Cassie K
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Picture from Natural Ways
Permaculture, also known as "Permanent Agriculture" or "Permanent Culture" encompasses Seven functional components that act like a Forest: 1. The canopy (i.e. tall trees); 2. Understory layer (i.e. trees that revel in the dappled light under the canopy); 3. Shrubs (i.e. berry bushes); 4. Herbaceous Plants (i.e. annuals, biennials or perennial culinary and medicinal herbs); 5. Ground cover (i.e. Cover crops such as clover or any Plants that grow dense and closer to the ground); 6. Rhizosphere (i.e. Root layers within the soil like fungi); 7. Vertical layer (i.e. "runners" and Vining plants like beans).
According to Holmgren, the Twelve Permaculture design principles include:
- Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
- Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.
- Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
- Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
- Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature's abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources.
- Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.
- Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
- Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
- Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
- Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
- Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
- Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.
Permaculture is an ethical, ecological, and science based gardening design that practices sustainability, avoids chemicals, and machinery (that runs on petroleum oil). This philosophy extends to avoiding the exploitation of land and animals. The idea is to recreate the aspects of a self-healing, self-working food forest. Fruit and nut trees and fruit bushes maintain themselves. In fact they continually add loads of seeds to the ground every year, creating more fruit and nut trees. Fruit and nut trees provide pounds of food for years and even decades. Perennial flowers and herbs also grow year after years providing and aesthetically pleasing garden/yard. As many Perennial flowers you can add to your garden the better. As long as you can keep many bees around, you will be able to pollinate your fruits and vegetables.
In Permaculture design, tillers and other machinery are not used because they are absolutely not necessary and they do more harm than good. In fact, No-till gardening allows for natural aeration of the soil, promotes natural drainage, saves water, reduces the need to weed, reduces soil erosion, saves time and physical exertion, retains life, and eliminates the use of petroleum oil.
The beauty of this philosophy is that there is hardly any money or work involved, especially if you're using materials on your land to create a food forest.
No-till gardening allows us to build up an existing ecosystem by layering the soil with carbon ingredients (i.e. cardboard, leaves, pine needles, straw, newspaper), and nitrogen ingredients (i.e. compost, weeds, urine, humanure). Instead of tilling (which damages ecosystems and does not build up soil), layering of "ingredients" perfects the nutrition, aeration, drainage all while retaining enough moisture to save water.

picture from Eco Films
Also, cutting your grass with a lawn mower is unnecessary if you're utilizing every space of your property (or yard). Mowing a lawn does not create a beneficial habitat for insects and animals. Not only that, but there is a reason a Forest is dense and the ground is shaded. A shaded ground will compost material faster, holding nutrients in, while a shaved lawn will expose the ground to the Sun taking away nutrients from the soil. However with a Knife or clippers, pruning dead or over-grown weeds can be used as mulch.
Going back to the Forest, you notice there is hardly any grass growing, perhaps in patches. But a Forest floor has been taken over with abundance of Trees, shrubs, leaves, Flowers, rocks, moss, Fungi. All of these aspects create a self-healing (self-working) mechanism which you can benefit from. It only takes you to mimic the rules of the Forest, and plant these things.
There is no such thing as a Pest in Permaculture. All insects and animals have their place, and it is up to us to know the beneficial insects. For example, Praying mantis, Wasps, Granddaddy long-legs, lady bugs eat harmful bugs. Instead of spraying Brassicas with repellants, add sawdust (which slugs and caterpillars hate) around susceptible plants like Cabbage. Any Cabbage loopers or worms can be relocated onto their own Cabbage plant (separated from the garden).
Permaculturists have noticed that young or weak plants are more susceptible to insects eating an entire plant; it seems that the nutrition from the soil which produces large and healthy plants, will not be susceptible to insects.
Sometimes it's a matter of adding a native plant for the insects to eat. Many insects will avoid eating your food if you provide them with an alternative like a native plants (ild Mustard and Plantain weed). Marigolds are also beneficial in the garden. Growing Peppers, onions, garlic, and herbs around susceptible plants will also ward off harmful bugs.
The intention in choosing natives, medicinal herbs, and other plants is to grow those that serve many purposes. Many Permaculture gardens contain Moringa Oleifera-- known as the most nutrient rich plant in the world. The Moringa can be made into a compost tea to feed plants, or the cuttings can be used to mulch the garden which will still add nutrients. You can even make a tea out of the leaves for yourself. Fruit trees or usually serve many purposes, not to mention producing pounds of food, but provides shade for plants growing below.
Beans also serve many purposes, adding nitrogen into the soil for surrounding plants. For example in the Three Sisters method, growing Corn, Beans, and Squash in close proximity. The beans will act as Fertilize to the Corn while the Squash will smother out other intruding plants. The Corn acts as a pole for the Beans to crawl up as well.
Choosing plants that serve many purposes is similar to Companion planting. For instance, Carrots love Tomatoes, Roses love Garlic.

Picture from Two Little Men and a Farm
I have recently posted videos of other gardeners who transformed their backyard into a Food Forest, which you can see here: Val and Eli and Permaculture Trio. I highly recommend watching those videos because they will allow you to visualize some of the details I have outlined so far.
Another video I recommend (see below) discusses types/aspects of Permaculture, for example, Hugelkultur, Straw bale, Sheet Mulching, soil/compost bombing, Ruth Stout Method/Composting in Place, and living mulch systems:
