Permaculture Vegetable Garden

permaculture vegetable garden

Sarah, you would need to write a whole book just to cover the areas you list.

Permaculture is Permanent (agri) Culture.
So plants/trees/vegetables and herbs are essential parts of the garden. The idea is that you and your family become as auto efficient as possible, working with nature not against it. Using the least amount of human energy to provide a yield whilst enriching, not depleting the ecosystem. Permaculture is about creating beneficial relationships with plants, animals and other people.

So for example connections are made between different components. The chicken for example produces eggs, meat, feathers, manures as it walks around, it scratches so it weeds, eats bugs, they breed so repopulate, they free range. A chicken tractor (moveable pen) can be used so that chickens clear weedy plots of land for you and fertilize it. The tractor is then moved along to the next plot for clearing and fertilizing.

The bigger picture is that each component in the ecosystem is beneficial and reliant on the other. So animals are essential for the ecosystem. In my opinion, they do not have to be domesticated animals, they can be wild animals, but then I am a Vegan so my views differ from the majority of Permaculturists’ views on keeping animals.

Regarding Habitat: Permaculture is to live ethically and sustainably so we have to understand eco systems and how the natural world works. The key is to understand that we are a single system; not separate. Whatever we do locally affects other people and the environment globally. Local solutions provide the best answers, we have different climates, soils, flora and fauna. Different needs, wants, tradition and cultures. But by acting locally we must keep an eye on the Horizon by limiting the damage on the environment and people globally. For example Global Warming affects us all.

Permaculture seeks to design ways of meeting man’s needs by creating permanent high-yielding agricultural ecosystems. It is a solution aimed at how people can live on the smallest amount of land possible. The natural landscape (the rest, the wilderness is then not used by man) it is then left alone to heal and so it functions holistically.

Local responsibility ensures that people become as auto sufficient as possible both individually and as trading communities. Man is responsible for meeting his own needs for fuel, food and dealing with his own outputs and wastes.

Timber is grown on site in mixed native woodlands. This enriches the local ecosystem but its basis is the opposition of meeting man’s needs by deforestation of the remaining natural and ancient forests/woodlands. Permaculture is a system of observation and least possible intervention both in terms of the home and the wilderness. It’s leading principle is that eco-systems will naturally re-balance if left alone.

Hence the desire to create high yielding ‘homesteads’ to meet man’s needs as efficiently as possible. By creating our own mini high yielding systems for our own use we use the least amount of everything possible. The Ethics of Permaculture are: Earth Care this is simply working with nature not against it. Limiting consumption and self limiting family size so there is less demand on natural systems/finite resources/finite land.

So I will give you lots of links for you to look at:

http://www.homegrowntexas.com/issues/JulAug05/index.html

http://www.abqpermaculture.net/principles.html

http://www.cat.org.uk/catpubs/pubs_content.tmpl?subdir=catpubs&sku=PUBS_25/06&key=csg

http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/permaculture/

http://www.pfaf.org/

Download the free ebook Essence of Permaculture on David Holmgren’s website.
David Holmgren & Su Dennett
Holmgren Design Services
Email info@holmgren.com.au
Website http://www.holmgren.com.au

http://www.permaculture.org.uk/

http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:NP7jlNz6oS0J:www.emissionizero.net/Introduction_to_Permaculture_-_Bill_Mollison_1981.pdf+

http://www.terrapsych.com/permaculturedesign.pdf

http://www.permacultureactivist.net/Newsletter/Permanews.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye90FxJmuw0&mode=related&search=

http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/what_you_need_t.html

http://www.sbpermaculture.org/index.html

http://www.thefarm.org/permaculture/

http://search.abc.net.au/search/search.cgi?form=simple&num_ranks=10&collection=abcall&query=Peter+Andrews&meta_v=austory&submit=Search

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