Permaculture
Permaculture is a philosophy that is central to our garden practice, but is not strictly about plants nor growing. Permaculture uses systems thinking to design an environment that builds upon and works within itself. There are twelve principles to permaculture, which can be explored in this infographic:
Food Forest
Food forests are polycultural food production systems including perennial trees. We utilize a major benefit in terms of microclimate creation, and efficient use of solar energy through layering, in our garden. The angle of the sun in the garden allows us to place bushes under trees, while both still receive full sunlight. In addition, this structure faces the wind, protecting the garden through the creation of an improved microclimate, with slower movement of air. Trees are nutrient accumulators, providing energy to soil life, powering the digestion of rock particles into available nutrients and then returning this to the soil surface as leaf litter. Compared to plain garden beds, our food forest has more shelter and food for birds, a greater variety of fruits, a different pattern of labor, and significantly different growth patterns.
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Mulching
We usually mulch liberally, using compost, fresh weeds, or grasses to cover the soil surface. Mulch creates a microclimate on the soil surface, encouraging life closer to the surface. The sun reaches less of the soil surface, meaning fewer weed seeds sprout and the soil is less damaged by drying. Organic matter is slowly accumulated by the soil biology, storing the more easily absorbed water. Our practice of mulching reduces the work in the garden, while improving the function of the system.
Tillage Reduction - “Mulch-Based No-Till”
We aim to minimize soil disturbance in the garden, to reduce disruption of important cycles. Tillage is the physical processing of the soil surface, and cannot be entirely avoided. The “No-Till” philosophy in combination with liberal use of mulch should improve the quality of our soil and its products over time. Tillage worsens soil quality, while bringing weed seeds to the surface and encouraging their germination. We use mulching to deter weed growth, and avoid soil disturbance if possible.
Continuous Cover - Cover Crops, Green Manures
We use cover crops to maintain photosynthesis within a soil-based system, while we are not actively growing harvestable crops in these spaces. Cover crops can function as living mulch. Cover crops also hold the soil together physically with roots, and provide some competition to counter weed growth. Green manures are cover crops that provide sources of nutrition to the garden system, such as clover, which can sequester atmospheric carbon and nitrogen, before being “chopped and dropped”, creating a mulch layer.
Polyculture
We aim to maintain polycultures in the garden, for various reasons. The combination of multiple species can be more efficient in terms of total productivity in a given space. Variety of cultivars also allows us to use space and time more efficiently, with vertical layers in the food forest. Different species of plants produce different chemicals while interacting with various components of their ecosystems. Issues such as pests and diseases are much more easily contracted and spread, as agricultural systems become less stable, less resilient, larger or less diverse. Species diversity increases our gardening success. Choosing to grow previously unavailable foods can be a simple factor in varying our diet, which is often composed of very few foods.
Composting
We create compost continuously, and use it throughout the year as a nutrient rich mulch through our guilds of trees and bushes, as well as in grow beds. Collecting food waste and other organic material allows us to remove material from the waste stream, reducing local GHG emission. The improved soil that results from compost application is also more able to sequester carbon in the future. Completing the circle with compost creation allows us to appreciate the natural cycles we are a part of.
Planning and Organization allow for Experimentation, Experience, Learning and Enjoyment
Planning
We would love to be able to plan a whole meal, with all parts coming from the garden, the year before. Planning various harvests to coincide, while not the most practical way to cook, is a great way to exercise planning abilities. PANGEA is currently planning crops for harvest and consumption in fall of 2023. Some crops, such as asparagus or some fruit trees, take years to begin producing harvests, but then continue to be stable food sources for decades.
Planning is essential to our garden. We plan placement of infrastructure, tools, structure, and plants of various lifetimes. Planning in time and space allows us to efficiently use the resources available to us, such as sunlight and fertile soil. We are able to more efficiently ensure soil surface coverage, for better soil health. Tasks involving multiple people and long timelines become much simpler. We use spreadsheets to track: labor, seeds, species and specific information, planting areas within beds, and more.
Without the careful planning, and tracking throughout the gardening process, we would learn less, and be less capable of sharing our wealth of knowledge, or implementing knowledge from others.
The garden is organized spatially based on several simple principles.
We have several large sections of rectangular beds, with 9 grid sections per bed. This makes coordinating between multiple gardeners easier, and makes tracking using tables simple. These are labeled by letter and number, allowing us to track our crops with shared spreadsheets.
Across from the beds we have several sections of guilds covering the base and slope of the bank. Trees, bushes, and groundcover species are grown together, protecting the garden and providing fruit. We track these along the length of the garden, in only one dimension on our spreadsheets.
Written by:
Tomas Kehus and Xander Lai
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