Finding Peace and Prosperity With Permaculture
Learn the basics of this harmonious form of agriculture and start growing your own food forest
Within the first few weeks of taking a permaculture course or lecture, something powerful can happen.
I saw it in the eyes of other participants having the same revelations as me.
A sense of despair and helplessness about the state of the world started to melt away as our proverbial tool belts began to fill.
“Permies” as they are affectionately called, are bootstrapper-types who focus on positive solutions to the world’s biggest problems. It turns out that the answers can be much simpler than we may have thought.
Permaculture started as an agricultural design philosophy based on mimicking nature. It was originally a portmanteau of “permanent” and “agriculture,” but has grown over the years to encompass broader meanings and applications, and is now thought of as a form of permanent culture. Permanent because it aligns with the enduring patterns of nature.
Food forests, clean energy, rainwater harvesting, and living a simpler life may not sound like the revolution you imagined, but changing how we interact with land, other creatures, and each other can transform how we spend our precious moments on this incredible planet.
Even if you don’t have a large piece of land, you can start small in your own backyard or deck by planting edible and perennial plants to give you a taste of homegrown, organic food. Even one plant in one pot is a meaningful start.
If you do, you might start to see the world as full of potential. By installing an edible landscape that continues to produce more food each year—thereby reducing food costs and trips to the grocery store—you become part of a desperately needed transformation.
So, what can you do at your home?
The answer is far longer than the space of one article will allow for, but this will get you growing in the right direction.
Learn Your Space
Permaculture starts with observing and interacting with your own outdoor space. Your goal is to align with nature, and to do that, you must first observe it. How and where does the sun move at different times of the year? Where are your hot spots and cool corners? Where does water from melting snow or rain tend to collect? What is already growing? Can you identify the plants, insects, and other creatures that share your space?
This is a good time to start with basic plant identification to ensure you aren’t pulling up valuable edibles. Take some pictures so you can look back on how far you’ve grown. When I started my garden, the ecosystem consisted of cigarette butts, dog waste, and ants. Now I am gratified by how far my small yard has come.
Start With the Soil
If your soil isn’t fertile, have some delivered from a local landscape center or add compost to give it nutrients and water-holding capacity. Everything begins with your soil—and sun.
But how will you know what “good” soil even looks like?
Dig into your ground and take a look. Is it dark and full of tiny insects and fungi? That’s a good sign. If it seems like sand or silt with little else, you’ll want to create an environment for beneficial microbes and tiny worms called nematodes.
You can do that by adding organic matter such as compost, worm castings, and mulch.
Grow Some Dirt
If you don’t have a compost system, now is the time to start one. Regardless of your living situation, there is a composter that will work for you. If you live in an apartment, you can start a small vermicompost that uses tiny worms to accelerate the process.
Although you can only compost one to two liters of food scraps per week, it will light a spark when you see these tiny wiggly helpers turn your waste into a valuable soil amendment. If you have a larger garden, there are many options, from a tumbler that’s off the ground for tidiness to a three-bin system for high volume.
Enrich Your Ecosystem
Select a few of your favorite edible perennials. These plants come back every year. To live in harmony with your ecosystem means it’s important to know what already grows there. Edible perennials and plants that are indigenous to the area are ideal.
There’s so much to learn from nature, so accept early on that you won’t ever know everything and that’s OK. Also accept that you’ll make mistakes. Just come from a place of honoring the land and caring for the living beings you share it with, and you’ll surely be on the right track.
Start by planting higher-maintenance plants in the areas closest to where you often walk and work your way outwards to low-maintenance plants such as garlic.
Plant more than you think you’ll need and share the extras with neighbors and friends.
Plan for the Seasons Ahead
Want to extend your growing season? Get a small greenhouse for those cooler, darker days in the spring and fall. Put it in a place where it’ll get plenty of sunlight during early spring, when the sun hugs closer to the horizon in northern climates.
Be careful, though, as even unheated greenhouses can get extremely hot. Keep a close eye and make sure it has airflow.
A greenhouse can give you a feeling of having more control over your situation, which is also good for calming stress.
Seek to ‘Stack Functions’
In permaculture, we talk about “stacking functions,” which means we try to work as little as possible and ensure our systems do more than one thing. This is how nature works and it’s what makes permaculture so enriching.
To do this, consider the cycles of your ecosystem. Are you planting trees in an area where the falling leaves will provide easy mulch for the next year, or do you have to rake them up and move them elsewhere?
Permaculture aims to minimize inputs—including labor—and generate useful outputs that feed the system. Maybe you’ll want to select a coppice tree that keeps growing so you can cut it back and use the wood for compost.
You can also plant assorted flowers that’ll bloom throughout the season. This means you’ll have an abundance of pollinators and birds; endless entertainment; flowers to give to friends; and food, such as edible nasturtiums.
Flowers also attract people and can spur interactions with neighbors, which creates opportunities to build community connections.
Engage in Outdoor Activity and Resiliency
People want and need to be outdoors more. And our outdoors can better support the people in our community. In my hometown, some friends and I have used permaculture principles to plant edible food forests on small plots of city property.
These public gardens require minimal upkeep and offer residents a place to get free fresh produce.
We all have this inspiring opportunity to make our own hometowns into something better, more thoughtful, and more resilient.
So if your gut is telling you to grow food, trust it. Those are your survival instincts.
The crazy thing is, you may also actually enjoy the simpler life.
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