Permie Notes: Permaculture Principles to Ponder
Permaculture is a process, a movement, and an incredible way of sustainably farming to preserve the Earth. Design-wise, permaculture offers twelve principles to guide you in how you tend to the land and utilize the naturally-occurring patterns in nature to inform you on how to create your garden. Permaculture is grounded in three core values that illustrate the ethos of working for the land: care of the Earth, care of people, and fair share. As a movement, permaculture and sustainability go hand in hand, and both are intrinsic to environmental justice and combating climate change. I wanted to offer you a brief breakdown of the twelve guiding principles of permaculture design to assist you in applying them to your adventures of home gardening.
1. Observe and interact
Two cucumbers that merged beneath the soil and grew together, a great sign of a healthy garden.
A bumblebee sits atop a cosmos flower; take the time to notice the insects and wildlife in your microclimate.
Two carrots that intertwined during growth.
By observing the immediate environment, noticing all the details of where the light spills into your garden, what insects and animals roam, and what is naturally growing in your space, you can learn a lot about how the space functions at an optimal level. Valuing what we observe is essential; nature has many patterns that result in a flourishing abundance of plant life and food.
2. Catch and store energy
Solar panels are a great source of renewable energy for not only your garden, but your entire home as well.
Hydropower plants help to generate renewable energy via the natural water that flows through our planet.
Develop systems that will use and reuse the natural resources you have at your disposal. Notice the available resources in your garden that occur naturally, then utilize them to your garden’s advantage. Installing solar panels, a grey-water system, or building swales can be fantastic ways to catch and store energy.
3. Obtain a yield
A beautiful and bountiful harvest of carrots and beets.
Harvest of lemon thyme, lavender, and chamomile.
It is crucial to reap what you sow, literally. Ensure that with all the work you put in, all you do for your garden results in rewards and plenty of harvests. It is the reciprocal relationship of sustainability, you give, and then you receive.
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
Despite this mesclun and arugula mix being edible, the stems have ‘bolted’ and begun to flower, meaning the nutritional value and flavor will diminish. Sometimes this occurs early in the season due to high temperatures or lack of watering.
It is vital to practice self-control and accountability in tending to the Earth because it empowers us to regulate our work while optimizing our natural systems. Feedback will inform us of what is working and what isn’t.
5. Use and value renewable resources and services
Rather than purchasing new houseplants every time you feel the itch, you can propagate your current houseplants in soil or water.
Changing out standard lightbulbs for LED lightbulbs can save a lot of energy in your home and be a better source of light for indoor plants.
For the longevity of the planet and our species, we must release our control over nature’s resources and instead utilize renewable sources of energy. By placing a higher value on renewable energy, we refocus our attention on reducing the harmful effects of overusing natural resources and in turn can begin to regenerate the earth.
6. Produce no waste
Using kitchen vegetable scraps in your compost is a fantastic way to avoid waste and utilize every bit of unused food to supplement the garden.
By reducing the amount of waste you create, your carbon footprint shrinks and your garden expands.
Waste not, want not. Reducing our carbon footprint by making sustainable changes in our lives is living from a conscious perspective. Waste is one of the biggest challenges our planet faces, so investing in doing the maintenance to eliminate waste is essential.
7. Design from patterns to details
I designed and planned out this gardens’ crop rotation prior to planting any starts or seeds in order to create a balanced and thriving ecosystem.
An example of using permaculture principles in a design to get the overall look of how to layout the garden, allowing for new details to emerge in the process.
Step back and observe the patterns that already exist in nature and society. Remember to work from the big picture first, which will help inform how to create logical and efficient systems. This principle is an excellent reminder to look at the garden as a whole ecosystem rather than many individual crops growing for consumption.
8. Integrate rather than segregate
Rather than weeding the oxalis out of the ground for the garden, I used it as a cover crop to retain moisture and increase the health of the whole ecosystem.
Integrate your communities, work together as one, value diversity, and engage in building systems that work in harmony. By working as a whole-body tending to a whole ecosystem, the work becomes more manageable, more consistent, and results in incredible rewards.
9. Use small and slow solutions
This zone of a garden has a completed installation of three small raised beds for herbs, with mulch laid out underneath. You can see the zone in the back is in the first step of preparation with cardboard and bricks laid out to prevent any weed growth and to level out the ground.
This zone is now in the next phase with new larger raised beds built and installed for vegetables. Since we had time to level out the ground and prep the space, we have plenty of herbs already growing while we plan out these fresh veggie beds.
Step by step is a valuable process and a lot more manageable than having too many big projects at a time. By working towards smaller goals and celebrating each project completion, there is more opportunity to use local resources and attain more sustainable results.
10. Use and value diversity
A raised bed with a diversity of plants intermingling, including nasturtium, beets, leeks, onions, and radishes.
Incorporating diversity within our social ecosystem is essential in building community and creating an inclusive environment.
Just like in nature, diversity is crucial to maintaining a healthy, balanced ecosystem. Diversity works by reducing vulnerability to environmental threats and potential harms in the surrounding environment. By incorporating variety in our designs, we can learn new things about growth and life and utilize our surrounding environment to our advantage.
11. Use edges and value the marginal
This edge of a garden is right next to the street and has a lot of cover crop already growing, so we utilized container gardening in this space to maximize our space and grow as much as possible.
The interface between things is where the most interesting things take place. By utilizing edges into our design practices, we expand our possibility of available resources and knowledge. For example, we could extend a community garden by using untended land nearby.
12. Creatively use and respond to change
Urban environments do not always offer enough space to grow, so this epic design in Italy used the available city space and created a much greener environment.
Installing renewable energy resources to utilize the natural environment is crucial to responding to change and maintaining an ecosystem. This windmill is used to power part of a farm.
Change is the only constant we know. Being resilient and allowing change to adapt and flow with our designs will prove to be viable and sustainable throughout time.
These principles are a unique and robust guiding set of values to live by and implement in our gardens. It often takes time to incorporate these principles into practice, but just as permaculture asserts, slow and small growth is preferred. This is just a tiny taste of what permaculture teaches and practices. If you are interested in learning more, I have included a shortlist of additional resources you could check out.
PERMACULTURE RESOURCES
https://permacultureprinciples.com is a great resource for learning more about permaculture, sustainability, and the guiding principles discussed in this post.
Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, Second Edition by Toby Hemenway is one of my favorite permie books to have around. It is very detailed in how to design your garden, how to build great soil, and all the ins and outs of managing a food forest style garden.
Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison is one of the big classics in this field. Mollison is one of the founding fathers of permaculture-style farming and is quite knowledgeable in all aspects of agriculture.
Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren is also an excellent resource. Holmgren is another pioneer of permaculture and has a lot of experience in the field.
https://www.permaculturenews.org is another great online resource and community hub for permaculture farmers and gardeners around the world.