Polycultures, Rockets Stoves and Plot 21

I went down the Naturewise Allotment - Plot 21, @ Alexandra Palace on Sunday. Thankfully despite predictions it was a clear day, unlike the rainy mudfest of my previous visit.

Niels Corfield was visiting Plot 21 to talk about polycultures, and he also did a bit of practical tree pruning tuition for those of us there. Niels has a yahoo group Polyculture People for sharing and spreading knowledge about polyculture, his de.licio.us page entrailer has further links to polyculture sites and a whole bunch of other interesting pages for those interested in Permaculture. Toby Hemmenway’s book Gaia’s Garden has some good home scale examples of polyculture planting.

In the evening Niels talked about rocket stoves and other wood burning variants. He had a couple of video clips from Aprovecho Research Center an Oregon, USA based organisation that are engaged in research into appropriate technologies. On their site you can view/download their films on Charcoal Burning Rocket Stoves and building a VITA stove. Unfortunately the wonderfully camp video on making a stove in an old olive oil can Niels showed us is not yet available, although apparently will make it on to Google video soon. Niels also had a copy of Ianto Evans et al.’s book Rocket Mass Heaters: Superefficient Woodstoves YOU Can Build, which had more glorious pictures of Cob Building in it (the book has its own website from which you can download a pdf copy for the very reasonable $10 (especially if you are outside the USA and benefiting from the falling dollar).