What do weeds indicate about your soil?

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Heather Jo Flores What Weeds Indicate About the Condition of Your Soil “Weeds are weeds only from our human egotistical point of view, because they grow where we do not want them. In nature, however, they play an important and interesting role. They resist conditions that cultivated plants cannot resist, such as drought, acid soil, lack of humus, mineral deficiencies, as well as a one-sidedness of minerals, etc. They are witness of man’s failure to master the soil, and they grow abundantly wherever man has ‘missed the train’ — they only indicate our errors and nature’s corrections. Weeds want to tell a…

Big yields From a Small Garden: Growing Food in Small Spaces

Permaculture Womens Guild

There are plenty of good reasons to develop a skill set for growing food in small spaces. By Heather Jo Flores There are plenty of good reasons to develop a skill set for growing food in small spaces. Maybe you only have a tiny balcony with sun for half the day? Or a hot, paved driveway but no other yard? Perhaps you’re in student housing? Or maybe it’s more of a time constraint: You’d like to have an expansive garden but you really only want to work on it for an hour a week. Or perhaps you just don’t really eat…

Mulch Much? The Benefits of Mulching

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Heather Jo Flores It’s always a good day for mulching your garden! Mulch builds humus. The word “human” comes from the same roots as humus, meaning earth, and in fact our bodies do contain many of the same elements and microorganisms as fertile organic soil. Soil health is linked to our own health, and soil communities bear remarkable resemblance to the flora and fauna in our own guts. A diverse, thriving intestinal community keeps us humans healthy, and the same goes for the soil ecosystem. The Benefits of Mulch ​A layer of mulch, whether up around perennials and fruit trees or…