Wednesday, July 8th
I’ve been reading up on permaculture again. It’s always a good way to remember that, from a Christian perspective, we are to be stewards of the Earth. From the Buddhist perspective, it is good to work in harmony with nature and do no harm.
Coming soon to our property is a greenhouse. It’s gonna be a big ‘un. I hope to grow most of our seasonal vegetables and perhaps some fruit. I want to start enough lavender to create a mini-meadow of it for harvesting. We’ll be collecting the rain water from a portion of the house’s roof and storing it at the back of the greenhouse. This will also provide a little bit of temperature modulation.
Now to close the loop.
What by-products will the greenhouse create that I can use? What potential problems can be solved by permaculture principles?
- Oxygen created
- Carbon Dioxide needed
- Extra green material
- Need for compost
- Need for water
- Excess heat
- Could this be vented to the house? Could we vent it to a future livestock area?
- Would livestock adjacent to the greenhouse help enough? Could the house have a vent back towards the greenhouse?
- Composting outdoors is challenging due to the wildlife scavengers. What other alternatives do we have?
- It will be difficult to come up with enough compost, especially when the greenhouse is first built. Happily, I found that A1 Organics has product available very near to our house.
- The aforementioned rain barrels will store all our water. Unfortunately, we will need to plumb in a water line from the well as a backup method for obtaining water.
- I’m interested to see what heat is generated in the greenhouse during the winter. I don’t know, aside from possible vents to the house, how to utilize this heat effectively. It may also be necessary to keep the temperatures higher to avoid too much night-time heat loss.
Can you think of how permaculture thinking can affect things going on in your life?
