re designing large amounts of fruit stock to offer dappled shade for both plants and house.
Occasional vacation but not often for long or the same time each year. - Ensure that planting scheme is self-fertile and low maintenance.
3. Consider the special influence of edge on the designs you produced for the last section. Discuss how you will manipulate edge to improve your site design. Remember to maximise edge to increase productivity options and minimise edge when conserving energy. (Anticipate that future assignments will further redevelop your chosen site.)
We have already identified that with the limited space available to us that we must adapt our design to make the most of all the tiny margins we find around it. The steps we are endeavouring to take in order to take advantage of these margins are:
· Plant hedgerows, which we hope to encourage predators and diverse wildlife along with ensuring our hedgerows can provide a yield for us too, brambles are all over the area providing food not just for us, but our animal friends too.
· Spiral planting, to offer more edges but also allowing for a closer cultivation pathway. This will give us close access to our planting schemes whilst not removing productive areas with unnecessary pathways.
· Forest gardening, as mentioned above is a passion for us and with the basic seven-layer approach we can utilise much more of not just the horizontal plane but also design vertical growth into our site.
· Trellising, the access road is quite wide and intrudes through the entire site, by constructing ‘trellis-like’ structure to the sides and over the top of this access road, we increase the areas with which to grow on, including climbing plants to our overall design scheme.
We have plenty of additional margin opportunities that we believe will become apparent the more observations we make, but for now these above are the clearest opportunities we see.
· Overall we are looking to design a self-sustaining site on a relatively new site that has had little previous work carried out on it.
· We are looking to make this a vegetarian project focusing on making the entire area an ‘edible’ landscape.
· The outdoors is very important to us, but we have no need for the traditional English lawn area. Getting outside, working outside, socialising outside is critical to the type of ‘lifestyle’ we are trying to create.
· The site’s size is limited so we must maximise the edges and margins.
· We want to experiment with forest garden ideas, as this is a highly productive and self-fertile system; we also grew up around the New Forest National Park.
· We want to use lessons from Earthship design and build, or at least borrow from the ethos of green building.
· Substantial grey water collection and reed filtration are also preferred. Composting toilets will also be our human waste disposal of choice.
· Due to the angled geography to the west aspect of the site, much of that side of the building could be part-buried improving insular properties. We’d like to include some geothermal capacity to the property to assist with warming.
· Recycled materials are to be used extensively.
· We want to have lots of experimental build ideas as the challenge is as important as the technologies available. Eco-build from start to finish.
2. Observe your chosen site. Note the functions taking place (how the elements interact with other elements in the system). Consider the functions and elements you want in your system and develop implementation strategies to create them. Fill in the Patterns form in Appendix four: Patterns. This may be difficult if you are not familiar with the site. Be sure to include any patterns of behaviour the client may have.
Patterns -Initial Comments
Frost covers most of the SW corner of the site. Because we are new to the site we have yet to observe how extensive this will be stretching over the rest of the site. - We’ve decided to mitigate this by positioning our property in this location.
Site has substantial angle and we must consider water retention policy we will employ. -Designing swales and a dew pond for over-spill collection from rainwater collection to be designed into the overall build to help minimise runoff problem.
Summer offers full sun to entire site. - We’re designing large amounts of fruit stock to offer dappled shade for both plants and house.
Occasional vacation but not often for long or the same time each year. - Ensure that planting scheme is self-fertile and low maintenance.
3. Consider the special influence of edge on the designs you produced for the last section. Discuss how you will manipulate edge to improve your site design. Remember to maximise edge to increase productivity options and minimise edge when conserving energy. (Anticipate that future assignments will further redevelop your chosen site.)
We have already identified that with the limited space available to us that we must adapt our design to make the most of all the tiny margins we find around it. The steps we are endeavouring to take in order to take advantage of these margins are:
· Plant hedgerows, which we hope to encourage predators and diverse wildlife along with ensuring our hedgerows can provide a yield for us too, brambles are all over the area providing food not just for us, but our animal friends too.
· Spiral planting, to offer more edges but also allowing for a closer cultivation pathway. This will give us close access to our planting schemes whilst not removing productive areas with unnecessary pathways.
· Forest gardening, as mentioned above is a passion for us and with the basic seven-layer approach we can utilise much more of not just the horizontal plane but also design vertical growth into our site.
· Trellising, the access road is quite wide and intrudes through the entire site, by constructing ‘trellis-like’ structure to the sides and over the top of this access road, we increase the areas with which to grow on, including climbing plants to our overall design scheme.
We have plenty of additional margin opportunities that we believe will become apparent the more observations we make, but for now these above are the clearest opportunities we see.
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