There is an enormous amount of informationabout Permaculture on the Internet, some useful, some not so useful. It’s been an education for me, to see how complicated some ‘authorities’ have made it sound. Permaculture is simply using organic gardening principles to their full extent and capabilities. The classic example of the basic permaculture philosophy is the example of the American Indians who grew sweet corn, beans and pumkins together. The sweet corn supports the climbing beans, and the beans and pumpkins have a symbiotic/companions relationship that benefits each plant’s growth and production. Of course, permaculture goes much further than that, with strategies to save and reuse water and other resources. I have seen some wonderful permaculture gardens that provide food for many families, all year round. Fruit and vegetables planted in scrubby bushland or forest, food plants such as pumpkins and pawpaws growing happily alongside native vegetation and commercial timber crops, each plant or groups of plants supporting and assisting the other. Permaculture designs have been successfully and widely implemented in many third-world countries, but there is an urgent need to expand these principles into temperate climates, and especially into urban areas, to create more enjoyable and sustainable human habitats.
Click here to jump to our organic garden page! Permaculture principles focus on thoughtful designs for small- scale intensive systems which are labour efficient and which use biological resources instead of fossil fuels. Designs stress ecological connections, and closed energy and material loops. The core of permaculture is design and the working relationships and connections between all things. Each component in a system performs multiple functions, and each function is supported by many elements. Key to efficient design is observation and replication of natural ecosystems, where designers maximize diversity with polycultures, stress efficient energy planning for houses and settlements, use and accelerate natural plant succession and increase the highly productive "edge-zones" within the system. *End Quote Chickens lay eggs, loosen the soil, eat insects, eat food scraps, produce fertilizer multiple elements each important function is supported by many elements. Fire control through ponds, dams or creekbeds, through firebreaks and slow burning windbreak trees. Windbreaks and hedges provide mulch, and fertiliser to the soil. Keep the distance from the kitchen door to the vegetable garden short! In fact start your permaculture garden at the back door, and work outwards. Plant so that the plants make the best use of external energies, e.g. sun, light, wind, rain. Some plants need hot, dry areas, others the opposite. Build up biological resources that reproduce, and encourage each other. These can be animals from chickens to cows or herbs on your windowsill. Use as little energy as possible. Use waste energy in a second cycle, e.g. the dirty water from the chicken or duck pen is excellent for the vegetable garden.
Click here for Companion Planting! Don't wait until you harvested all your bananas before you plant new. Utilise the edges, the areas where two different systems meet. The forest and the meadows, the ocean and the shore, path and garden, the pond and the vegetable patch. Life flourishes here because the resources of both systems are available. Permaculture is never monoculture. Polyculture creates a greater biological stability and protection against pests and sicknesses. Plant different strains of vegetables, and try to grow traditional seeds rather than hybrids. Look for solutions, instead of finding problems. Do you have too many snails eating your salad, or not enough ducks to eat the snails? Enter into a workplace agreeement with the worms and other garden creatures. If you have an insect problem, call in a lizard or frog! Work where it counts. Only pull weeds where you replant immediately. Make the garden pay for itself by providing food, and by producing its own.
Another quote from Bill Mollinson, the founder of Modern permaculture; "The important thing is not to do any agriculture whatsoever, and particularly to make the modern agricultural sciences a forbidden area - they're worse than witchcraft, really. The agriculture taught at colleges between 1930 and 1980 has caused more damage on the face of the Earth than any other factor. "Should we tamper with nature?" is no longer a question - we've tampered with nature on the whole face of the Earth. If you let the world roll on the way it's rolling, you're voting for death. I'm not voting for death. The extinction rate is so huge now, we're to the stage where we've got to set up recombinant ecologies. There are no longer enough species left, anywhere, to hold the system together. We have to let nature put what's left together, and see what it can come up with to save our ass. At the same time, anything that's left that's remotely like wilderness should be left strictly alone. We have no business there any more. It's not going to save you to go in and cut the last old-stand forests. You should never have gotten to the stage where you could see the last ancient forests! Just get out of there right now, because the lessons you need to learn are there. That's the last place you'll find those lessons readable". *End quote. Finally don’t let others make permaculture too complicated. It’s not, it’s just commonsense wise application and extension of commonsense organic gardening practices. Happy gardening, Patrick!
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