permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 12:54 PM, Koreen Brennan <koreenbrennan@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I hear you Lawrence. We try to cover aquaculture in the class before we
> visit the site so the students have that perspective. Nice pond photos! And
> interesting article.
>

I have three wet weather ponds. One always has a few feet of water in it
and is planted with cattails and duckweed.
One of the others has cattails and water lillies and semipermanent
duckweed. The third has a little duckweed, less light and less nutrient
input from field runoff.

>
> As an interesting aside, it is illegal to transport water hyacinth in
> Florida. It's so incredibly invasive here it clogs entire waterways so
> nothing can get through. It LOVES Florida. After I discovered that it has
> at least 22 economic uses,


I believe it! Its like hemp, food fiber, forage, oil, biomass, compost and
more.
Same with many varieties of bamboo.


> I explained this to some state people who pay
> millions to eradicate it. One of them was a private contractor who cleans
> it up for the state whose lightbulbs were going off; he could see the
> advantage of harvesting and selling it rather than trying to commit
> genocide on it.
>
> Keep the herbicide away from all these plants, always. Either find a use
for them or move away to a safe distance.


> The site has concrete basins where the rainwater ends up, and then it goes
> into the wetlands/pond on an overflow.They could put appropriate plants in
> the basins and it would be a lot prettier and more fun, as well as more
> functional.
>
> I have been thinking about a permascape system for that facility over the
past few days.
1) Rain goes to concrete basins
put aquatic plants in them - water hyacinth would be ideal; not sure what
other floating aquatic plants you have down there.
If you construct some kind of rudimentary floating island you could stick
cattails on them and eventually they would send  roots down into the  silt
on the bottom if that could be allowed to exist, probably a good idea. This
would pretreat/remediate the water.
2) Overflow goes to wetlands and pond
Have the flow pass through an expanse of "lawn", a gradual slope planted
with durable, vigorous weeds and grasses, unmowed.
>From there it would pass into a wetlands that serves as habitat for
amphibians, birds, snails, dragonflies and other insects. It would contain
cattails, iris, and duckweed in the shallows plus similar water tolerant
plants usually found in a riparian zone and swamp.
These remediation stages will clean the water pretty well so that when it
flows into the pond a robust aquatic ecosystem will be allowed to develop
and regenerate. The pond should have cattails, duckweed, azolla and water
lillies at the very least.

A few nights ago I watched a PBS show on restoring water quality in Lake
Tahoe, quite a job! The emphasis was on remediating water flowing into the
lake involving cleaning up streams by removing sediment and allowing them
to flow through existing healthy ecosystems to remove excess nutrients.
Ponds and lakes created for housing developments were drained with the
streams feeding them restored to former state of health. Shoreline
development was curtailed and pollution from boating was dramatically
reduced. I think this is an ongoing project that will take a long time
before the lake is restored to its former glory, a blue one rather than a
green one.
Another PBS documentary dealt with restoring the freshwater,
tannin-saturated lakes right on the inland side of the sand dunes at
ocean's edge, i.e. beachside. You probably already know about this
important work.

I like their rain chains that catch the water on the way down from the
> roof. I would love to make some of those with repurposed material. I just
> would have designed the whole thing a lot differently.
>
> They do have some nice water catchment off the parking lot into sunken
> medians that absorb it. They have other features that are nice too. It was
> disappointing, when I first went there, to see how much they didn't do that
> they could have done.


There is a whole world of things they can do; many useful options and
systems that are realistic to consider designing and installing.


> I understand there may have been regulatory and other
> barriers that no one wanted to mess with and the client may have had
> requirements too that limited what they could do.
>

Someone needs to configure or reconfigure regulations that will accomodate
the permaculture solutions, recycling and remediation
that they and the public desire.


> Nice photo of chinampas! We use chinampas or a modification a lot in
> Florida, really works great here. You just gave me the idea of adding one
> or two to our pond - dont' know why I didn't think of that...We just
> installed a small pond in our yard with lilies, papyrus, duckweed, native
> iris and some water hyacinth somehow got in there (:-0)

Somehow....:-)
Go water hyacinth, the kudzu of the water world!

  - we're going to
> add azolla and some edibles.


Azolla is a miracle plant. I wish it and water hyacinth could survive up
here but it is too cold.
That's the thing about the final stage in your client's system being a
pond. If you can pre clean the water enough the pond water would
host edible plants for harvest; that would include duckweed and cattails,
maybe more.


> We also are blessed, in Florida, with super
> hardy native gambusia or mosquito fish. We have them plus goldfish plus
> tons of frogs that showed up plus *hot pink* dragon flies!  I kid you not!
>

Do you harvest and eat the gambusia or are they solely a vital component of
your aquatic ecosytem?

Dragonflies are wonderful. They all but eliminate mosquitos on site; frogs
and bats get the rest.


> They showed up the first day after the pond had water. And electric blue
> and pure black ones. I love ponds!  We plan to add a flow form catching
> rain off the roof, going through a small wetlands to clean it, then into
> the pond - the spillway leads to some bananas.
>

Excellent. Post some pictures of your site!

LL

>
> We talked about putting some larger native fish in there but there are tons
> of water birds in the neighborhood; not sure I want to fight that fight.
>
> Koreen
> www.growpermaculture.com
>
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 8:34 AM, Koreen Brennan <koreenbrennan@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > They did plant some wetland plants though, and got some
> > > points for that. They put chlorine in the pond water to keep the algae
> > out
> > > though, lol.
> > >
> >
> > A catchment pond can easily remediate excess nutrients. They are working
> > backward putting chlorine in the water.
> > Algae are Nature's response to unnatural levels of nutrients in water,
> i.e.
> > nitrogen. The way it is done is to plant the water, the soil in the pond
> > and the soil around the pond, the shore/beach, embankments and adjoining
> > watershed. Required plantings include duckweed, water lillies, cattails,
> > papyrus, limited aquatic plants (do not remember names but some are used
> in
> > aquariums) and in warm climates water hyacinth and other floating plants.
> > These plant communities become self sustaining and to a degree self
> > regulating. They provide habitat, breeding grounds and food for many
> > marine, aquatic and land based creatures. Mosquito control is always a
> > benefit from a balanced pond ecosystem, birds, dragonflies and bats
> > accomplish this. Lose the chlorine and bring in the duckweed and
> cattails,
> > and algae! In a balanced diverse aquatic system algae does not last long
> as
> > it becomes food for other creatures and eventually plants; duckweed
> > outcompetes it for space and light. This scenario happens even during
> > loading of fresh nutrients, sometimes in large quantities, from adjoining
> > watersheds, ditches draining fields, pastures with livestock manure.
> Living
> > floating islands and chinampas can add significantly to remediation of
> > nutrient rich water flowing into the pond.
> >
> > Volvox, one of the seven wonders of the micro world
> >
> >
> http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artdec03/volvox.html
> >
> > *Volvox* is a Chlorophyte, or green alga. It exists as a grand spherical
> > colony. Each little alga within the colony bears two flagella, whip-like
> > hairs. The individual alga are connected to each other by thin strands of
> > cytoplasm that enable the whole colony to swim in a coordinated fashion.
> > The individual alga also have small red eye spots.
> >
> > The colonies even have what we could call a front and rear end. Or, since
> > Volvox resembles a little planet, a 'north and south pole'. In the
> northern
> > region the eyespots are more developed. This helps the colony to swim
> > towards the light. This differentiation of cells make *Volvox* quite
> > unique. It is a colony that comes really close to being a multi-celled
> > organism.
> >
> > Watching groups of colonies under the light microscope is a breathtaking
> > sight. If you leave enough space under the cover slip (with the aid of
> > spots of Vaseline under the corners) the spheres will swim slowly towards
> > the light of the microscope, (use dark field illumination!).
> >
> > *Volvox* can be found relatively easy. They need quite clean nutrient
> rich
> > water (Eutrophic) and it has to be warm so summer is the time of the year
> > for a good *Volvox* catch. The best thing to do is to use a plankton net
> > but if you are lucky you can also find them by squeezing pond scum. In a
> > jar of pond water they will swim towards the light so they are often easy
> > to find near the surface.
> >
> > <> - LL
> >
> > One of my ponds:
> >
> >
> > ​
> >
> >
> > ​
> >
> > This is the aquarium aquatic plant I referred to above growing with
> > duckweed in a small pool I built
> >
> > Same pool as above which was close up picture.
> >
> > Cattails and duckweed in same pond with water lillies.
> >
> > Water hyacinth in a lake in China
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Lawrence F. London
> > lfljvenaura@gmail.com
> > https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > permaculture mailing list
> > permaculture@lists.ibiblio.orgubscribe/unsubscribe|user config|list
> info:
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> > message archives: https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture
> > message archive mirrors:
> > https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/permaculturelist
> > http://permacultureforum.blogspot.com
> > http://permaculturelist.wordpress.com
> > Google message archive search:
> > site: lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture [searchstring]
> > Permaculture Institute USA http://permaculture.org
> > How to permaculture your urban lifestyle
> > http://www.ipermie.net
> > Avant Geared  https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/
> > https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
> > Permaculture: -- portal to an expanding global network of landtech
> > pioneers practicing and teaching permaculture
> > while designing ecological, biointensive land use systems with integrated
> > elements for synergy, sustainability, regeneration and enhanced
> > nature-compatible
> > human habitat --
> >
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.orgubscribe/unsubscribe|user config|list info:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> message archives: https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture
> message archive mirrors:
> https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/permaculturelist
> http://permacultureforum.blogspot.com
> http://permaculturelist.wordpress.com
> Google message archive search:
> site: lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture [searchstring]
> Permaculture Institute USA http://permaculture.org
> How to permaculture your urban lifestyle
> http://www.ipermie.net
> Avant Geared  https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/
> https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
> Permaculture: -- portal to an expanding global network of landtech
> pioneers practicing and teaching permaculture
> while designing ecological, biointensive land use systems with integrated
> elements for synergy, sustainability, regeneration and enhanced
> nature-compatible
> human habitat --
>



-- 
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/