Dumpster Diving Chronicles // Practicing Permaculture in the Yard
The place I live in now is nothing short of blessings. Just a few minutes of walk and you can reach the river, as well as some areas with pine trees as well as native forest.
However, no matter how beautiful a place is, there will be humans leaving trace in not exactly the most pleasant of ways. During my exploration of the area I mention I ran into several piles of trash which completely ruined the local scenery.
At the same time, there was enough decent material among the garbage for us to salvage a bit and bring a nice little treasure back home. I'm always looking for interesting things to recycle, so from that perspective, it wasn't that bad.
Here you can appreciate the thick of the haul we brought home. Some planks, boards, translucent rooftops and PVC pipes:
This is what the yard currently looks like and though it's not much to witness, I share it with the intention of showing the progress made with every little step taken.
The idea is to turn all this into a very fertile place, filled with organic matter and rich soil. After that we can add a plant here and there and take care of it until it adapts into the ecosystem. Those that have followed me for some time might know I'm not much into fast-paced agricultural production, but rather into turning places into healthy environments for a diversity of plants, fungi, and insects.
This looks like a fire pit and in a certain sense it is, but for a different kind of fire... The idea is for the wood to fuel the life that will be born, mainly fungi and microorganisms that will help the soil thrive. Underneath the soil, there is more wood to be decomposed giving nutrients to whatever may grow here. Hopefully, we'll be seeing a tree or a native bush sprout from here eventually.
Some more things that could be useful to put plants inside.
Can someone explain to me what this was doing in the trash?
I spent this afternoon putting together some of the planks to begin the construction of a tiny greenhouse. It'll just be a rectangle with the plastic covering to place a few edibles. The nice part is that except for the nails, this is 100% recycled and free of monetary cost.
Well, that's pretty much it for this post. As you can see, there are some basic permaculture principles applied here, such as:
- Observe and interact
- Produce no waste
- Integrate, don't segregate
- Use small, slow solutions
- Use and value diversity
- Use edges and the value marginal
Hope you're all going for better ways to live during these times when we have more time to get our act together for the planet. As you can see, improving the space we live in needs little to no money due to all the resources available from a waste-producing society.
Stay well and keep fighting for a better world!