Permaculture: Common sense gardening
By JOYCE COMINGORE
While researching articles about horticulture, I read, “Local farming and local organic farming is the way to solve all our food problems and uses less petrol to do so,” you know right there, this is going to be very “Bri-dish.” Actually, the men that came up with the term “permaculture” were two Australians. In the mid-70s, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren coined it from permanent agriculture. Their desire was to create sites that meet the needs of site owners, food, shelter, fuel and entertainment.
Mollison has failed to obtain copyrights in Australia or in America for the term “permaculture.”
As city lot owners, most of us are limited in following the ultimate degree in permaculture, the mixing of landscape and edible landscapes. Zoning regulations eliminate chickens and goats, which, when I was young, neighbors kept. Goats were for lawn maintenance. They had to be tied to eat only in a certain reachable area not including the shrubbery.
In my formative years of junior high and high school, we had chickens and rabbits. You could hear the crowing of the neighbor’s roosters. This was not some hick town, but the glorified academic town of West Lafayette (home of Purdue University, where Dad worked), Ind.
One year my father brought four lambs from his parents’ farm in Michigan; his mother, being British, had a big penchant for mutton and lamb chops. We did without the chickens that year, placing the lambs in the fenced-in chicken area. The rabbits were another story. Fantastic for fertilizer (ECHO started this way), but hard on heart strings. I grew attached to each fuzzy ball of fur and could not/would not eat them. Yes indeed, there are reasons for zoning laws.
We had a large “Victory Garden,” away from our limited house lot size, so our basement storage larder was always full. Canning was a way of life.
In the ’60s, I became a fan of Euell Gibbons, the living-off-the-land guru, and in the ’70s, bought the first six books of the Foxfire Set, about the vanishing culture of the Southern Appalachians, along with Ray Cohan’s book, “How to Make It On the Land.” Those were the days of concern about our future survival and backyard bomb shelters.
Permaculture all seems to boil down to common sense in gardening. We can borrow ideas from their premise, utilizing what is needed in the growing zones of your landscape for productiveness and usefulness. Being aware of wet or dry areas and emphasizing the use of native plants or plants adapted to our area – plants with multiple uses, like growing bamboo for staking poles and fruit trees that provide food and shade, fruit-growing hedges, to fill our practical needs.
The 12 design principles are: 1 – Observe and Interact; year round, study you property, pay attention to where the wind, rain, sun, visiting animals engage with nature to suit our particular situation. 2 – Catch and store energy; developing systems that collect free stuff like sun, water, seeds, organic matter, to use in times of need. 3 – Obtain a yield. 4 – Apply self-regulation and accept feedback. 5 – Use and value renewable resources and services. 6 – Produce no waste. 7 – Design from patterns to details. 8 – Integrate rather than segregate, plants that work together to support each other. 9 – Use small and slow solutions 10 – Use and value diversity. 11 – Use edges and value the marginal. 12 – Creatively use and respond to changes. Watch and intervene at the right time.
Seven layers, one of the tools used, concerns the relationship between component parts: canopy trees, understory, shrubs, herbaceous plants, soil surface groundcovers, Rhizosphere, root layers in the soil, fungi, insects, nematodes, worms, etc., then the vertical layers, vines.
“Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against, nature; protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system” – Bill Mollison.
Australia was rapidly growing in the use of industrial-agriculture methods that were highly dependent on non-renewal resources, poisoning land and water, reducing bio-diversity, removing billions of tons of topsoil from fertile landscape. Permaculture was their answer to solving the situation in 1978.
The Earth is a living, breathing entity. Without ongoing care and nurturing there will be consequences too big to ignore. We need to care for the Earth, people (look after self, kin and community), and fair share means, set limits and redistribute surplus, comprising the three permacultural concepts.
Every city has a group or guild to become involved in locally. I first read about this when the Edible Gardening Club in Lehigh had a June meeting with Brad Ward of ECHO speaking on permaculture. Brad is an Agriculture Technical Consultant at ECHO who speaks on “Using Permaculture to Reform International Development.” Going online will inform anyone desiring to learn more, to join and how it would apply to local needs. ECHO presents the newest, latest horticulture practices and we can save gasoline having as much as possible in our reach.
Reminders – Sunday, Nov. 16, will be the first hibiscus sale without a show at the Salvation Army on McGregor Boulevard from 2-5 p.m. These are the showy ones that can’t be bought at the box stores. On Nov. 22, the Fort Myers/ Lee County Garden Council will be having an open house at Virginia Avenue, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., along with the Garden Market available across the street at the Edison/Ford Estates that continues through Sunday, Nov. 23. The Annual Bonsai Society Show, workshops and Seminars will also be on Nov. 22 and 23 at the Lee County Election Center on U.S. 41.
If you are inclined to enjoy forest bathing, Conservation 20/20 will be having guided tours every Saturdays during the winter months, 9-10:30 a.m. Parking is free, no fee or registration is required. Dec. 6 is at Prairie Pines, 184400 North Tamiami Trail, North Fort Myers.
Find a tree to linger under, thank it for clean air and de-stress.
Joyce Comingore is a Master Gardener, hibiscus enthusiast and member of the Garden Club of Cape Coral.