permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

NEW BOOK /The Forest Garden Greenhouse
How to Design and Manage an Indoor Permaculture Oasis
by Jerome Osentowski
http://www.chelseagreen.com/…/the_forest_garden_greenhouse:…
The Forest Garden Greenhouse
How to Design and Manage an Indoor Permaculture Oasis
by Jerome Osentowski
With a revolutionary new “Climate Battery” design for near­-net-­zero heating 
and cooling
By the turn of the nineteenth century, thousands of acres of glass houses 
surrounded large American cities, becoming a commonplace symbol of the market 
garden and nursery trades. But the possibilities of the indoor garden to 
transform our homes and our lives remain largely unrealized.
In this groundbreaking book, Jerome Osentowski, one of North America’s most 
accomplished permaculture designers, presents a wholly new approach to a very 
old horticultural subject. In The Forest Garden Greenhouse, he shows how 
bringing the forest garden indoors is not only possible, but doable on 
unlikely terrain and in cold climates, using near-­net­-zero technology. 
Different from other books on greenhouse design and management, this book 
advocates for an indoor agriculture using permaculture design 
concepts—integration, multi­-functions, perennials, and polycultures—that 
take season extension into new and important territory.
Osentowski, director and founder of Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture 
Institute (CRMPI), farms at 7,200 feet on a steep, rocky hillside in 
Colorado, incorporating deep, holistic permaculture design with practical 
common sense. It is at this site, high on a mountaintop, where Osentowski 
(along with architect and design partner Michael Thompson) has been designing 
and building revolutionary greenhouses that utilize passive and active solar 
technology via what they call the “climate battery”—a subterranean 
air-­circulation system that takes the hot, moist, ambient air from the 
greenhouse during the day, stores it in the soil, and discharges it at 
night—that can offer tropical and Mediterranean climates at similarly high 
altitudes and in cold climates (and everywhere else).
Osentowski’s greenhouse designs, which can range from the backyard 
homesteader to commercial greenhouses, are completely ecological and use a 
simple design that traps hot and cold air and regulates it for best possible 
use. The book is part case study of the amazing greenhouses at CRMPI and part 
how­-to primer for anyone interested in a more integrated model for growing 
food and medicine in a greenhouse. With detailed design drawings, photos, and 
profiles of successful greenhouse projects on all scales, this inspirational 
manual will considerably change the conversation about greenhouse design.
About the Author
Jerome Osentowski
A forager and permaculturist with roots in rural Nebraska, Jerome Osentowski 
lives in a passive solar home he built at 7200 feet above Colorado's Roaring 
Fork Valley. Director and founder of Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture 
Institute and a permaculture designer for thirty years, he has built five 
greenhouses for himself and scores of others for private clients and public 
schools in the Rockies and beyond. He makes his living from an intensively 
cultivated one acre of indoor and outdoor forest garden and plant nursery, 
which he uses as a backdrop for intensive permaculture and greenhouse design 
courses.
Among his accomplishments is hosting the longest running Permaculture Design 
Course in the world, now at twenty-nine years running. Jerome and Michael 
have also been instrumental in identifying, conserving, and propagating 
heritage fruit trees that have survived and borne crops for over a century in 
the harsh environment of the Roaring Fork Valley. Jerome's explorations of 
sustainable systems and his travels for development projects have taken him 
to Baja, Nicaragua, Patagonia, Finland, Australia, and the Caribbean.
http://crmpi.org
- See more at: http://www.chelseagreen.com/…/the_forest_garden_greenhouse:…
http://www.chelseagreen.com/…/the_forest_garden_greenhouse