The family seed saving book – Rosemary Morrow

 

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Do it yourself – A handbook for changing our world

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The Use of Reedbeds for the Treatment of Sewage and Waste Water from Domestic Households

Reed Bed

This is a 20 page manual published by the City of Lismore in Australia detailing their use of reed beds to process waste water as an alternative to septic treatment.

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Learn Permaculture 101 in Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

Gaias Garden

Hemenway’s 14 Principles of Permaculture

1. Observe. Use protracted and thoughtful observation rather than prolonged and thoughtless action. Observe the site and its elements in all seasons. Design for specific sites, clients, and cultures.
2. Connect. Use relative location, that is, place the elements of your design in ways that create useful relationships and time-saving connections among all parts. The number of connections among elements creates a healthy, diverse ecosystem, not the number of elements.
3. Catch and store energy and materials. Identify, collect, and hold useful flows. Every cycle is an opportunity for yield, every gradient (in slope, charge, temperature, and the like) can produce energy. Reinvesting resources builds capacity to capture yet more resources.
4. Each element performs multiple functions. Choose and place each element in a design to perform as many functions as possible. Beneficial connections between diverse components create a stable whole. Stack elements in both space and time.
5. Each function is supported by multiple elements. Use multiple methods to achieve important functions and to create synergies. Redundancy protects when one or more elements fail.
6. Make the least change for the greatest effect. Understand the system you are working with well enough to find its “leverage points” and intervene there, where the least work accomplishes the most change.
7. Use small-scale, intensive systems. Start at your doorstep with the smallest systems that will do the job and build on your successes. Grow by “chunking”—that is, developing a small system or arrangement that works well—and repeat it, with variations.
8. Optimize edge. The edge—the intersection of two environments— is the most diverse place in a system and is where energy and materials accumulate or are translated. Increase or decrease edge as appropriate.
9. Collaborate with succession. Living systems usually advance from immaturity to maturity, and if we accept this trend and align our designs with it instead of fighting it, we save work and energy. Mature ecosystems are more diverse and productive than young ones.
10. Use biological and renewable resources. Renewable resources (usually living beings and their products) reproduce and build up over time, store energy, assist yield, and interact with other elements. Favor these over nonrenewable resources.

Principles Based on Attitudes

1. Turn problems into solutions. Constraints can inspire creative design, and most problems usually carry not just the seeds of their own solution within them but also the inspiration for simultaneously solving other problems. “We are confronted by insurmountable opportunities.”—Attributed to Pogo (Walt Kelly).
2. Get a yield. Design for both immediate and long-term returns from your efforts: “You can’t work on an empty stomach.” Set up positive feedback loops to build the system and repay your investment.
3. The biggest limit to abundance is creativity. The designer’s imagination and skill usually limit productivity and diversity before any physical limits are reached.
4. Mistakes are tools for learning. Evaluate your trials. Making mistakes is a sign you’re trying to do things better. There is usually little penalty for mistakes if you learn from them.

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Tropical Tree Seed Manual

E.M. FLORES

Academia Nacional de Ciencias,

Costa Rica

Tropical Tree Seed Manual

Tropical Tree Seed Manual full Free ebook. (pdf)

Cover and Frontmatter J.A. Vosso Details

Chapter 1 Pages 1-30: Seed Biology J.A. Vosso Details

Chapter 1 Pages 31-47: Seed Biology J.A. Vosso Details

Chapter 1 Pages 48-61: Seed Biology J.A. Vosso Details

Chapter 1 Pages 62-81: Seed Biology J.A. Vosso Details

Chapter 1 Pages 82-106: Seed Biology J.A. Vosso Details

Chapter 2: Collection J.A. Vosso Details

Chapter 3: Storage Tran D. Hong and Richard H. Ellis Details

Chapter 4: Orthodox and Recalcitrant Seeds Patricia Berjak and N.W. Pammenter Details

Chapter 5: Dormancy and Germination Michael T. Smith, Ben S.P. Wang, and Heriel P. Msanga Details

Chapter 6: Pathology Part 1 – R.K. Mittal and S.B. Mathur Part 2 – K. Old and Z.Q. Yuan Details

Chapter 7: Ecological Life Histories Ariel E. Lugo and Jess K. Zimmerman Details

Chapter 8: Ethnobotany Ana Lucrecia De Macvean and Elfriede Poll Details

Chapter 9: Notes on Tropical Dendrology Elbert L. Little Jr. Details

Indices J.A. Vosso Details

References J.A. Vosso Details

Species Descriptions

Tropical Tree Seed Manual (Entire Manual) Details

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Low Input Manual

“In 2005, Stacia was contacted by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Malawi to consult on a project that would begin to assist relief and donor agencies to look beyond food aid and start focusing on sustainable food programmes.  As food insecurity and malnutrition have become chronic problems in Malawi, so too have shipments of food aid (usually in the form of maize).  In many instances of extreme shortages or disasters, this type of aid can mean the difference between life and death, but even in these situations it remains only a temporary solution.  The true solutions to Malawi’s food and nutrition security problems lie with the people themselves and the agricultural systems that they are using to feed themselves.

In response to these problems, and the call by many for a more sustainable future for Malawi, Stacia worked with a team of people to compile the Low Input Food and Nutrition Manual…Growing and Eating More Using Less.  This manual is a culmination of the work that she and her husband, Kristof, have done over their ten years in Malawi on the issues of nutrition and sustainable agriculture (especially Permaculture).  This manual is currently being used by the WFPs partners in Nutritional Rehabilitation Units, schools, and various HIV/AIDS programmes.  It is also the model that is being used by Malawi’s Ministry of Education for thier school gardening/feeding project that is aiming to get Permaculture integrated into over 5,000 primary schools throughout the country.  To date, close to 5000 copies of the manual have been printed with plans for an additional printing of 20,000-30,000 copies in the next year or two.  So far, these printings have been supported by the World Food Programme and GTZ (a German Technical Agency).

The only restriction on the reprinting of this manual is that it be used for Non-Profit use only.  We encourage organizations and individuals to print and use their own copies as needed.  It is one of the main principles of Permaculture, “Observe, Learn, and SHARE!”.  We would like to get this information out to as many people and groups as we can who are interested in applying Permaculture principles to their lives and in their work. Below you will find the Low Input Manual that has been broken into downloadable PDF sections for you to use and reprint as desired for non-profit use.  These sections are still large, but we have tried to keep them all under 2mb in size.  We hope that you find this information useful.”

• 01 Low Input Manual p 1-20, introduction.pdf

• 02 – Making Food Choices
• 03 – Diet Diversity
• 04 – Soil Health
• 05 – Water
• 06 – planning design
• 06.5 Planning Design
• 07 – implement and monitor
• 08 – appendix 1 – handouts
• 09 – appendix 2 – handouts
• 10 – Appendix 3
• 11 – Appendix 4

• 12 – appendix 5
• 13 – appendix 6
• 14 – appendix 7, the LAST file!

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Permaculture Principles

Permaculture Principles

Permaculture is a design system based on ethics and principles which can be used to establish, design, manage and improve all efforts made by individuals, households and communities towards a sustainable future.

This site explores the ‘essence of permaculture’ in a simple and clear way, expanding on the work of co-originator of the permaculture concept,David Holmgren.

Permaculture Principles

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Capturing HEAT Five Earth-Friendly Cooking Technologies and How to Build Them

By Dean Still and Jim Kness

Contents:

4 INTRODUCTION

4 Saving Biomass Resources Worldwide

7 MARIA TELKES SOLAR COOKER

8 How to Design a Powerful Solar Cooker

10 How to Build the Plywood Telkes Cooker

16 CONICAL COOKER

16 Reflections on Solar Cooking

19 THE WINIARSKI ROCKET STOVE (ESTUFA ROCKY)

20 How to Build the Rocket Stove

22 Insulation and High Mass in Stoves (and Houses)

26 Concerning Stove Efficiency

26 How to Make a Rocket Stove with Tin Cans

29 HAYBOXES (INSULATED COOKERS)

31 THE ROCKET BREAD OVEN

33 How to Construct the Winiarski Rocket Oven

Capturing Heat

By Dean Still and Jim Kness (Aprovecho Research Center)

Contents

• INTRODUCTION
  • Saving Biomass Resources Worldwide
• MARIA TELKES SOLAR COOKER
  • How to Design a Powerful Solar Cooker
  • How to Build the Plywood Telkes Cooker
• CONICAL COOKER
  • Reflections on Solar Cooking
• THE WINIARSKI ROCKET STOVE (ESTUFA ROCKY)
  • How to Build the Rocket Stove
  • Insulation and High Mass in Stoves (and Houses)
  • Concerning Stove Efficiency
  • How to Make a Rocket Stove with Tin Cans
• HAYBOXES (INSULATED COOKERS)
• THE ROCKET BREAD OVEN
  • How to Construct the Winiarski Rocket Oven

Capturing Heat

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Vegetable Garden Encyclopedia

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The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency by John Seymour

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