Saturday, April 14, 2018

Your Phone as a Permaculture Tool


Your phone can be just as invaluable a tool in your food forest as your shovel and your scythe. Keeping track of where you've planted everything, the weather, what critters and plants are growing in your forest, all can be managed right at your fingertips, giving you advantages far beyond those of our forebears. Ray Kurtzweil and Peter Diamandis (of Singularity University fame) call our cell phones an extension of our brains.

There are thousands of apps available online. Many are specifically related to gardening, and a simple search will find those for you. Feel free to look around for them when you're done here. You'll be amazed. But your phone and its apps can be used for much more. There are building tools, levels and such, flashlights, ID apps, GPS tools - all kinds of stuff.

I downloaded a GPS App to plot where I planted things or found wild edibles on our land. Granted - not very precise - maybe within a few meters - but combined with matching up topology with Google Earth on my PC I can get a pretty good idea where things are located, and can plot them all on a map (see my blog on using Google Earth as a Permaculture Tool)  --- BTW you can get Google Earth on your phone too.

You can also use your Google Maps app the same way now. Just stand where you planted or found your edible plants or maybe your bee tree or mushrooms and hold your finger down on your zoomed in map and save the location and label it.

I found one app that enables you to look through your phone's camera lens and  it lays out a level line across the scene for you. How can you use that, you ask? Have someone uphill from you poke a stick in the ground and you can find a spot farther to the left that's level to it, and have them poke another stick there. Bam - you have a swalefinder!

I have goats and chooks. Sometimes my work as a digital illustrator keeps me glued to a computer screen and away from the sun, and I don't notice it's getting dark outside. If I don't put our critters away they can get eaten by coyotes and coons. So to let me know it's sunset I use an IFTTT app, which I can configure to link Weather Underground to my GoogleCalendar. My IFTTT has my calendar send me a reminder before sunset, so I know to go put away the goats and chooks and feed the cats before the coons (who will eat not only the catfood but our chooks) come out. 

I also have IFTTT set up to warn me if there's a freeze warning that night, so I can make sure I cover my more delicate plants. I have another to let me know if it's going to rain the next day. Having that heads-up the day before gives me a chance to prioritize outdoor tasks that I'd rather not do in the rain, so I get them done today instead of putting them off till tomorrow, and save the indoor stuff for the rainy day. 

Sure, I could make it a habit to check the weather every day, and mostly I do, but permaculture is partly about letting things take care of themselves, and if I can automate tasks using something like my phone, that frees my time and mental energy for more productive use.

Weather Apps - You also have instant access to weather radar so you can see just how much time you have before that rain is going to hit with weather apps like Dark Sky (my favorite - but starting Aug 1st 2020 it's only available on iphone).

Google Calendar - Google Calendar also makes a great to-do list. I can schedule tasks at certain times of the day, or, if I mark the task as 'all day', it'll stack the task on top, so looking at the same desktop calendar will also keep my to do list right at hand. 

Another good use for your phone calendar is, say you're planting some broccoli way off in zone 4, idk, maybe because it's a great spot to grow broccoli, but you don't go out there often. You look at your seed packet and it says that in x number of days your broccoli will be ready to pick. You can pull your calendar while you're planting, jump x number of days ahead and leave yourself a note on your calendar, along with, wait for it...... The GPS coordinates and a photo of the area where you planted it, all of which can be linked to that calendar entry.

You can even set a date the next year for when a particular pest invaded that broccoli this year. Set a reminder a week before to remind you to make a trip out there with a photo opened (do a quick search through google photos or google keep from the year before) on your phone ready to identify that critter and prevent it from damaging your plants. Nipping a pest in the bud is the best way to beat them.

Watching for and destroying pest-insect eggs on the leaves can prevent the larvae from devouring everything before they ever hatch. Much more effective than waiting for signs on the leaves after the damage is done. And much more efficient than having to check on them every day, especially if you want to plant your entire land with more and more food.

It's tough to keep track of it all, what with the varying growing rates of every plant, companion planing, possible pests and diseases. So entering projected landmark dates into your calendar for each thing you plant, and entering instructions for those dates at the time of planting, frees your brain up for more creative problem solving activities, and you can rest assured that your phone will let you know when it's time to keep your eye out for any threat to your edibles.

Set a reminder right now for Dec 22nd, June 21st, and Sept 22nd to photograph various parts of your property to see where shadows are falling, so when spring comes you'll know where to plant plants and where to plant mushrooms. 

Speaking of photos, that camera on your phone is great for all kinds of things - from showing your progress as you build ...  so you can show the local authorities how it was constructed if they question its structural integrity,  to taking a snapshot of that plant or mushroom or bug you don't recognize so you can Google it when you're not so busy to see if it's potentially useful. The photos I take for this blog are taken with my phone and automatically uploaded to Google Photos for easy access from my PC for when I post the blog. 

...and speaking of Google Photos - whenever you take a pic of anything, it can be backed up to Google Photos. With its latest updates, there are even more tools. Along the top of the screen you'll get a feed of the photos from each of the last 5 years. Taking frequent photos of pests and blossoms and events in weather can give you a history that you can reference quickly. Also - when you tap on a photo - on the bottom of your screen is a little square with a dot in it (3rd icon from the left). Say you have a photo of a weed you have never seen before. Take a photo of it, pull it up on Google Photos and tap that icon and it'll do a search for it. It's not 100% accurate, but it's gotten pretty close for me many times.

If you need a good app to jot down ideas quickly, OneNote is an awesome FREE note-taking program from Microsoft that also syncs to your PC. While it's not very editable from your phone, taking initial notes and writing on it really helps when you want to record an idea or an observation on your land that you want to look into later when you sit down at your computer. I used it to write the first half of this blog while I was sitting in bed winding down for the evening. I also use it from my PC to save research into every aspect of permaculture. It has powerful organizational features, which makes retrieving that information even easier and faster.

What I really love about OneNote is you can add the images to text and rearrange things easily on a page, even sketch, circle and write on it. And once you've compiled everything, you can export it all to a PDF. I plan to create a PDF of all the permaculture information I've gathered over the years and make it available for download on this blog. 

If you'd rather stick with Google - Google Keep is also a great app for taking down all kinds of notes - from a simple phone number to a long essay. You can add labels for quick accessing later on, you can save by color - like Green is for finances or orange is for permaculture tips - and you can use tags to store the same note in different categories. You can use it to set reminders - either by date OR by location! Set it so next time you go to Tractor Supply your supply list pops up automatically so you don't have to look it up. You can also add images and draw on them if you need to. Creating a reminder by date lets you bypass the Google Calendar function I listed above by actually including the photo and description of the pest that ate your broccoli last year.

Need to find free stuff? Craigslist lets you save your searches and have them sent to your email. 
Looking for pallets for your goat shed? Do a search for pallets in the For Sale > Free category, save the search, go to your account (you have to make an account if you don't have one. It's free) turn on the alert and bam - every time someone posts an ad for free pallets, you get notified, so you pretty much have dibs on it. 
Need lumber? Do a search and do the same thing. I have one out now for wood, pallets, sheds, gates, roof (looking for roofing material), batteries (looking for deep cycle), plants, bricks, pavers, wood chips (for walkways and mushrooms). Good to have a pickup truck when you're out and about. You can respond right away and bring it on home - FREE!

Mindmaps come in handy in permaculture. You can make mindmaps for things like comparing building materials, companion plants, flow charts of steps to take on a project, organizing your food storage, all kinds of things. It's a great app to have on your phone to help you organize your thoughts when you have to sit and wait for something. My favorite is MiMind Pro (an inexpensive, one time purchase) that lets you store your mind maps on Google Drive.

Of course, having full on access to the web isn't a horrible thing either. We look up plants and bugs and critter habits all the time while we're out in the land planting. Sometimes when you're not busy, when you see a cocoon on a plant and want to know if it's a pest or a beneficial insect, you can just look it up right there. 

And if you can't find it, there's always social media like facebook, where people have plant identification and mushroom identification groups that are waiting to ID your new find, cuz they love mushrooms!  It's like having a team of experts at your beck and call.

Social media is also handy when you want to let your friends know you're building a chookhouse. A simple "Does anyone want to help?" and some folks might see that as an opportunity for some free PDC sessions and be ready to jump right in.

Using Google Maps is a great way to locate nearby services and materials you might need also, like gravel quarries, local earth moving equipment and tree services for wood chips.

Flip through Google Play some time. Use your own imagination to find uses for your phone. You may be surprised.






Thursday, April 12, 2018

Twitter!! @SoulsticeHome

So as an extension to this blog, we decided to open up a Twitter account to share what we're doing in real time.

The blog itself was created to share detailed procedures and design ideas, not so much so you can copy or use those ideas, but so you can see the process of how we get those ideas and why we choose to implement them. Some fail, some work.

We'll be using Twitter to update you in real time, commenting as we go along, sharing photos of our progress, sharing ideas as we get them.
Comments welcome. 

#SoulsticeHomestead 
@SoulsticeHome

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