Permaculture

What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is a term coined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren that comes from combining the words ‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’ to create an idea completely new. This “permanent agriculture” philosophy of design incorporates a vast array of diverse practices. It can be applied to styles of living ranging from large-scale farms to even a one-bedroom apartment.

Permaculture design focuses on the relationships between the world's natural forces and then emulates those processes to create a more bio-diverse and autonomous system. The goal is to create biological systems that can consistently produce large yields and maintain homeostasis without any human interactions. By observing and emulating their natural processes, humans can make more for themselves while contributing less time and energy.

With more intention to the initial conception and construction of your agricultural system, you can vastly reduce the amount of planting, irrigation, and fertilizing your system will need. Permaculture is an efficient and environmentally responsible way of growing your food. While permaculture principles are best applied during the initial phases of building your garden, they can be used to improve an agricultural system no matter what stage of development it’s in.

It's important to note that permaculture is a design concept as well as an agricultural practice. Not all permaculture design is centered around producing food for humans, but on creating a bio-diverse system that is resilient and self-serving by nature.

Permaculture is founded on a set of ethics that are applicable to us in every aspect of our lives. It is a philosophy and lifestyle carried with us not just in our gardens but in our homes and communities as well.

The Three Ethical Standards

Care for the Earth

This standard is about ensuring our actions are beneficial to the environment and the earth as a whole. There are very pragmatic reasons for doing this, as respect for the land you inhabit helps ensure that the land will persist in the years to come for yourself and for future generations. Think of it like an investment for your children or the children of your loved ones.

This applies to not using harsh chemicals that poison your garden, avoiding mono-cropping that robs the soil of its nutrients and potency, and growing a diverse array of vegetation to help strengthen its resilience against pathogens or natural disasters.

In your home, the application of this principle should be more obvious. There are simple solutions like recycling, turning lights and faucets off when unused, or even just composting your food scraps. And then there are also more radical applications like rainwater catchment, solar panel installation, or even passive solar house design.

Care For People

This standard focuses on the fundamentals people need to survive and thrive sustainably. In the modern day, if a system is going to sustain people, it will need water harvesting, food production, comfortable shelter, waste management, renewable energy, and some sort of sewage processing.

A system can also settle with simple food production, or another would like to focus on strengthening the interpersonal relationships within their community. There are endless ways your system could be designed to benefit the individuals residing in it, but it’s still important to remember that’s not the only goal of a permaculture system.

Fair Share (Returning Surplus)

Fair Share embodies the philosophy that we only take from the system what we need, and we leave the remaining surplus for the system itself. For example, if your apple trees are fruiting, then you would only want to take as much as your family could reasonably eat and leave the rest for the animals or to decompose and enrich the soil.

This applies to energy consumption as well. Using solar power instead of being on the grid or utilizing rainwater catchment are both great ways for you to ensure that you’re only taking your fair share.

Permaculture Zones

Permaculture, as a design philosophy, is very focused on practical efficiency. There are countless tasks to be done and resources to be harvested around your system, and to help maximize your efficiency, it’s advised that you designate the different areas of the system into strategically placed zones.

Zone 0

This is your house, considered the center of your system. It does not have to be the geographical center of the property, but it is where you will spend most of your time, and where you go to and from when traveling to the other zones. 

Zone 1

This area will be filled with tasks and resources requiring frequent visits. Often you will fill zone 1 with herbal gardens, chicken coups, potagers, or any part of your system you’ll go to most often. I suggest placing this zone directly outside your kitchen for maximum efficiency, as you most likely harvest herbs or eggs while cooking.

Zone 2

The tasks that must be done only a few times a week are best placed in Zone 2. Just slightly farther from your house than Zone 1, this location is ideal for any livestock, market gardens, annual gardens, compost piles, sheds, and barns.

Zone 3

Often called the “farming zone,” zone 3 is the perfect space for allocating the tasks and resources that will only require your attention every so often. Mushrooms, beehives, fruit/nut trees, grains, and pastureland are ideal for Zone 3.

Zone 4

This is your “semi-wild zone.” It is best used for wood harvesting, hunting, fishing, and forestry. This zone can be closer to the edges of your property as you won’t need to travel to it regularly.

Zone 5

This is your “true-wild zone.” It is best used for conservation, observation, and exploration. If you have a large enough property to have a Zone 5, it would be the perfect place to travel for an overnight camping trip.

While you could technically continue beyond zone 5, each location this far from your Zone 0 will be too similar to zone 5 in purpose for me to make note of it.

The Permaculture Principles

 

There are 12 principles to apply to designing or redesigning any permaculture system. It’s best to follow them in sequential order, but not necessary. The basis of permaculture is sustainability, and each one of these principles brings a vital aspect of that sustainability into your system. I suggest understanding each of the 12 principles to ensure you and your environment reap the benefits of this design philosophy to its fullest.

1. Observe and Interact

It’s best if you observed the behavior of the natural forces that interact with your land before designing any component of the system. You should be familiar with the weather, where the rainfall collects and flows, where the sun shines most, and where the wind blows the hardest. Done correctly, this process can take well over a year, as you’ll want to see how the weather affects the terrain during each season. Understanding these interactions is incredibly informative for the design of your system. Where the soil is the richest is where you’ll place your garden. Where the rainfall flows down the hill is where you’ll want swales for your fruit/nut trees. Every decision should be predicated on observing the interactions of the land.

2. Catch and Store Energy

Countless renewable resources interact with your land that you can use for your benefit. Plant sun-loving plants where they get the most exposure, install solar panels to power your home or even design your house to benefit from passive solar heating in the winter. Similarly, you can install rainwater catchment systems or divert rainfall to water certain crops.

3. Obtain a Yield

When you begin thinking about the benefits of the entire system, your idea of a ‘yield’ begins to broaden dramatically. While the food you produce to feed yourself and your community is vital to your permaculture system, you must also see things that benefit your other plants and animals to be just as essential. Weeds that can be used as medicine or fed to your chickens can be considered a yield. Flowers that provide pollen for your bees are a yield. Organic material for your compost pile, eggs, meats, dairy, and even manure can all be considered a yield on your permaculture property.

4. Self-Regulate and Accept Feedback

To ensure the system works as efficiently and effectively as possible for you and your environment, it’s essential to assess and reassess what is strengthening the system and what is not. Be open to making the necessary adjustments to improve what isn’t working, relocating or omitting specific elements depending on your system’s needs.

5. Use and Value Renewables

A primary focus of permaculture has always been sustainability, and there will always be new and creative ways to reuse materials to benefit the whole system. All kinds of renewable resources are available to us, and while solar energy might be the one you’re most familiar with, it’s far from the only option. Wind energy may not yield as much power as a solar panel array, but installing an additional turbine can act as another energy source even when the sun goes down. Hydropower is another viable option, generating energy from flowing water. Geothermal may be incredibly situational but is an endless renewable resource to those who have access to it. You can even produce your own biofuel from waste vegetation oil or animal fats. The options can be a little overwhelming, but it’s important to note that even imploring one of these options can help both your wallets and your environment.

6. Produce No Waste

This one seems both obvious and impossible. While in the modern age, the notion of producing no trash seems far-fetched, there are many creative ways of repurposing and reusing different materials to significantly reduce the amount of waste we contribute to a landfill. The easiest step is to utilize your food scraps. Many undesirable portions of your food can be fed to eager pigs and chickens, and if you don’t have any animals, you can always throw your food scraps away in a compost pile. You can reuse greywater to irrigate different soil beds, reuse packaging, repair broken tools and appliances before replacing them, and much much more. 

7. Design From Patterns to Details

If you’ve spent sufficient time observing the patterns and details of your property, you will now be able to incorporate that knowledge to benefit the overall design of your system. You can recognize where the sun shines the most year-round and place your solar panels accordingly. You’ve learned what channel the rainfall flows through the heaviest, so you can put your water catchment barrel where it will most effectively. And you know the paths that you take most frequently to and from your home and can plant your herbal garden appropriately. Recognizing the patterns and details is one of the most critical aspects of designing an efficient system.

8. Integrate Rather than Segregate

Unlike mono-cropping, permaculture gardens work to incorporate as many different elements of the system as possible. Set up your chicken coup next to your greenhouse so both can share their warmth during the cold nights. Use companion planting to stave off certain pests, increase their production, or even increase the flavor of specific plants, like when basil is planted next to a tomato. Or integrate a mobile chicken coup to follow the grazing pattern of your dairy cows to help eat the worm grubs growing in the cow pies and help those pies be broken up more evenly into the soil. The interactions of various species in nature are limitless. It is encouraged to express as much creativity as possible when working to incorporate different elements of your system.

9. Use Small, Slow Solutions

As much as some of us want to overhaul our systems with large-scale time-consuming changes. Improving your system one simple step at a time is far more sustainable and effective. As found in nature, these small but consistent changes lead to a much more effective and lasting change in the long run. If you want to revitalize a dried-up soil bed or plant an entire apple orchard; the changes will not happen overnight. It’s better to start by growing a small garden than it is to begin a large-scale farm from scratch.

10. Use and Value Diversity

A prosperous and resilient system incorporates as many forms of life as possible. If you plant a wide array of crops, you increase the chances that you’ll be able to eat come time to harvest, even if several of your crops fail. A biodiverse system not only leads to a more assured yield and a healthier, more diverse diet for yourself but will also benefit the differing plants, bugs, and animals that have migrated into your system. Imagine a diverse garden with beautiful flowers, countless pollinator bugs, and unique birds that transform your garden from a homestead into an oasis.

11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal

In sustainable practices, we strive to utilize every resource available to us. The fringes of your system may seem a simple place to lay your fence line, but when used correctly, it has the potential to be so much more. On any homestead, you will most likely find unused corners or fence lines with seemingly no significance. But these are perfect locations for planting trees to shade your grazers or fruit-producing shrubs for you and your animals to enjoy. Perhaps your garden fence could even be used to grow productive vine plants such as grapes. Your system's fringe areas allow you the perfect opportunity to think outside the box, quite often literally. 

12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change

Last, you must always work with nature and never against her. Change is the only true constant in life, and the permaculture design recognizes this truth. No two growing seasons will ever be the same, and as a gardener, you must be prepared to work with this change if you want to be successful. If your summers are getting hotter and hotter, switch to growing more heat-loving plants. Similarly, you could plant your more sensitive lettuce and cabbages in the fall when the weather suits their needs.