Permaculture Course - Video 6

Well the holidays were great for us and I did manage to watch a number of the videos from this series although I haven't yet documented them. I've not gotten a lot of feedback on these reviews so, although I will still be reviewing them because more than anything this blog is still for me..., I will not be doing any real in depth analysis of them other than to just kind of order some of my ideas here in a pseudo formal setting. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, regardless of if or how you celebrated it.

This video was primarily focused on the design process... or at least that was the gist of it. I have enjoyed each of these videos quite a bit, but I do have the singular criticism that Dr Hooker is quite wordy and prone to tangents and I think some really valuable subject matters tend to sometimes get glossed over from time to time. This class was one of those to a certain degree but still had a bunch of great information.

To start things off, we went through he scientific process. In essence, and in case you are rusty in your Middle School science topics, the scientific process is basically - Observe, Hypothesize, Test, Analyze results and come to a Conclusion. There were also a number of other methods that he went over, such as the Koberg/Bagnall Process (From the Universal Traveler) and the "New Age Process". Over all they all come down to the root of pay attention and observe what is going on on the land already before beginning any design process, Come up with how you best think you should proceed based on those observations, put it in to action and analyze what happens. Afterword, conclude whether it is working and modify it accordingly. I agree with this process completely and have found it to be the correct way to go through much experience.

Observation
The first part of this process is to observe. Collect data regarding your property by observing it casually, as well as by using the physical tools available to us that have been proven throughout the years. (I will get more into some of these tools in a later dedicated post at some point.) Tools such as Topographic maps, pegging the slope, weather data and such.

One particular tool that he puts into use during his design process phase is called a Sector Analysis. The sector analysis is a way of documenting what Dr. Hooker calls the "wild energies" coming into a property from all sides. Those wild energies may be wind, sun, or people energies. Also documented in the Sector Analysis are views, access points and such, as well as the differing sun inputs based on the solar seasons. This will be one of the first things that I do when I begin designing in detail my garden here on my new land.

Another great tool that he goes into with some detail is a sort of North arrow compass rose that he integrates into all of his design projects. What it does is to document, in relation to the property and it's orientation, the path of the sun and the light coming into the landscape.

Probably the best thing I got from this, honestly, was a wonderfully simple explanation of how to determine and calculate the amount of sun coming in at a particular angle based on the season and the angle of the sun. I understood the concept as a basic part of passive solar heating and cooling, but didn't quite have my head wrapped around the math behind it. This math can be put into use when determining placement and design of any landscape features that may affect the plantings in the garden.

The final portion of this class was to show how a landscape analysis drawing gets put together and how it illustrates all these factors in one place. This will be an invaluable process in our design phase. I will definitely go into this with much greater detail in the future.



It really was a pretty darned informative class. I realized exactly how much so as I reviewed my notes and re-watched portions of it as I went through creating this post. It was well worth the watch.

Now that the holidays are over I will be trying to get these video reviews up a little more regularly. Although, I do have some really cool new news that I will be sharing with you here very shortly that will take a portion of my scarce free time. It will be well worth it though!

Talk again soon.
P~