Haven’t yet heard about permaculture? I’ve only recently embraced it as a holistic alternative to conventional agriculture. In fact, it’s an entire lifestyle and landscape design that is based on nature. Have a problem? Ask nature for the answer, and most likely, you will receive nature’s bounty.
Much like how a prairie or forest can persist without any human guidance and cultivation, an agricultural ecosystem can be seeded into an ‘edible forest garden’ or simply a permaculture garden, one with many layers of various food crops that form complementary and beneficial, symbiotic relationships with each other. Usually, this takes place in the form of soil mineral transfer.
A prairie has 5-10 different types of grasses, flowers, and shrubs all interspersed with each other. Imagine if half of these were food crops that had similar characteristics to the native prairie grass, and were able to coexist with a copious variety of other grassy crops. They would need no pest or weed care in nature’s image. Beneficial lifeforms can stay and deter pernicious ones from coming nearby.
An edible forest garden, for example, plants tall fruit trees, shorter orchards and nut trees, along with ever smaller shrubs and finally herbaceous plants all in harmony with each other. The basic idea is that well-placed and well-designed biodiversity can create a sort of soil equilibrium that is resilient to weeds and pest attacks, and also contains a balanced nutrient transfer among the various strains of food crops.
I’m on vacation this week in Ashland, Oregon, and we decided to take a trip to the Southern Oregon Permaculture Institute, where the most gracious permaculturist Chuck Burr took us on a tour of his place. He opened our minds, and showed us a beautiful time.
Permaculture is a lot like ecology, and looks at natural systems from a holistic, cyclic, and sustainable point of view. Humans are included in the design, as we have important roles in our ecosystem, and our behaviors have definite impacts on our environment.
Yields, you ask? Permaculture produces bountiful yields. The soil is screaming with life, crops are happy as can be, and diversity is cherished.
This post is meant to be real simple introduction to permaculture. So, you’ve had the real simple introduction. If you’d like more real simple info, check out Wikipedia. And see my photo tour on Flickr:
You got to talk to Chuck Burr? Cool. I’ve heard so much about his work.
I’d love to find out more… am already planning my dream garden in my head, though who knows when I’ll get there. Permaculture is a big exciting goal for me.
Thanks for posting this & stoking the fire. Beautiful photos!!
Thanks! I hadn’t heard of Chuck Burr before making my stop there, but he gave a great tour and was really awesome to talk to.
Do you know permaculture design? I was enticed, I’d love to take Chuck Burr’s class. He has a two-week summer course.
I’ve often wondered about this method of farming, I didn’t know it actually had a name. How large a scale could permaculture be feasibly practiced on?
The basic premise of permaculture is that it copies nature, so it can be as large scale or small scale as you want. There would be different design principles incorporated, based on how nature would design a larger ecosystem. So I’m not entirely sure of how large scale permaculture could be, but in accordance with their guiding principle, it seems permaculture could take the place of conventional agriculture (probably would need additional research though). I’ll have to look into it further =P
I’m so jealous!
That an amazing experience. I’ve been reading about permaculture for the last few years (and looking for a few hands-on courses to take). It’s such a great example of looking to Nature for how we should be living our lives.
On a small scale, our yard and gardens reflect a basic permaculture approach — but there is always more we could be doing.
One of the better books I’ve read on the subject was “The Earth Users Guide to Permaculture”. A good read if you have the chance. Nice hand-drawn illustrations to boot.
Hi Bill, I agree, it’s a great example for how we should live our lives.
I am definitely interested in reading more about permaculture, I’ll take a look at the book you mentioned. I heard from Chuck Burr that I might want to read some of Bill Mollison’s stuff. I think he was one of the original people shaping permaculture.
Great to hear you are implementing some permaculture design! I’d love to learn more about it. The CSA that rented space from Chuck’s farm incorporated some elements of permaculture design, so that is a start.
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