Permaculture Potential: Natural Solutions for Spring/Summer

Submitted by Debbie Willis on behalf of the Grounds Committee

This week, as we all start to look forward to more time in our gardens, I wanted to include some easy ways to support urban biodiversity. Though these tips aren't considered 'permaculture' per se, they do help build strong soil, bird and insect health, and so are part of a regenerative practice. We won't be able to do big permaculture projects at our co-op until our retrofit is well under way, but in the meantime, we can all prioritize environmental health in our own spaces.

How to Support Urban Biodiversity: (Most of these tips are thanks to Sandra from Calgary's Climate Hub. Thank you, Climate Hub!)

Birds:

• Lights out: Residences and low profile buildings pose a threat to migrating birds who travel at night (like songbirds), so turn off all non-essential lights (especially between 11 pm and 6 am) to help birds migrating north from colliding with buildings.

• Mark it: Daytime window strikes are also a problem. If your windows reflect vegetation, birds may try to fly through them. You can mark your windows with soap or tempera paint, and there are many commercial products on the market. Ensure decals or markings are vertical in nature as horizontal markings may be perceived as branches.

• Leave it alone: Got an active nest in your yard? Leave it alone. Under the International Migratory Bird Act, it’s prohibited to interfere with the nest or eggs of most migratory species. Apart from the legal issue, birds such as robins would likely abandon a nest that was moved. Incubation periods are pretty short though, so it won’t be long before the babies leave the nest.

Bees:

• When it’s 10 degrees, you can wake the bees: If possible, avoid yard cleanup until it is consistently 10 degrees above zero. Mulch, dead leaves, etc provide wintering opportunities for bees and other beneficial insects so waiting until it’s warm enough for them to emerge naturally will keep them safe.

• Dandelions - a bee’s best friend: these “weeds” represent one of the earliest and most significant sources of pollen for bees, as they bloom at a time when queens are feeding in order to begin laying eggs. So if possible, leave some dandelions for the bees.

• Clover is another plant that bees love so if you have some in your yard, leave it alone. It's also a stabilizing plant, like dandelion, so if you see it in your grass it's because a monoculture (like grass) is an inherently unstable/unhealthy environmental situation, so clover has been sent in to save the day!

• Native plants for native bees. Southern Alberta is home to a variety of bees and one of the best ways to support them is with native plants such as willow, milkvetch, cane raspberries and clover.

Water:

• Water is a precious resource. In your garden, consider plants that have lower water requirements and that are conditioned to our dry, high altitude climate. There are many online resources that will help you determine what is geographically appropriate - just remember that Calgary is considered Zone 4a.

• Avoid watering in the heat of the day. The water just evaporates and burns your lawn/plants. Best times to water are before 10 am and after 4 pm. If slugs are an issue for you, only water in the morning. Watering in the cool evening traps moisture and creates a perfect habitat for slugs.

• Leave water out for birds and bees. Remember to clean any dishes or trays to reduce the chances of parasites and disease. If cats are an issue in your neighborhood, keep the water 3 to 4 feet off the ground. Bees can’t swim so if your intention is to provide them with water, be sure to include rocks, marbles or sticks that they may reach to avoid falling in.

Soil:

• We don't normally think of soil as alive in the way that bees or birds are alive, but healthy soil is full of billions of microorganisms. The biggest tip, for a garden that maintains its soil biodiversity and therefore produces healthy food, is to turn your soil as little as possible. When you plant your garden, try not to disturb the soil structure too much.

Grounds Committee Updates

Submitted by Jennifer Peters on behalf of the Grounds Committee

Here are a few of the items that were discussed at the last grounds meeting.

We discussed the possibility of moving the partition about two feet to give more space in the shed which would make finding, putting away and keeping the shed organized much easier. It's in the early stages and still needs to be discussed further with other committees.

There is a broken swing at the playground that we have put on our list of items to fix as soon as possible. It is our goal to keep the playground safe and up to code for the kids in the co-op.

In Permaculture news we discussed a small project of using rain barrels and pallets for garden planters around the co-op, and finding out who would be interested and if this is something we could make into a bigger project depending on the interest from members.

We also discussed the ongoing issue of 3rd St with speeding cars and children's safety, especially with the weather hopefully getting warmer soon and summer around the corner and more kids out playing. We discussed some interim fixes of putting out more signs but the City could get involved if the need was there, so this is something that could take some more time and planning to get a proper solution, but the first steps have been made.

And lastly, the valve on 7 Ave in front of the sign has not been fixed as of yet and there have been no updates from the City.

Permaculture Potential: Permaculture and Air Pollution

Submitted by Debbie Willis, on behalf of the Grounds Committee

I have been reading a hugely informative book called Breath, by James Nestor, about the importance of correct breathing for our mental, emotional and physical health. This book inspired me to investigate how our environment affects our ability to breathe in a healthy way, and the possibility that permaculture at the co-op might improve our air at Sunnyhill Co-op. This feels particularly relevant as Alberta is now on the precipice of a third wave of Covid-19 and we are all concerned about the health of our respiratory systems.

The effects of air pollution:

According to the World Health Organization, a reduction in air pollution – in particular, four key pollutants: particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide – would help cut rates of stroke, lung cancer, asthma, heart disease, and respiratory disease. Small particles get absorbed straight through the lungs into the blood and are responsible for chronic effects including cardiovascular disease, according to respiratory physician Louis Irving. He goes on to say that large particles lodge in the lung and can cause effects such as cancer, asthma, and chronic respiratory disease. (Source: permaculturenews.org)

Air pollution is particularly damaging to children and young people. The negative impacts of air pollution on a young person can affect everything from environmental allergies to breathing issues such as asthma, to a child’s body mass index, according to researchers at the University of Calgary. At least one study showed that cognitive development was less in children that went to schools in areas with high traffic-related pollution, said Stefania Bertazzon and Rizwan Shahid of the Geography of Health and GIS Analysis research group at the O’Brien Institute for Public Health in the Cumming School of Medicine. (Source: Global News, 2016.)

Pollution solution:

But here's the good news! Though we live near downtown and Memorial Drive, putting us at risk for air pollution, we can mitigate this effect by increasing the tree cover and diversity of our green space.

According to research into urban food forests developed in Peterboro Ontario, there are many advantages to permaculture and polyculture green spaces when it comes to air pollution. It is well documented that plants can take up gaseous pollutants, as well as reducing particulate matter suspended in the air, which sticks to plant surfaces (Currie and Bass, 2008). Some of the particulates are absorbed into the plant, although most of them just stick to the surface and are washed away by rainwater to the soil below (Currie and Bass, 2008). This prevents us from breathing them into our lungs.

Urban trees and other vegetation can also reduce contaminants making it to water bodies, such as rivers (Smith et al., 2013). Plants can prevent sediment, as well as other contaminant loading of rivers (such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and other pollutants) (Smith et al., 2013). As a community located close to the river that is also our drinking-water source, this could be a Calgary-wide advantage to permaculture development at our co-op.

One of the beautiful and most important aspects of permaculture is that, unlike typical agriculture, it embraces the planting and tending of trees—and trees are pollution-absorbing powerhouses! According to the USDA Forest Service, tree transpiration and tree canopies affect air temperature, radiation absorption, heat storage, wind speed and relative humidity, and these changes in local meteorology can alter pollution concentrations in urban areas. Reduced air temperature due to trees can also improve air quality because the emission of many pollutants and/or ozone-forming chemicals are temperature-dependent.

As a final note that I think is significant and exciting, here's an example of trees used on a large scale to decrease air pollution: in 1994, trees in New York City removed an estimated 1,821 metric tons of air pollution. This had an estimated value to society of $9.5 million, in reduced health care costs and other benefits. Perhaps, by decreasing our grass monoculture in favour of more plant diversity, we at the co-op could experience this type of well-being in our little community too!

Permaculture Potential #3: Permaculture and Climate Change

Submitted by Debbie Willis and the Grounds Committee

Welcome to Permaculture Potential! The Grounds Committee is excited to help educate co-op members (and ourselves!) about permacultures principles and techniques, with the eventual aim of proposing more permaculture projects to membership. This month, in honour of President Joe Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, we will be discussing permaculture and its relationship to the climate crisis.

It's probably intuitive how permaculture—working with nature in order to grow food and regenerate natural systems—can be an important way to address climate change. Eating local food has long been a known as an effective way to lower your carbon footprint; our food forest at the co-op will be a way for all of us to enjoy local, healthy food that has not been transported by plane or truck.

Also, permaculture tends to include growing trees, shrubs, and other plants that will sequester carbon in the ground in the most natural, life-giving way—there is nothing wrong with carbon, per say, but there's something deeply wrong when we've released too much of it into the atmosphere.

But it's not simply trees that sequester carbon; it's the entire natural system, including the soil and mycelium. Agriculture monocrops do not sequester carbon the same way that complex polycultures do, in part because carbon cannot be effectively and naturally sequestered unless there is healthy soil.

 Soil is full of trillions of living microorganisms, and those beings do enormous work to sequester carbon and communicate with each other, and they don't like to be disturbed. Permaculture—which mostly relies on perennial plants and is often no-till/low-till and organic—allows us to produce food without much disturbance of the top soil. In contrast, industrial forms of agriculture tend to involve using pesticides—which kill microorganisms in the soil—and then attempting to replenish the soil through the addition, each year, of more and more fertilizers. These chemicals are generally fossil-fuels based, and they lead to soil depletion and, over the long term, the death and disappearance of topsoil. The loss of topsoil is a huge topic, as it has led to the collapse of whole civilizations, so preserving our topsoil is one of our most effective ways of addressing the linked crises of climate change and food insecurity.

Permaculture uses natural methods to increase the soil's capacity to capture carbon, such as compost, compost teas, mulch, fungi, worms, beneficial micro-organisms, and sustainably produced biochar. Permaculture also generally involves ground cover, which protects and nurtures the soil. Permaculture is always concerned with building and preserving soil, rather than tearing it apart and letting it blow or wash away.

I highly recommend Kiss the Ground, a documentary that is informative about regenerative agriculture's effect on soil health, and therefore on the planet. It can be found on Netflix.

And of course, there are many other ways in which permaculture can help solve the climate crisis, but these are far too numerous for a short article. Here are just a few, and there's more information at permacultureclimatechange.org:

• Water harvesting, retention and restoration of functional water systems allows for better management of watersheds and less waste (see our last article on permaculture and water management)

• Forest conservation, rewilding, and sustainable forestry and agriculture allows for healthier ecosystems and natural carbon capture

• Community-based economic models—incorporating strategies such as co-operatives, local currencies, gift economies, and horizontal economic networks—allow for citizen engagement instead of corporate monopoly

• Conservation, energy efficiency, re-use, recycling and full-cost accounting (taking more than just economics into account) decrease waste

• Conflict transformation, trauma counseling and personal and spiritual healing can allow for greater engagement with the natural world

Permaculture Potential #2: Water Management

Submitted by Debbie Willis on behalf of the Grounds Committee

Permaculture Potential #2: Water Management

Welcome to Permaculture Potential! This is a column from the Grounds Committee; we are excited to help educate co-op members (and ourselves!) about permacultures principles and techniques, with the eventual aim of proposing more permaculture projects to membership. This week we're talking about something that has been on many of our mind's lately, as our sidewalks cover with ice and Sunnyhill Lane fills with puddles: water management.

What is water management, permaculture-style?

Permaculture always focuses on whole systems, and manages inputs and outputs in a way that ensures the health of the whole ecosystem. In permaculture, water is optimally used while respecting the overall health of the watershed. We must always be mindful that water is an essential resource.

At Sunnyhill, we have issues with water on pathways and flooding in the common area and so we on the Grounds and Planning and Development committees feel that it is worthwhile to explore the possibility of managing and using this plentiful resource—wonderful water—in ways that could be productive and beautiful for every member of the co-op. These are all dreams for now; I want to stress that we don't yet have concrete plans or detailed knowledge of what might be possible at the co-op. But in the name of education, I want to give you a general sense of how permaculture approaches an abundance of water like we are fortunate to have at Sunnyhill.

Two approaches:

There are two basic strategies of water conservation and management on a permaculture property: storing water in the soil and diverting surface water to dams, ponds and/or tanks for later use.

First we want to slow, spread, and sink water as it falls from the sky into the soil.

Following this, the secondary goal, as Ben Falk writes in Resilient Farm Homestead, are to:  capture as much water as is reasonably possible, store that water for dry periods, and distribute that water when necessary across the site. 

1) Let's talk about the first objective: slowing and sinking water. We want to disperse the flow of water so it can infiltrate into soil, turning runoff into soak-in. Essentially, we want to make the water stroll, not run, through the landscape and for this we must shape the land in a way that facilitates getting water into the ground and storing it there. In permaculture, one harvests water in this way by directing it through terraces, seasonal rain gardens and ponds, water-infiltration swales, slow moving waterways, and dry creeks. Slowing and sinking the water allows it to feed trees and plants, produce food, and create lush, self-sustaining landscapes appropriate for leisure—children playing, adults sitting under the shade of trees, green-thumbs who want more space to garden.

See below for an image of swales:

(You can also see wonderful examples of swales in the film The Biggest Little Farm, where they make use of the technique in their orchard.)

2) Once you’ve made the best use of the fallen rainfall and stored that water in the soil, you’ll get runoff as the field capacity of soil is reached. (You might get this runoff straight away if your site’s watershed is in a bad shape.) At that point, you begin diverting and storing that water on the surface in ponds, rain barrels, and tanks. Please see below for an image of a permaculture pond:

Right now, many feel that we have a water "problem" at Sunnyhill. By using permaculture principles and design, we may be able to change that problem into an opportunity. This is something that the Grounds Committee and Planning and Development will be exploring to improve our sustainability score for funding as plans for the new-build unfold, with the aim of presenting a cogent and realistic plan to members.

Permaculture Potential #1: What is Permaculture? And Winterizing Your Garden!

Submitted by Debbie Willis on behalf of Grounds Committee

Welcome to Permaculture Potential! This is a new column from the Grounds Committee; we are excited to help educate co-op members (and ourselves!) about permacultures principles and techniques, with the eventual aim of proposing more permaculture projects to membership.

What is permaculture?

According to Bill Mollison, who was a professor of biogeography and environmental psychology at the University of Tasmania, permaculture is the "conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems."

In short, permaculture is about living and gardening in harmony with nature. It is a holistic worldview, as well as a set of principles and techniques. It often involves closed-loop systems (a system that provides its own energy needs), rain conservation and usage, the planting of perennial crops (rather than annuals, which involves disturbing the soil every year), and letting nature do the work for you (the human's role is to observe and work with nature's inclinations, rather than to engage in unnecessary labour).

A wonderful example of permaculture is the food forest that co-op members planted last summer—a welcoming space of perennial plants and trees that we expect will produce hundreds of pounds of food for co-op members in the coming years. We feel that further permaculture projects will enhance the beauty and sustainability of our grounds while also reducing maintenance costs and increasing food security.

For a lovely and moving overview of the principles of permaculture, please see the documentary Inhabit, available on Vimeo.

Winterizing Your Garden—Permaculture-style!

To winterize your garden the permaculture way, you want to take advantage of the resources that nature has already provided and to sustainably cycle them back into your garden to feed your soil over the year ahead. According to the website growmyownfood.com, here is a reliable way to prepare your garden space for winter:

After you've harvested the last of your veggies (and presumably you already did this before the snow this year!), cut your annual veggie plants stems off at the soil level. By retaining the root system in the soil, the roots will gradually die off over the winter and provide a ready source of accessible nutrients for next year's plants.

For perennials, perform some last "chopping and dropping." To "chop and drop" means to take extra green leafy growth and drop it directly into your garden as you cut it off.

It's best to refrain from doing any pruning of fruit trees until the late winter when they are more dormant.

Once you cleaned up the old plants in your yard, feed and preserve the soil by keeping it covered and moist. This is especially important during Calgary's dry, cold winters! The simplest (and most inexpensive) way to protect your soil is to mulch with shredded leaves. Shredded leaves decompose faster than whole leaves and so won't rot. According to The David Suzuki Foundation, leaves also provide important nutrients for the microorganisms that keep soil healthy, as well as providing a warm home for butterfly pupae, who need shelter to overwinter.

And voila! You have a simple, low-maintenance way to preserve the integrity and health of your garden over our long winter! :)

Please get in touch with Debbie in unit 34 (debmwillis@gmail.com) if you have ideas for other topics that should be covered in Permaculture Potential!