Putting the perm in permaculture

[rainbowgardener]

Part of the idea of permaculture, why it is "permanent," is to have edible forests and food gardens that keep coming back year after year, with minimal inputs from the gardener.

So I thought I would ask what people are growing in the way of food trees, perennial fruits and vegetables, annual food plants that re-seed themselves, etc.

I've been trying to keep this in mind. Since I am only in my second growing season in this location, not everything is producing yet, but here's what I have planted:

2 apple trees, 2 peach trees, 2 fig trees, 2 hazelnut trees, one dwarf banana tree, one elderberry tree, 2 serviceberry shrubs, rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus. I want some artichokes, but haven't found any yet (they are slow from seed, I would like to find plants). Lots of perennial herbs. I always let some of the lettuce go to seed when it bolts and I did have lettuce plants pop up on their own - including one little lettuce clear across the yard from the bed where they were planted.

Once all this is producing, we will be living in the land of milk and honey!!

I might yet plant some blueberries. I am refusing to plant raspberries, because the raspberries in my Cincinnati yard escaped and turned a big chunk of it into a bramble patch. Not only do they spread rapidly by runners, but the birds eat the berries and then deposit the seeds with a nice little wrapping of fertilizer, so they pop up in other parts of the yard as well. And the birds did get most of the berries. So, not doing that again. I haven't grown blueberries before. I know they need soil more acid than mine, which discourages me, but at least I think they are less likely to take over your yard.

[imafan26]

I think permaculture is more than just perennial plants although I do admit, we like our fruit trees here. We think of them not just for fruit but also because they provide shade and cool the house. I think of permaculture as a philosophy rather than a planting plan.

It is more about working with nature; the land and the environment. Planting so the land can renew itself with few inputs, creating a self sustaining more or less ecosystem. Also in a closed system you want to be able to recycle and balance the inputs and outputs.

In permaculture you would practice organic soil building with compost , usually made on site. Natural fertilizer usually provided by your own animals, chickens, goats, cows, rabbits . You may have bees for honey and also to pollinate the garden. You would provide habitat for beneficial animals or wildlife. Incorporate as many natives as possible.
Instead of tilling large patches, maybe no till, interplanting and crop rotation would be instituted.
You would also plant to attract beneficial insects so you would not need to use a lot of insecticides.
You would compost your garden and kitchen waste and maximize recycling. You would try to minimize waste.
https://permacultureprinciples.com/
Extremists would try to go off the grid with composting toilets, recycling gray water, solar power, even giving up cars and going the eco friendly route with walking or riding bikes to work and tilling by hand, no power tools to reduce the carbon footprint.

It is also a philosophy of sharing with each other, nature, and community.

[rainbowgardener]

Yes indeed. I was just focusing on one little piece, but quite agree with you on all of this and do try to practice what I can.

I have said other places that I aim to be a "closed loop" gardener. Nothing (or as little as possible) coming in from the outside and nothing wasted. Now that we have chickens, it's even more so... the chickens do (so far?) eat purchased chicken food, but they also eat table scraps and lots of chickweed and other greens. And they contribute poop to the compost pile. And in a couple more months, eggs for us.

Everything organic gets composted. Mostly I don't fertilize, just keep feeding my soil with compost, compost tea, and mulch. The mulch is either straw from the chicken coop (which is purchased, but then has nitrogen added by the chickens), fall leaves (of which we have TONS from big old trees around the edges of our property), grass clippings, pulled weeds. So all if it is from the property except the straw, which the chickens need. I don't till.

And yes, I am busy planting to attract beneficial insects and NEVER use poisons in my yard. I would love to have one or two bee hives some time, but probably not this year. But plan for this year (in the fall) is to put solar panels on our house. Since we have an all electric house, that would power everything.

What are other people doing/ growing to have "permanent" food gardens?

[applestar]

I love the concept of permaculture and have tried to adapt what I can to my suburban postage stamp. I also like the self sustaining garden ideals and edible landscaping.

What you focused on -- food plants that keep coming back -- is perfect and makes so much sense for a busy (or lazy like me) gardener. I love that all you have to do is pay a little bit of attention to them, and they will grow and supply harvest when it's time.

Fruit trees, shrubs and perennial plants as you mentioned are invaluable. I'm envious that you will be able to grow some things that I have to put more effort in to get them to grow. So far I have apples, pears, peaches, cherries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. Persimmon "Prok" -- larger fruited native cultivar. Volunteer currant. Strawberries - both named cultivars planted in beds and bird-spread wild strawberry volunteers that grow and fruit even in shade and spread into their own groundcover. Elderberries will also spring up in unexpected places, and some pruned stalks I used as stakes have rooted. Very easy. Mulberry tree. Pawpaw trees (one of the 3 just started blooming last? year... need pollinizer so others need to mature for fruit production. Seedlings, not grafted known cultivars.) Figs - one winter Hardy variety, two that need to be brought inside for winter - pot culture.

Other winter vulnerable container plants -- pineapple (only one fruiting so far), super dwarf banana, seed grown (not guaranteed fruit quality or timeline...some are mostly for fun) avocados (one dwarf named cultivar "Day" intended for pot culture and originally purchased as grafted plant, subsequently the original plant died but I was able to graft scions to my own seed-grown rootstock before losing the plant), citruses of all kinds (from seeds of store-bought lemon, orange, grapefruit, like). Latest that are more assured for fruit if not timeline are Meyer lemon and Key lime. Seed-grown pomegranate. Mangoes. Ginger and Turmeric. Would you consider my overwintered peppers part of this group?

Some of the fruiting plants are more for wildlife use -- Service berries -- tree and shrub. Shrub is edible. Tree gets ruined by cedar-apple rust anyway, but I don't think is really the eating kind except as wild forage -- require extra processing. I have viburnums and dogwoods that produce (bird-edible) fruits, too. I think an aspect of permaculture is to pay attention to plant in guilds. I try to do this with human as well as wildlife food plants. And trifoliate orange "Flying Dragon" just because I wanted a winter hardy fruiting citrus -- nearly inedible though juice can be used like astringent lemon.

I think nut trees is another important element, but it's not easy to work them into a tiny garden scheme. So I started out with American hazel, which does not really produce big nuts but mine has started to fruit/nut after realizing I needed a pollinizer 2nd plant. I also acquired a locally grown pecan nut seedling as well as nuts that I planted and obtained backup seedlings. If I had more land, I would buy and plant grafted specific varieties of pecan. Also walnuts for sure. If I lived in warmer climate, I would plant almonds which are fleshless peaches/nectarines. (There is a cultivar of peach/nectarine that they claim you CAN eat seeds like almonds -- normal ones have too much cyanide in them to eat).

(Some of what I'm doing are more of a "dreamer" than intentional gardening -- I believe for assured production, it's better to research cultivars and varieties and obtain ones that are best suited to your garden's climate, soil-type, and local disease and pest resistance ...so do what I say and not what I do )

I try to stick with native plants for perennials, but do make exception for some human edibles.

Perennial plants and herbs -- asparagus, ostrich fern (spring shoot fiddles), myoga (Japanese ginger for flowerbuds). Garlic chives, oregano, lavender, thyme. Saffron Crocus. Three kinds of mint, 4th oddball that might be crossed seedling-grown intermingled in the spearmint patch. I'm getting yomogi (Japanese mugwort) this year. Rosemary is borderline here and I overwinter in the house.

Culinary mushrooms -- just shiitake on logs for now. Would like to try others.

Self reseeding (note that the kind that can self re-seed are a menace and need close watching) -- shiso/perilla -- Asian species specific for eating (N. American wild species is supposed to be toxic o large livestock), mitsuba (Japanese parsley -- hardier and can become weedy), cilantro,lettuce and Spinach Tree (magenta spreen) which you might not consider since it's a lambs quarters cousin... Biennial re-seeders -- Italian parsley (yes, let them bloom and go to seed in 2nd Year and they will reseed themselves), .... oh, kale (I think some, like Red Russian Kale, re-seed better than others), carrots (but I think they cross easily so you may not get the quality you want from re-seeded ones), Chard when allowed to go to seed in 2nd year re-seeded and grew back successfully one spring, but not in another -- you may have better luck where you are with the milder winter.

I feel like I'm forgetting something -- if you want, I'll dredge up things I've considered and rejected, am trying and haven't succeeded (yet), and/or haven't gotten around to planting in the next post.

[rainbowgardener]

You are amazing, applestar! I don't think you have more land than me (my new place is just shy of half acre), but you do SO MUCH with it!

The pawpaws are dioecious, separate male and female trees, so you have to have one of each. But when you buy them from a nursery, they can't tell you what your trees are. With three trees, hopefully you do have male and female trees, but not guaranteed. I had three paw-paws in Cincinnati for at least six years and none of them ever did fruit, though one bloomed profusely. The flowers are said to smell like rotting meat (not that I ever noticed this) to attract carrion flies to pollinate them. Bees aren't interested. Otherwise you can hand pollinate.

I did let my carrots go to seed one year in Cincinnati. The next gen carrots were basically inedible - hard, woody, small. I don't know what they crossed themselves with, but it wasn't a success!

[rainbowgardener]

Applestar, you reminded me of things I am still dreaming about. I didn't move far enough south to grow citrus in the ground, but I would love to have a dwarf orange tree in a container. I also want to try growing ginger and turmeric. I definitely want to have viburnum and dogwood, but I'm thinking that will wait until I get around to doing something with the front yard.

I would LOVE to grow my own avocados. I think the more cold hardy avocados (like Mexican), could be grown in the ground here, like in front of my south facing garage wall. But I always hear that they can take ten or more years to start producing. I'm 70 years old! I don't think I can wait that long!

I also leave a lot of the edible/ medicinal weeds when they show up, just swat them down enough so they don't take over. So far have purslane, plantain, lamb's quarters, dandelions, wild violets...

I think edible weeds are a great permaculture example ... food that just springs up that you don't have to do anything for.

[applestar]

Yep edible weeds! Some are actually really tasty, some are particularly nutritious. As a gardener, it's a good habit to ID every plant so you know which ones they are. Don' just toss them, make use of them


...I remembered one that I forgot. I have always thought that tea shrub is ideal for replacing a formal, well manicured hedge. You live now where you could do that and harvest enough for your use.

My little shrublet is hardly enough for one cup -- I'm having trouble growing it.

...hoping to get this one turned around and more lush.

I got my plant from here. They have nice info pages.
Grow Your Own Tea!
https://www.camforest.com/category_s/53.htm


...I just browsed there and they have some more new cultivars that are hardy to 6B... hmmmm Oh Oh! And they have a VARIEGATED tea

[rainbowgardener]

Oh good reminder! Yes, definitely! It would like a morning sun location, right?

I still haven't touched our front yard, while we work in the back, putting in raised beds, including the giant circle and chickens and fence line plantings, and redo the deck....

When we get to the front yard, I want to get rid of all the "green balls" (the only picture of them I had was with Christmas decs! )

(little bonus- if you click to enlarge, you see two little heads in the doorway! )

We want to put stairs down from in front of the front door, (right now the only entrance is from the side right in front of the garage and then walking the length of the narrow porch) with a path leading to midway down the driveway and then do a nice mixed foundation planting. The house faces the morning sun, so somewhere in the foundation planting could be the camellia....

I always wish things could go faster, but we don't have the time, energy, and especially $$ to do it all at once.

[applestar]

You could grow tea from seeds -- suppose to be "easy" then when you are ready to work on the front landscaping, you will have them ready to plant. You could grow them in pots (or tall recycled beverage jugs, etc.) outside probably.

[applestar]

BTW -- sorry to drift off topic but -- posting like this is like having a "conversation" with you. I thought about what you always say -- pull them out of the pot and see what the roots look like -- so decided to repot the tea while I was thinking about it. The resident earthworms had turned the potting mix into solid muck and the roots were stunted. I think also that at some point, this plant had become rootbound outer potting is fell away to reveal tightly coiled primary roots.

I think I had read that tea doesn't like it's roots disturbed and made the mistake of not loosening it out before. I believe it's also said to have long ranging deep roots -- well this one doesn't. The coiled roots are already woody and I can't unwind them, but I did the best I could, and added extra perlite so the wormyworms can't make a mudball out of the rootball anymore. Next time, I'll try to have pine bark chip mulch on hand because I think that would be better for tea -- likes acid soil.

[xtron]

I've got a pretty good rhubarb bed going..third year here from 100 year old crowns I got from grandparents place in iowa. rhubarb likes nitrogen, so I go heavy on the mulch and throw some rabbit fertilizer on it in the fall.
I'm still trying to get an asperegras bed established, but it's slow going. every year I add half a dozen more crowns and every year I get one or two more sets.
my strawberry bed was over run with creeping Charlie...the devil's own favorite plant, so it was moved. of course, I lost a lot of the transplants, but when you are starting with close to 300 plants, it won't take long to get a nice full bed again.
this will be the second year I harvest horseradish. I screwed up the preserving last year .. hope for better results this year.
I also have trees...dwarve grannysmith apples, roman apples, a peach tree, which set fruit the first time this year, two cherry trees, which bear well, if I can keep the birds out of them, a plum tree, and a 5 fruit pear tree.
as for fruit, I have blackberries that usually produce 5+ gallons of berrie, black rasberries, and blueberries.
I just added 4 more blueberry plants this spring and am considering trying huckelberries next year.
I also added 2 seedless concord grape vines, a seedless Thompson and a seedless red table grape, I forgot the variety.

I have 3000 square feet of vegetable garden, half of which is fallow this year, the other half will be next year.
I plant mainly heirlooms and save seeds from most of my crops. I haven't figured out the bi annuals yet...cabbage, brussel sprouts, beets. but I keep trying...one of these times I'll get it right.
every year I try something different, and if it works, and we like it, it gets added to the list o things to grow. that will work until I run out of space.

[imafan26]

My lot is 5400 sf including the house. I have about 3,000 sq ft of yard. Part of that is public so, I have to plant some grass (50% HOA requirement). I do have some ornamental trees, shrubs and flowering plants that will attract beneficial insects. Some of them are technically edible but don't tell the HOA, "vegetative plants" are not allowed in the front yard. My vegetable garden is a small oval (8x16ft) that was formerly where a mango tree was then a rock garden. When we bought the house the tennants did not care well for the yard and the garden had only one sad pomegranate that was barely recognizable still clinging to life. Most of my plants are in pots and they are expanding. I am down to a narrow watering path in the back yard. I do have citrus trees in pots, bilimbi, Murraya koenigii, and potted herbs like ginger, turmeric, thyme, rosemary, bay leaf (in the ground and in pots), oregano, mint, peppers, eggplant, Mexican oregano, Mexican tarragon, lemon grass, araimo, taro, asparagus, and green onions. I did have papaya and if I can find a spot, I may put another one in again. It will be good for 5-8 years. The only animals I have around are my house cats, one does catch roaches. Outside there are enough flowering plants year round to keep bees and other beneficial insects hanging around. I have dozens of lizards in the front and backyard. I rarely have to spray. I do have issues with whiteflies every couple of years but I usually can control them by cutting back the hibiscus. Others like peach scale are immune so I have to attack them with soapy water and a brush.

I only make vermicompost with kitchen waste but I buy compost for the garden. I did a soil test and I only need nitrogen and nothing else. I do buy sulfate of ammonia which is not organic, but one 20lb bag lasts for years.

I try to grow most of the vegetables I eat, tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplant. Herbs are grown year round. If I had a papaya it would also give me fruit most of the year. I grow some things seasonally like corn, broccoli, komatsuna, cutting celery, sweet peppers, peas, and occasionally beans. Lettuce and limes, I get from my mom. I have friends who give me avocado, mango, lychee, and other tropical fruits when they are in season. My community garden has chayote and satsuma tangerines. I thought about getting a chicken, but knowing what the feral chickens do, I have changed my mind. Not ready to give up the car ( I get car withdrawal), but since water and electricity is so expensive here (the water is cheap but sewer fees are ridiculous) I have cut back on the watering and actually let some plants die. I do have rain barrels. I have maximized as much as I can saving water and electricity in the house. I do plant a diverse landscape so there are flowers so I have something for the beneficial insects all year and that keeps my pesticide use down. Weeds are another story, an unending one.


.

[rainbowgardener]

My April post I mentioned wanting to grow ginger. I have tried several times and never got any to sprout. So sometime in early May after it was thoroughly warmed up, I once again got a piece of grocery store ginger with some nice eyes on it. Cut it in several pieces and planted them. Most of them just died as usual, but one kept hanging in there, with the bud swelling up. I checked it again and it has a little green shoot, maybe half an inch tall (two months after being planted) ! Yay!

I don't know how I will do at keeping it alive after this, but this is as far as I have ever gotten with ginger.

[imafan26]

The trick to growing ginger from the market is to make sure it isn't too old and has some healthy eyes on it. Some places are cutting the eyes off the ginger so it cannot be planted. Ginger is a seasonal plant, it not only likes warm temperatures, it is dependent on the season. It can be harvested after about five months, but every year around September- November it blooms. After a couple of months the tops are going to turn yellow and start to die down. This is usually when ginger is harvested and the best time to find good seed pieces. Keep them in some moist sand in a bucket. Ginger has no resistance to nematodes so it is important that your soil be nematode free. I keep my ginger in large pots. This year, I had too many pieces so I have a 15 gallon and two 5 gallon pots now. The same thing happens with araimo. I have to use more or plant less. I use MG potting soil because it is a sterile mix. I added 1/4 cup of 10-20-20 plus since I needed high phosphorus fertilizer. ( I actually had to buy some, I don't really need phosphorus anywhere else. ) Bone meal could work as well. Ginger needs a wide pot but does not have to be too deep. The rhizomes grow sideways. This year, I tried planting them in a different direction and I planted them deeper, so I will see if it works. Ginger will start to sprout around March or April in my bucket. If I remember I will try to plant the pots around the end of March. If they sprout then OOPS, but I still plant them anyway. On the commercial farms the ginger are planted on hills. In buckets only 2 or three pieces are enough. They need the room to spread. My friend told be to try planting them lower and only partially fill the container and fill it as they ginger grows. My other friend told me to plant the pieces vertically. I'll see which one works out better. I have one in the sun and two are partially shaded by a trellis. They are about a foot tall now and I do water them every day. They will be about 3 ft tall by the end of September. I will feed them more of the same fertilizer but about a tablespoon per bucket per month.

After I harvested the ginger. I kept the biggest pieces for next year and gave some away. The rest of mostly small pieces, I peeled with a spoon and put them in a clean jar and submerged the pieces in dry Sherry. I still have some left from last year. The sherry will be ginger flavored and I can use it for Chinese recipes that call for ginger and sherry or Shao Xing wine. I made the mistake one year of reusing the sherry and the ginger got moldy. The pieces do have to be submerged so I can only use the wine for cooking if I can still keep the pieces submerged. Adding more sherry did not work either.

[rainbowgardener]

I bumped back in to this post from this season two years ago.

I have continued to move in these directions. I keep planting more native plants and wildflowers and things that attract pollinators and beneficial insects. We have seven hens now and they are being very productive this spring -- four to six eggs a day. And they are great for keeping down bugs, fertilizing everything, eating weeds and grubs. Our peach trees have now finished blooming and have set LOTS of baby peaches. The apple trees are in bloom. This spring I planted two apricot trees. The fig trees have struggled along. I think they are barely hardy. They keep dying back, so haven't fruited yet. Blueberry bushes are covered in blossoms. Elderberry hasn't fruited yet, but should this year. This spring I added Mexican avocado and hardy banana. Still don't have any citrus. If I think of this in survivalist terms, I really should add some citrus for the vitamin C. But our mini-orchard is actually looking orchard-ish since the trees are so much bigger now.

I now have a thriving camellia siniensis, which is tea leaves. Need to figure out how to dry those leaves for tea...

Don't yet have rainbarrels, but in a place that gets over 50" of rain a year that doesn't feel as pressing. What I want to get is one or two of these: https://chattanooga.craigslist.org/grq/ ... 00369.html

water tank.jpg (20.52 KiB) Viewed 13968 times

275 gallons of water and you can get them for $50.

I would also like to have a little pond/ water feature, but haven't gotten around to that yet.

I keep building and feeding my soil with compost and mulch. After three years of gardening here, my garden beds have lovely, dark soft soil full of earthworms.

I always let things go to seed and I love my volunteers. Potatoes are one of my favorites. They are practically perennial. In digging potatoes, the little marble sized ones fall off and then stay in the soil and sprout the next spring. I already have volunter potato plants and squash plants in the garden.

Here's a quote from the wiki article on permaculture: "The focus of permaculture, therefore, is not on each separate element, but rather on the relationships created among elements by the way they are placed together; the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Permaculture design therefore seeks to minimize waste, human labor, and energy input by building systems, and maximizes benefits between design elements to achieve a high level of synergy. Permaculture designs evolve over time by taking into account these relationships and elements and can evolve into extremely complex systems that produce a high density of food and materials with minimal input"

so that is what I am about, creating a backyard eco-system full of complex relationships with no waste and as close to self-sustaining as I can make it....

[SQWIB]

Rainbowgardener, looks like everything is coming together for you.
Your story is very similar to mine, adding native plants, fruit trees, peaches, apples, apricot, cherry, figs, pear, meyers lemon tree, Hardy Kiwi, Grapes, even the figs dying back lol. I haven't had any luck with my Blueberries, Raspberries and Black berries, just enough to snack on when doing yard work, but I am usually filling up on tomatoes anyhow.

Add a few bat houses and get that rain barrel regardless of the rainfall. We received 61" last year our average is 41" but you never know when you may hit a drought.
The lowest I have seen on record is 29" in 1964 and 1965.
I use my rain barrels to automatically top off my ponds. I also us the rain barrel to water the plants and I am hoping not to need city water with the exception of a very dry week. I also put in some gutters and one that feeds the back pond.

Let me know when you go to do the ponds, I have built several and may have some insight or at the least save you money by pointing out my mistakes.

[applestar]

Backyard paradise in the making! I love it.

The milder winter there allows for more potentials, and the chickens! Did you say you were thinking of keeping honey bees before?

With all the rain, I really think mushrooms would round out your kingdoms?

Oh, the possibilities

[rainbowgardener]

Yes, bat houses would be a very good idea. Being in such a wet area, with meadows around us that are wetlands a lot of the time, we do have lots of mosquitos.

I do want to get the water containers.

Honey bees and mushrooms are both things I have wanted to get in to. In both cases the cost seems a bit prohibitive. Every time I look into beekeeping, it sounds like you have to have hundreds of dollars worth of equipment, just to get started. When I have seen ads for grow your own mushrooms in the past, it was mostly inoculated log sections for $40-$50. It seemed a bit much to grow one season's worth of mushrooms. But I looked just now to check what I was saying and found a bunch of cheaper options, so probably I will go ahead with this. Thanks, applestar!

[Gary350]

What I have learned permaculture is a gardening method where you do everything you can to make your own fertilizer or provide fertilizer including the use of nitrogen fixing plants for much needed nitrogen for other plants that need nitrogen. It also includes compose for soil, soil preparation, plants that attract good bugs, plants that repel bad bugs, the use of birds to eat bugs, manure for fertilizer, save your own seeds to plant next year, and more.

Sometimes soil does not have what legume bacteria needs to live in the soil so nitrogen fixing bacteria is added plus minerals are added for the bacteria to live in the soil. Nitrogen fixing bacteria is used to get nitrogen fixing started on legumes and many other plants that take nitrogen from the air then turn it into a usable nitrogen plants can use. Nitrogen is the most important fertilizer plants need it to grow large and produce a large crop. Soil needs calcium and other minerals to keep nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil.

I like to plant nitrogen fixed beans next to each of the following plants, squash, melons, corn, peppers, broccoli, to provide plants with a continuous supply of nitrogen all season.

After pulling up nitrogen fixing plants they need to be tilled into the soil very soon or covered up in the compose very soon, dead plants loose 10% of their nitrogen into the air every week they are not turned into the soil.

There is a long list about 100 plants that are nitrogen fixing including, trees, flowers, herbs online.

I like to put nitrogen fixing bacteria on beans seeds let them set over night in a jar with 2 teaspoon of water then plant them the next day next to, corn, melons, squash, peppers.

Potatoes & tomatoes do not need added nitrogen unless your soil is very low on nitrogen.

I make lots of wood ash from any wood I can find to burn. I turn some of the wood ash into a high nitrogen fertilizer.

We have, blackberries, black raspberries, black cherry trees, no problem with birds once plants get large enough. I am considering planting 2 peach trees & maybe 2 apple trees. I dug up my Rhubarb last week it is not suited for TN hot humid rainy weather I am tired of babying it plus it is too sour to eat. We would love to have grapes too but this is another plant that is lots of work too much work for me I had grapes once already.

I had bat houses once, they need to be in full shade, never in the sun, bats like it cool, north side of house against the cold brick house wall. I could never get bats to stay year round. They go somewhere else in freezing weather & hot weather.