Permaculture Plants
Rethinking Agricultural Design to Include a Diverse Range of Species
Agricultural methods are more about the ease of using machines and less to do with gaining maximum production. Smart choice of plants helps us to redress this balance.
Permaculture is a wide ranging design process which mimics nature and aims to help provide a sustainable future. It doesn’t only refer to agriculture however the smart use of plants is a large feature in permaculture systems. Ideally permaculture plants will have multiple uses and be low maintenance, preferably hardy perennials. Edible forest gardens are an example of this permaculture principle taken to its furthest, but the idea of recreating more natural systems to cut out most of the work of caring for and gaining a harvest from plants can be applied to even the smallest vegetable garden.
Although organic gardening is not the same thing as permaculture, it is an important part of it. Pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers can hardly be considered as part of a natural system! So the placing of plants in permaculture design is very important to prevent build up of pests, as is the use of plants which don’t produce edible parts but do attract beneficial insects. Another consideration is how the physical structures of plants can fit together in the environment. Modern agriculture favours monoculture crops as these are easiest to apply pesticides to and also to harvest with machinery, however they can only occupy one niche in the habitat, and permaculture aims to occupy as many niches as possible and thereby increase the overall productivity of the land even though each individual crop may produce less than in monoculture. This means thinking in 3 dimensions and layering plant types so that each occupies a different niche on the same piece of land.
An example of this would be a sparse tree canopy with an under-layer of fruit bushes and a lower layer of shade loving vegetables. We can see this sort of stacking in effect in nature in real forest and as well as occurring vertically it can also occur in time. A good example of this is also native woodland, where the spring bulbs take advantage of the time before the trees come into leaf to complete their life cycle. The trees do not start to produce green leaves until later in the spring because otherwise the leaves may be vulnerable to damage from frost. These systems also have the benefit of being stable and having almost total ground cover (preventing invasion of other species and also helping retain water and nutrients.
So if we design our food production systems and backyard vegetable gardens in this permaculture way we can increase production per unit area as well as decreasing the amount of work required in weeding, watering etc.
Nature’s Fertiliser
Everywhere around us, decomposers break down dead matter and provide nutrients for plants. By not digging the soil over, we encourage the action of these decomposers and the soil becomes much more fertile. There are also plants such as legumes (peas, beans etc) that fix nitrogen from the air and make it available to other plants. Including legumes into mixed planting will help build up the nutrients in the soil with no need for work from you! Pea/bean trellises can be used in place of the tree layer in order to provide the upper plant canopy whilst also improving the soil. Shade loving plants such as soft fruits, herbs and leaf vegetables can then be grown underneath this canopy to provide the second layer, and a ground hugging layer of clover (also a nitrogen fixer) can be used to prevent weeds as prevent water loss.
So next time you are doing some gardening, take a moment to plan what you want to do and try to multi-crop and make the plants you choose as useful as possible and consider how they can be planted with other plants to make the most use of your land possible. Remember useful doesn’t have to just mean edible, it can also mean that a plant provides valuable shade, attracts beneficial insects, can be used for firewood, a wind break or even as a forage crop for your pet rabbit!
