Eat the Suburbs: Gardening for the End of the Oil Age

[numbnuts234567]

Most calories are from fats and sugars. To get just 2100 calories from vegetables you would need to eat 2 pounds each of the following: broccoli, cauliflower, onion, potato, carrot and cucumber. That's 12 pounds of vegetables each day. And don't leave out those potatos because they are 800 of the calories. So...you had better plan on growing some olive trees for fat and some sugar beets or sugar cane for sugar. Or keep some bees. Don't think you can live on vegetables.

[MrEnergyCzar]

Heinberg lives the way we all should, small lot producing a lot of food.....

[seaviewzoo3]

Great video guys we have just started a permablitz group in Adelaide thank you so much for all the work you have done and shared to make it easier for others to get inspired and going.

[johnTconover]

Melbournians, they drive through our small farming towns on holidays and long weekends in there BMW SUV's, only stopping to ask where they can buy a mocca choca latte, vegitarian pizza, croissant or some shit. They know the answer but ask only to make us small inferior simpletons feel like we are missing out on the real joys of life that only the enlightened liberal city folk know. Bring on peak oil.

[johnTconover]

Touch a raw nerve there huh? You high brow snobby wankers deserve whats coming. I spent almost two years travelling the world and never have I met a more shallow, egotistical and competitive group of people. You put the parisians to shame, at least they have something to be snobby about... The truth obviously hurts, deal with it...

[cyrusp100]

Why are you guys growing so many annual vegetables?

I though permaculture emphasises perennial systems i.e. fruit and nut trees, nitrogen fixing support species etc?

[manchovie]

Perhaps because that was a blitz in a rental, the emphasis was on the annual vegies. That was blitz #5 or so in Melbourne and we're now up to #85. 90% of blitzes do have food forests, fruit trees/chicken systems or other perennial systems. All of them feature legumes for fixing nitrogen.

[ladytezt]

The only problem with this video is that it's not a GREAT depiction of veggie gardening! It is possible to have a productive and attractive garden, but you wouldn't know it looking at the hot mess of that PermaBlitz. Yuck.

[weeblespin]

Gotta admire the deniers (those who still deny that we are in trouble and need to change our strategies if we are to survive) for their unwavering faith (belief without proof) in human intelligent problem-solving.

[libervisco]

Isn't changing our strategies and things like what this video shows precisely an example of human intelligent problem-solving?

I agree those who deny and then just sit on their asses with blind hope that everyone else will do the job are bad. I think the minimum anyone should do is spread this idea and try to build a new culture.

But it IS about intelligent problem-solving. It's just that for this to actually occur we need to make it into a self-fulfilling prophecy and actually do the solving!

[Braveluck]

I grow more food every year! Mouths to feed.

[manchovie]

Sorry LoneOarman, there are no hydrogen mines. Hydrogen isn't an energy source, just a way of storing energy (and a problematic one at that -- the molecules are so small they leak through metal tanks for one). We're no more going to run the economy of hydrogen than we are off duracels.

[saintveil]

High voltage applied with a KV ignition coil will crack the water bond instantly producing a vapor which expands 1800 times in mass: Perfect for compression engines. Hydrogen is already being liquified and added as a fuel additive. There is also a new super capacitor car battery manufactured in Texas, 400 mile range, charges in just minutes.

[saintveil]

Manchovie: Stan Meyer Water Cracking/Fracturing Secrets...

v=YGp7hMUXjmI

[manchovie]

Saintveil: The useful energy you get back when you burn the hydrogen will always be less than what it took to crack the water -- that's basic thermodynamics.

[saintveil]

Not burning hydrogen at all. Using electrolysis to charge electric car battery. With piston engines, cracking water into steam/vapor, expands 1800x. This video, he's creating 1.5KW, 400 miles on 1 litre of water.

v=eb9urNUFzAM

[saintveil]

Google Video "Daniel Nocera"

[DrReaper]

The more people I see doing this the better off we will all be.

[abweller]

this is what we all need to do NOW...peak oil or not!!! the perfect storm is brewing...i think the economic meltdown will precede peak oil...get together and plant food people...the end of the 1500 mile dinner is at hand...

[LoneOarman]

Water Fuel (hydrogen) will replace oil, so all of these nature freaks can get back into their SUVs.

[wolverwho]

LoneOarman: That's great...we can use our new hydrogen SUVs to drive around and see all the barren fields that are too depleted to support any food production at all. Industrial agriculture has killed the soil and is largely dependent on synthetic fertilizers derived from fossil fuels. Unless we learn to replenish the soil (a key component of permaculture) we will all die of malnutrition if not starvation.

[saintveil]

We must eat sea foods daily, and add sea vegetables to our diets. Fresh water shortages are requiring sea water desalination, and we are now beginning to fertilize our fields with these solids.  Current fertilizers are chinese synthetics, chemistry, likely toxic or even fatal. Again, add sea fish and vegetables to the diet.

[wolverwho]

I can't dispute the value of sea foods, which are extremely nutritious, but still, does it make sense to have people in Iowa depending on their food sources to be shipped in from coastal areas. The food supply chain is far more complex than necessary; it makes us vulnerable. Local application of permaculture techniques is a well reasoned course of action in the face of our current economic and health crisis. It's responsible & intelligent to create an environment able to support human life.

[saintveil]

wolverwho, my point is that desalination plants are producing solid waste, sea solids, which are now being used for fertilizer in Idaho. Google search "sea solids", which is waste from desalination plants or even salt beds.

[gsindia]

Great little film. Bring on the Perma-revolution!!!

How do you think the neighbours feel when they see a permablitz in action?