Cris
Sustainably Practice Permaculture?
What is Permaculture you ask?
Permaculture is a way to manage land in a way that is sustainable. It mimics natural ecosystems that flourish as they are, untouched by man. The term originally came from “permanent agriculture”. The main principle is to design land management around whole systems, not just one main crop.
Today’s farming techniques are focused on producing one main crop. There is no crop rotation to allow the fields to recover. Tons of pesticides and herbicides are used to be able to produce the same crops year after year. These toxins often leach out into local waterways and cause massive downstream damage to ecosystems.
Designing a permaculture-based system considers water resource management as well as regenerative design for the soil itself. This leads to healthier crops, healthier land, and sustainable living.
Why Practice Permaculture?
Today’s farming depletes soils of beneficial microbes and leads to a buildup of toxins. Not only do the toxins harm the plants, but the microbes, fungi and other beneficial organisms are often required for plants to grow. This results in the necessity to add more synthetic fertilizers into the soil in order to produce anything. Eventually, even adding toxins will not help, the soil will be completely devoid of its life sustaining ability.
Permaculture is a way around this as it mimics natural ecosystems. Thing of the last time you went on a hike in a fully natural environment (no, not the city park, more like a National Forest or National Park), did you see anyone watering the trees or adding fertilizers. Now think of all of the different ecosystems that are in the world, there are literally thousands of plants the grow really healthy in their natural environments with no intervention from man.
Permaculture looks at the entire ecosystem in your field and designs a way to make it sustainable for the long term. This means you will consider everything from symbiotic organisms, to decomposing fungi when creating your permaculture garden. You are essentially closing the loop of nutrient flow so that what you grow one year, feed the plants the next year (Natural composting).
Recycling what you have for Sustainability
As you grow food for yourself and your livestock, you are also growing your own natural fertilizer. Use the composted animal waste to further nourish your site each year. Use rain capture methods to enhance how much you can water your crops, especially in arid climates.
Permaculture farming is one of the oldest methods of farming in the world. It was sustainable for the Aztecs, and it can be for us too. It starts with growing what you can for your environment rather than altering the soil to grow what you want. Eventually the soil will be rich enough to support more life, but the amount of time will depend on what you start with. If you live in a rocky desert that gets very little rain, your tomatoes will likely be better in a greenhouse in a pot than directly in the ground for a very long time.
Using permaculture allows you to store the naturally produced energy of the system. By revitalizing the earth, you will create healthier plants. Last year’s organic waste feeds this year’s plants. We are only as healthy as our planet is, and our planet is only as healthy as our soils are.
How to Start Permaculture Farming
You don’t need to have a large area of land to practice permaculture. Even Urban Homesteaders can start to plan permaculture gardens. You take a look at inflows to the system, and outflows from the system. You put in water and sunshine, and you take out…what?
Excess water should be salvaged to support a duck or livestock pond. Your rain barrel can be used to raise fish, of course your plant material after your harvest gets composted to return those nutrients to the garden. Start small, with one tiny step in the direction of permaculture design, then continually add to it each year.
Begin by using perennial plants. These are plants that stay planted for the long term such as fruit trees, berry vines, artichokes, rhubarb, and asparagus. This will require you to NOT TILL your land each year. Tilling actually harms the soil by allowing the beneficial fungi to dry out, killing off the super healthy support network of the earth. Most of what we consume each year are not from perennial plants, which is rather unfortunate. But there are ways to incorporate annual crops in around perennial crops to produce high yields.
Keep Permaculture Practice Low Maintenance
Work Smarter, Not Harder. By working with nature, not against nature, you are actually working much smarter. Try building a chicken tractor to allow your chickens to be healthier and letting them work over your dormant garden patch. Plus, its free fertilizer! Use natural water flow to your advantage by constructing terraces to slow down the runoff and use it for more crops. Rotate crops to replenish what gets stripped out by another type to keep the soil healthy.
Not only do you benefit, so do the animals, the microbiota, and the earthworms and especially the soil. Once a permaculture system is established, your land will become extremely productive, many permaculture farms are of the most productive in the world.
Basic Permaculture Concepts
The first concept is a food forest, where you use the natural contours of your land to grow food, rather than a traditional garden. Incorporate layers to encourage pollinators and shade as you grow food for your family. Remember the perennial plants to minimize the inputs you have to work on each year. Take advantage of thermal mass (like this greenhouse pond) to keep things warm overnight.
Passive solar energy is a concept that is related to thermal mass, it incorporates the sun into design to get the most out of it. Harvest your rainwater to use for personal uses and for animals and crops. Use barrels to collect it off of roofs and use the natural lay of the land to create terraces so the natural flow takes longer to pass through, thus watering your plants better.
Join some local groups to get new ideas, plan a potluck highlighting your permaculture crop. Join the local farmers markets to build this network and share information with neighbors.
Take advantage of stacking and plant guilds. Stacking involves using livestock to do a service for you, such as letting chickens turn your compost, or allowing cows to graze a freshly mowed field. Plant guilds take advantage of companion planting where you compile different plant species that are beneficial to each other.
Permaculture in a Nutshell
The ethics of permaculture are to take care of the earth, take care of the people, and share your abundance. This way we are becoming good stewards of the planet. When we care for the earth first, it will provide for us to be able to take care of not only ourselves, but the others around us as well.
Taking these principles into account, we can all become permaculture farmers:
- 1) Observe the land and interact WITH it, not against it.
- Watch which way the sun, wind, and water mover through, plan around those to start with. Take advantage of what naturally grows there. What animals use the land, how do they move through, is it seasonal, what areas are they attracted to?
- 2) Connect the pieces you observed and integrate them together with what you need.
- Make things easier and more convenient for you to do. If your garden is too far from your water source, they are not integrated to make things easier. Place your garden where it won’t be a chore to water it from the start.
- 3) Harvest and store energy that comes into the system.
- Rainwater is easy and convenient to catch and store for later use. You can store it in a barrel, or in a catch pond that can be pumped to your crops later.
- 4) Make each part of your system perform several functions.
- Take advantage of companion l=plants and those perennials that will leave natural compost on the soil each year. Use native flowers to encourage pollinators to your garden.
- 5) Change very little, work WITH it, not against it
- Remember the observation step? Take advantage of what is naturally there and design your permaculture garden around the layout of your land. Don’t drive in the backhoe and flatten out those hills to put in nice, neat rows, go with the hills and create the best layout you can.
- 6) Start small scale, then expand.
- Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your permaculture farm shouldn’t be either. What looks like it may work, might fail miserably? Take time and try different strategies to see what actually works the best. Expand slowly as you work with the land to develop the best ecosystem for your homestead.