Permaculture Paths

The most energy efficient thing you can do in your life is grow some of your own food. There is no greater reduction of energy per action.

Our first internship on a 4th-generation Austrian farm revealed just how inefficient a spread-out setup can be. Whenever we forgot something, we had to take a 30-minute walk to fetch tools, because the toolshed was uphill, by the house. The panorama was beautiful, and we loved the walk for that reason, and the farmers were super grateful not to have to go themselves. Still, it soon became a nuisance, since it kept breaking the flow of the work. They always forgot something up there, and with the toolshed strategically placed so far away, any joyful garden practice was disrupted.

Here is an surprising example of how we think in permaculture. If you want to raise chickens and grow vegetables, you could place your compost mound inside the chicken coop. Every time you assemble the mound, the chickens will scratch it, mixing it and adding more manure, while scavenging for food. If it is placed on a small slope, they will kick it downhill, moving it for you. Down the slope, you can set up a convenient way to collect the mature compost. Growing annual vegetables needs a lot of compost, so this design combines compost production and chicken husbandry, connecting both seamlessly.

"In practice, we evolve over time to various forms of accounting for our actions. Such accounts are fiscal, social, environmental, aesthetic, or energetic in nature, and all are appropriate to our own survival. Consideration of these rules above may lead us, step by step, to the basic realization of our interconnectedness with nature, that we depend on good health in all systems for our survival. Thus, we widen the self-interested idea of human survival (on the base of past famine and environmental disaster) to include the idea of “the survival of natural systems”, and can see, for example, that when we lose plant and animal species due to our actions, we lose many survival opportunities. Our fates are intertwined." Bill Mollison

Some people get frustrated with Permaculture because it doesn’t offer easy solutions. Solutions are location-specific and individual. They result from a design process based on observation and trials. That is where human creativity and agency play their role. What is your reaction to know that gardening is asking you to be creative?

Most soils in backyards are struggling soils. The amount of life in them, which is the foundation of fertility, is very low, and what is left is barely surviving. As gardeners, we can incorporate soil treatment practices to create conditions that support the reflourishing of life in the soil. That will help both annual plants and trees. “Soil treatments now need to precede tree planting over almost every area that has been used by contemporary agriculture.”

Excessive slugs in your garden are a sign of duck deficiency, as Bill Mollison used to say. That is an example of the permaculture thinking “The problems are the solutions.” When slugs, or any other pest in this case, are seen not as a problem but as an opportunity, we open our minds to design a new sustainable practice. In this case, when we put ducks in a garden, the slugs become high-protein food for them. Moreover, duck droppings fertilize the soil, and ducks give us eggs and meat. So, having a lot of slugs becomes a positive thing, because you can raise ducks more easily. Of course, you have to adapt your home garden for the ducks, just as you would for chickens, but if you continue to follow this permaculture thinking, it opens up more beneficial options. Does it sound ridiculous to have ducks in your backyard, integrated with your home garden?

"The only long-term insurance of good water supply to a settlement is by rigorous control of a forested catchment, including a total ban on biocides and metallic processing. As there are few such clean areas left in the world, house roof tanks must do for the foreseeable future. The 30-40 additives commonly introduced into water supplies are often pollutants in themselves to that increasingly sensitive sector of society developing allergies to any type of modern pollutant. These additives represent the end point of the technological fix: pollution is “fixed” by further pollution." Bill Mollison So, harvest rain water both for drinking and for gardening.

Fukuoka's fours principles of growing: 1. No cultivation - do not turn the soil over, and so cause injuries which attempt to heal themselves 2. No chemical fertilizer or prepared compost - let the plants and animals that make the soil go to work on the soil 3. No weeding by tillage or herbicides - use the weeds. Control them by natural means, or occasional cutting 4. No dependence on chemicals - insects and disease, weeds and pests, have their own control. Let these operate and assist them All these principles were translated into actionable permaculture practices, which you can put into action right now to cultivate thriving ecosystems and transform your your relationship with nature.

The most unusual gardening advice I ever received was to practice the noble art of scavenging. Most people see valuable raw material for gardening as waste, but only because they don't have a composting and mulching practice. Once you do, every bit of organic material left over from anything becomes a resource: tree pruning (private and public), grass clippings, pet fur clippings, hair clippings, dead wood washed ashore, kitchen scraps, tree leaves, coffee and tea grounds, and mate tee leaves. If you are committed to composting and deep into permaculture practices, even manure and roadkill can be scavenged. Scavenging is especially useful for urban farmers, who don’t have enough space to produce the bulk material for composting and mulching that homesteaders and farmers have. That may seem out of the box, but our ancestors knew how important it was to profit from every bit of organic matter they could find. It is an effective sustainable gardening practice that reduces waste, circulates nutrients, and reduces the work.

We studied Permaculture with Geoff Lawton He may be considered the successor of Bill Mollison, and I would say he is the third person who has thought the most about permaculture in the world. I find it fascinating that he says he has a spreadsheet with the total number of students he has taught the PDC (the Permaculture Design Course, developed by Bill Mollison to teach the principles of permaculture in 72 hours and “infect” people with the spirit that we can be the most beneficial living creatures on Earth). He then has another spreadsheet with the number of students who became teachers or are directly involved in implementing permaculture gardens and farms beyond the personal scope (which we are proudly part of). He uses the first spreadsheet to measure how many people, in relation to the world’s population, are aware of permaculture. That is important because, according to Malcom Gladwell, there is a tipping point at around 11% of the whole population being aware of an idea. After that, the idea inevitably spreads to the rest of the population, becoming the norm. That’s Geoff’s personal quest! I love his idealism combined with his realism, and I find this dream amazing! By the way, permaculture has proved that we can conserve nature and create productive home gardens where we produce everything we need to survive, including a meaningful and fun occupation, thus creating heaven on Earth.

A student of Landscape Design at the University of Tasmania created permaculture in 1978. David Holmgren met Bill Mollison during a lecture at their university. After David shared that he was trying to study the intersection of ecology, landscape design, and agriculture, and how natural systems could influence it, they started working together on the permaculture concept. By studying how nature designs resilient and self-sustaining systems, they realized that uniting these three fields would allow them to develop a framework for creating permanent agriculture, permanent culture, and planned abundance. Our home gardens and farms can be beautiful, regenerative places for our enjoyment and for the benefit of all the other living elements on Earth.

Wildlife helps regulate the climate, and this belongs in policy discussions. Besides that, how would our cities look if every lawn were a home garden-food forest (where wildlife has a niche to exist)? Where biodiversity has a place to live and where we harvest nuts, fruits, and vegetables, as well as house small animals like chickens, ducks, and pigeons?

Polyculture isn't just mixing plants randomly. In this letter we go thorugh the design principles create practical polyculture gardens: permaculturepaths.substack.c…

The patterns of nature hide a secret order. Bill Mollison, the creator of permaculture, studied these patterns and how to apply them to design sustainable and productive gardens. This pattern is called a torus. (Figure 4.1 from Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual, Bill Mollison, page 73) Does it sound crazy that garden beds, food forests, lakes, and all the other features, when designed inspired by these patterns, become productive, aesthetic, and sustainable?

Spraying pesticides and herbicides, introducing microplastics into the soil by using plastic, plowing, and tilling deny you an abundant future. The reason is that they cause pollution and destroy the soil life that is the base of fertility. Implementing a permaculture home garden with trees that form a food forest, relying on effective sustainable practices, will guarantee an abundant future and protect nature. It may be difficult to wrap your head around the fact that we already have the solutions, but we do. We just have to become aware of them and apply them.

If you were to choose just one actionable practice to transform your gardening, it would have to be water harvesting. Well, if the air in the place you live is breathable, then rainwater is drinkable, and water can be captured in all paved or impermeable areas like rooftops and roads. Roof water is the most easily treated water for drinking and cooking. Roads and other ground catchments, like swales, provide proper water for gardens and trees. Despite popular perception, there is often much more water available to be harvested than we need for our daily and garden needs. We can provide for all our house and garden needs with simple sustainable practices.

Earth is a shared home. From the grandest landscapes to the smallest crevices, every creature has its place and purpose. When we garden with this mindset, we transform our relationship with nature and learn to cultivate thriving ecosystems, both on a big farm and in our backyard.

Gardening (and farming) is a way to lower the entropy of the solar system. “Biological systems tend to become increasingly complex and efficient, seemingly violating the law of entropy.” —Edward Goldsmith, Thermodynamics or Ecodynamics (1981)

I was surprised to hear that people are not talking enough about seeds today. They are the foundation of any sustainable practice. Bill Mollison strongly highlights that without saving regional seeds and creating a network of people to exchange heirloom varieties, it is impossible to develop a permaculture practice. Handing over the responsibility of selecting seeds from the previous generation of plants, and of saving them, to big corporations is the surest way to lose food independence, biodiversity, nutritional value, and the possibility of designing sustainable gardens.

The water content in vegetation greatly moderates temperature extremes (heat and cold) and also releases and absorbs water from passing airstreams. This can play a significant role in local microclimates. Plants are intelligent natural self-regulators and by designing permaculture gardens with a mix of perennials and annuals you can help the ecosystem to thrive.