The Blueprint for Thriving in the Tropics

Whether you want to design a self-sufficient homestead for your family, grow a clean diet tailored to your needs, or are already guiding a team to create and maintain food forests and gardens — this course gives you the complete, step-by-step blueprint for every stage of tropical living.

Built on 15 years of hands-on experience at Finca Tierra Permaculture Education Center in Costa Rica — proven across humid, wet/dry, and savanna zones throughout the tropics.

The Challenge of Growing Food in the Tropics

The tropics humble even the most experienced growers. Most people dream of abundance in the tropics — until reality hits. Soils wash away or harden like concrete, seasons swing from flood to drought, and the ecosystem seems to favor pests over plants.

It is possible to grow food in poor soils; it just requires a design suited to tropical conditions.

The Tropical Design Method That Turns Challenges Into Abundance

We started with the same dream — to live sustainably and grow our own food in the tropics.

At first, it was anything but easy: the rain poured, the sun burned, the clay soil hardened, and pests claimed every harvest before we could.

But we didn’t give up. We observed, redesigned, and applied permaculture principles until we regenerated the soil and built productive ecosystems. What was once unforgiving land became a thriving food forest — one that now feeds our family and students year-round at our education center in Costa Rica.

After fifteen years of living off-grid, producing in abundance, and teaching thousands of students worldwide, we distilled everything into one proven, step-by-step system for success in the tropics.

This isn’t theory or guesswork. It’s the tested system we’ve refined to turn any tropical landscape into lasting abundance.

Create a Complete, Nutrient-Rich Diet

Using easy-to-grow tropical staples, this module shows you how to design a balanced, sustainable diet rooted in your land.

You’ll learn how to:

• Define which parts of your diet to grow based on your time, space, and goals

• Maximize small areas with nutrient-dense vegetables, fruits, herbs, and spices

• Design a system that supplies essential calories, proteins, fats, and micronutrients

• Select the right crops for your nutritional needs — and calculate the space required

Whether you want to supplement your meals or achieve full self-sufficiency, this module gives you the tools to feed yourself well — from a backyard garden to a full homestead.

Example Garden with Crop Area & Nutrient Charts

Plan your self-sufficient tropical vegetable gardens, and food forest on 2,000m²—or adapt it to any space. This template shows you how to grow a complete, balanced diet designed to feed two+ people efficiently and sustainably.

You’ll learn how to:

• Determine how much land you need for a food forest and gardens

• Use Crop Area and Nutrient Charts to calculate yields and cover nutritional needs

• Adapt the model to your context — scale down for small plots or expand for retreats or restaurants

Based on diet and yield data from our homestead, this model makes growing nutrient-dense food simple, efficient, and scalable.

Permaculture Design — Build Your Tropical Homestead

Learn to design a thriving, low-maintenance homestead that integrates food, water, energy, and shelter.

You’ll learn how to:

• Map and plan your land using permaculture design principles

• Place gardens, food forests, and water systems for efficiency

• Design nutrient and energy cycles that reduce waste

• Create a long-term plan that adapts to your climate and needs

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Tropical Food Forest — Abundance with Minimal Effort

Learn how to mimic natural ecosystems to grow fruits, nuts, and perennial crops that regenerate themselves year after year.

You’ll learn how to:

• Design an easy-to-manage food forest

• Select the right tropical species for long-term abundance

• Integrate support species that build soil and provide fertility

• Reduce labor with good design by letting nature do the work

Tropical Vegetable Garden & Staples — Grains, Tubers, Beans & More

Grow the staples that truly feed you in the tropics — from grains, corn, beans, cassava, sweet potatoes, and fresh vegetables to eggs and honey.

You’ll learn how to:

• Grow calorie-rich staples alongside your vegetables

• Improve your soil with compost, mulch, biochar and other regenerative practices

• Raise chickens for eggs and bees for honey

• Plan seasonal harvests so your pantry is always full

Homestead Infrastructure — Energy, Water & Waste Systems

Go beyond home design and explore the essential infrastructure that powers a self-sufficient tropical homestead.

You’ll learn how to:

• Set up domestic solar power and solar hot water systems

• Cook with fire using efficient and sustainable methods

• Design effective rainwater harvesting systems

• Recycle kitchen waste and capture nutrients from wastewater

• Use key food processing tools like solar dehydrators, oil presses, grain mills, and pressure cookers

Crop Profiles — Master 60+ Essential Tropical Crops

Learn how to grow, harvest, and use the most important tropical foods with confidence.

For each crop, you’ll learn:

• Why it’s a staple in a self-sufficient tropical diet

• The best varieties to grow for resilience and yield

• How to plant, propagate, fertilize, prune, and manage pests naturally

• When and how to harvest, plus storage and processing tips

• How to use it in your kitchen with our favorite recipes

Wellness Kitchen — Cooking, Preserving & Nutrition

Turn your harvests into everyday meals, pantry staples, and natural medicines.

You’ll learn to:

• Cook with fresh, whole ingredients from your garden

• Preserve harvests into flours, oils, vinegars, sauces, teas, and spices

• Keep a pantry stocked with year-round homegrown staples

• Plan balanced meals using the Nutrition Chart and Sample Week Menu

• Enjoy farm-to-table recipes tested in our tropical kitchen

• Understand the nutritional and medicinal power of your food

Our Journey to Self-Sufficiency 

In 2008, we began our journey into permaculture, initially inspired by the idea of building an energy-efficient home and growing our food. We wanted to eliminate rent, electricity, and water bills and produce a food forest to replace our grocery expenses. Ultimately, we envisioned creating something beautiful, low-maintenance, and cost-effective that would give us the freedom to share time with our loved ones and enjoy life—a system that would transform us from consumers to producers to heal our lives while helping to regenerate the planet.

Eventually, we founded the Finca Tierra Permaculture Education Center, where we still teach our immersive, hands-on two-week Permaculture Design Certificate Course (PDC).  More than 1,000 students from around the world have since joined us to gain real-world experience in sustainability. Along the way, we’ve also launched and supported community projects that help others reconnect with land, health, and self-reliance.

For 15 years, we’ve experimented, documented, and refined this system with one goal — to make tropical self-sufficiency achievable, economically viable, and deeply regenerative.

Today, our off-grid homestead provides a complete year-round diet through a productive food forest and integrated systems for water, energy, and waste. We created this online course to show you exactly how to do the same!

If you live in the tropics and want to build resilience, reduce grocery costs, or design a sustainable lifestyle, this course is your blueprint. Whether you’re starting with bare land or established gardens, you’ll learn to grow abundance efficiently and economically.

Transform your relationship with the land — join us and fast-track your path toward a more resilient, regenerative life.