Orchard People

Journey to Texas: A Surprising Landscape
Last year, I traveled to Texas. I was a speaker at the Texas Tree Conference and it was a lot of fun. But getting to Texas, I was really surprised to see
how dry and parched the landscape was.
Some of the trees were really struggling from drought,
and of course the lawns had turned brown.
There's just too little water. But during my trip, I visited the Festival Beach Food Forest. It was in Austin, Texas,
and it was absolutely like stepping into a different world.
Everything was so lush and beautiful and green.
And that was partially because of the passive watering systems that they had developed.
And these are systems like berms and swales or ground covers and mulching.
So I thought that would be a great topic for the show today.
Introducing Bill Wilson: Permaculture Expert
And so today my guest is Bill Wilson. He's the co founder of Midwest Permaculture in Illinois.
Permaculture Principles: Water Management
So Bill, welcome to the show today.
Thank you, Susan. Pleasure to be here.
It's so good to have you here.
And I wanted to ask you, in my introduction I talk about Texas. It is really hot there. And of course, passive watering and water management is really important in Texas. Why is it so important to you as a permaculture expert in your landscapes that you're creating?
Climate wise and location wise, it's incredibly dry.
Not enough rain. A lot of parched land down in Texas. But in Illinois, we have a lot of soils that are really, have a tremendous amount of clay in them. And so even though it's raining, if the rain comes too quick, there's a lot of water that runs off of the landscape. And so that's, once water leaves the landscape and it hits a creek anywhere in the Midwest, It's going to end up in the Mississippi River and down to the Gulf of Mexico.
Quite literally, the water that leaves my front yard is going to the Gulf of Mexico. what we look to do is, we know that if we can take water and soak it in the ground, it's still eventually going to get to the Gulf of Mexico. That's just how our watershed works. But I'd rather have it go down into the ground, Go down to the water table and slowly work its way into the creeks and streams and then make its way down because while it's traveling through that landscape, anything I plant between where I soak water in and where it finally soaks in, I can take advantage of that water and grow more vegetation.
And then, The more vegetation I grow, the more root systems there are, the more open the soil is, and the more water that soil will actually absorb. Most of the farm fields around here probably don't absorb more than a half an inch of water per hour, maybe an inch. Whereas in our food forest, we probably have a percolation rate more like seven or eight inches per hour.
So all of a sudden you just don't have runoff anymore, because all the water is soaking into the ground. That's the goal of a permaculture design. Allow the water to soak into the ground. Where it falls. Everything on the planet. That's the goal.
That's the goal. That's an amazing goal. We've got an email here from Howard.
Hi Howard. Happy new year to Susan and Bill listening from Albany, New York. Will Bill still have that online course in the new year? And yes, Bill, you're going to be talking. I guess Howard's really excited. So tell us about your online course.
Online Permaculture Courses: A New Era
we've been teaching these permaculture courses for 18 years now, and the 100 of them were all in person and, it finally got to the point COVID hit.
And, I resisted because I, that's all I knew, but finally COVID hit. So we had to figure out a way to do it online. And what was amazing, Howard, is that when we started doing the online courses. I was shocked at how well the content penetrated. We would have students that would do anything to not miss a session and they would show up because it's so exciting.
It's so interesting. And it's so fun to learn with others. This is really. interesting and not just important stuff. We've ha everything from, you know in the landscaping field who, don't even tree grass and bush in th But yet they're all in the same class and they're all getting a tremendous amount of information out of it.
So I don't know what it is, but that's what's brilliant about permaculture and why Becky and I carry it to the world. It's, a lot of the missing pieces that we don't get in a formal education. yes, we, the, online course is always available. Anybody can buy it anytime they want, but four times a year.
I sit down on a Monday night and for nine weeks, I'll sit down with you and say, okay, now listen to this four hours. And then the next week we come in and we discuss it. And so listen to the next four hours and we discuss it. And then that way we actually have one on one FaceTime throughout the course.
I love how you were talking about how the information sort of percolates and soaks in like, the water and the landscape.
And that comes to Pam's question. I don't know where Pam's from, but it's a really good question. So Pam asks, with regards to these permaculture or food forest systems, are they expensive to bill? thanks. P. S. Happy New Year. Thank you, Pam. It is a very special show on New Year's Eve. Now, While you relate to that, Bill,
you created your own landscape in your house,
in your own house,
and a lot of people who listen to this show, think, I can't have a food forest.
I just have a house in the city or whatever.
So can you address the price of these kinds of systems and how you can transform an ordinary property? you don't actually need a whole farm.
The earthworks part of it. If you're going to put in an urban environment, you're really not usually looking at swales, but rather rain gardens.
Everybody has a house usually, and there's downspouts and there's water coming off. And if that water is making it to the neighbor's property or to the street, that's water that you could capture, sink it to the ground and then develop a plant system or plant guild around that rain garden. And that's all we did in our yard.
We basically found places to hold water. And then we put plants in those areas because now they get. Basically free watering annual plants even in our yard. We still have to water those We have a rain water tank and we collect 400 gallons at a time whenever it rains We get an inch and a quarter of rain.
I got 400 gallons of water off my roof And so we water our annual plants because those root systems aren't down But all of our perennial systems all of our bushes and trees and shrubs We never even think about watering those they just they have all the water they're ever going to need
I love this.
Rain Gardens vs. Berms and Swales
Okay, so here we're comparing two different systems. We've got,
rain gardens, which is like something in a smaller space, like a home, a growing space.
And then we've got berms and swales, and I'd like to describe those a little bit more.
But I feel like it's all about variations in the grading of your garden.
Am I right? You're creating lower points that capture water, and hopefully near your fruit trees, too. Perhaps, near your fruit trees, root, tree roots. but perhaps not. We can talk about that. So tell me a little bit about berms and swales versus rain gardens. What's the difference?
actually they really aren't different in the sense that what they're doing, you're creating an impression in the ground and allowing water to, to, directing water to that place so it can sit there and give it time to soak in.
When we first built our rain gardens. Water would flow into our rain gardens and it would take over three days for them to drain. That's how much clay we have in our soil. Now it barely takes 12 hours. They fill up. So it's six times faster now that the water is absorbing in our rain gardens. And that's what I'm after just to get it down.
We've estimated we've collected a one and a half million gallons of water just in our front yard. In the 14 years we put our system in.
Wow. Sorry, go ahead.
So a swale is just a big long rain garden. It is. And a swale though is put in the landscape on contour. It's, it has to be perfectly level. So it doesn't matter where water enters that swale.
Just think of a long ditch. But if that ditch is sloped, water is going to run to the end of the ditch. That's a ditch. But if it's perfectly level, that ditch now becomes a swale because the whole thing just fills up with water and you end up with a little teeny skinny pond. Now you just shorten that and make it round and now you got a rain garden.
It's the same concept.
Wow. Okay. A place
for the water to sit.
Small Space Solutions: Urban Permaculture
Okay, we have a question from Brenda. Hi to Susan P from Hamilton, Ontario. Happy New Year. I have a very small yard, less than 400 square feet. Can I use one of these systems for that size?
You are so lucky. Cause what happens is there's so much you can do in 400 square feet.
Oh my God. It's unbelievable. Our front yard is 400 square feet, I would say. And we have a hedge on the corner. It's, just lilac hedge. And of course you can make some wonderful drinks, and syrup from lilac and we do, but, it's so dense. We put a bench there and the sidewalks on the other side and Becky and I can be sitting on the bench in our little 400 square foot front yard.
And people walk by don't even know that we're sitting there and then we have a little path system and there's a couple of small, swale, excuse me, rain gardens and there's an archway over the path and we have vines climbing up over that archway and we have trees on either side of those rain gardens.
And so it's, like walking through a little. Know, ar arboretum is what our front yard looks like and feels like. I'd say we probably have maybe 150 different variety of plants. Everything from the ground, clovers, covers all the way up to the trees. And let's go back and address the cost of this.
It doesn't cause anything to dig a hole that it's cost of a shovel, or trench. But then the plants themselves, certainly some of these plants we purchased, especially new, but now that we've been at it and we have neighbors and we're looking for things. Probably three quarters of everything in our front yard.
We just stole from somebody else
In their
yard with
their permission. Of course,
they're breaking it apart. They have an abundance You know, are we graft, this tree onto this thing? And it, it just doesn't, it doesn't take that much money. Now, at the same time, if you have some resources, there are people now like Matt Labon in St.
Louis that have a really good business. they'll actually come in and set up an entire permaculture system in your yard, thinking about the water all the way through and thinking about it, how it's gonna look in year three, year five, in year 10, and design the whole thing for you. Now, that, of course, is gonna cost, but.
the amount per year for something like that, especially if you look at over a period of 25 years and the amount of enjoyment you get from it. Oh my God, it is such an incredibly good deal.
That
you can eat out of your own yard. That is some of the healthiest food that's ever gone into your mouth.
amazing.
That's worth it.
Okay. So talking about Matt Lebon and his, his offerings in terms of his business, you do have to be careful where you put these berms and swales, where you put your rain gardens, for instance, fruit trees don't like wet feet. Correct. So if you create a system where you're directing all the rain to go right towards the roots of your tree and it never goes away, you're actually not doing yourself or your fruit tree a favor.
So what are the things that you keep in mind when deciding whether to, where to plant your rain garden or, your berms and swales?
Perfect. It's simple questions. When you dig a rain garden or swale, you're taking soil, you take that soil and you put it next to the rain garden. maybe on the downhill side, usually is what I look for.
And that's where I plant my fruit tree on top of that pile of soil. So the crown of the fruit tree and the majority of the roots near the tree itself are always up out of the water. And yet the sinker roots go down and they have access to all the water that's working its way down. But that's exactly what I do with fruit trees is I put them on the berm.
Now with nut trees and with the water loving trees, like in the willow family, it doesn't matter where you put those. And some of those I put right in the bottom of the rain garden. In one of our rain garden, we have corkscrew willow. I put in about eight plants 12 years ago, they were sticks. And now they're little hubs about this big around.
And every year it grows this nice little clump of corkscrew willow goes up about eight or nine feet. And it's just beautiful. And then at the end of the year, I cut all those off. And we have this nice big clump of corkscrew willow for decorating or for whatever. And the, now the green, the bottom of the rain garden is empty, except for those stumps.
Those are, called, coppices, willow coppices.
So I know that there are some people, like traditionally, when people planted orchards, they looked for a site with a teeny weeny bit of a slope. Just enough so that the, water would be able to absorb into the healthy soil. Hopefully it's nice and soft and healthy and absorbent, but it wouldn't stay there.
it would a little bit roll down the slope. And yet there are some times, and some people who've planted their fruit trees on too much of a slope, so that the fruit trees never really get the water. The water and it rolls down the hill. what would you do in that situation? Is there a way you can help keep the water in place or would you just not recommend planting your fruit trees on a hill?
If I already had my fruit trees there, or if I, that's all I had, that's my property. I'd still put my fruit trees in, but I would put in a swale system or what we call sometimes a cup swale, which is one dedicated swale for one tree. And it's just an impression. So that as water comes down, maybe even a couple of little wings that come off of that, as water comes down and it's grabbed, it's brought over this tree.
And it's directed to that one tree, and I could do that for every single tree. Or if I plant my trees on contour, I can have one swale all the way down. But if it's not on contour, just put one little pocket, one little mini rain garden. At the uphill side of a fruit tree, and it'll get all and put a little couple of little wings off of that are, just capturing the water and bring you to it.
And now you basically are sinking water in right up above that tree.
I've got a whole bunch of questions coming in, but I just wanted to read this comment from Facebook from Pietro in Ontario. Pietro had a great idea on that one. Pietro writes, I have some maple trees on the side of a hill that I don't tap because they don't produce any sap.
how they grew so large on rock is beyond me. What I have been doing for these trees is using a tree trunk from a dead tree, To catch the water on the lower side of the slope, preventing it from running down the hill. there are solutions, that's like trellising in a way, and I think what a great idea when you're creative and when you understand what your tree's needs are.
It's common sense. That's, all permaculture is common sense, indigenous wisdom and the use of appropriate technology. That's all permaculture is. We're not, Bill Mollison did not invent anything new. It's just, he just looked at all of these solutions out there and brought all these solutions. Look at these alternatives is all he did.
Shaking the cage. Look at these alternatives. There's always options. And so that's what we look for. Simple, easy, natural options.
That's what I love about you as a communicator, how you make it so it's not scary with you. Good. That's what's lovely, Bill. Thank you for making it not scary.
Thank you.
We have a few questions.
This one's from Francis.
Aquaponics: Integrating Fish and Plants
Bill, can you explain what aquaponics is? aquaponics, is that something you do?
Aquaculture is the growing of fish. Hydroponics is the growing of plants and usually a, maybe a greenhouse system, usually with usually nutrients that come from a bottle.
Aquaponics is combining the fish and the plants. So you have fish, in your tank down here. Actually, we have ours in a, little, an in ground. mini tank and a hundred gallons and our fish, our coy little baby goldfish, baby coy. And, and when they poop it, that water becomes nutrient rich.
So we pump it up and we have actually have three little beds made out of gravel and that water goes up and goes from this bed to this bed And then finally it comes down and we grow all kinds of things in that gravel from the nutrients from the fish. And when we don't have much plant growing, we don't feed the fish very much cause they don't need much.
To eat their cold blooded so they don't need to keep their metabolism going or anything else like that. But in the growing season, when we have lots of plants in there, Becky will feed the fish every day and she'll buy two celery plants at the beginning of the year. Sometime in April or May we'll eat the celery.
She'll cut off the body and take them out there, work them down into the gravel. And then those two celery plants grow and that's our celery supply for the next five months. Just out of our aquaponics system. We just break off what we need There's always new stuff coming up in the middle and that's a real simple system.
And the fish are providing it for us
Wow, great idea because celery can be tricky to grow.
Can I add one thing here?
Yes, sure, as
we talked about aquaponics there in our system what I want to mention though is we do that because it's nice to be able to grow some food. And Becky's he has a green thumb anyway, but that little system has become such an incredible, joyful thing in our yard.
when it's running, it's sprinkling, it makes that nice little scent, not sprinkling, but it's makes the trickling sound. But it's become this collection for birds coming in, brings birds, bring a lot of phosphorus onto a piece of property. So from all over, they're eating bugs, everything come to my property, poop on my land.
Drink my water. We have all kinds of neighbors. Cats come over the neighbors. Kids come over. it really is this point of joy and productivity and life in our yard that we get to enjoy all year round. it's one of these things we wanted to try and has turned out to be this incredible gift.
Wonderful. We get all of these benefits from this one little system and I just wanted to put a plug in there Thanks for bringing asking the question about aquaponics
Awesome. Okay, few more emails. We've got one from ken great show today learning a lot from toronto ontario. Yay Happy new year to the best gardening show in the world.
Thanks. Susan. Oh ken. I'm gonna cry. That's so nice I so appreciate that. Okay, Sarah wrote us as well. Let's see. This is Sarah from Southern Ontario. I'm wondering how exactly I could incorporate the rain garden concepts into my annual vegetable garden. Thanks and Happy New Year. Oh, and Sarah also wants to know in regard to fruit trees as well.
But we talked about fruit trees and how that would relate to a rain garden, but what about a vegetable garden? You touched upon that with the celery.
I don't understand that second question.
she's asking, Sarah's asking about, Ray, how to integrate your rain garden and your vegetable garden together.
So for me, when I look at my backyard, my veggie gardens are in race. My veggies are in raised beds. even if I had a rain garden, it wouldn't really affect my raised beds. So is there, you, gave us the great example with celery, but that's also like the aquaponics thing, but how would you mix those two together, if at all?
Okay, so now we're talking about two different ecosystems, a, food forest, or a, perennial system. It thrives in a, mycelia rich environment, a lot of fun jet fungi in the soil. It needs that like a forest is like 90 percent fungi and 10 percent bacteria. Now in our annual gardens, it's just the opposite.
Annual vegetables thrive on present day bacteria doing all the work that it needs to do. And so there are two very different systems. We've tried growing annuals in our perennial system and the, vegetables will grow, but they're miniature. They don't thrive. Because we've changed the mycology of the soil.
but where it really comes in handy in the annual gardening process is to create an Island. You could have an, a rain garden in the side, or but even in the middle, if you had to raise beds like a Mandala, but in the middle is a rain garden. That's bringing in water. You have rocks and stones, for, frogs and lizards and, Dragonflies and water.
And now you have plants that are deep rooted and you maybe got a shade tree or a couple of trees on either side of that. What that has created is an Island of beneficial insect habitat. So now they are there and they go into your annual garden and help take care of some of the bugs in your garden and bring birds in that eat the bugs in your garden.
And it basically, they work together to support, They're each other's function, but there are a lot of people who've just said by having a perennial system near their annual garden, their insect pressure dropped by 50, 60%.
I love that because all these beneficial insects will also be chasing away the bat or eating up or predating on the bad insects.
So I just, I see this beautiful image of the Mandela with the, rain garden in the middle, oof, makes me want everything we're talking about. I want to redesign my garden now. Oh, nevermind.
Permaculture Tools: No-Till Farming
Okay, Helen writes hello Susan hello Bill Are you building this system with hand garden tools or would I need a bobcat a tiller etc?
Oh, Yeah, you need two bobcats really, you want a skid steer and you want an excavator, too I'm sorry. I'm just goofing off It's tempting if you have a big piece of property, you need something if you're going to do something large scale, but absolutely not. You do not need motorized equipment to do any of this stuff.
Matter of fact, Masanobu Fukuoka's whole thing, One Straw Revolution, for those of you who had the opportunity to see that book or read it, It's his whole thing was how do I do all this without disturbing the soil, tilling the soil? And that's really the goal here. Because once I, once our system is in place, we've never turned the soil on our front yard again.
I might open the soil to put a plant in, but I'm not tilling it. Now that's not my annual garden, but we have raised beds throughout our yard. And do we till those? No, we don't put a rototiller in there, but we work the soil in the spring. So the thing about, tilling the soil is that's what has created this incredible problem we have around the globe, annual agriculture.
And when we till the soil, we basically break down the life of the soil. We dump all that carbon in the atmosphere. And the goal is with no till farming, but no till gardening is also to minimize the That kind of damage that tilling does to the soil and Masanobu Fukuoka was the one Bill Mollison wrote his first book and there was nothing in there in farming and people asked him, how come there's nothing in here on permaculture farming?
And he said, because we don't know how to do annual agriculture without disturbing the soil. And what I want you to know, we spent a whole hour on that in the permaculture design course. There are several ways to do this. Farming, large scale. Thousands of acres without tilling the soil and we have farmers that are doing that.
So when I say we, they're, out there, I don't have them. I tell their story because they are successful.
We've got a whole bunch more questions. Maybe we'll do one more and then we'll hear a word from our sponsors.
And then after the sponsors, we can have a few more questions. Mike writes happy new year to Susan and the radio staff, Mike asks, what is actually permaculture?
Permaculture Defined: Sustainable Living
What is permaculture? Thanks.
the elevator answer to that is it's basically just an umbrella word for all things sustainable. So it has to do with large landscapes all the way down to your backyard, all the way to how you build your house, how you use energy, how you capture water, how you treat water, basically permaculture.
How do we create a way of living in such a way that because we were here, We actually left the planet in better condition when we, than when we arrived. That's the goal of a permaculture design. So it includes all of those things, including animal care and people care. It's like caring for creation itself.
That's what permaculture is.
That is perfect. So on that note, let's take a moment, shall we? Are you okay staying on the line for a minute, Bill? And we'll listen to our sponsors.
Absolutely. I'll be here.
Wonderful. You are listening to Orchard People, a radio show and podcast brought to you by the Fruit Tree Care Training website, orchardpeople.
com. This is Reality Radio 101, and I'm Susan Poizner, author of the Fruit Tree Care books, Growing Urban Orchards, Grow Fruit Trees Fast, and Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone. And we're going to be back right after this little break.
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Orchard People Radio Show Part 2 Introduction
Hey everybody. You are listening to Orchard People Radio show and podcast, brought to you by the Fruit Tree care training website, orchard people.com.
This is Reality Radio 1 0 1, and I'm your host Susan Poizner.
Interview with Bill Wilson: Passive Watering Systems
And in the show today we've been talking to the amazing Bill Wilson, who is co-founder. Of midwest permaculture and we've been having so much fun talking about passive watering systems and berms and swells and rain gardens. So if you missed the beginning part of the show, you must go back and listen to the recording once it's up and watch it on YouTube with all the pictures we're going to add in it.
And one thing I just wanted to add is. if you grow fruit trees, fruit trees, they don't have teeth, right? Their roots take in nutrition from the soil and they need it to be in liquid form. So if your fruit tree doesn't have enough water around its roots, it's not only going to be thirsty, it's going to be hungry too.
So soil It's so important. Water is so important.
Gray Water Systems and Passive Irrigation
Okay, Bill, so we've got a few more really interesting questions I'd like to dig into.
This one's from Akira in rural Indiana. Akira says, just a quick shout out. Thank you for your time and energy poured into this podcast, Susan and Bill. Happy New Year to everyone and working towards a more regenerative world in 2025 and beyond. Thank you, Akira. Now, Akira writes, I'm planning a laundry gray water treatment harvesting system that would also provide irrigation.
Any recommended setup, plants, or resources. Thank you. Wow. So you can wash your clothes and reuse the water and not worry about the detergent getting into the soil. Tell us about that.
of course, there are very detergents that are designed to be biologically friendly with the soil. So that's really what you need.
And it's, friendly with the environment. So those are the soaps that we would use, every washing machine is built in with a pump at the bottom. It has to have a pump to get the water out, the dirty water out once the new water comes in. And In the Midwest, there's no reason you can't take that and direct a water line from your house.
And when it pumps up, it pumps it outside and sends it right into a rain garden. And then right in that rain garden, around that rain garden, you had your fruit trees, your bushes, maybe gooseberries and currants or elderberry. And so you're, it's constantly being watered by however much laundry you do. Now in the wintertime, you just reverse the switch or unplug that and run the water through.
You said you don't need to be running all the time. water into your backyard when everything's frozen, but during the growing season, that is a great system to, use gray water and use it wisely because you actually have our nutrients that are coming out of your clothes as well. The dead skin coming out
of your clothes.
where does the dead skin go?
Oh, and
then you wash it out. That nutrient goes out to the plants as well. And the microbes are
going to be feasting on our dead skin. Wow. And who knows? Maybe there's microbes in the laundry. Who knows? Maybe the microbes survive the spin cycle. Who knows?
we've got a message here from Charlie. Just curious, Susan, is this system patented or just hit or miss now? I'm, I think Charlie's talking about. Permaculture, is the system patented or just hit and miss?
Actually, that's a great question.
Permaculture Principles and Practices
If we're talking about the big scale of permaculture, that was a term coined by Bill Mollison and he and a fellow by the name of David Holmgren produced the first materials on permaculture, put it up, but they set it up as a gift to the world.
They did not want it ever to be controlled or patented or used. Trademarked that any or that somebody could take and you can't get permaculture unless you pay some kind of an override It is a gift to the world and that's what's different about permaculture than a lot of other kinds of systems But it's out of the box anyway But the one request that Bill Mollison made he developed this permaculture design course Which is what we teach and what I took and I taught I took 28 courses before I started teaching I'm a slow learner.
It's a large body of work, but that the, basic agreement is he says, if you're gonna go out and teach permaculture in the world, please at least take the full permaculture course so you understand it from beginning to end. And then you're free to use the name permaculture in the promotion of your business or in producing educational programming or doing, teaching.
And that's what we did. We took a teacher training, we took the permaculture course training 28 times. So we, understood the, curriculum.
I think that's incredible. There is a pro and con though, because anybody can go out and say, I do permaculture and you can, really do some damage.
You can.
And so
everything has two sides, right? So you just want to know if you're working with a permaculture expert, you want to know where they've got their training from. yeah. Okay. John writes. Hi, is plastic used anywhere with this system? Thanks. Happy New Year from Boulder, Colorado.
Yeah, I love Boulder.
plastic is, it shows up, it, hits, come in, but there isn't not any particular tool or anything that you need to have and use plastic. we use little plastic tags that go in the ground that used to be curtain shades, and they're made of plastic and we use that to write down, as a plant.
Plant names, but, plastic is just around, but it's not a part of permaculture.
Frank writes, this is a great question. Susan, does Bill offer any gift cards for his course? I need to give some late Christmas presents. Thanks. That's a good idea.
Yeah, just call Becky.
Ah, Becky will sort it out.
We don't have a gift card situation set up, but, you certainly could, reach us and we'll be happy to set something up for you.
Oh, that's so nice. Yeah. With Orchard People, with my courses, I can give people, a hundred percent discount code so that people can go sign up for their own courses. Course. But yes, let's see. What do we have? We have Nigel on YouTube. Hi, Nigel from the Bonsai Zone. Welcome. Hello, Susan. I hope you can make it down to Stratford to see our community orchard someday.
Oh, Nigel. Have a great new year. Yes. I remember Nigel. You started your community orchard a good few years ago, and I bet you it's doing really well. I am so glad to hear about that. Bill, we've talked a lot about berms and swales and rain gardens. Is there maybe another passive watering tool that you want to put on the table to discuss today as well?
Using Cover Crops and Plants to Make Soil More Absorbant
Yeah, I would just say that the first thing that I always look for, before I start tearing up the soil, When you're putting in a soil system, that's really like emergency work because you just got to land water running off. You got to stop. You'd like to stop it, but you could do the same work with plants.
And the key is the plants don't have to be dense enough and the root system deep enough that basically you increase your percolation rates. So we worked on this farm. And we, dug a hole and you put water in the hole and it takes, it, it only soaks in a quarter of an inch an hour. And then after we put in a deep planting system three years later, and there's nothing else in sight now, water will soak in three inches an hour.
So we, what do we do that? We multiply 12 fold, so that's it. And plants are doing it. We didn't put in a single swale. All we did is put in plants and help those plants along, making sure they had enough water. Now, once the plants are established, now they're doing the job of capturing their own water, sinking it in the ground with their deep root system, and we never have to irrigate again.
Once the system is in place and you have a high percolation rate, the water is now going in the ground and you don't need to water anymore. So in an orchard system, that's exactly what you might do. You might go ahead and run a cover crop underneath a line of trees, nothing really tall, but a complimentary, I'm talking about, 10 to 15 different kinds of plants, several kinds of clovers, maybe some annual radish and, beets and things like that.
Certainly a vetch. Maybe even some, it peas, anything that wants to grow and put organic. Every plant that is growing is sinking carbon into the soil in the way of organic matter. So you put a dense system in there and slowly but surely, it'll be able to hold more and more water. And if and even if you don't have an irrigation system when it does rain, that is going to soak in a lot more water.
Now, how does that compare to turf grass?
Turf grass is better than concrete. By all means. But now if the grass is this tall, basically what in a plant says that what above ground, that much biomass is below the ground. And if your grass is three inches high, your roots are about three inches deep and that's it.
Percolation rates are relatively low, but even if you just mow your grass and now it's four inches, now your roots are four inches. That can make a big difference. Actually, that was what the studies have shown. That's the neutral zone. At that point, you are now in the soil to replace carbon that might've been taken out when you actually put the plants in.
So you basically are building topsoil if you keep your grass four inches high.
Yeah, it's interesting. And I, love these ideas. The one thing that I have found when I visited, food, forests, permaculture gardens is the, It's, they plant it right up to the base of the tree. And depending on what it is, it can be a problem.
First of all, young fruit trees don't handle competition very well. So I always clear out, the space around the tree and do not plant. Under, certainly with the young trees, I do not plant right up to the trees. So that's something that I just want to put in there as something to think about. And also think about what you're planting under your tree.
Fruit trees do need hands on care. They do need correct annual pruning if you're growing them for fruit quality. And so if you plant strawberries under your tree, just know you're going to be trampling all over your strawberry plants in order to prune the tree, harvest it, do whatever holistic sprays.
So all of these things are things that, you know, If I, and one day I probably will redo my garden and I would definitely would do a forest, food forest. but saying that I think I'd do a Susan version because I've been, I spent so many years learning how to make the fruit quality good. That's going to be a top priority as well.
And yeah, Karen says on YouTube, happy new year to all. Thank you, Karen. And, yeah, so plants are important. Ground cover is important. berms, swales, we've talked about so many great things. let's talk about, I'm just looking to see what else do you want to throw into the mix? Another way to keep the water.
You were talking earlier about. Fungal drenches. What is that all about?
Soil Drenches and Compost Techniques
Or soil drench, yeah. it's just one of the things we can do as we're developing a system. like from ground zero and you have really ground that's in really rough shape. Not a lot of nutrients. It's very compacted. we'll use soil drenches for the first two or three years.
Maybe once a month. And I like to do them right after a rain because the ground is already open. It's moist. And basically I'm just making up like a foliar spray or nutrient rich. batch of water. It's almost like homeopathic. It's not like I'm dumping in lots and lots of nutrients, but I'm just taking, making a batch of large compost tea.
But one of the things I'm adding is some mycelia and you can buy this in a package and it has 10 or 12 of the most common bacteria found in the soil in developing soils. And I add that and mix it in as well. Then when I spray that on the ground and I put it in real heavy, I mean I'm with a garden hose.
And, and really try to get a good soaking in, those I'm putting nutrients in the soil, and I'm also putting beneficial bacteria in the soil, and they're going to eat up any of the organic matter that's laying on the surface and turn that into nutrients for the plants themselves. We were able to in like in Ohio, we had a project and we were able to take one inch of topsoil and in three years we had five or six inches numbers.
There's a layer of black soil, one inch thick, and three years later, that layer of black soil was five or six inches thick and by, by, that was the cover crop technique with the soil drenches and foliar spring, the fruit trees.
So the basis of the soil drench is your compost. Does that mean you're making a compost tree with tea with some sort of percolation system?
or does that just mean mixing water into some compost and then mixing in the mud? how easy can you make this for us? Because I know that we have tried in the past, my husband more tried a whole percolation system. and it was very complicated and very messy. And I also understand that sometimes you can, what's multiplying is the bad bacteria, not the good bacteria.
So what's the simplest way to do that soil drench?
I think part of it, this is going to, there aren't a lot of, there are, a lot of people doing a lot of different things. And I too have been confused by all the different techniques and I'm doing something and not getting results. And I just throw something down and I get results.
So I don't have the answer. All I know is just what is my intention with this situation and what do I think it needs? And if I have a pile of compost, I can magnify. It's benefit by taking it, putting it into that 55 gallon drum and putting water in there and allowing a day to go. Maybe add some, molasses or something like that to help give it a little aeration.
I don't put a bubbler in it. I don't, and then I take that. I screen it and I won't go ahead. If I'm just putting it on the ground, I don't have to screen it by putting it through a sprayer with a fine tip. I have to screen it so it doesn't. clog up the sprayer, but somehow I just get that down on the ground.
And I, all I know is I'm not hurting anything. All I'm trying to do is just how can I'm actually looking at the plant and just say, is there something I can do to support your growth?
We've had mixed success with compost over the years and we also have, critters. So we've got raccoons that do their thing and it's a mess.
And so what we've found had made a huge difference last year is my husband Cliff ground up some just leaves from the neighborhood, beautiful maple leaves, whatever. We have a special grinder that we got on Amazon to cut it up into little tiny pieces and we covered the veggie beds with it. And just over the winter, just keeping that soil covered over the winter.
And I thought, worth a try because the leaves, if you do the whole leaves, it gets sticky. Then you take them off in the spring. We have never had soil so wormy and so lovely as after one winter with that stuff. So I like to see it as we're not growing vegetables, we are feeding the microbes in the soil, which will then feed our vegetables, feed our fruit trees.
I love your idea of we've got a mulch pile at the back, a compost pile just with ground up leaves. Take a little of that, put it in water, stir it around for a day, stick in your molasses and pour it on the ground, see what happens. keeping it simple, just keeping it simple.
And if it's stinky, maybe that's bad smelling is probably not something you want to, is it, is that a secret? if you're mixing something up and all of a sudden it smells really off. Maybe it's not a good idea to put on the soil.
That's anaerobic, right? You're just letting off sulfur compounds and what's needed in that situation is dilution or adding carbon Because you add more carbon and it'll neutralize that And the soil is fresh and alive.
You can just tell by the smell of soil. You don't it's not anaerobic. So those bacteria don't really benefit the soils that we want. So you want to get it out of an anaerobic state before you actually add it. And you can just by adding more comp, fresh compost, lots of carbon and get it in there and lighten it up and add a lot more water.
And that'll sweeten it up.
We've got a comment from Stephanie. Thanks. Thanks, Susan. Good job. I think Stephanie likes the idea of doing this easy mix. okay, let's get one more question from you and then I, one more share from you and then I want you to talk about your courses a little bit more and how people can find you.
Final Thoughts and Reflections
But the last thing is, you've got the listeners of Orchard People listening to you. What, do you wanna share about your mission, about what you, what we all need to be doing right now on our beautiful planet? What, will help us all give us some wisdom?
Sure. Let me, we'll, a little wisdom on you.
I just figure you're a guy who has a lot of wisdom. I don't know.
actually it's, one of the things about our permaculture course, and, this is to me, is the. The thing that confirms that what we're doing is making sense is we have never lost a student. Once a course has started, it just burned out and just, walked away or just couldn't have another.
And I think that's incredibly rare. And, the reason is, I think it's because we're taking permaculture, we're looking at it every day from a real honest perspective, like what's really going on here. Permaculture just asked two questions. It asks, what is, And how do things really, and it's so refreshing when we're not, there's no sacred cows and not a belief system in permaculture.
It's not like we have this, is what we have to promote into the world. If there is something we're promoting or that I'm promoting anyway, it's like what's real. What's really happening here. And so we not only look at that at the plant scale, or not at, building a home and how much energy is consumed and all of those things, but even, but particularly I would say on the human scale, because anytime I've seen a community start or even a permaculture group start, or even a community garden project start, and when they fail, they don't fail because they didn't have a good design.
It didn't build the beds, And didn't have the right chemical or, nutrient or whatever. It's a people problem. Almost always it falls apart because people have a hard time communicating and understanding and just not having a thicker skin. People are so sensitive. He made me angry, he, hurt me or whatever.
And that's just not true. It's just like we are as a, culture, we're a bunch of seventh graders running around playing adulthood and playing with this planet, but we lack the maturity and the wisdom to act responsibly and honestly and the whole universe. It's just you look at the universe and the way it's set up before humans were here and after humans leave.
The universe will still be here and what is what it is and that's truth and the truth is surrounding us all the time. What is and how it works is always surrounding us. And if we don't know what that is, where the hell have we been all this time? We are surrounded in truth and what's going on and we don't know what it is.
It's our culture that's clomping down and not, we're not, just a culture, but we as individuals, aren't stepping out of that and into a world of basically awareness. It's self awareness. And with that, you start going down these roads of asking the question, what's real, even on the internal basis. And slowly, but surely we develop awareness, maturity, and at some point, a level of peace of mind.
And now we can step in into the world as an adult and say, how do I create a life where actually, because I'm here. I've been able to leave things in better condition than when I arrived rather than just watching TV my whole life. So, that's it. And it turns out that's the most exciting journey there is.
It doesn't matter what we do in our culture. What is the weapon of mass distraction that most appeals to me? I'm going to watch TV. I'm going to see all the movies. I'm gonna watch all the sports games. I'm going to get all the sexual activity. I'm going to do all the drugs. I'm going to do all the race car driving.
I'm going to climb Mount Everest, all of these different things. And if, we ever get to any of those and get saturated in those, they all become boring. And that's because that is not where contentment and happiness comes from. Contentment and happiness comes from an inner journey of understanding the world as it is, seeing where we can make an impact and letting go of those areas that we can't and don't want to make an impact, simplifying our life.
And really it's anchored in honesty, integrity, humility, compassion. And that's what permaculture is, care of people. Care of the planet, care for the future. Those are the ethics of permaculture, and that's why I love permaculture, because it's about care. But it begins with us, and that personal journey. So I touch on that in the course, and it comes up over and over again in the course, and then people have questions, whatever, and all of a sudden people take this course, and they realize I've always had the tools for my own happiness, for my own success, for my own, by success, and I'm talking about permaculture.
Success to me is waking up in the morning and having a hard time staying in bed because you're so excited about all the things you get to do today. That's a good life.
Perfect.
So that's what I hope for everybody. And that's, that's where Becky. All right. she just keeps rolling her head.
I was up at 3 o'clock this morning sitting here right here because I'm working on some things and I'm just really excited about it. And I love doing it and makes sense to me.
That's fantastic. So what is your website so that people can find out more about you?
Yeah, so midwestpermaculture. com.
Pretty straight forward.
Guys, I think a whole bunch of people are going to be heading over there. And I am so glad that you came on the show today. What a joy chatting with you. I really enjoyed when we did our pre interview as well, for the listeners. I think Bill is very sparkly. Do you think he's sparkly?
I think so. Let's see what you guys say. it is the holiday season guys. I hope you have had a great time so far. we've got the new year coming up. I would love to know how this show has been for you this past year. Have you enjoyed it? Has it been good for you? Have you learned a lot? I hope so. That's, I really hope so because I've learned a lot creating this show.
And if you guys want to give me a present to say thank you, you don't have to. Go to YouTube and press on the subscribe button. Or go to your podcatcher or Apple podcast and click on subscribe. My mission this year is to get this show out to more people. We've got a very wonderful group of listeners, but I think there's so much more wisdom that we could share further, and I would love it if you guys can do that, rate and review the show, whatever, just to get it, or even share it with a friend, tell a friend about it.
That would be awesome too. So before we end today's show, I just want to connect with everybody. I want to wish you guys a fantastic. joyful, abundant, successful year in 2025. There's so much to learn, to do, to grow. it's, been, there's been so much wisdom this year and there's so much more to come.
So wishing you guys a happy and healthy new year and thank you Bill so much for coming on the show to me today and I hope you'll come back again someday.
Susan, thank you for the work that you're doing. This is an example of what needs to happen in the world. It's just like honest information giving it to the world.
So thank you.
Oh, thank you. Okay. Take care. Goodbye for now, everybody. And we'll see you next time. Happy New Year. Bye for now.