Permaculture

[gwalchgwyn]

Glad that there is interest in this topic.

I agree with those who believe that Permaculture presents a paradigm shift & would therefore suffer much criticism from voices from an older system. To say that a system that aims to overturn the existing system "doesn't work" is typical of the Western (that is: Judeo-Christian) tautology; if you're not with me you're against me. Just as abolition is impractical to a slave economy, Permaculture seeks to overturn our current system (in which the land we live on is not really our landbase.) Permaculture as an idea does challenge our dominant system that uses food as reward for service to its agenda. Think of any other domesticate and see that the reward of food is a very effective motivator. I press the blue button to get chips that I can then exchange for a meal. Now I love Basmati rice as much as any other aficionado of it, but every time I buy it at the grocery store I put serious mental to how that rice got to my table: the grower's underpayed workers - how much energy goes into a 4$ bag of rice that I "earned" from a half-hour's service? Then there is packaging, freight shipping, redistribution... how many engines were involved? how many semis? How much fossil fuels were used and how much damage has that caused to a habitable world? And I'm not even against international trade. Even if I brought the example down to the local Farmer's Market I am dismayed every time I buy food that I couldn't spend that time and energy myself. The reason for this confliction is simple: Permaculture brings the food directly from garden to table. No other animal or plant (aside from domesticates and in labs) has to reconcile its activity in this way. It is only in the dominant human symbolic gesture that we understand that completion of a chore relates to food and therefore reproduction. Permaculture yes is ideological and privileged information as any revolution would be. But at its heart Permaculture is a recognition of our basic animal nature, our direct relation to a landbase, a harsh criticism to our current destructive food system. As long as it's easier to mow someone's lawn or manage a store for food then Permaculture will be impractical and marginal. Then it's back to the quaint vestigial kitchen garden and tomato-basil summer sandwiches...

[whoami]

I'm doing a permaculture course at the beginning of Oct. its expensive. and I need to take off two weeks unpaid leave to do it as well as having car rego, electricity and rates all due in September. but on gonna wing it and do it anyway!!!!!!! why the eff not, I can make more money but there may not be another course on in my area for a long time. ill let yas know how much I got out of it

[vitex]

I'm doing a permaculture course at the beginning of Oct. its expensive. and I need to take off two weeks unpaid leave to do it as well as having car rego, electricity and rates all due in September. but on gonna wing it and do it anyway!!!!!!! why the eff not, I can make more money but there may not be another course on in my area for a long time. ill let yas know how much I got out of it

It's not all about the money I'm doing a permaculture design course too.

Try this http://holmgren.com.au/essence-of-permaculture-free/#lightbox/0/

I reckon permaculture is a philosophy rather than a method. The twelve principles (see link) are helpful, because they make you think differently about growing things. I've been looking at permaculture since the mid 80s and there has been a change - a lot of people are now saying "where's your yield?" It's not just a system for rich yuppies - anyone can benefit from using the best bits of philosophy. I reckon the principles of permaculture can help us to transition away from tearing up the soil and then throwing chemicals at it (for one). You don't get more vegetables out of a neat garden than an untidy one, that's for sure. Another thing that permaculture does is to allow synergy - to grow plants closer together (like beans growing up corn stalks) so that they help each other. The ancient "three sisters" garden is arguably a permaculture setup.

I think my exposure to permaculture has totally changed my thinking and I'll never go back to just buying stuff from the stupormarket without thinking about it

[whoami]

yeah exactly, money is superficial, nothing ultimately. so that's why I'm just gonna do the course. I've done a fair bit of research online but apparently well be learning how to gut and butcher a pig as well as see examples of permafarms that are 100% self sufficient. as self sufficient as you can get anyways. so it should be bloody good stuff

[teonanacatl]

So after doing loads more reading for those who permaculture doesnt appeal to, and for those who it does but want (and should) to expand their arsenal, agroforestry, silviculture and their various incarnations, of which I like agrosilvipastrolism the best, have lots to offer.

These are practical systems with no waste on land, in permaculture the haphazard food forest is indeed productive but not really suitable for small gardens (Im not talking intensive stacking here). The food forest is indeed productive until climax, then productivity declines. Agroforestry etc recognise this decline and as such everything is run on rotations, 1-50yr+ cycles that renew the system. I really have not heard anyone talk about the logistics of harvesting the timber species in a permaculture system. Dont get me wrong I love the food forest idea, and I can see that it works, but my mind is analytical- there needs to be a plan! Agroforestry is productive and adaptable to a commercial scale as well, something that I dont believe permaculture as a whole is.

I wont say agroforestry is sustainable purely because if you have outputs with no inputs its not sustainable- thats simple maths and applies to permaculture too. Inputs need to come from somewhere.....

I love the emphasis on design that permaculture pushes, though it is after all just good decision making! One thing that I like is the idea that you want to keep the water on your property for as long as possible, though in my climate that would likely result in an inland lake or a swamp at best But its the principle I like, the principle that one should retain any resource in your environment for as long as possible/ feasible. I like to apply this to livestock, instead of letting fruit fall and rot on the ground it should go through an animal, in fact as many animals as it can before its put back into the soil and then back to the tree. As long as the animal doesnt leave the land then the energy is all there (minus farts and gasses from decomp, though even those will be caught to some degree) in the animal and is eventually cycled back to the land. Animals represent an excellent store of nutrients. They also represent an interesting source of inputs- if you buy in some of their food this is essentially equivalent to a fertiliser (could actually be cheaper then an organic fert too!). Considering a well managed pasture should be consistent/increasing in C and N levels all one should have to supplement the pasture with is minerals, and this can be done via the livestock through salt licks etc. I find it an interesting activity to ponder resources and how I can keep them on my land for as long as possible. Time and money are interesting resources to consider.

Permaculture is a business, it sells its product well but not only that it sells dreams to people. I never imagined (until I did some sums) that I could make more money selling the plants and tools to make a dream then the produce from such a dream- ie you make more selling the plants and seeds then the produce!

Permaculture is also suffering from the metaphysics that is being added to courses/ retreats/ blogs/ blah. It never was part of what Mollison designed, it is not permaculture yet its addition makes it harder to gain scientific acceptance, something that must be achieved in order to change the way things are. I also feel that animals are under utilised in permaculture systems and that the eating of animals is to widely shunned in organic systems. Its true that massive amounts of grain and water are used to feed animals (this is inefficient) when they could be fed directly to humans, this however doesnt give context for where animals are useful. Animals can convert waste from crops, low nutrient forage and low maintenance crops into high quality protein. Feeding grain to animals might be inefficient but one is trading with the resource of time here so losses in energy of the system + waste ( which isnt that bad because a lot goes back into the soil anyway) are acceptable. I feel animals are an important way to cycle "time" through a system, not to mention the value they add in diversification!

Anyway agroforesty, silviculture, agrosilvipastoralism Sorry for the rant- was kinda bored

Edited March 13, 2014 by teonanacatl

[paradox]

i agree with all you said about permaculture as a business.. what you mention i think is also a part of what 'permaculture' is a 'about' though, it's about ingenuity within a particular sustainable framework. if you can do better selling the dream, or selling seeds etc, then it makes sense to take that road. it's about taking the most intelligent, efficient & sustainable path toward your goals.. but damn i'm beginning to really get sick of the word. the culture around permaculture, while i think it's a positive & benign is pretty much as banal as any other subculture thats been around a while.. though there is some interesting & quite original things going on here & there. really though the interesting things are in the details.. if you ask me, forget the word, learn the concepts, add it to the rest of your knowledge & get on with your own ingenuity & creativity to achieve what you want to achieve..

any plant systems inherently always have a lot of inputs, free inputs i might add, in the form of sunlight, which is the main resource that you retain & cycle through the system.

it isn't hard to make a climaxed food forest system productive again, you just have to intelligently cut it up into chunks & start new successions amongst & around the remaining standing forest.. as they say a lot in permaculture, it's easy to extend an already established system.. you can most certainly have multiple stages of succession functioning concurrently, all producing different products, it's especially workable if you have a pre existing climaxed system that you can tweak & cut & divide up.. for example you can adapt a climaxed forest to retain highly productive long term tree species & their respective associated plant community, splitting & carving up the 3 dimensional micro-climatic structures to allow for younger successions of forest to come through around & amongst them. you make your design decisions based on all the various facets of the particular site.. depending on what you want to achieve you can tweak it accordingly.. this kind of idea could potentially be more or less infinite in terms of how you could design it.. but yeah you do need space.

i'd like to chat more but really gotta crash now

[obtuse]

The one problem that comes straight to mind, is that it gets airy fairy and science gets incorporated without people actually researching the facts.

I attended a workshop where a whole heap of mis truths were being told and it was really cringeworthy. I love the design element to permaculture, but for people to take it seriously beyond being a hippy meme, people from within need to make it more scientifically credible.

As a scientist investigating how to incorporate Permaculture Design into wider landscape management methods, i find the lack of scientific detail being pushed in "permaculture" a little disturbing.

[ThunderIdeal]

hmmmm, it is called permaculture, not permaology. although i agree that science is ace, little or none went into those cultural practises which were gathered up into permaculture. i wish your post said a lot more.

[teonanacatl]

I would disagree TI, many of the principles that people used to farm were merely observations or reproducible things that were required for them to maintain a living. These principles were incorporated into permaculture and explained through ecological principles. Observations and reproducible results are the backbone of science whether or not people new they were practicing it or not.

Mollison is himself a scientist and if you watch his PDC videos he comes across without a lot of the stuff that is thrown around in permaculture today. Though I like him (not so keen on Geoff Lawton) they both do this think where they tell "stories" to show points. The problem I have with them is as with every story there is some truth and some not truth, it is entertaining but the evidence they use is not solid. Geoff is worse for it then Bill, often stating things that are not true and exaggerating things though he is still very knowledgable.

Im just ranting Im sorry, its this thing I do when Im bored or uncomfortable, mostly it stays in my head as most of my thoughts and opinions exist as paradox's much like Schrodinger's cat. Some though like this actually have some opinion behind them.

[Yeti101]

My gut feeling is that the science that would enable us to analyze how such a hypothetical food producing permaculture forest would work are themselves in need of a bit more development - or maybe I just think that because none of my education is in ecology.

It's hard. You are looking for a system that is customizable, yet finely tuned, that is full of plants and animals which are largely resistant to pests and diseases, all of which functions to produce significant outputs with mainly free inputs, all in a manner that is sustainable across a wide time-slice. I think it is logically possible, but then, so are most things. In practicality, it would require a very fine-grained understanding of how the whole system fits together and interacts and a spectacularly skilled program of species selection. More science applied to the development of these techniques could only be a good thing.

If only the 'wild' species we tried to use were more productive, or the domesticated species were more pest resistant and required less inputs. I can (mischievously) think of a hypothetical solution, but it would be a supreme irony if the ideal permaculture garden or forest were only achievable though the use of GM species .

[paradox]

I think it is logically possible, but then, so are most things. In practicality, it would require a very fine-grained understanding of how the whole system fits together and interacts and a spectacularly skilled program of species selection. More science applied to the development of these techniques could only be a good thing.

bingo, as a discipline (i'm not talking about 'permaculture', but a multifaceted approach that incorporates permaculture related ideas) it requires a full life dedication & passion for the science & art of interactive ecology. in my opinion for it to be a worthwhile path at all implies that a life of diligently acquired knowledge & practical experience go into it.. the same way anyone who is successful in anything goes about it.. a simple minded 'hippie meme' approach to it is a nice fantasy for some & perfectly workable in the context of an industrial culture, that makes it is easy for it to be only a little more than a hobby to alleviate their despair about the state of the world..

this long term approach can be difficult for people in our culture to get their heads around.. ultimately the idea would be to create a long term multi-generational system, that by the time you're old, it is in a established, functional enough state to hand on the the next generation to be developed further & so on.. i think that is really the entire point.. i often feel if only the previous generation had begun what i'm doing now.. well they didn't establish that long term system so it's up to me to do it, for the next gen.

i think people get turned off by this because it's a very alien idea to industrialized consumer culture. people get the wrong idea & think they can just take a simple cutesie approach to it & in a few years all their dreams will have manifested themselves.. without full dedication to a long term process that requires much diligent study in many different areas, much, much, much work & a life of practical experience. you also have to be pretty intelligent & very sensitive to subtle signals from your environment. if you can always maintain a good balance between your hard scientific knowledge, your own practical knowledge & your intuitive sensitivity to the ecology your involved with, you'll be doing ok. though our culture has extreme difficulty with the concept of long term, the fact is, now is the time where we have the greatest opportunity for investing in long term systems as we still have access to vast amounts of resources, information & a huge, globally unprecedented access to diverse plants species from all over the world.. the opportunities we have now to use these resources to establish long term systems have never been so good & will not be available for very long into the future. dualistically it is also a time where the future & therefore long term projects has never been so uncertain. in this case i think an optimistic approach is the only one worth taking..

i think geoff lawton has been pretty guilty of propagating the idea that it's all so easy & simple.. though he also teaches some very good stuff. on a certain level it is simple, but really, to truly understand how simple it can be takes a life of work, study & play & a very good understanding of multi-disciplinary science. it's in geoff lawtons interests to propagate that idea because he has bought into bill mollisons word & sells the rights to use the word for two & a half grand a pop.. not to say geoff lawton hasn't done some great things.. it's just one of the realities of it.. publicity for these kinds of ideas though i think is a good thing just quite annoying nonetheless, witnessing the intellectual labotomy which is much of the permaculture 'eco' meme fad.. maybe thats a bit harsh, but just making a point..

Edited July 13, 2014 by paradox

[paradox]

My gut feeling is that the science that would enable us to analyze how such a hypothetical food producing permaculture forest would work are themselves in need of a bit more development - or maybe I just think that because none of my education is in ecology.

the point is though, theres no time for only hypothetical models, if we're at all serious, we have to actually conduct the experiments on the ground & get the fuck on with it, if not you then who? it's the only way to truly understand how any of this stuff works.. Hypothetical models are only as good as the experiments that back them up or ultimately prove or disprove them..

Nature & ecology are inexhaustible in terms of the what you can learn interacting with it. it's hard not to sound very corny but the key is trusting 'nature' to show you, the answers really are are all there, it's only our own capacity for ingenuity, creativity & intelligence that limit us..

With the right mind set, simply by doing many various different things while paying attention to all the subtle & extreme changes in the total biosphere on as many levels as you're capale over each year & observing how the developing system reacts, you can learn an incredible amount.

'ecology' as a science has most of it's work still ahead of it, nature & ecology are seemingly infinite in terms the complexity of interaction on fractalicious levels of scale & the science of ecology is quite stifling in light of that. the english language is incredible bad for speaking about subtle ecological process's unfortunately, which basically just means if you want to really understand it to some degree you have to go & interact & experiment with it your self & balance your scientific knowledge & study with your unspeakable internal neurological/nervous system awareness & intelligence. you might not be able to explain half the things you learn.. thats something i'm learning all the time, but at least you can just get something done, later we can explain things in detail that others are capable of understanding intellectually, now we just have to get fuckin busy & do the real work.

Edited October 7, 2014 by paradox

[greenwoman]

I would love to have enough land to grow a food forest. At the moment I have about 300-400m2 of land (not including house, watertank, paved area etc). I have a small rainforest area, mainly natives with some herbs underneath; a 'jungle' of bananas, passionfruit, passiflora foetida, dwarf mango, custard apple, cassava, & herb understorey; a 'bush' garden with paperbarks, banksias, lomandras, leptospermum, lemongrass, herbs, etc, and an 'open' garden with pumpkin, cherry tomato, eggplant, sweet potato, herbs, and a fig tree etc & I can plant out with annuals like lettuce etc as per season. I don't grow nearly enough to feed myself. I would love to grow other things but I am limited by the amount of water I have.

I think if we breed less, there would be more land available to grow food forests on. I also think that 'modern society' is sick, and needs to be replaced with a healthier system.

[_Cursive]

Hey guys! I'm liking the debates in this thread. Relaxed, to the point and best of all, no anger!

Here's some videos on Permaculture if you're interested:

http://www.theearthgarden.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=156

Edited July 13, 2014 by JT_NZ

[Farmer88]

I have been mucking about with permaculture for 20 years. Mostly procrastination. After watchin it all happen and not happen, I have noticed that the systems e.g. food forests etc, are more persistant than humans and their relationships. Usually the family moves on, couple divorces, sickness intrudes etc. Then the next owners or custodians of the farm don't care and bulldoze the lot.

So permanent agriculture can only happen where it is owned by an organisation capable of lasting longer than people.

[LokStok]

As the world looks for ways to establish food security in the face of climate change, Cuba may have some important lessons to teach us.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-29/unlikely-leader-the-world-looks-to-cubas/5633224

[Darklight]

I have been mucking about with permaculture for 20 years. Mostly procrastination. After watchin it all happen and not happen, I have noticed that the systems e.g. food forests etc, are more persistant than humans and their relationships. Usually the family moves on, couple divorces, sickness intrudes etc. Then the next owners or custodians of the farm don't care and bulldoze the lot.

So permanent agriculture can only happen where it is owned by an organisation capable of lasting longer than people.

I'm with you and Teo on this. To get it said early, I'm a sceptic on most things and am sometimes proven wrong ( often happily )

I started to permaculture my place back in the late 80s. It suffered for that, and I think it suffered from a problem common to a lot of permaculture places in the beginning- an excess of zeal combined with a lack of long term understanding of the parcel of land and it's weather, and was compounded by a lack of experience with long term agriculture at all

It's easy to plant things and pat yourself on the back. Is not so easy to monitor, harvest, remove, adapt and modify an area over time. The latter is much more work. I'm now finding I get much more output from small, intensive garden beds and a very few of the many fruit trees that really suit the weather cycle and local pest management

I remember buying a shit ton of quail 20 years ago, because Mollison's book and a few locals were raving about quail as a Zone 1 or 2 ( can't recall ) producer which wasn't invasive to tilled areas. 48hr later, the quail were all gone- foxes had moved in quickly and tho the birds had settled within 15m of the house, we lost them. So we made a pen and planned it as part of the garden. It was a pretty good one too. But it only took 2 weeks to have it broken into by goannas, snakes and more foxes and we'd lost the lot

To top it off, a lot of the species recommended for planting in permaculture systems have turned out to be weedy locally. I spoke to a permaculture person out on the coast and they shrugged and said " There is nothing a weed species can do which is as damaging as anything humans have done ". Which is a valid statement if that's where your priorities are. I don't believe this statement is representative of permaculture overall. But is indicative of some of the attitudes out there

I see a lot of people starting permaculture type gardens with all the enthusiasm and best intentions and lots of cash and labour input, then leave the mess for the next buyers or tenants. Lather, rinse, repeat

If you get a place and are looking at making sustainable improvements, hold back your enthusiasm to plant the whole place out for a bit. Intensively cultivate a short term patch for home use, plan fences, dams and wind breaks, and while they are establishing you will learn how the weather, the soil and the pests affect you specifically. And in those years you will start to network with other people, including local food networks- and learn, and save youselves buckets of time and money

[teonanacatl]

Ive been listening to a bunch of permaculture podcasts whilst carving of late and the american presenters and the people asking questions are terrible. The presenters were greedy, economically minded though they claimed otherwise, naive puritans who used the interviews to boost their ego. The guests were brilliant- Paul Stamets, Darren Doherty Bill Theil? and even Geoff Lawton impressed me. I find Geoff rambles to much and makes up sentences that dont make sense and just repeats key words, his lack of chemistry understanding drives me nuts too. Geoff did redeem himself though in telling people to take up lands that were full of pesticides, herbicides, lands that had been raped etc as it was out pollution as a whole and therefore we had a responsibility to deal with it. One thing that also became apparent to me was that a lot of the permaculture places making money run a non-profit and profit organisation, the tax is fed back through the non-profit and so much seemed focused on how to build the right business plan which I think is good if one is going to do it. They also kept saying how labour costs were so expensive these days that one had to rely on free labour to do all these things which is exactly true.

They talked about the productivity of each zone and obviously zone 1 was the biggest producer, but it quickly fell away as one approached zone 3. Most people use intensive garden beds in this area anyway with lots of stacking regardless of permaculture.

I read P.A. Yeomans book on water and farm development and it was great (the new edition is poorly edited but the info is good) and Id highly recommend it. I think Darren Doherty has the right idea as well, very much a system designed around doing agriculture better without the fluff. I think the initial layout is very important and once that is done your are 80% of the way there, its more about smart designing then permaculture. People focus too much on the food forest aspect of the permaculture. The agree wholeheartedly with your advice DL Maybe the point of permaculture is to give people a way to make money whilst spreading the idea of smart designing?

I did some research on the implications of dams on waterways and one cannot really do any dams whether smaller farm dams or large town dams without influencing the river ecosystem in someway. Large town dams rarely were economical and neither were a lot of hydroelectric dams. It did surprise me that even small farm dams had an effect. I think a reasonable number that was thrown around was storing

[ThunderIdeal]

^is that so? then you've gotta think even the keyline plowing is going to affect waterways, i mean it alters the water table directly underneath, bringing it closer to the surface in places like ridges where it is normally further underneath... reducing run-off..... swales would have a similar effect too.

i guess anything you do to keep more of the water on your land longer is going to have downstream affects.

[Darklight]

Maybe the point of permaculture is to give people a way to make money whilst spreading the idea of smart designing?

I have suspected this for some time

The onflow effect of getting more people interested in gardening and producing their own food... I can't argue with those tho

[teonanacatl]

TI: Ill search for the references when I get my internet speed back. I was looking it up to see if all farms in an area adopted the keyline/permaculture plan would it be better then a large town type dam.Reality is anything you do to a property is going to affect the natural system which is why I think most choose degraded agricultural land. If there is agriculture then one has made the choice and effecting the environment/ waterway is a side product that one is happy with. Then it becomes about doing it as low impact, sustainably and intelligently as it can be done which is keyline and swales.

Cant argue with that either DL, one has to wonder if that was Mollison's original plan- if it was then he is even smarter then I thought

[teonanacatl]

Ok so here are some references on farm dams.

http://www.clw.csiro.au/publications/waterforahealthycountry/2008/UWSRA-tr7.pdf

http://archive.nwc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/10968/Surface_and_or_groundwater_interception_activities_23June.pdf

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/9329/waterreform.pdf

Basically farm dams result ~1ML reduction in runoff for every 1ML stored. So whilst a few dams on one farm are minor comparison to the large dams built by government when counted in total they represent a significant cause of stream flow reduction. Though I do think having the equivalent volume in farm dams would be better then damning up a main river for one big dam. Dams, swales etc would also act to slow the movement of water to the creek, perhaps the creeks would run lower but for longer though quite a lot of water is lost through evaporation ~10% and plenty more through transpiration of crops and removal of produce.

Swales and dams have their place in farms, its really just a matter of population as to whether something is low impact, sustainable and eco-friendly etc.

[paradox]

apart from what teo said about population, impacts to 'water flows' depends on which dendritic order your dam is placed in the total catchment & the total catchment area of that dam over the total catchment area of the entire valley into which your dams stream line runs.

Usually farm dams are in relatively tiny catchment areas that only ever feed the main order creek line during floods. i don't have any precise figures, it would be good to work this stuff out... most of the time this percentage figure would be extremely tiny & almost entirely negligible until the population spikes out of control & every one is doing it.

an important factor to consider when worrying about these things is that most farm dams, as i said, are built in small catchment areas that only ever flow during floods. therefore the vast majority of the water input to the main creek from these tiny catchments happens during floods & is rapidly washed out to sea within a day or two anyway. So in fact capturing water in the landscape with this dam & therefore enabling all kinds of biological abundance & energy storage would make up (in terms biological/ecological health) for this miniscule loss of flood flow to the main catchment 100fold. My point being that in most cases, with the kinds of small dams i'm talking about, the issue being discussed is more or less a moot point if you ask me.

It's easy to plant things and pat yourself on the back. Is not so easy to monitor, harvest, remove, adapt and modify an area over time. The latter is much more work. I'm now finding I get much more output from small, intensive garden beds and a very few of the many fruit trees that really suit the weather cycle and local pest management

In my opinion you're touching on a key point here, the latter thing you mention is much more work & yet it's the absolute key to success. it is extremely frustrating sometimes that this is not iterated more in permaculture as i think it is one of the main issues people have trouble with, almost exactly as you describe..

you have to be dedicated to the long haul. you have to put all your knowledge & information resources into use to narrow down a list of all the species & varieties that, according to all your data, might work the best from what you know of your climate & conditions. you need to talk to local growers & gardeners & pay attention to every garden you see, research like a bastard & build up a list. once you have it narrowed down you need to procure as many of each species & variety on that list as possible, plant them out en masse throughout your system & wait & see what happens, over the next few years you will begin to see what works & what doesn't, what has potential & whats worth doing more work with & experimenting further. anything that fails (probably a lot of things if not most) you can get rid of. In the meantime you should have been growing all kinds of appropriate root stocks for all your graft-able varieties & by the time all your best genetics are fruiting & showing their abilities to thrive in your area you should be ready to graft the fuck out of all your best genes & begin to mass propagate your own provenance seed for adaptive breeding. This way you also have the advantage of only paying for the genetics once. once you have figured out which genes are the bomb for your place, that knowledge is worth more than gold & you have a basically endless propagation resource of the stuff you know is definitely going to be successful. This, in the long run can make the initial investment of the multiple varieties seem like peanuts.

in this scenario obviously over the years you will be constantly experimenting with new varieties, species & genetics & always refining your selections.

This also puts you in a very good position to supply to other locals & build up a database of localized information.

If you're interested in diverse fruit tree production & you don't already know your regions climate, the particulars of your property & the regions history of fruit culture inside out but.. you aren't willing to do what i just described then i think you're pretty much doomed to failure & i think it is one of the major reasons so many people do 'fail'.

Edited August 26, 2014 by paradox

[paradox]

i think a point worth mentioning is that if more people did the kind of work i was just ranting about, we would have some really good local data & genetic resources from region to region so that the dire need for everyone to do that kind of work would not be so extreme & this would allow many many more people who don't have the time & necessarily the total dedication to that kind of work to develop extremely successful systems. Of course there are micro climatic differences between different sites even ones that are very close to each other in the same region & these variations will always need to be accounted for..

but I guess my point is just that at this time, that kind of data is profoundly limited over a broad area & most commercial nurseries are hopeless, don't know anything & just stock generic commercial cultivars that were probably shipped from a completely different climate so at this time it is a critically important factor. when this work has been done more comprehensively it will make it much easier for everyone.

Edited August 26, 2014 by paradox

[teonanacatl]

Ive got a new bone to pick with Mollison over his mandala garden beds and his non-linear plantings. In the book, and many other permaculture resources, it is claimed that planting in rows is inefficient and that curves, zigzags and mandala/keyhole style garden bed make best use of the space.

Here is a google sketchup I made of various styles of bed. In all cases the straight lines fit more plants in when the spacing of paths etc is the same or less.

Each is designed as a repeating unit for a 10mx10m area.

The far left mandala style bed is how Mollison describes to make it in his book, with .5m wide paths. I counted all space outside the circular beds as wasted even though yes one could plant companion plants there, technically is not garden space (make sense?). The second I optimised for space making garden beds no deeper then 1.5m from a path (ie how far I can reach without walking all over the bed). The third is straight lines optimised for to repeat in 10m with .5m paths and 2m wide garden beds. One could get even more from the space making the beds 3m wide ie 1.5m from each path but I wanted it repeatable.

Here is the math:

Garden bed comparisons Garden area (m2) Walkway area (m2) Extra area (m2)

Straight 2m beds .5m row 80 20

Straight .5 and 3m rows 90 15

Mandala 1m wide gardens 36.84 13.02 50.14

Mandala 1.5m wide garden 59.8 13.2 27.18

The two plots on the right are a crooked planting vs a straight planting. They are 100x100m (scaled to 1:10) and trees are planted at 2m spacings along the rows which are 7.1m apart. They are both designed to be within a fence with space to the fence. The total length of the planting and the # of trees are provided below. Each zig-zag row is 127.3m long where as each straight row is 90m long, however there is an extra four straight rows!

The math:

Layout Length (m) # of trees

Zig-Zag 1145.7 572.85

Straight 1170 585

I tried other patterns and none would touch the straight unless you started removing access points, ie make it like a maze or a spiral.

I think the problem is people make a grid (lets say 1x1m grid in a 10x10m area) and go zig-zag but dont realise the distance between rows is at its min .71m and max 1m, so its unfair to compare with a 10x10m area with 1x1m straight rows. I hope that makes sense.

It is also claimed that curves, zigzags etc increase edges, this is obviously not true in the field or garden examples as seen above. In the case of the garden beds the mandala garden has only 76m of edge vs the 96m of edge in the straight field.

The zig-zag planting and mandala gardens do offer more aspects and therefore likely more microclimates, great for poly culture but there is no reason why this could not be done with the straight plantings- I think more of a test of the designers skill and plant selection then whether its curvy or straight.

The correct answer should be that choice of cruvy, zigzag or straight plantings depends entirely on the property under design.

Edited November 8, 2014 by teonanacatl