permaculture

[lfl@intrex.net]

On 14 Jan 2007 15:19:03 -0800, in alt.permaculture "hr.oskar"
<hr.oskar@gmail.com> wrote:

Happy New Year all!

I'm sorry to say I actually gave up on this group a few days after
posting, as I noticed there was lots of spam posts and not much
activity. So I'm pleasantly surprised now to see there were replies.

Chookie, in a sense you have more to show for than me, since I still
don't have anything resembling a yield! Well, I happened to start
gardening late autumn and obviously now it's winter and freezing cold.

Most rowans I'm familiar with are medium-sized, with a few species
here
growing older and larger, such as the ones in my garden. But trees
here
in Iceland are relatively small - the tallest trees in this country
are
at most 30 m tall, and that's an extraordinary height, with most trees
being just 4-12 m tall. But then, we don't have any really old trees
here yet so those sizes don't necessarily reflect the maximum
potential.

In any case, the Australian environment is totally different from
Iceland in so many ways, according to what I've read. If you see a
rowan over there... then I think it got lost! ;)

Gilly, geothermals certainly have a lot of good uses here in Iceland.
In fact we already do use them in horticulture - Icelanders have been
using geothermally heated greenhouses to grow food for 30-40 years
now.
We're practically self-sufficient in tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers,
which are the main crops grown in the greenhouses. You could grow
bananas or coffee or whatever in there too, as that's been tried
successfully, but economically it can't really compete with imports so
no-one bothers.

Anyway I'm pretty much out of gardening jobs for now, as the country's
totally covered with snow these days. I've been in contact with the
local crowd of activists and alternative lifestyle people, hoping to
tell them a bit about pc so we could form a community here. A little
help from someone experienced in pc would go a long way, if someone's
travelling to Iceland in the coming months that is...