How To Design Your Property – The Process Of Permaculture Design Explained

permacultureapprentice.com writes…

“You’ve finally got your hands on the piece of land of your dreams and now you’re looking forward to making the best possible use of it. You want to use a permaculture design but there is a problem, no one has explained to you how the design process actually works and maybe you just don’t have the $1000 to afford a Permaculture Design Certificate.

Permaculture design is a mysterious concept that everyone’s talking about but it’s hard to convey the underlying process without taking a PDC. One could well say permaculture design is elusive and enigmatic form of alchemy.

Recently I finished Geoff Lawton’s Online PDC, yet was caught off-guard when it came to the actual design. When I searched the web for a tutorial about the process of the design I found it very hard to visualise it clearly: there were books out there and encyclopaedias such as Designers’ Manual but what I needed was a straightforward guide with simple steps.

What I discovered is, when we take apart an idealised permaculture design, we can see 5 fundamental, interrelated actions:

• People Analysis and Assessment
• Site Analysis and Assessment
• Design Concept Development
• Detailed Design
• Implementation & Evaluation

In this article I will provide a step-by-step guide to the phases that lead to the final design and design itself, as well as touch on the implementation phase. Although there might be other people involved in the project, today I will focus only on you…”

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Bag Gardens and how to make one

sendacow.org.uk writes…

Bag Gardens are a type of African garden that Send a Cow teaches families how to make in Africa. They are also a great way to get your pupils involved in a growing project, learning about healthy eating and life in an African country. These mini-gardens make the most of soil, compost and waste water, are easy to weed and can be grown in schools.

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Google Maps can now tell you if it’s worth installing solar panels on your roof

theverge.com writes…

 

 

Google wants to help you harness the power of the sun. A new service called Project Sunroof aims to provide a “treasure map” of solar energy with the help of Google Maps. Sunroof gives homeowners detailed information about how much solar power their roof can generate and how much money they could save on electricity costs by adding solar panels.

Sunroof uses data from Google Maps that previously had no practical application. For instance, Sunroof uses Maps’ 3D-modeling to calculate the amount of space a building’s roof has for solar panels. The service also analyzes the positioning of the sun over the course of a year, as well as the type of cloud cover and temperature the neighborhood usually experiences. It even considers the amount of shade cast by nearby objects.

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