7 Things I've Learnt about Permaculture

When I first came across permaculture I thought it was all about gardening in a way that is as close to what nature intended. And it kind of is, but not in the way that I thought. I thought it meant getting naked, performing pagan rituals and gardening in the moonlight. In reality it's a set of really sensible systems that provide excellent results. If some people choose to apply these systems in a pagan, naked, light-of-the-moon kind of way then so be it but that's not what permaculture is about.

Permaculture. It's not voodoo!

There is a good reason for emulating nature and I had a serious 'duuuur' moment when I actually realised this. Forests, if left alone, do pretty well. They've been doing very well without our help for a very long time (in fact they often do much better without us!). They have complex ecosystems and lots of biodiversity that intermingles and co-habitates, thrives and flourishes. All without any help from humans.

Do you know how many hours I have spent trying to overpower nature, weeding a precise row of lettuce, removing fallen leaves or covering crops from the cabbage white butterfly? Don't see anyone doing that it a forest. If we copy nature (and in particular, food forests) we should be able to minimise our time and effort inputs and maximise the gain and overall health of the system.

Once I actually got my head around this I began to look at my backyard in a whole new light and really decided that I wanted to dig in (no pun intended) to learning about Permaculture. The 4 main resources that I've been using so far are the Permaculture Research Institute, the excellent articles on Temperate Climate Permaculture, the free online lectures over at The Regenerative Leadership Institute and David Holmgren's book 'Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability'. Here's an overview of the ideas that have stuck with me so far:

1. Nature is good. Copy nature (as above). Everything has its niche and once you find it you can put them all together and they'll look after each other.
2. "The problem is the solution" sounds fairly contradictory and vague to me but once you get into it it's actually a great principle. It's about looking at the elements in an environment which we perceive as being problematic and using this as a cue to realise that what we're doing is not working (we're likely working against nature) and so we should modify the plan for that plant/area/building. It's a way of observing what's going on in a system and getting feedback on what's not working so it can be improved. For example you may have an annoyingly soggy patch of land that you want to dry up, instead stop fighting and turn it into the perfect place for a pond!
3. Ploughing soil is baaad, real bad. Ploughing and digging mixes the different layers of soil, breaking mycelium nets, destroying soil structure and adding too much oxygen, burning out the nutrients much faster. Far better to put all that good organic matter on top and let the worms do the work. In addition, grow plants like daikon, lucerne and comfrey to send down deep tap roots and add air pockets to the soil.
4. Every element in the system should have as many functions as possible. For example chickens can provide manure, weeding services, eggs, meat (not that I'll be eating my ladies any time soon!) and entertainment! Another good one is the Pigeon Pea which can provide food for humans, animals, they fix nitrogen, provide shade, wind protection and mulch. Most elements have more than one function but the idea is to pack as many great things into one plant/animal/structure as possible.

   

   Pigeon Pea seedling just coming up, I have high hopes for these guys!
5. Function of redundancy. If you have enough biological diversity, something will thrive. Even in tough conditions. It's about not putting all your eggs in one basket and reminds me of hybrid vigour in genetics. 
6. The idea of "succession" is a big one and goes back to the idea of copying nature but the goal here is to speed up the natural process. It's about taking degraded, bare land and starting with anything that will grow (likely things considered weeds/invasive species) and nitrogen fixers (they get nutrients from the air and so can survive in degraded soil). Once these plants have been in place for a while, putting roots into the soil and dropping leaves, the soil will be improved to the extent that these 'pioneer plants' will have lost their competitive edge and other, more nutrient hungry plants can take over.
7. Keeping water on site through the use of swales and mulch pits. These tools slow and hold onto water, gradually allowing it to seep into the ground. Swales are ditches dug along contours in the land to stop water running off. The soil from the ditch is usually piled on the low side of the swale to further stop run off and provides a great spot to plant fruit trees. Mulch pits are used as a very simple and inexpensive way to safely store and deliver grey water. Before I knew about mulch pits, grey water systems seemed prohibitively expensive and complicated to retrofit into an existing home. Making a mulch pit is easy. Simply dig a hole near trees you want to water, add some ag pipe, fill with chunky mulch and direct a grey water pipe into the ag pipe. It's better to have more than one mulch pit to avoid water-logging. Once the pit has water in it, all sorts of little microbes and creepy crawlies will colonise the mulch, remove nutrients and eventually turn the mulch into compost. Dig out the compost and start again! 

These 7 ideas barely scratch the surface but they're the ideas that have really stuck with me initially. What permaculture ideas do you use?