Most people who are passionate about living sustainably and in harmony with nature will eventually stumble upon the permaculture system, it is hard not to, it is a worldwide phenomenon and it is growing!
For more information about what permaculture is, go to this link: What is permaculture and how we can apply it.
If you are reading this, then you are one of those people. Some of you eventually study permaculture, and then graduate, you go through what we call the “permaculture effect,” a sense of deep inner change and fulfillment, and a passion that follows from there, going out and doing a. difference, to stop being part of the problem and be part of the solution!
How to start your permaculture garden?
The simple answer is, in your own backyard (if you have one).
If you do not have a backyard, a patio garden or even a small garden on the balcony can be productive and make a difference, every little effort to help the planet makes a difference, even serves to maintain your connection with nature.
If you don’t even have a balcony, there is the possibility to take part in a community garden, get your own plot, and garden there. In some areas, the waiting list for community gardens can be long, while in other areas, there is free space in surplus with no one claiming it.
Another possibility is to volunteer to design and maintain a friend’s backyard garden if they are not interested in gardening and are not using it. Where there is a will, there is a way!
One of the important things you learn in permaculture is design, because permaculture is ultimately a multidisciplinary design system.
If you’ve done the course, you should be able to handle a basic layout, but that’s not where people get stuck. The biggest obstacles are taking the first step, believing in yourself, believing that you can do it, trusting that it will work.
In this article, we assume that you are already familiar with the natural principles of permaculture design, and we will show you a systematic way to end the entire design and construction process of something that is manageable and not so scary.
This approach was learned all first hand, turning it first into my garden project for three months full time that transformed from an average backyard in my Melbourne home to a permaculture garden demonstration that is living proof of the concept, which has been seen on various tours of the garden by hundreds of people since it was first built two years ago.
By sharing this information, we hope to encourage more permaculture graduates to start one!
1. What is a permaculture garden?
The first step in building a permaculture garden is trying to figure out what a permaculture garden is for you. This may sound strange, but the fact is that there is no one way to build any type of garden, and you will have to have some idea of what you want to create.
Having a final design means that you have something to build, it ensures that you have put your ideas on paper, and to do so, it has to have some kind of structure and shape. If you are entertained by vague ideas, you could end up procrastinating and never designing anything, much less building something tangible.
Design encourages decision, some like to leave their options open, which means nothing is done. There are people who say that they cannot start building there because in the future they could do something else elsewhere, so through indecision nothing will ever happen.
Decide what you can do, and want to do, right now, not in the possible distant future, but right now, and then make the commitment to do it on a certain day and time, preferably now. If you postpone tasks and projects to an unspecified future date, chances are it won’t get done.
Any garden designed with the principles of permaculture, emulates the patterns in nature. By definition, it is a permaculture garden. What needs to be decided at the outset is the degree to which permaculture principles are incorporated into the garden design.
The size of the garden is dictated in part by this, the scale of the project can be anywhere from a container garden to the balcony all the way through a vast food forest.
You have to decide “how much permaculture” you want to incorporate into the design, whether your garden looks like a traditional garden, with some permaculture design features, or a big one with everything involved.
2. Principles of permaculture – emulating nature.
The next step is to decide which Permaculture design principles you want to use, or to what degree you want to emphasize them. Also, look at how you will choose to emulate nature in Permaculture design. Here are some points to consider:
Soil preservation – how do you intend to protect the soil?
- Organic straw / mulch, ground cover plants, etc.
- Trying to keep bare soil in the garden is against nature, because nature aims to fill the space with anything to protect the soil, and the best plants that do this are pioneer plants, often disparagingly referred to as ” bad herbs “.
- Bare soil is compacted by rain, which will degrade the soil structure as well as wash off the top layer.
- Don’t dig into the design, it preserves the soil as removing the soil destroys the soil structure and exposes the deeper layers of the soil to ultraviolet light from the sun and heat, which kills the soil biota (living things in the earth).
- Grow beds can help maintain good soil, as long as they are of a size that you can easily reach so that you never have to enter garden beds.
- Putting your feet on the ground destroys the structure of soils by compaction, preventing the penetration of air and water to the roots of the plants, which affects the health of the plant, restricts the growth of the plant and reduces the productivity.
Rebuilding the soil.
If the soil is quite well dead, containing little organic matter and humus, if it is compacted or damaged in any way, it must be repaired. Soil construction activities should remedy the situation.
You can use plants with deep taproots like fenugreek and dandelion to break up the soil.
If absolutely necessary, you can dig or fork the ground, just once, to relax, then place an organic mulch to cover and protect it.
Composting in the soil can be used to restore life to it, either by using compost piles, or more easily and quickly, using the leaf composting technique, it would be advisable to learn how to make your own compost or compost to have greater amounts of good rich soil for cultivation.
The use of green manures, cultivated plants and then cut afterwards, to generate a large amount of biomass to make a mulch in the soil, which will rot down to create humus. Fava beans do well in colder climates, and they add nitrogen to the soil, as do all legumes (kidney bean or pea family). Any plant that grows strong in the year works well; you just have to cut them before they give seeds if they are not vegetables.
Do not step on the ground in the garden beds, do not use designs where you have to dig, use earthworms to do the excavation, they dig much more efficiently than you.
Stacked plants.
Stacking in a vertical space . Plants grow in nature in a “stack” design, with trees forming the canopy, shrubs below them, then herbaceous plants below them, and ground cover plants at the lowest level, with root crops under the ground. and vines growing vertically in the background.
The use of this design allows a greater use of space and greater productivity for a garden area.
Successive sowing.
Stacks on time. Nature regenerates plant growth to protect the soil – plants are replaced while others die.
If you organize newly planted plants while existing plants are reaching the end of their fruiting or productive cycle, you can “stack the plants in time” to get extended crops throughout the growing season, without having bare spaces in the garden. , or wait a long time for the plants to bear fruit.
Edge effect.
In nature, the extremes of any ecosystem, where the environment transitions from one form to another, are the most productive.
If you want to emphasize the principle of the edge effect, you may want to go for curved garden beds, mandala beds, or simply use a large number of small rectangular beds.
Microclimate.
Groups of plants planted together create differences in temperature, shade and humidity compared to the surrounding area, better to support the growth of the plant.
Use plants that grow together to protect each other from the elements (wind, sun, etc.). This will help them survive and create a sturdier garden. Remember, a plant alone in a bare garden bed is like a man standing in the middle of a desert, under a hot blazing sun.
Vertical Gardening.
Plants don’t just grow in the ground; they can grow on vertical surfaces to make better use of space. Here are some ideas:
- Various vines such as grapes, kiwi, passion fruit can be grown on trellises, arches, fences, and pergolas.
- Cucurbits, such as pumpkins, melons, watermelons, zucchini, squash, loofahs can grow vertically up to a wire mesh (mesh closely spaced and large enough for the hands to fit through) supported by poles.
- Trellis trees can be used along fences or narrow spaces to maximize the productivity of large unused vertical spaces.
The water gardens.
Aquatic ecosystems are the most productive ecosystems of all, and they have many design functions.
They can be used to grow edible aquatic plants, such as water chestnuts, Sagittarius, lotus, Vietnamese mint, and many others.
- It can support aquatic or amphibian life, that is, fish or frogs.
- Large ponds can support ducks.
- A pond can be used as a collection area for water from a reed bed filter system used to clean recycled gray water.
To complement the information, you can consult how to make natural and homemade fungicides and pesticides for the garden.
Monocultures, poly-crops and companion plants.
Nature favors biodiversity, and a variety of plants mixed together in the right combinations can support each other in growth and increase productivity.
Crop association can be used to stimulate plant growth and productivity, increase resistance to pests and diseases, hide your plants from pests, or mask their smell to make them more difficult for pests to find and attract beneficial insects. that act as pollinators, such as bees, or attract beneficial predatory insects that feed on pest insects, such as ladybugs, lacewings, and hoverflies.
Monocultures make plants more accessible to pests, and avoid the use of companion plants or stacking plants. Emulate nature by mixing plants, if you have to make any effort to find them, so will the pests that feed on them.
Annual plant monocultures take more work, effort, and record keeping, as planting a single type annually in the same location for more than one season will lead to nutrient depletion and susceptibility to pests and diseases.
The choice is either to carry out crop rotation and keep an exact record of what grows where and when, and where each side goes, or you can just take the easier natural approach, embrace polyculture, and grow everything in. everywhere.
3. Starting the Garden.
One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in building a permaculture garden is starting the actual construction. People can often agonize over the design for months to get it perfect, then come to a complete halt when it comes to starting the project.
The critical human factor is motivation, overcoming the inertia of facing a great challenge. A big challenge is easier when it is broken down into smaller, more manageable parts.
There is wisdom in the old joke “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! “I cannot overstate the importance of starting small. Even if you are ambitious and motivated, you will have to go through delays or obstacles, and there is a chance that you will see the task as too daunting and simply give up.
Selecting an easy task to complete makes it easier for you, and successful completion of each simple task will build confidence, self-esteem, and provide the impetus for the next task that follows.
Strategies to get started.
- Design big, start small– know what you ultimately want to build, use a design that encompasses all factors in all important aspects of the design, then build one small piece at a time.
- Determine the scale of the project– be it a container garden or a food forest, get a clear idea of what the large garden will be like. The factors in garden maintenance too. A full-fledged food forest closely resembles nature, requires much less maintenance and upkeep than an urban container garden. This becomes more apparent when you think about root space, water availability, plant size, etc. Remember, no one needs to water, prune, or fertilize forests.
- Determine critical design elements– including water, solar wind, garden orientation, proximity to home, plant placement according to needs. Also, remember to plant in the correct season, that is, not in the middle of summer.
- Modular design– a very effective way to build a large garden is to start small, using repeating units (including associations) that can be easily replicated to expand the garden to the desired size.
- Design Element Priority Size– A key construction priority is to put the largest design elements in first, then design around it. For example, in a stacked forest design, trees go first, then watering.
Then all the smaller and smaller plants are planted around the trees and at the location of the irrigation lines. Smaller items such as cover plants are planted last.
The reason for this process is that you can’t dig tree-sized holes in garden beds, and installing watering in a plant bed is one of the most time-consuming and painful exercises if you’re trying not to damage them all. the plans in the garden beds.
In short, running the task of building a garden from scratch down to small, manageable pieces, one garden bed at a time, with a completely general layout to guide your efforts, makes it a lot less difficult than it initially seems at first. You’re more likely to start something if it looks more like a grain of sand than a mountain.
Once you’ve successfully completed a project like your own Permaculture garden, you will be able to look back and be happy to see that you put in the effort. If you have taken a Permaculture course, I urge you to take that step and put what you have learned into practice. Nothing reinforces knowledge like the practical application of it. We learn best by doing!
