ecosystem services

My work establishing good soil via restoring Nature's ecosystem services at Everybody's Garden is completed. As a permaculture planting, it now generates its own fertility. The life and death processes of all the plants, animals, and microbes can feed new life. The hawks nesting on the Laco building down the street have been seen taking both rats and rabbits. Transition to a more stable, peaceful planting can now be via only having trees and perennial flowers and herbs there, which will need weeded but not fed. I pulled up all the tomato plants, which were unstaked due to my having pulled my back in early spring and so have been feeding the rats. There will be no composting whatsoever there now. I'm distributing the last of the compost, and will distribute the chips to the walkways between the beds. I cut down the sunflowers that were gone to seed or fallen. The few still doing well I'll cut down as the bees and birds finish with them also. The list of plants to remain there from now on (no longer tomato, cantaloupe, squash, watermelon, or anything else likely to attract rodents): rose, garlic, rose-of-sharon, peppermint, orange mint, apple mint, pineapple mint, spearmint, hydrangea, aloe (to be taken in in the winter), sedum, asian lily, daylily, sunflower (re-seeds itself), lambs quarters, purslane, comfrey, horseradish, thyme, one pine tree, six peach trees, 2 apricot trees, about 8 or 10 figs, several flowers I don't know the name of, flag, amaranth, gladiola, strawberry, asparagus, dill (re-seeds itself), fennel (also re-seeds), sunchoke (Jerusalem artichoke), French sorrel, chives, basil (re-seeds), fern yarrow,...The banana I had Neighborworks pay for needs a winter home, and I have a couple papaya in pots people are welcome to take before they freeze. I will pot up more chives to give away, and there are some cayenne in pots people are welcome to, some basil, sage, and mint in pots.

My next project, I would like to be a part of establishing somewhere an enclosed bioreactor which uses gravity only (no electricity) and screening at the bottom (no turning needed due to the shape of the reactor and internal baffling which would mix the input as it traveled downward). This reactor would be able to handle, due to it's size (much larger than these residential composters) and the fact that it is enclosed, all types of biomass waste (including animal parts and manures). Anyone interested or knowing either connections or possible sites please give me a holler. Water flow w/passive solar could also be included in a system that was a conversation piece of art as well as a functioning low-cost off-the-grid part of a living machine.

Jim McCue
412/421-6496
appropriatebiotech@yahoo.com