Abstract

At mass I hear the priest talking about the need to heal our relationship to the Earth. The idea of a personal salvation “that I can be saved but the rest of creation cannot” is not understandable to me anymore. So I am also hopeful that as our crisis deepens there will be an alternative theology available to people, one which calls for the affirmation of life, for taking care of the Earth, and for fostering the sisterhood and brotherhood of all other living things.

Michael E. Zimmerman
Professor of Philosophy
Tulane University, New Orleans

© 1998 The Adelphiasophists and AskWhy! Publications. Freely distribute as long as it is unaltered and properly attributed
Contents Updated: Thursday, September 21, 2000

Bill Mollison and Permaculture

Permaculture is an attempt to create a Garden of Eden. Permaculture started and the word “permaculture,” a contraction of “permanent agriculture,” was coined in the seventies by Bill Mollison and one of his students, David Holmgren because there was no word in our language to describe a system of agriculture which did not deplete the land or endure without constant human inputs. It is defined by its own experts as “the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems.”

Mollinson and Holmgren rushed out a book, based on Holmgren’s thesis, called “Permaculture I,” published in 1978. Twenty-five thousand copies were printed. Within three years they were out of print.

Regional permaculture groups started. Enthusiasts got together to talk about permaculture, and set up an association with a journal, now known as “The International Permaculture Journal” with many subscribers. People got together once a month or every two weeks to talk about permaculture, swap plants, discuss good species of fruit and nut trees, hold workshops, exchange seeds, and make political representations, or spawn new regional associations. With more information available a more practical book, “Permaculture II” was published. Thirty thousand of those were printed, and it has been reprinted since.

Masanobu Fukuoka’s One Straw Revolution

If you want to get an idea of the natural fertility of the earth, take a walk to the wild mountainside sometime and look at the giant trees that grow without fertilizer and without cultivation. The fertility of nature, as it is, is beyond reach of the imagination.

Masanobu Fukuoka, “The One Straw Revolution”

Even before Mollison, Masanobu Fukuoka was developing an ecocultural farming method involving no tillage, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no weeding, no pruning, and little labour. He too aimed to work with Nature, using combinations of plants, polyculture, a system opposite to the modern method of monoculture. He published his, now famous, book, “One Straw Revolution,” in 1978. Fukuoka was trained in microbiology, specialising in plant diseases.

The Japanese before the war were rapidly industrialising and the received wisdom was that of “modern” agriculture of shoving in energy, capital and chemicals to produce high yields. Fukuoka rightly saw these methods as contrary to Nature and he withdrew to his home village on the side of a mountain to seek alternative natural ways of farming.

As a scientist, Fukuoka was a good observer and experimentalist and he developed a method that closed “the gap between agriculture and naturalism.” By allowing plants to self propagate and grow in a natural succession, Fukuoka claimed that food and fibres could be produced almost effortlessly, without cultivation and chemicals. His four principles are:

1. No cultivation—not tilling the soil avoids injuries to it, and its denizens, that reduce production.
2. No chemical fertilizers, or even prepared compost!—plants and animals that make the soil are allowed to do it naturally.
3. No weeding by hoeing or herbicide—use the weeds and only control them when needed by natural means or cutting.
4. No use of chemicals—insects and weeds, diseases and pests have natural controls that should be allowed to operate.

Europe, Fukuoka said, was beautiful, with lots of Nature preserved, but he sensed, desert was slowly encroaching. The mistake Europeans made in agriculture was:

Growing meat for the king and wine for the church. Cow, cow, cow, grape, grape, grape—everywhere.

In short, loss of diversity. Doing this changed Nature, especially on the hill slopes, where soil erosion occurred. Only the 20 per cent of the soil in the valleys remained healthy, and 80 per cent of the land was depleted, requiring chemical fertilizers and pesticides to be used. Agriculture under European civilization started by tilling the land, and that was the beginning of the mistake. True natural farming uses no cultivation, no plough. The enemy of the tree was the saw and axe. The enemy of the soil was cultivation and ploughing. Without these tools the world would be better off.

Good farming lets Nature run her course with minimal human intervention. Western-industrial society is in the mind-set that the more intervention in the environment undertaken, the more productive that work required will be. In Nature, the earth is not tilled, and fertilizers, dead plants and animals, and fallen leaves, begin as mulches on the soil’s surface.

Leaves fall and decay. Twigs of trees are broken off by a strong wind. The trunks of trees are blown down and lie on the earth. Animals and plants begin to eat this organic matter. These tiny animals and plants also die and decay, and become part of the soil, along with other organic wastes. Soon earthworms and ants eat these piles of rotting matter and they themselves return to the earth. This process of decay is the beginning of birth, part of the natural circle of life. The word “nature” means this circle. The meaning of the word “ecology” is also this natural circulation. Fertile and healthy soil is made in the long, slow process of the natural life circle. The circle represents continuity as well as sustenance.

Hideki Inoue

Taking Action

So, “Should we tamper with Nature?” It is a question asked too late—we have tampered with Nature, throughout history. Permaculture, just like living, means changing Nature, but it is a question of how much and how sensitively? Should we be doing genetic engineering and creating hybrids—some would say monsters? We must avoid modern agriculture altogether, and we must declare modern agricultural sciences as commercial mother-fucking—worse than lobotomy. The agriculture taught at colleges between 1930 and 1980 has caused more damage on the face of the Earth than anything done before.

No one needs a teacher to do permaculture, though some tuition makes it easier. Everyone must start, teacher or no teacher. Just start! Begin by making sure you are not a hypocrite. Suppose you are working for a big overseas aid organization. You leave home in a Mercedes-Benz, travel 80 kilometers to work in a glass and concrete high-rise with diesel engines labouring in the basement to operate the air conditioning—then you publish plans for an efficient mud hut for Africa! A tad hypocritical? Ecologists that drive cars, buy three newspapers and do not grow their own vegetables are not ecologists in practice. Get your own life right first.

People who look after themselves and those around them, are ecologists in practice like Masanobu Fukuoka. He talks practical philosophy. People like that do not poison things, do not ruin things, do not lose soils, do not build things they cannot sustain. All of us should be like them.

A permaculturist and an agriculturist work in different ways. The permaculturist tries to let things function in a natural way. There is no other systematic design for living than permaculture. How can we possibly expect to survive if we do not design what we are doing to be bearable? If you do something basic wrong, you can get nothing else right. From latitude 30 degrees to latitude 60, you must have the long axis of the house facing the sun to capture its warmth. In practice they are designed to face the road in whatever direction it goes. They make no efficient use of natural heat and, without electricity, most modern homes would be uninhabitable. The basic principle was not followed and we and the earth are still paying for it.

Permaculture is a change in perception, from the passive to the active. Instead of physicists teaching physics, they should first go home to see how physics applies there, and how it affects the whole of life. They teach sophisticated physics at the university. They know all about entropy but ignore it in practice. They go home to a domestic environment that can only be described as demented in its use of energy, and instead of screaming in rage, they set up more gadgets using their skills to waste more power and destroy more of the world. They cannot see it. Their blindness is appalling. When they see some practical, non-wasteful uses for their physics in real-life, then they can go and teach it.

Rapid delegation of work to people is essential. Hundreds and hundreds of them are neded as permaculture experts. Patents are out. Information must be public. Permaculture is cooperative, not competitive. Our knowledge and thinking must be active. The greatest amount of change in the shortest period of time is needed.

The Ethics of Permaculture

Permaculture is also an ethical movement stressing positivism and cooperation, built upon caring for the earth and interacting with the environment in mutually beneficial ways—maintaining a system in which all life can thrive. This includes human access to resources and provisions, but not the accumulation of wealth, power, or land beyond their needs.

We have to rethink how we live on this earth. Stop saying that we must have agriculture, we must have exports. All that is the death of us. Permaculture challenges what we are doing and thinking—to that extent it is sedition. If you try to maintain a simple life these days, you are seditious, because you are refusing to join the conspicuous consumption merry-go-round. Before long, anyone growing an allotment will be arrested as a traitor to the system. Permaculture is a revolutionary genii that has been let out of its bottle. Such seditious ideas cannot be stoppered again at all easily.

Permaculture is successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy. In that sense, it is an anarchist movement in which everything interacts properly with everything else. Permaculture is urging complete cooperation between each other and every other thing, animate and inanimate. You cannot cooperate by knocking something about or bossing it or forcing it to do things. You won’t get cooperation out of a hierarchical system. You get enforced directions from the top. The world would function extremely well with millions of little cooperative groups, all in relation to each other.

Permaculture involves ethics of earth care because the sustainable use of land cannot be separated from life-styles and philosophical issues. Energy-efficient buildings, waste water treatment, recycling, and land stewardship in general are other important components of permaculture. Permaculture encompasses the evolution and development of permanent communities, such as co-housing projects and eco-villages. So, permaculture design concepts are applicable to urban as well as rural settings, and are appropriate for single households as well as whole farms and villages.

Permaculture also acknowledges a basic life ethic, which recognizes the intrinsic worth of every living thing. A tree has value in itself, even if it presents no commercial value to humans. That the tree is alive and functioning is worthwhile. It is doing its part in Nature—recycling litter, producing oxygen, sequestering carbon dioxide, sheltering animals, building soils, and so on.

The ethics of permaculture provide a sense of place in the larger scheme of things, and guide us to right livelihood in concert with the global community and the environment, rather than selfishness and indifference to other things. These ethics require us to think and act responsibly in relation to each other and the earth. We must care for the Earth and all living and non-living things—plants, animals, land, water and air. We must care for people, promoting self-reliance and community responsibility and access to the resources needed to live. We must set limits to population and consumption, giving away our surplus time, labour, money, information, and energy to achieve the aims of caring for the earth and its population.

If we can meet our needs without jeopardizing how future generations meet their needs, then we are behaving sustainably. If we leave our children a degraded landscape and a hostile society, then we are destroying our own and other species. So, it promotes stability in society, preserves wildlife habitat and the genetic diversity of wild and domestic plants and animals. It is a synthesis of ecology and agriculture, of observation and design—it is Ecoculture!

Permaculture Design

Whereas permaculture ethics are more akin to broad moral values or codes of behaviour, the principles of permaculture provide a set of universally applicable guidelines which can be used in designing sustainable habitats. Distilled from multiple disciplines—ecology, energy conservation, landscape design, and environmental science–these principles are inherent in any permaculture design, in any climate, and at any scale.

Permaculture is more than a system of food production. It is not just about producing food in symbiosis with Nature, but is also about designing ecological human habitats, and choosing how to live. People, animals and food and fibre plants are to be integrated harmoniously into the ecology of their landscape, so that the people obtain their food, energy, shelter and other needs in a sustainable way.

Put another way, permaculture offers knowledge, from diverse sources like indigenous cultures or scientific research, to create sustainable, small-scale, intensive, ecological landscapes for practical use, including human settlements, that are labour efficient and use biological resources instead of fossil fuels, so avoiding resource losses.

Permaculture is a practical concept which can be applied in the city, on the farm, and in the wilderness. Its principles encourage people to make natural environments providing food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs. Observing the natural geographical and biological characteristics of a site suggests the best methods for integrating water catchment, human shelter, and energy systems with tree crops, edible and useful perennial plants, domestic and wild animals and aquaculture. In summary, permaculture…

• is a holistic, integrated systems analysis and design methodology;
• can be applied to create food productive ecosystems or to help degraded ecosystems, no matter how badly, recover health and wildness;
• values and validates traditional knowledge and experience;
• incorporates sustainable agriculture practices and land management techniques and strategies from around the world;
• is a bridge between traditional cultures and emergent earth-tuned cultures;
• promotes organic agriculture which does not use pesticides to pollute the environment;
• aims to maximize symbiotic and synergistic relationships between site components;
• is urban planning as well as rural land design;
• design is site specific, client specific, and culture specific.

For ten thousand years we have struggled with the soil to make it produce. Permaculture creates agriculturally productive ecosystems with the stability, resilience and diversity of natural ecosystems. It provides us with the means to meet our needs for water, food, shelter, energy and social interaction through the assembly of beneficial relationships without destroying the life community around us of which we are an inseparable part.

Energy, Source and Sink

Life is movement. The real world that we live in is in constant flux. Energy flows. Water flows. Animals have mating behaviours and feeding strategies. Plants disperse their seed in different ways, all involving movement away from the parent. The world is dynamic but we are taught statically—supposed eternal truths that are fixed. Science understands dynamics but, in their general education, children are taught in a way that implies a static underlying picture. We are not taught interactive processes, and we are not taught much about the resonance of things. Things behave. We need to know how things behave and, more important, how they interact.

The Earth is the sink of a broadly constant energy input from, for all practical purposes, a renewable source, the sun. Between the source and the sink is where humanity intervenes. Energy moves from one form to another, but it cannot disappear or be destroyed or created. So we have a choice in the type of flow that we allow through the system. We can determine whether it is stored or whether we let it leave. The more ways in which we can store energy, between uses, from the source to the sink, the better we are as designers. A lot of energy unusable in a mechanical sense are usable in the biological sense. So we need biological as well as mechanical storage.

The same is true of water, of rainfall. We can store it or we can let it leave. If we let it leave, it becomes unavailable to us. Make a dam in the river in the valley and the water is stored in a lake but it is in an energy trough where it is least useful. It was more useful before it ran off the hills. Had the engineers stored the water where it came from, then they could have run it through all sorts of systems before they let it escape into the valley. The closer to the source that we can intervene, the greater use is the network that we can set up. It is not the amount of rainfall that counts, it is the number of duties we induce that water to perform.

Settlements can use water supplied from roofs. Put a big enough tank under the downspout from the roof of houses, or lead the water into cisterns or ponds. Ponds made of compacted earth for homes are much cheaper than concrete tanks. For every 5,000 gallons we can store in concrete tanks, we can store 250,000 gallons in earth tanks at the same cost. Then we always have enough water for our uses—fresh water, that modern designs waste.

Why is it that we do not build human settlements that will feed themselves, and fuel themselves, and catch their own water, when any human settlement could do that easily?—when it is a trivial thing to do?

Perhaps, because we are so wealthy, we believe we do not have to make efficient settlements. If you have money, you are always doing something because you have to get rid of that money. Like wasting petrol on flashy, gas guzzling, penis-substitute cars. Humanity must stop admiring people with money. Riches are always wasted resources because few wealthy people even do what ancient kings did—build astonishing buildings. Rich people could still do altruistic things but now they hardly ever do.

A definition of wealth from the Inuit is: “Wealth is a deep understanding of the natural world.” On this definition, Americans and western Europeans are so poor it is pitiful—they do not understand the natural world. It is as if we have a death wish. We do not understand anything about where we live, and show no signs of wanting to, in the main.

When we design, we must use only energy that is productive and not harmful, and attempt to build harmonious order into functioning systems. A house should look after itself—as the weather heats up the house should cool down, and as the weather cools down the house should heat up. We have known how to do it for a long time. Nor is the garden designed to assist the house.

Diversity

To design efficient systems, natural ecosystems are observed and copied. Between the energy source and its sink, diversity increases—energy stores increase and organizational complexity increases. Permaculture has to convert those pauses in the flux of enough of those categories into beneficial resources. It is the number of niches in a system that will allow a number of species and varieties to co-survive. We must make nesting boxes for all of life in our landscape.

In places that should be saturated with species, and with yield, we can make a vast difference by seeing where we can create more space, often by small movements. The numbers of pairs of pigeons breeding on a cliff depends on the number of ledges. It is easy to increase the ledges. Often, what is holding down a yield is not the basic factor of food. Food ceilings are rare things to bump. It is some other factor totally unrelated to food.

The agriculture departments have defined agricultural land as land that can be tilled. No landscape is fundamentally non-agricultural. The hierarchy of geographical levels in landscape can all be used for variety of production. We have to find the level at which we can increase the use of land termed non-agricultural for agricultural products. They might not work singly producing single crops but, as part of the system, they can work admirably.

Diversity is maximized with polycultures, natural plant succession, and increasing the highly productive “edge-zones” within the system. Emphasis is placed on multi-use plants, cultural practices such as sheet mulching and trellising, and the integration of animals to recycle nutrients and graze weeds. The focus is not just on these elements themselves, but especially on the relationships created among them by the way we place them in the landscape. An aim is that everything should do more than one thing—functional diversity.

One permaculturist says, “If there are sixty ways in which a hummingbird functionally interacts with a bottle brush vine, that is more biodiversity than 50 non-interacting or competitively interacting species in the same locale. Functional diversity is the number of total connections.” So, cooperation is valued over competition, in species ecologies and human communities, because cooperation increases functional diversity.

This synergy is enhanced by mimicking patterns found in Nature. Jack Rowe gives the practical example of chickens in fruit orchards offering pest and weed control, as well as high-phosphorus fertilizer to the trees. The trees offer shade, shelter, and food to the birds in the form of fallen fruit and orchard insects. The two components—chickens and fruit trees—offer mutual benefits to each other without competing for their respective needs. Weeding, pest control and feeding chickens is not needed. The orchard, already supplying a yield, supplies another yield—chickens and eggs—in the same space using existing waste fruit and pests, without sacrificing anything.

Diversity is not just the number of suitable plants and animals cultured but also the number of connections between elements, including the practical resources like greenhouses and chicken coops. Permaculture design sets up a union of things that work harmoniously together. We cannot make ecosystems, but we can bring biological elements together. Then they connect themselves. Providing that we have chosen suitable elements, we can stand by and watch them connect to each other. Start by doing something right, then watch it get more right than you thought possible.

When we put three harmonious elements in conjunction, other beneficial results come out that we did not design. Now that has happened almost without exception. This is a signal that Nature is being followed and symbiotic interactions are occurring. Once we have done one thing correctly it goes on and it proceeds to do a lot of other things by itself. If you look into it closely, although you put it together for a single reason—you had reasoned it out—you see that once you did that, there were 12 or 15 other reasons why you should have done it.

When somebody built a greenhouse on to the front of the house instead of standing it out there in the sun, they might have done it just to insulate the house, or to make it easier to tend it. But then lots of other good things came out of that. Do something according to ecological principles and benefits will accumulate.

We should be seeking to put things in the right place but what is the right place? That is the information we need. Anything we are trying to place, whether it is a building or a tree or an animal or a road or a structure or a person, we have to know these things about it. We have to know its intrinsic functions, what is natural for it to do, the things it cannot help doing by virtue of just being itself, being alive.

Then there are things that we can categorize as yield, which we might be interested in. These may be of two or three levels: direct yields—chickens lay eggs—and derived or processed yields—chicken manure will yield methane. We would like to know what the different yields are.

Little is known about the practical properties of a tree. As to the yield, it may be almost unknowable. Nevertheless, if you have good information about it, then you can place it where its intrinsic behaviour can be fulfilled. Then it will give its optimum direct yield and its derived yield can be taken used by putting complementary things near it. It behaves in a friendly way because we put it in a place it likes and near to things that benefit it.

Resources

Resources are something you can feed into a system to increase its productivity, or its yield, or the number of useful storages. If you continue beyond that point of productivity, the system itself collapses. Any integrated system can only accept that amount of energy that it can productively use. So you can over-manure anything, over-heat anything, over plough anything. What happens is you start to get less and less an increase in yield and then more and more an increase in a toxic factor. There is no rule—farmers note—that if something is good then twice as much must be twice as good!

The older Chinese agriculture—weeding by hand—produced, under intensive conditions, using natural manures, about three times as much energy as it consumed. By modernizing, using small tractors, artificial fertilizer, and weeding by hot jet flames, they put 800 per cent more energy in and got a 15 per cent increase in yield. As they continued to pour in more energy, the yield decreased. Now they only get 4 per cent to 6 per cent of that energy out again. So agriculture went from an energy productive to an energy consuming system, just as the sea has gone from being oxygen producing to oxygen consuming, all because we are putting too much nutrient into it.

Some resources increase when used. Some forms of browsing fall into that category. Some animals and plants increase each other by interaction, and some resources also do that. Some resources, quick turnover resources, decrease if you do not use them. Annual grass is a good example. If not used, the amount of annual grass in the system decreases. Usage increases it. We can take our rhubarb and asparagus and more comes, providing that we do not over cut it.

Some resources, if you use them, poison everything else, like uranium or plutonium, DDT and dioxin. But most resources lie in the category of resources that need to be managed to maintain them. They are those which decrease if used. We will call them finite resources.

Petrol (gasoline) is a resource which has created disorder in Western society. When did someone last use productively a gallon of gasoline. Nearly all of it is used non-productively—bluntly it is wasted on futile journeys. Recently people have been protesting that motor fuel is too expensive. It is far too cheap in price but terribly dear in cost. No one counts the cost! President Bush, with a little forethought, could have saved more oil than the US needed to buy from Iraq, but he preferred to go and bomb innocent Iraqi families—wasting more oil in the process.

Contemporary economic activity is based on the economics of scarcity. Businessmen seek to control resources so that they are scarce, to increase their profit on trading them. In the UK they caused a panic by holding back gasoline supplies. Customers fear there will not be enough to go around and they buy up as much as possible, causing the scarcity they feared, and proving that they were right to act as they did. Society lives on a neurososis of scarcity amidst plenty.

In the economics of scarcity, abundant resources like forests have little value, and are willfully destroyed for short term gain until forests become scarce, and more valuable. The continued existence of forests is not a concern to investors, who take their profit to be invested elsewhere when forests run out. This is of no long term value to anyone.

The wellbeing of people depnds on the health of the planet. Permaculture designs usually require activities that restore natural systems in the wake of the destruction of modern agriculture, but such as to serve the needs of humanity. By applying ecosystem design principles, permaculture designs achieve the same efficiency and elegance of mature natural ecosystems. Dan Hemenway has given this summary of permaculture design principles:

1. Restraint. Conservation. Do only what is necessary. Seek the maximum benefit for minimum change. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
2. Stacking functions. Achieve multiple benefits from every action and design element.
3. Repeating functions. Secure necessary resources in more than one fashion. Design for smooth shifts from one resource to another as circumstances require. Design multiple pathways for every essential flow.
4. Design on appropriate scale. Scale is inappropriate if a screw up will cause a catastrophe. When mistakes can be regarded as educational and even entertaining, scale is appropriate, providing that it is not so small as to be trivial or inadequate.
5. Focus design activity at edges, interfaces. Energy flows across a gradient. Amplify edges to increase energy flow. Restrict edge to minimize energy transfer. Introduce edge species or other elements to regulate and harness edge transactions.
6. Encourage functional diversity. Functional diversity differs from raw diversity. It is not a matter of number but of connections. It is the number of useful connections among elements that defines functional diversity. A system with highly integrated functional diversity becomes alive and spontaneously develops additional functional connections. It becomes increasingly stable and efficient and begins to look after itself.
7. Reciprocity. Everything works both ways. All gains have costs and many problems present opportunities. Awareness of reciprocity permits design to account for it.
8. The Law of Gifts. Every element receives input from other elements and transforms that input according to its own nature. In functional systems, the waste created by one element benefits others.

Permaculture Design Practices

• Relative location
• Each element performs multiple functions
• Each function is supported by many elements
• Energy efficient planning
• Using biological resources
• Energy cycling
• Small-scale intensive systems
• Natural plant succession and stacking
• Polyculture and diversity of species
• Increasing “edge” within a system
• Observing and replicating natural patterns
• Paying attention to scale
• Attitude

The health and vigour of the soil are maintained through natural composting. Close growing is protects soil microorganisms, reduces water loss, and maximizes yields. Companion planting facilitates the optimal use of nutrients, light and water, encourages beneficial insects and creates a vibrant mini-ecosystem within the garden. The use of open-pollinated seeds helps to preserve genetic diversity and enables gardeners to develop their own acclimatized cultivars.

Permaculture designs use a zone system according to a “low maintenance, high yield” philosophy. Areas that require more intensive maintenance—main crops, herbs and vegetable—are closer together, usually near the major structures—home, greenhouse, animal pens, aquaculture ponds. The second zone is for fruit and nuts. The third zone has large natural areas for human and animal grazing. The fourth zone is for firewood foraging, animal grazing and other low intensity uses.

Stacking is the inter-planting of trees and ground level plant life. Individual species yield is lowered, but combined yield is increased, providing a healthy alternative to the dangers of monoculture. Stacking allows for important plant diversity, provides resistance to disease, healthy soil and wildlife habitat. So, natural diversity should be added to the principles above. And not just of crops and trees. With no cultivation, no fertilizer, and no chemicals, many insects and animals return to the garden. Pesticide kills a pest, destroying the balance of Nature. The balance of Nature has to be encouraged to return.

Then the aspect of the sun must be considered. Sun-sectors are where most light is received. The moon is a factor in planning planting and harvesting. Harvesting at full moon gives a higher yield because water content correlates with the cycle of the moon. The “Edge Effect” is based on the overlap of two ecosystems, and is the most productive in nutrients. A strategy for sustained maximization is to plant in a spiral format or create spiral ponds in which to grow around. The spiral shape has the most edge effect. All plant an animals have specific niches of time, space and behaviour. Within these niches exists a delicate interaction and balance between animal and plant. A key to good culture is knowing these ecological niches enough to make use of them.

Since permaculture is not a method of production but rather a land use and community planning philosophy, it is not limited to plant and animal agriculture, but also includes use of appropriate technologies—coupled with an adjustment of life-style—and adoption of concepts and philosophies that are both earth-based and people-centered. Many of the appropriate technologies advocated by permaculturists are well known. Among these are solar and wind power, composting toilets, solar greenhouses, energy efficient housing, and solar food cooking and drying. As permaculture principles are site specific and amenable to locally adapted techniques of production, it may be adapted to farms or villages worldwide.

Permaculturists have taught Bushmen gardening. The Bushmen had a sustainable lifestyle but modern governments have destroyed it. They can no longer pursue the game because it has been killed by the fences put up to ranch cattle for European beef. Just like the Australian Aborigine, 63 per cent of what they used to live off is extinct, and the rest is rare now. Bushmen or Aborigines cannot live naturally anymore, so they have to think about how to live. Permaculture help them do it.

Due to the inherent sustainability of perennial cropping systems, permaculture places a heavy emphasis on tree crops. Systems that integrate annual and perennial crops—such as alley cropping and agroforestry—take advantage of “the edge effect,” increase biological diversity, and offer other characteristics missing in monoculture systems. Multicropping systems that blend woody perennials and annuals hold promise as viable techniques for large-scale farming. Ecological methods of production for any specific crop or farming system—soil building practices, biological pest control, composting—are central to permaculture as well as to sustainable agriculture in general.

Standard organic farming and gardening techniques utilizing cover crops, green manures, crop rotation, and mulches are emphasized in permacultural systems. But there are other options and technologies such as chisel ploughs, no-till implements, spading implements, compost turners and rotational grazing, available to sustainable farmers working within a permacultural framework.

Farming elements that play an important role in permaculture designs include agroforestry, soil and water collection, management, and re-use systems like Keyline agriculture, swales and contour plantings, greywater, rain catchment, constructed wetlands, pond-dike aquaculture, aquaponics (the integration of hydroponics with recirculating aquaculture), and solar aquatic ponds (also known as living machines), hedgerows and windbreaks, integrated farming systems such as intercropping and polyculture.

Instead of attempting to produce a level, even field or pasture suited to the growing of a single crop, the permaculture designer increases microclimatic diversity by installing swales—water and soil conservation ditches—on-contour at intervals designed to capture all runoff with its accompanying load of valuable topsoil. The soil at the bottom of the swales is wetter, allowing the plants that otherwise might require expensive and wasteful irrigation to be grown.

Topsoil which would otherwise be carried off in runoff settles in the swales where it creates a rich microenvironment. Adsorbed nutrients such as phosphorus, which would otherwise be lost to waterways, creating nutrient waste and water pollution are conserved. While taking up only about 10 per cent of the area of a field, swales offer an added yield by conserving water and soil.

Gardening and recycling methods common to permaculture include edible landscaping, keyhole gardening, companion planting, trellising, sheet mulching, chicken tractors, solar greenhouses, spiral herb gardens, swales, and vermicomposting. Most important is no-till gardening.

Gardening without Tilling

Beneath the natural mulch layer, undisturbed soils develop two distinct features central to the natural interactions between plants and soils. One of these features consists of the soil “horizons” which result from the tendency of the soil to separate into horizontal strata of mulch, topsoil, and subsoil. The other is a valuable, spongy condition called “crumb structure.” Tilling both mixes the soil’s horizons and destroys its crumb structure, interfering with the processes and organisms which have evolved to depend upon these features.

The mulch layer consists of plant and animal remains, and is the primary source of the soil’s fertility. The topsoil consists of mineral soil, huge numbers of soil organisms, dissolved nutrients, organic matter brought down from the mulch layer, and humus from the breakdown of organic matter, useful to absorb moisture, hold nutrients, and buffer pH extremes. Most of the soil’s fertility is stored in the topsoil, in the form of soil life and as nutrients held in solution by the soil’s humus and clay. The subsoil consists mostly of mineral particles, leached nutrients, and the deeper water- and mineral-seeking plant roots.

Crumb structure is a spongy state developed and maintained by the movement of earthworms and plants’ roots through the soil. The crumb structure is held together by soil colloids, gel-like substances created by decay organisms, and by earthworms’ secretions, used to aid their movement through the soil. Natural crumb structures are quite stable and remain largely intact after rains. The sponginess of the crumb structure helps soil aeration, and to infiltration of water and dissolved nutrients into the soil.

Tilling mixes organic matter from the mulch layer into the topsoil where is decomposes too quickly for plants to use, creating an excess that is wasted, and also mixes mulch materials into the subsoil where they are attacked by anaerobic bacteria, which excrete metabolic byproducts toxic to plant life and soil organisms. Tilling exposes the topsoil’s extremely valuable and slowly-forming humus to the air where it can be oxidized and lost, and destroys the soil’s existing crumb structure.

Tilling decimates the earthworm population, thereby slowing reestablishment of a new crumb structure, and can cause the formation of a hardpan by dislocating fine soil particles and allowing them to be washed downward toward the subsoil where they collect and form a dense sedimentary layer. Naturally occurring soil layers and crumb structures serve vital functions which are interrupted, not aided, by tilling. And since natural patterns always begin to reestablish themselves immediately once disturbed, the gardener has to work constantly to prevent their return.

Tilling is an ineffective and at best temporary approach to increasing soil tilth and fertility. Rather than attempting to enforce our own idea of soil tilth on our gardens, we are better advised to cooperate with and use the soil’s own natural method for improving fertility—a thick, rich mulch of organic materials to feed soil organisms and plants, which then work toghether to establish natural soil tilth.

Since no-till gardening relies on earthworms to do all the digging, Jack Rowe recommends, before each mulching, a rock-powder mix is applied at the rate of about 4 to 5 pounds per 100 square feet. A good mix consists of roughly equal parts of soft rock phosphate for slow-release phosphorus, gypsum as a non-alkaline source of calcium, or lime if the soil is acidic, hardwood ashes for potassium and trace minerals, and bone meal for phosphorus and calcium. These powders will slowly and evenly be taken down by worms and the rain as the mulch is consumed.

The most important single strategy in a no-till garden is keeping a thick mulch on the beds at all times to feed the earthworms and the soil. The right proportions are as important for mulches as they would be for compost. The mulch must contain enough grass clippings or other sources of nitrogen to suppoly decomposition microorganisms, or it will temporarily rob the soil of nitrogen thereby starving plants.

Also needed are high-carbon materials like tree leaves, which create humus and keep nitrogenous materials from packing into a mucky layer which would exclude rainwater and air from the soil. By spreading mulches directly on the soil, instead of first converting them to compost, organic materials do double duty—serving as mulch, and as a slow-release organic fertilizer, soil coniditioner, and worm food. The fertilizing value of the materials is more fully used, since in a compost pile much of the nitrogen, humus, and minerals are lost through conversion to gases and by rainwater leaching.

Weeds are guardians of the Goddess invited into agricultural plots by farmers or gardeners deciding to defy Nature’s principles. By clearing local vegetation to sow annual crops, we defy Nature. Weeds are Nature’s sign that she is struggling to bring about the succession of native vegetation. They are trying to turn your garden back into forest. Using traditional methods of soil cultivation, humanity has to try to hold at bay native plants to grow their own food crops. Weeds are Nature’s way of repairing damaged soil—Nature’s bandages protecting the soil while it is repaired and revitalized. Gardeners and farmers resisting weeds are simply damaging the soil more. If you don’t want to fight weeds then do not damage the soil by tilling and adding chemicals.

Some weeds grow to cover an exposed soil that’s vulnerable to erosion and run-off—Nature tries to protect exposed soil. So cover it yourself, with a mulch. Other weeds are deep-rooting plants that go down to the subsoil to collect fresh minerals when the topsoil runs out of them. Composting or green mulching will maintain topsoil minerals. Weeds are great soil indicators, so always look to them to learn what is appropriate. Then mulch where they were growing, and fill the space with appropriate plants—groundcovers, crop trees and other vegetation, creating a healthy system with no room and no need for weeds to modify it.

This is the answer—more biodiversity. Increased biodiversity and good soil fertility maintenance solve weed problems. Managing croplands in tune with Nature’s principles makes for fewer and less costly weed problems. Strategies which utilize allelopathy, intercropping, crop rotations reduce weeds considerably.

Some of the most aggressive weeds need full sun and low fertility to thrive. Increase shade, organic matter and soil health and they disappear. The best way of all to deal with a weed is to use it, to find some value in it that will make it worth growing. Some Third World farmers simply would not survive without weeds.

Pest attack shows where the soil fertility needs attention. Plants growing in fertile soil have healthy immune systems and can repel pest attack. Where this does not happen, the soil is unbalanced. Correcting the problem restores plant health and the pests depart. Using poison sprays is worse than futile—the poisons also kill beneficial insects which naturally control the pests. Most of today’s major crop pests have actually been caused by pesticides which have wiped out their natural predators.

In Nature, the soil’s surface is rarely smooth and flat. A varied surface of hills and valleys, high spots and drainages gives plants a wide range of soil and moisture conditions to adapt to. Many different plants, each with different requirements for moisture, sun, wind, and nutrients, can all find their needs and grow within a short distance of each other. The result is the great diversity of plants and animals that flourish in natural environments. These same ideas in our own gardens allow us to grow a wide variety of plants, and with little trouble since each individual plant can more easily find exactly the microclimate it prefers. All the gardener has to do is shape the surface of their garden beds to the patterns that occur in Nature.

To create a more diverse environment in the garden, the gardener must first decide where the high and low spots will be placed, and what will be grown in those spots. Many plants from arid lands, such as rosemary and fava beans, will grow in humid, wetter climates if they are placed in a bed of porous soil, such as a sandy loam, raised one or two feet above the surrounding area. Other plants, such as canna lilies and irises, prefer wet soil and will grow well in drainage areas or spots where the drainage is naturally poor. Most vegetables prefer conditions somewhere in between wet and dry, and will do very well in slightly raised beds placed close to wet areas where their roots can find sub-soil water during drier periods.

If the gardener wishes to grow only plants which prefer arid conditions, the shaping of the beds may be as simple as using imported sandy soil to create raised planting beds. If only moisture-loving plants will be grown, the garden might consist of a large, shallow low spot which floods a few inches deep when it rains. Most of the time, a gardener will want to grow a variety of plants, and in this case will want to install a wider variety of topological conditions To create wet, dry, and in-between spots.

In this case, the garden might be shaped so as to include tall and short raised beds decoratively winding their way through lower areas where water collects during rains. In poorly drained soils, these low areas can be dug like a creek system, formed of linking pools of water which spill into each other and out of the garden in heavy rains. Low areas constructed this way will provide drainage for the raised beds during wet periods, while at the same time allowing water to collect in pools several inches below the raised beds during wet periods for infiltration into the soil.

In the conventional garden, the soil’s surface is evenly levelled prior to final preparation and mulching. Plants which need more water must have water supplied often, somtimes creating problems for nearby plants with a need for drier conditions, and vice versa. In the multi-level garden, each plant can be placed so as to meet its own water needs most of the time, creating healthier plants, avoiding conflicts and saving time for the gardener. Water infiltrated into the soil from low areas spreads to provide sub-surface irrigation for all the beds without adversely affecting surface drainage conditions, which means that the gardener can water less often. In areas where the water quality is poor, as in regions where the water contains salt, which collects in the soil and causes a loss of the soil’s fluffiness or crumb structure, watering less often can be very beneficial for plant and soil health. Time freed from watering chores leaves time for other things.

When water is allowed to soak into the ground for long periods of time without a means of removing and using the water which is infiltrated, the soil may run the risk of becoming waterlogged. Even more serious is the possibility of raising the water table over a period of time until it reaches the surface, which can cause soil salinization due to the salt content of most water tables. These problems can both be avoided easily, and a further yield obtained, by planting trees in the garden every forty or fifty feet in each direction. Trees, which use large amounts of water, can reach down and tap into water tables deep in the ground, keeping them from rising too close to the surface. They provide shade for human enjoyment, and can also be grown during the late spring and early summer. Trees provide frost protection for tender plants, and can extend the growing season for tender heat-loving plants as well as for the cool-season ones.

In regions with heavy clay soils, water may at first infiltrate only slowly into drainage bottoms. Arrange the drainages so that all standing water soaks into the soil in less than about three days. The rate at which water soaks into the ground can be speeded up if the bottom of the drainages are broken up a little, and some gypsum, calcium sulfate, added under a layer of leaves. The leaves and gypsum will work together to loosen up even the stiffest of clays, and water will soon soak into the clay at an acceptable rate.

Robert Hart of Shropshire, England, advocates forest gardening. Forest Gardening mimics the natural tiers of the forest, creating a self-sustaining environment. Standard fruit trees provide the canopy. These trees “self-water” the garden because their deep roots reach into the earth, pumping the water from these depths up towards the roots of the smaller plants. Deep roots also bring minerals from the subsoil to the surface. These trees should be self-pollinating or complementary species to save unnecessary labour.

The second layer is the “low tree layer” consisting of fruit and nut trees on dwarf root stocks, which allows for an economy of space and light. The third layer is the shrub layer for fruit producing bushes. The fourth layer are herbaceous plants—various edible herbs and vegetables. Harmful Insects and other intruders are repelled by the aroma of this herbaceous level.

Fifth is the vertical layer, of vines and other climbing plants. These plants trained over trellis fences also help to create a barrier guarding against any large animals that might want to enter the garden. The sixth layer of groundcover, such as mint, creates a mulch for the forest garden and helps to suppress weeds. The layer closest to the ground is the “rhizosphere,” consisting of shade tolerant plants. Because the forest garden contains mostly perennial plants, the garden is “self-perpetuating.” It is “the no till agriculture,” which is central to the practice of permaculture.

V G Guest from Western Australia offers a slightly simpler but essentially similar scheme:

1. Ground Layer: potatoes, taroes, carrots.
2. Cover Layer: herbs, lettuce, cabbage, beet, garlic, alfalfa for stock.
3. Climbing Layer: beans, peas, lentils, tomatoes.
4. Fruit Tree Layer: all types of local fruit trees and allow vines to climb on them.
5. Protection Layer: plant deciduous trees, banna grass and use this layer to provide a wind beak/sun shade/mulch material/fertilizer for the garden.

Use local plants to replace the names given here. Companion planting will stop most bugs and enhance the growth. Some plants can be partially cropped while growing yet suffer no harm. He suggests that Lucerne (alfalfa ) makes a nice tea, and can be cut continuously. Oats can be grazed quite heavily and will recover. Silver beet and celery can be used by taking mature leaves from the outside.

Diversity and Darwin

Darwin wrote:

It has heen experimentally proven that if a plot of ground be sown with one species of grass, and a similar plot be sown with several distinct genera of grasses, a greater number of plants and a greater weight of dry herbage can thus be raised.

This type of experiment is essentially about ecology, the study of the interactions between species in a community. It is a modern preoccupation of biologists, yet the word ecology was not invented until 40 years after “The Origin of Species” was published.

The thrust of his argument—that a greater number of species will lead to a greater productivity—is a central tenet of biodiversity, a modern biological theory that suggests the more species the healthier the life. Darwin could have been describing the kind of experiments carried out today. Unfortunately, he left no references. Darwin wrote the hook when Alfred Wallace came up with the theory of evolution at the same time. Darwin had intended to write a longer work, with references, but never completed it in the need to publish before Wallace.

Sanjida O’Connell in the “London Guardian” reports that in the 1950s, R C Stauffer embarked on a recreation of what would have been Darwin’s seminal work. Stauffer spent 20 years amassing manuscripts to do it. He had found a reference from “Loudon’s Gardener’s Magazine” written in 1826. The article was by George Sinclair, the sixth Duke of Bedford’s head gardener. It described experiments carried out at Woburn Abbey in southeast England. Dr Andy Hector of Imperial College, who was doing similar work today, wanted to see the original and tracked it down to a book, the “Hortus Gramineus Woburnensis,” published in 1816, found in the rare book collection in the British Library.

“There’s only one original copy,” says Hector. Inside the leather-bound hook were large, fold out maps of the garden. The book meticulously described the experiments Sinclair had carried out, and, instead of featuring line drawings, the book contained dried specimens of the plants grown in these experiments.

Sinclair and the Duke of Bedford grew different kinds of grasses and herbs in 242 small plots of land, effectively creating mini-meadows. They also used leaded tanks the same size as these plots—4ft by 4ft—to experiment with mixtures of aquatic plans. Their aim was to re-establish grasslands on the estate that would be as productive as the original pasture. The work was ahead of its time. The pair even employed the chemist Sir Humphry Davy to carry out a soil analysis and determine what sort of environmental conditions best suited the plants.

The work was not purely experimental. Ann Mitchell, archivist at Woburn Abbey, says that John Russell, the Duke of Bedford, was a keen gardener. He had the park landscaped by Humphry Repton, a well-known landscape gardener, who created “The Red Books,” a series containing drawings by Repton that showed how the landscaped gardens should evolve over time.

Under the Duke’s guidance, Sinclair built up a willow garden, a large orchid house and cultivated many American plants. On his death in 1839, many of the plants, induding the orchids, were bequeathed to Kew. As a result there is barely a trace of the gardener at Woburn today.

Some of the plants Sinciair grew, such as sweet vernal grass, crested dog’s tail, bird’s foot trefoil, yarrow and ribwort, are ones that Hector has been growing in similar experiments. Over the past decade, he has been involved in a project with 33 scientists in which they cultivated a series of mini-meadows with just such a mixture of plants and herbs in eight European countries. Biodepth showed that altering the diversity of the plant species significantly altered the dynamics of the ecosystems within which they grew.

The more plants there were, the greater the overall productivity. What was important was the characteristics of some of the plant species, such as clover, which fixes nitrogen in its roots and thus fertilises the soil. In a later experiment, with Professor Michel Loreau, of the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, Hector showed that positive and complementary interactions between species is the key to boosting productivity. The results of the European experiment suggest the EU should seriously reconsider its agricultural policy.

About half of Europe’s farmland is grassland (60 million hectares) used for grazing, hay meadows, and set aside. The loss of species is playing a key role in the gradual erosion of the quality of the environment and can only he offset by encouraging biodiversity according to the team of scientists.

Darwin was trying to explain why there is such a rich diversity of plants and animals, and why this diversity is maintained. Today we are rapidly losing species just as we are becoming aware of the seriousness of the consequences. As the ecologist Paul Ehrlich wrote in his book “Extinction,” the loss of species from Earth is like losing rivets from an aeroplane.

Weeds

Gardeners and farmers who fight weeds are the enemy because they damage the soil. Weeds are the frontline troops Nature uses to repair damaged soil. Preston G Sullivan writes in “Principles of Weed Management for Croplands:”

Weeds are evidence of Nature struggling to bring about natural succession. When we clear native vegetation and establish annual crops, we defy ecological succession. Man is, in effect, holding back natural plant succession, at great cost in weed control.

Most weeds are involved in the primary stages of natural succession. In effect, the weeds are trying to turn your land back into a forest. If you don’t want to fight weeds then don’t damage the soil. Increased biodiversity and maintaining good soil fertility solve weed problems.

Stability through biodiversity is one of Nature’s fundamental rules (Sullivan).

Some weeds grow to cover an exposed soil vulnerable to erosion and run-off—Nature hates exposed soil. So cover it yourself, with a mulch. Other weeds are deep-rooting plants that go down to the subsoil to collect fresh minerals when the topsoil runs out of them. Composting will maintain topsoil minerals. Kim Wilkinson writes in “AgroForester:”

They are medicine for the soil, repairing it and revitalizing life. Succeeding weeds is about stepping-up the process of succession. Weeds are experts in the process of succession, and great soil indicators as well, so look to them to learn what is appropriate. This means mulching and filling the space with appropriate plants (groundcovers, crop trees and other vegetation), creating a healthy system with no room and no need for voracious weeds to modify it. Some of the most aggressive weeds need full sun and low fertility to thrive. By increasing shade, organic matter and soil health they will disappear.

The best way to deal with weeds is to use them, to promote them to the level of wanted plants. Some Third World farmers simply wouldn’t survive without their “weeds!” Weeds invade agricultural fields through deciding to defy Nature’s principles. Managing croplands in tune with Nature’s principles makes for fewer and less costly weed problems. Strategies which utilize allelopathy, intercropping, crop rotations reduce weeds considerably.

”The pests are my professors,” wrote Sir Albert Howard, founding father of the organics movement. Pest attack showed him where the soil fertility needed attention. Plants growing in fertile soil have healthy immune systems and can repel pest attack. Where this doesn’t happen, the soil is unbalanced. Correcting the problem restores plant health and the pests depart. Using poison sprays is futile, and worse: the poisons also kill beneficial insects which naturally control the pests. Most of today’s major crop pests have actually been caused by pesticides which have wiped out their natural predators.

Fungi Facts

Jeff Owens (Web Page) has given these fungal facts.

Why should I be interested in fungi? Building good soil begins with fungal activity and many diseases are both caused and solved by fungi. Some plants are so dependent of fungi that they can’t survive without them. This relationship can be at the root zone or in the leaves. It is now known that some fir trees have a fungi which activate when the needle is attacked. This in essence is the immune system and adapts in areas where the tree is unable to adapt.

It is also suspected that the decline in forest and farm soils is related to fungi diversity loss. This view seems to be mainly among mycologist at present but the supporting evidence is growing. Some interesting facts about soils and fungi are:

• Of the estimated 6 million species of fungi we have catalogued about 50,000.
• An important component of soils are actinomycetes which have been called both fungi and bacteria.
• Fungi can selectively modify soil pH * Fungal die off is an early sign of ecological collapse.

All this indicates fungi are part of one of our biggest frontiers to be explored—soil.

If we encourage fungi won’t that also encourage fungal diseases? It is a question of balance. The fungi are always around and we want to make sure their predators are also around. Often those predators are other fungi. Also, some non fungal pests can be controlled by fungi, so usually we end up gaining more than we lose.

Can I buy fungi and add them to the garden? Yes, many people add sprays which contain fungi. Often, these are mycorrhizal fungi which form relationships with plants. The brewing of compost teas is another way to improve the fungi balance. One major consideration is fungi habitat. If we fail to build good habitat then it may be necessary to buy replacement fungi each year, not a very sustainable approach and possibly expensive.

What is ideal fungi habitat? It is doubtful that all the fungi in the world will be known or all the roles they play. This makes precise answers difficult but we can make some generalities. Fungal dominated soils occur in forests and grass lands with the following characteristics:

1. Stable perennial plant cover to interact with.
2. Mulch layer as food supply. (For prairies it is reversed, root death provides the food)
3. Mostly undisturbed soil (not tilled)

Another characteristic is diversity and change. It is common for a fungus to find a home and spread slowly consuming its preferred food and leaving an open center. This appears as a ring of mushrooms after a few years. It is called a fairy ring and may not seem interesting, but consider this: a fairy ring 150 miles across was discovered in the American midlands. This suggests slow change everywhere these rings are growing and interacting.

The diversity factor consists of fungi populations eating each other, being eaten by just about everyone, and constantly changing. It is impossible to predict all the soil interactions so one answer is diversity. Have the good guys present and ready to fill the niche.

How do I know if my soil has a good fungal balance? Observation is the best method. Soil tests do not work very well when dealing with living tissue and diversity. Some of the clues come from plants and others come from looking at the soil. The smell, feel, and moisture retaining properties are all clues. Weeds are probably the best indicator of all. If we can identify the weeds and know what environment they prefer we can predict how similar crops will perform.

Some plants who prefer fungal soils are: conifers, grape, apple, forest plants, most deciduous trees, citrus, strawberries.

So how do I use all this information? Increasing soil bioactivity and being aware of how balance works is a good place to start. Another is to look at all the techniques which use perennials mixed with annuals to build habitat. This includes:

• Alley cropping—nitrogen fixing trees coppiced to provide mulch. Mixing alders and potatoes for example. This appears to provide sustainable yield. The alders work in conjunction with actinomycates at their roots.
• Forest Gardens—This technique mixes perennials with annuals and attempts to build a diverse eco system. Several books exist on this topic.

The study of agroforestry includes other systems with similar characteristics.

Other things to consider are no-till and limited crop rotation. Where soils need to be tilled the use of compost teas can help restore the soil life balance. Teas can be brewed for increased bacteria by increasing the sugars or for fungi by increasing the cellulose, starch, and gums.

Year round gardening is another good technique. Having plants around also helps their supporting fungi to survive. If we combine this with mulching and a few perennials our diversity is maintained and the soil is much more adaptive.

What about pesticides and herbicides? Caution to the point of complete avoidance is the safest approach with pesticides. Some of the natural compounds are useful, but where possible building healthy eco systems with predators is much preferred. Often this is more labor intensive and can impact profits. On the other hand, it provides meaningful work and connects us back to the land.

Can I grow edible mushrooms? Yes, but reliable results are difficult without careful procedures. There are also problems with identifying mushrooms which need to be considered. We are surrounded by fungal spore looking for a home and this presents some problems. In commercial mushroom farms about half the work is maintaining spore and propagating it. This spore is then used to quickly inhabit a sterile medium. Even these commercial methods sometimes fail.

Some things gardeners can do are: 1. buy a mushroom kit and spread the inoculated medium. Then spread a woody material on top. 2. buy mushroom kit and grow the mushrooms, then spread the spent spore and cover. 3. buy mushroom spore or plugs and inoculate the garden directly. For most gardeners the first method is most reliable.

Another method is to obtain a known mushroom from the store or other source. This can be mixed with a dilute molasses slurry and left to grow. The result can be sprayed in a good habitat and may take up residence.

Which mushrooms are recommended? Gardeners should first decide it they have a site suitable for mushrooms and then pick types that will fit the habitat. Here are some candidates:

• Oyster, one of the easier mushrooms to grow but it can be confused with other mushrooms. Habitat would be compost piles or a prepared medium.
• King Stropharia, can be grown in soils amended with chopped straw.
• Shiitake, can be grown on wood.
• Shaggy Manes, can be grown in manured soils and near compost piles.

The Mycorrhizal species (chanterelles, king boletes, matsutake, and truffles) are possible candidates for seeding by slurries or inoculated trees. This seems to be a controversial issue still. A few people claim success and others are questioning the results. Trial and error procedures can be risky with mushrooms so good information is important. Try MycoWeb

Permaculture in Practice

Kirby Fry of the Cross Timbers bioregion of north central Texas describes a front yard filled with corn and sunflowers towering over sprawling squashes and cow peas. As many high yielding food, medicinal and culinary plants as possible are placed in the front yard where they can easily be taken care of and where they give the greatest benefit from their presence.

To either side of path leading to the front door are two raised herb beds shaped with rocks into conical spirals (6 feet in diameter and 3 feet tall). The herb spirals are planted with echinacia, lavender, oregano, rosemary, thyme and penny royal. The raised spiral shape of the herb garden is an analog of natural spirals and offers plants the diversity found in Nature, different zones of moisture, different aspects of the sun, and an increased planting area by utilizing vertical space as well as lateral space.

Hanging in front of the porch of the main building are trellises made from local juniper branches which provide shade from the late afternoon sun. The six trellises are covered with grapes, hardy kiwi fruit, passion fruit vine, and scarlet runner beans. The trellises provide food as well as shade.

Close to the main building are several other multi-functional designs, all harvesting the natural flows of energy through the landscape, sunlight, rain, plant and animal behaviours. Cloaked with brown burlap bags, not twenty feet from the kitchen door are two rabbit hutches, one is portable to move around the garden beds, the other is raised on stilts. Food scraps and garden cuttings are enough to feed the five rabbits as well as enrich the diets of chickens.

Rabbit pellets from the raised hutch in turn fall into worm boxes to provide food for worms. The worm castings fertilize vegetables and inoculate the garden’s soil with worm eggs. When winter arrives and there is no longer any fresh produce from the garden the rabbits can be harvested for their meat and fur. Food scraps are thus converted into meat, fur, worms and excellent compost. Nothing is wasted, and everything is arranged so that the least effort need be made to gain the highest yield.

Along with the portable rabbit hutch is a portable chicken coop. This 4 feet wide, 10 feet long coop can house nine laying hens and one rooster. Chickens are useful. They scratch the ground, eat grasses and insects, and deposit a layer of high phosphorus manure. Chickens are amazing animals because they convert feed grains and insect pests into highly nutritious meat and eggs and useful feathers.

A series of level water-harvesting ditches dug on contour, called swales, collect the rain water, soil run-off and detritus washing off of the land. A swale can concentrate three times the annual rainfall and slightly lower the pH of the soil in its bottom, allowing fruit trees to grow and berry bushes (dewberries, black berries, red currents and blue berries). To conserve the water collected by the swales, fruit trees are heavily mulched with hay and wood chips, and all garden beds with a light layer of grass clippings.

Higher up slope is a small pond for collecting the run-off channeled by steel culverts passing under nearby roads. The pond provides a mini-ecosystem suitable for edible water plants, small fish and crustaceans, and serves as a water reservoir for irrigation and fire fighting.

On the north side of the main building shaded by a large elm tree is a 6,500 gallon ferro-cement water cistern used to hold the rain water off the roof, and there is also pressurized water from a well. Water harvesting is an essential function in a permaculture landscape and is supported by as many components as possible.

How to Restore Land in Arid Zones

Halt soil and water erosion from the top of the water tables by contour “bunding”—constructing earthen catchment areas that keep rainfall on the land, preserve what is left of the topsoil, and enable the water to percolate down to replenish the ground water table.

As runoff is checked, block gullies and ravines with small check dams to hold the remaining runoff. Existing catchment ponds are excavated where necessary to improve water retention, and new dams and ponds are constructed to create new bodies of water that enhance the flora and fauna necessary for a balanced ecological system.

The single most powerful factor in the land reclamation process is the planting of trees which protect and stabilize the soil, retain moisture and provide the shade and nutrients necessary to sustain life.

Along with bunding and the creation of check dams, plant a mixed plantation of drought-resistant indigenous shrubs, grasses and trees. For reforestation of lands that have severely eroded, use a variety of tree species selected for drought resistance and rapid growth.

Raise seedlings in plastic bags or seed beds and plant them out when the seasonal rains are due in pits dug into the exposed subsoil filled with topsoils or silt. Seedlings should become sufficiently well established during the rains to survive the dry season without watering, but water the seedlings when necessary to ensure survival, during their first dry season.

Protect areas being reforested from grazing animals and foragers by planting thorny hedges. Give new seedlings protective baskets if needed, and patrol the areas until the young trees are established.

After the first round of hardy, drought-resistant species has been established, the trees are interspersed with other native species and plants suitable for the climate, chosen for qualities of soil enrichment, beauty, shade and economic values such as provision of firewood, fodder, building materials, and food. Aim to be a botanical preserve for ornamental, timber, fruit, and leguminous species that are especially suited to the climate.

For cultivation the soil must be fertile, and so must be protected and nurtured. Initial agricultural work must include bunding, hedge plantation and water conservation—measures not immediately food-related but which define cultivable areas and recreate the biological balance necessary for a healthy, productive habitat.

Leguminous hedge plants such as Sesbania, Leucaena, Gliricidia, Tephrosia, and Prosipis are cultivated in and around agricultural lands as windbreaks, soil-builders and for use in coppicing—harvesting by heavy pruning that allows new growth from the old roots—to produce compost. Because of the depleted state of the soil, massive amounts of compost are necessary, and considerable effort must go into experimenting with composting systems to find the most appropriate for the climate.

Cows, horses, chickens and ducks play an important part in this effort not only because they form a natural part of a balanced, productive environment—producing milk, eggs, and transport among other things—but also for the manure essential for composting and rebuilding the soil base.

Soil is also rebuilt through sound cultivation measures:

• crop rotation which balances leguminous crops with heavy feeders,
• turning fields over periodically to leguminous ground cover,
• plowing in the green manure,
• tillage which minimizes susceptibility to erosion,
• careful timing of planting,
• intercropping leguminous and non-leguminous plants such as millet or pulses with a fodder tree like Leucaena.

In small-scale vegetable cultivation many farmers prefer the French-intensive method which utilizes raised beds and close spacing of plants, which helps eliminates weeds, conserves soil and water, and gives a higher yield than traditional techniques.

The agriculture of the future, especially in the tropics, will be based increasingly on trees. Agroforestry—the fusion of agriculture and forestry—is concerned with developing a permanent self-sustaining agriculture utilizing trees as a high-protein source for humans, as fodder for livestock and as fuel in the form of wood.

The food-growing process has moved toward the full use of orchard plantation—mango, cashew, and jackfruit trees in particular—protected by leguminous forest and fuelwood trees. Where sufficient water is available, these tree crops protect a still wider variety of more sensitive fruit trees such as guava, chikku, acerola, carambola, lime, papaya and banana.

A system of intercropping field crops such as millet or pulses with fruit trees works well for about three years until the shade cover becomes too pronounced for crop growth, by which time the fruit trees are self-sustaining and productive.

As fertility has begun to return to cultivated areas, food production increases geometrically. From being able to produce virtually none of the community’s food in the beginning, farms now yield over 75 varieties of vegetables, fruit, grains, and dairy products. In the near future, farmers expect to produce a surplus in some areas which can be sold in local markets, with the profits re-invested in the farms.

Seeding the Desert

The main criticism of Fukuoka is that he was a trained scientist and based his success on immaculately careful observations and practices. In arid countries, there might not be the chances to experiment with such patience. Families might be already on the breadline and need sustenance. Their advantage however, if they have not already destroyed the natural habitat, is that they already have a lot of the knowledge needed to make such a system work.

Fukuoka’s response is that chemical agriculture cannot change the desert. Even a tractor and a big irrigation system will not do it. To make the desert green requires natural farming. Many indigenous farmers will already be farming with no fertilizers and minimal tillage, so the approach is to develop their present methods until they are growing as well as their plots will allow. Even moderate success might keep them out of the hands of the multinationals. Fukuoka’s answer is simple—to sow seeds in the desert! The small farmers need seed and the desert needs seed.

Ethiopia was beautiful 90 years ago, but now it looks like the Colorado desert. Fukuoka gave seeds for 100 varieties of plants to people in Ethiopia and Somalia. He judged that plants including vegetables, ornamentals, and grains could grow in the desert. Some plants like Daikon radishes even grow better there than in temperate countries, and things like amaranth and succulents grow well.

People think there is no water in the desert, but even in Somalia and Ethiopia, they have a big river. They have water, but it stays beneath the earth, at 6 to 12 feet. Children planted the seeds, and watered them for three days. Because of high temperatures and not having surface water, their roots went down quickly. The plants needed watering after ten days and after a month, but not too much so that the root grows deep to tap the low water table. Soon large Daikon radishes were growing there. People can grow gardens in Somalia.

Sending seeds to people in the Third World is better than sending milk and flour, but there is no way to send them. People in Ethiopia and Somalia can sow seeds, even children can do that, but the African governments, the United States, Italy, France, do not send seeds, they only send food and clothing. African governments are discouraging home gardens and small farming. During the last 100 years, garden seed has become scarce.

The seed companies in the world belong to a consortium of not more than 10 companies. Many seed companies are part of multinational corporations. Seed is now being grown for, and distributed by, the multinationals. They have succeeded in lobbying for seed-patenting legislation. The patenting of biological materials is suspicious.

People in Ethiopia would be happy with wind and light, fire and water and enough food to grow. Why do people need more? The African governments and the United States government want people to grow coffee, tea, cotton, peanuts, sugar—only five or six varieties to export and make money. Our task is to practice farming the way the Goddess does, not to suit rich people’s greed for more profit. That is the way to start saving this world.

In Somalia, people do not have any greens for half of the year. Vegetables are just food, they do not bring in any money. People have even forgotten how to eat vegetables. They eat the leaves but ignore the edible root. So, they do not have enough vitamins, and get sick. First world countries provide corn and grain, so people do not have to grow their own food.

Do people in the USA realize that the United States is killing the people in Somalia by helping them in this way? Making them grow cash crops of coffee and sugar, while giving them monoculture food. The people in Ethiopia are happy being small farmers, but the United States government tells them to work and work, like slaves on a big farm, growing coffee, while accepting hand outs of meal. The United States tells them they ought to make money and be happy that way—like Americans. But would Americans like that themselves?

Without seed and knowing how to grow and collect seed, everyone remains captive by the seed corporations. So, if people in the United States and Japan and Europe wanted to help the people in Africa and reduce the desert, they should send seeds. To be a good gardener, seed growing is an essential skill. All our skills, not just a few, must be used to organize life forces.

One thing the people of the United States can do instead of racing to space is to sow seeds into the deserts. They could sow seeds from aeroplanes to make a large area green quickly. It needs to be done at once! Mix everything together, vegetables and trees, and sow at the same time. That is the fastest way for success. If seeds were thrown out like that, the rains would not be enough to germinate them. So coated seeds that would not dry out or get eaten by animals would have to be used.

They could begin by the coast where there is more chance of precipitating dew once some vegetation got established. Even in Blighty, on cool humid days with a slight wind, large trees can be surrounded by a drip zone of wetness condensed out of the air by the leaves of the tree. Banks of poplars planted near to coasts in desert areas would drip their moisture into the soil and shade it so that lower growing food plants can be harvested among them. Do you hear any governments offering to do this?

The Seven-Fold Way to Motivation and Movement

1. In education, the teacher begins with the familiar then moves to the unfamiliar. In seeking our real feelings and seeking to stimulate local action, it is better to ask people to say how they see the future. Whether they see it optimistically or pessimistically, the vision gives a basis for discussion and ultimately action. Is it pessimistic, what would improve it? Is it optimistic, how is it achieved? “Visioning Questions” are concerned with identifying ideals, values, and dreams. How would we like it to be? What is the meaning of our situation in our lives?
2. Encourage questions about the present situation for contrast with the vision. It should be easy because the vision is the response to the present. How has the situation affected us? Our feelings? How has it affected feelings about our families, communities, the administration?
3. The present and the future have been contrasted. How then is the change to be effcted? How might changes we would like to see come about? Can we name many ways? What changes have we seen or read about? What are the ways we could accomplish these changes? How can we reach our goal? Are there other ways? What would it take for us to do this and that? We must aim to encourage people to consider strategies for change.
4. Consider then the consequences. How would each prospective action affect others? Would it generate opposition or disharmony in the community? What would be the effect on the environment? What political effect would we anticipate from each alternative? Are the alternatives compatible or do some have to be discarded if others are adopted. Which then should be discarded?
5. Consider the obstacles. What obstacles presently exist that would need to be removed for us to proceed with each alternative? What stops us from doing x and y? Are we getting a sense of what we want to do? Decisions become clear around this point. If they are not, what is muddying the water?
6. Resources. What support to we need to do x and y? What resources would we need, to work for this change?
7. Co-operation. Who do we need to talk to about our vision? How can we get others together to work on this?

Adelphiasophists are happy to support the principles and practices of permaculture as the proper practical way for us to live our short lives in the bosom of the Goddess.

Sources: the main source is a lecture by Bill Mollison issued as a pamphlet:

• Original Bill Mollison Lecture in pamphlet form—Reproduction of this Pamphlet Is Free and Encouraged

Others are:

• About this pamphlet series
• CSF Permaculture front page
• How to obtain other pamphlets
• More about Cross Timbers Permaculture Institute
• Email: YankeePerm@aol.com
• Charles Brummer
• In Context magazine
• Journey to Forever
• Jack Rowe has interesting articles on lists, where doubtless he can be found using a search engine

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