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Today’s video explores a potent permaculture principle that unlocks amazing opportunities for your garden. Terms and conditions for the competition to win a place on my course next year 11-15th June:
1 Entry/comment per person
List as many functions as you can think of for a chosen plant
Closing date Saturday 7th Sept 10pm UK time
Chosen using random comment picker
Winner announced in my next Huw’s Garden Journal (see below) AND will be a pinned comment on this video. I will also reply to the comment too.
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27 Comments
6:56 i cant believe you’d use chat gpt as someone invested in permaculture and the environment
On your stacking functions model, you can add animal food to that as well. You can feed your animals with it
Love that you are broadening out into permaculture design and sharing your insights with us.
Nasturtium
Edible in salads
Polinator
Beauty interest
Food styling
Ferments
Green manure
Ground cover
Trap plant
Taco shell
Frog shelter
Conversation starter
Borage! It's always covered with pollinators, the leaves and flowers are edible, makes great compost and mulch, has medicinal value, looks great in the garden, and I also use it as shade for other plants. Oh, and I use it for animal food as well!
I came for the cup stacking 👣
I finally have a garden and I planted several different plants, but the Jalapeño has been my favorite to grow.
Fresh, Pickled, jarred, candied, dehydrated, and smoked. I grow them close to my other plants like carrots for shade and sometimes as a support for the beans. While overwintering them I like to throw all the leftovers in my compost to continue the cycle.
Cheers and thank you for the videos.
My goal is to add chickens and an enclosed chicken run to my suburban ‘farm’.
Chicken functions: Eggs, meat if necessary, compost turners, scrap eaters, insect control, entertainment, mental wellbeing (caring for something other than self), fertiliser for the garden, clean up of fallen fruit.
Caged Run functions: Protection from predators, they can let themselves out and put themselves to bed. Bird protection for a mulberry tree, a structure to grow fruiting vines on outside, which in turn will provide shade for the chickens.
Coop functions: Put a worm farm under their roost and you feed the worms, less clean up of chicken poop, worm castings for garden, treats for the chickens. Roof can collect water for the chickens to drink
I’m sure there are more.
Thinking oustide of the box: I think this is your superpower as a content creator (and probably in the rest of your life), Huw. Through this you teach, create, elevate, inspire, and keep us coming back for more. Keep stacking!
I have a fence in the garden that separates the veg plot from the lawn and border. It also keeps the dogs out of the veg plot and acts as a support to the raspberries that are grown on the other side. I can put hanging pots on it to create additional growing space vertically.
My tree cabbage this year has been a haven for caterpillars as well as a delicious eat
I often have it at breakfast before protein or carbs to help regulate my blood sugars so it's also a medicine, some leaves go to the chickens as a treat.
At the moment it is shading my lettuce from direct sunlight and the lower leaves will be chopped and dropped soon and should make effective slug hideouts. Happy collecting and disposing of to follow…the chucks will be happy.
Love the new sub stack format, I've chosen to support Sam with a paid subscription as I'm expecting you to get a lot of support for your stack. Can't do both sorry 😔
LOL Huw, you are even suggesting stacking the functions of your brain. If you do an activity immediately before you go to sleep, your brain works on the problem while you are sleeping, and in the morning there may be a new solution! Good work!
I think you are over thinking gardening big time.
I thinking about marigolds. A jellow or orange color spot in the garden, very distinct smell when you pick them, they saw themselves back so you have just to let that happen, they are medicinal for the skin, they are edible flowers and make your salades colorfull, they are adored by insects, you can cut some flowers to bring that intense color in the house, you can put them in a wild flower bouquet in a vase on your terrase table, you can harvest the seeds and give them away, you can dry them and keep some of that color in the wintertime, they are easy to saw so ideal for a starting garderer or kids, it is a repelens for sluggs ( wich gardener does not like that one ) , you can mix them in your vegetalbe garden, they have a taproot and help to make the soil lose, they repel wireworms and mematodes ( I amase myself, I remembered vagely they had a repel function, but I have also learned now they have a taproot), you can make art with dryed flowers or paint them
Winter squash – functions – winter carb as food for all sorts of meals, seeds for eating, seeds for sowing next year (depending on type), ground cover, halloween decoration, weight to hold things down as it is curing, wonderful flowers for pollinators, compost material (the old plant), summer sun storage for use in the winter, carve out flesh and use as a plant pot, the outer skin can be fed to animals, e.g. pigs and chickens, entertaining plants for children to grow, make nice gifts (?), thread seeds onto thick cotton and use as a bird feeder, good for competitions (grow the biggest, throw it the furthest, roll it, guess the weight etc), door stopper to keep the shed door open in the autumn/winter until you eat it, targets for shooting (!), carved out to be bowls to hold your soup. Who knew?
These were great thinking exercises, Huw.
One crop that does well here, in Southern Middle Tennessee is Okra. It is tall as a shrub, now, so it gives some shade to the ground and plants below.
I prune the leaves as I harvest, to cover the soil, as mulch.
It is definitely a seed crop, as it is the same seed my husband got from his grandfather 40+ years ago.
We eat the pods when small as a snack, especially the grandchildren, and
as mature pods in stews (and fried).
Last year I let tomatoes trellis it’s stalks.
I feed the overripe pods to my chickens, who appreciate the treat.
Finally, the compost gets the stalks when Winter clean-up comes around.
I have 43 almond trees
Multiple uses for them
• One I cover with mesh after bloom to allow the almonds to mature
• The rest bloom nicely in February [I live in Israel] and make a beautiful view out of my kitchen window.
• Attracting bees and other pollinators.
• Spreads lovely sweet aroma of juicy nectar from the blossom for almost a full month
• I harvest the non covered ones for green Almonds snd then let them feed the Rose-Ringed Parakeet around here
• And when not bear they shade part of my garden beds from the horrific Mediterranean summer sun
Nasturtiums – Add beauty, attract pollinators, edible flowers and leaves, trail over raised bed edges, can be trained up trellis, fill spaces, hide ugly corners, cut back and compost, save seeds, act as a slug and caterpillar trap (speaking from this years experience!), butterfly nursery 🤣
Great questions and a fun competition!
I like the use of the Lateral Thinking tool to generate new ideas.
I have an apple tree that is almost 30 feet tall and is tapped into the water table so requires no additional water in my northern California home. I take the leaves in the winter and either compost them or add them as a layer beneath the tree and then lay compost over that to recover the nutrients into the soil. We eat the good fruit, as do the various squirrels, birds, and rabbits. I use extra or damaged fruit in compost, or to bury in the heavy clay soil, or in my worm bins. When I trim the tree, I bury the limbs and larger cuttings in my raised beds before adding soil to kick start the soil ecosystem health, sometimes I burn them a bit first as I find that helps to really make the soil fertile and rich and it seems to stimulate growth. The larger libs also store moisture they soak up in winter months to help keep a hydration battery during the long dry months of summer and fall here. The bees love the flowers, and the tree provides shade against my eastern wall of my home, helping to prevent the morning sun from heating up the house in the summer months, and also provides privacy to the eastern windows. Below it, I am going to start trying to grow morels, which enjoy the base of mature apple trees as good places to grow.
suggesting we list multiple functions for something in the comments to enter the competition is a great way of stacking functions! 1. It advertises your course; 2. It showcases the useful things we would learn on it; 3. It gets people thinking about permaculture; 4 It gets people thinking about their garden and how things they already do are examples of stacking functions; 5. The resulting comments serve as a great set of examples of stacking functions! I'm sure there are more than this too 🙂
Sunflowers
* For the neighbors to enjoy
* Sunflower seeds for snacks
* To trellis my cucumbers and beans
* To break up into compost
* Use leaves to make liquid fertilizer
* To attract stink bugs and keep them away from tomatoes 😅
* use the inside of the stem (after it's dried) as a natural Styrofoam/packing substitute
* Tie the tops of the heads together and make a tunnel for kids to run through and play under
* Cut flowers
* To cast shade
* To provide food so we can watch the amusing antics of squirrels
My huge hazelnut bush is a shelter for birds and other wildlife, creates a sort of a tunnel before the maun part of my garden opens up, adds structure to the garden. It provides nuts for humans and squirrels, shade for the composters and wood for the stove. The long shoots can be used for runner beans, to make bows and arrows for children and to prop up nettings to protect the vegetables against the gourmet deer. Slim branches can be shredded to make paths or to add to compost.
I'd love to win a ticket for your course!!
"Stacking functions" is the key to interlocking your design elements and multiplies productivity and efficiency.
What a great video, thanks! The stacking functions that come to mind for me, date back to my childhood. We had a hazelnut living fence as a border to our neighbour. In addition to the great nuts we harvested every year, our neighbour harvested one third from the overhanging branches and he often thanked us for them. We also harvested the early green nuts, that are so different in flavour from the mature ones. From the branches, we kids made bows and swords, my dad used the sticks to make trellises to support climbers. The bushes also provided great shade for our chaotic, forrest-like compost, which not only benfitted the veggie garden, but also yielded heaps of worms for fishing. We made dens bewtween the bushes in summer, the pheasants and pigeons roosted there at night. And the best: We were the only family in the neighbourhood who had hazelnuts in the garden; made us feel special and it filled us with great pride when we were children.
Grass clippings worked really well between garden rows to keep out weeds. I had more cucumbers this year without wood chip.
I was listening to this while harvesting chamomile. The primary function is to use the flowers for tea, both medicinally and because it's tasty. But on the first of September I stop harvesting and let the flowers dry to be used for seeds. Once I've collected seeds for next year I dry the leaves to make natural incense. The chamomile flowers attract pollinating insects to the garden. Finally, the lovely scent just makes the garden a more pleasant place to be.