Advanced Permaculture Course

 

Apart from teaching the Permaculture Design Course, Christoff Schneider will be facilitating a series of Advanced Permaculture Courses for those who would like to delve deeper into these areas of interest.

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Christoff will be hosting a 2 Day Soil & Composting Intensive, a 3-day Advanced Permaculture Design Course, a 4 Day In-depth  Gardening & Food Forest Systems course and a 4-day course on building a Pizza Oven, Rocket Stoves, Pyrolysis for making Activated Charcoal and an introduction to Mud Building.

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Christoff has experience of  working in professional composting units across Europe, has worked as a professional Permaculture Designer and designed many Permaculture spaces, on small-scale gardens & properties up to 1600 ha and large scale, he has successfully created many productive gardens, has been using activated charcoal in his experiments and work for a long time and has spent a lot of time creating and teaching different forms of natural design.

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He will be sharing his expertise over the 13 days of the Advanced Courses with more time to explore specific areas of interest. For beginners and advanced practitioners.

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SESSION 1: COMPOSTING & HUMUS BUILDING,

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• Understanding the Living System, Humus & Soil

• Soil & Humus & Edaphon versus Fertilizer & Mulch & Green Manure

• The role & quality of hot composting, cold composting & quality worm farming in sustainable closed loop systems

• Soil pollution & erosion

• Creation and Composition of Soil

• Soil pores and crumb structure

• The Edaphon

• Understanding the role of Main Nutrients and Trace Elements

• Soil improvement

• Soil Testing

• Hot Composting with controlled microbiological carbonisation,

• Cold composting, Soil Mixtures, Compost Extracting for gardens & farms, the use of perfectly activated Terra Preta

• Hot Composting with future controlled microbiological carbonization, different ways and the advantages of cold composting, -VSA = Visual Soil Assessment

• Worm farming

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SESSION 2: ADVANCED PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE, 

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• 3 day Advanced Design, only for PDC graduates. A step-by-step guide, real-life approach to working with clients in the field including one-on-one mentoring with Christoff.

• We fit this course to your personal needs and preference in the design process

• Design process overview

• Reading the landscape and natural patterns

• Using Zones and Sectors-planning beyond landscape design to structure daily life, projects, companies and aid projects

• Client interview and goal articulation -Practical collecting of information necessary

• Creating a quotation

• Laws: Finding out regulations and talking with administration

• Planning exercises of given design tasks in groups and/or of your own personal project.

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SESSION 3: FOOD FOREST SYSTEMS & GARDENING IN DEPTH, 

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• Food Forest, Forest Gardening, Agroforestry: We will go through all the steps on how to create highly energy efficient Food Forests, discuss Forest Gardening and Agroforestry systems.

• The pattern language of a forest

• Succession in natural systems

• Planning, Design, and Maintaining of food forest systems

• Water management small and big scale

• Use of tools, machinery, and animals to prepare the land

• Pioneer plants for regeneration

• Improving soil-microbiology for better humus building

• Suitable trees and plants

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BUILDING GARDEN BEDS –

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• Explaining and building; planning, calculating, earthworks

• Finding and best use of local resources

• The advantage of ”good” tools.

• Raised, mound, mandala, keyhole gardens, vertical gardens

• Pot planting

• Polyculture systems, planting regimes, green manure crops, perennial cropping systems

• Water management

• Integrated animal management

• How to set up a simple greenhouse, walipini, nursery, winter garden

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SESSION 3: PIZZA OVEN, ROCKET STOVE WITH PYROLYSIS, BOTTLE WINDOW BUILDING, MUD BUILDING, MUD BRICKS(Adobe), CLAY PLASTER, 

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In this workshop, we learn how to

• Find suitable clay-

• Test clay mixtures for different purposes

• Discuss several technical realization options for clay ovens, rocket stoves, lorena stoves

• Build a foundation for our projects

• Build simple but very functional pizza-oven & rocket stove with pyrolysis for harvesting charcoal

• Make a bottle window

• Make mud bricks and play around with clay plaster

• Make simple pottery for having even more creative fun

• Screening of movie about straw bale building before heading to the bonfire

• Theory of how to build mud houses, getting an overview of different techniques and some hands-on experience.