Potatoes in a Woodrow Style Mandala Bed
Compost, Food Plants - Annual, Land, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation — by Grahame Eddy November 1, 2011
A technique for mounding potatoes in a mandala bed without importing soil, with the benefit of improving fertility and increasing organic matter.
by Grahame Eddy
I like to mound my potatoes by pushing soil up against the sides of the growing plants eventually creating quite a big mound. The theory is that I can get a greater harvest from the same space. But when I started using the Linda Woodrow style mandala beds I was struck by the difficulty of bringing in more soil to the bed as it would tend to spread outwards, and also would smother more than just the potato plants.
So, I came up with the idea of mounding from a small section of the bed and eventually building a compost heap in the resultant hole.
Comments (1)Is Personal Effort Enough?
Eco-Villages, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Grahame Eddy November 2, 2010
Just three years ago my young family and I made the move to rural Victoria, handing in our cushy government jobs for the dream of sustainable living based on Permaculture.
One of the reasons we chose to settle in a conventional rural environment rather than an established permaculture region/village was to ‘forge new frontiers’ for Permaculture. “If we can do it here, surely people could do it anywhere!”. Maybe this was misguided, especially since one of the difficulties for me is a lack of desire to be a leader – it is difficult for me to think beyond showing through demonstration. In some respects perhaps an intentional community may have been a better option for me, but now I’m on this path it is increasingly more difficult to move as the system still requires us to use money in order to escape it. Also, I don’t know that I would be content with a closed community that has no room for expansion.
I believe the best way to affect change is to be the change that you wish to see in the world. I’ve meditated on this famous phrase of Gandhi’s for many years now and the inherent truth of it reveals itself in greater detail for me the more I ponder it. Gandhi’s wisdom has shaped the way I approach my Permaculture practices. If I do it, and do it with all my heart then I may influence people and in turn allow them to influence others, and ultimately the world. I still believe this but, at times it seems like I am just a snowball throwing myself at the sun and saying ‘cool it man!’. It seems that this personal passive approach is just not enough.
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