Allotments 4 All

There, I said it out loud.

I feel it's of those things I ought to know and that everyone else definately knows, so I feel silly asking but hey.....we're all friends right?

I've googled the term and have several definitions ranging from planting permanent/perennial crops, growing your own and living a more traditional life - so I'm confused because there is no one definition and because if it is that simple why are there all these permaculture type courses springing up?  I mean, if that is all there is to it, aren't we already doing it??

We have a new conservation group just started on our site and permaculture is a term often used in that context - now call me cynical but is that just another way to justify a weedy, uncultivated plot?

Confused........ :-\

permaculture is a holistic term, coined by this chap
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mollison

smp1704, I went on the site you suggested and it was double dutch to me. Could you put it more simply. I am interested in all aspects of growing. I will look again at the site tomorrow as sometimes a couple of large G & T's cloud ones vision.

There are lots of great ideas  in the permaculture movement but sadly a lot of new age speak that can be a real turn off (for example  you don't have meetings but you go to a 'convergance').
Basically permaculture is an attempt to builld a more sustainable lifestyle (and that includes almost every aspect not just food production). There are several main ingredients:

Growing perennial rather than annual crops wherever possible reduces inputs (especially fertiliser and your labour). An example might be growing Good King Henry instead of spinach.

Grouping plants in 'Guilds' - that is plants that are permanent companians to each other. Example of an annual guild is the Three Sisters of sweet corn, squash and beans. Not so easy to find info on perennial guilds though in the UK. Guilds do occur naturally - just look down an old hedgerow and you will see a mix of species growing happily together year after year.  Different guilds will be suited to different climate zones and soil types too.

'Stacking' or  'Layering'  where you try and get the maximum from a given area by growing plants at different levels/heights. An example is growing a ground cover plant (like wild garlic) amongst fruit bushes (gooseberries), amongst fruit trees (cherries, etc) with maybe a climbing vine in the mix too.

Layout/orientation of paths/trees/veg plots/drainage/etc to maximise use and minimise carrying/walking, etc.

Everything in your plot should have more than a single function. So a hedge would not be just as a wind break but ideally be of useful crop bearing plants - sloe instead of hawthorn is an example.

In theory you design an integrated food production system/life style that includes plants, animals and you (and your home) so that each bit contributes to the overall efficiency. Not many of us can afford to do this starting with a couple of acres of bare land of course!

One thing I've always noticed about permaculture (apart from the fact that the people advocating are in need of a shower sometimes :D) is the rather low calorie per square foot..... in fact I can't remember any display garden I've ever seen where there looked like there was enough to keep people fuelled coming out of it..... THe New Age gobbledigook doesn't help much either though there are some good ideas..... I personally think it should be law that you use sloes for hedging......

chrisc

i agree with chrisc, about the amount of calories and that you would need a lot of land to feed yourself. the idea of forest gardening i suspect is harder to establish than it sounds and you need land, time and money, of which i have little.  i think another important point is that in the forest garden you are creating a micro climate, which should be better at surviving climate change and not dependent on anything to do with the oil industry. but i love my raised beds and rows of plants! the gardening is a part of permaculture, permaculture affects all the aspects in the way you live, work and play.

http://www.happyearth.com.au/

If you have the patience to read some of this, and the stamina to resist envy of their tropical climate, it gives quite a good impression of the mixture of ideas and lifestyle that permaculture seems to be, versus the original style of the conventional house and garden they moved into. The huge difference they made is shown in time lapse photography.

I am a bit puzzled too, but it suits my style to cram things in here and there in patches and develop a bit of a jungle, and have tall things casting useful shade for smaller things, so I am on the fringes of thinking about it.....

My plots look messy, but they are really leafy and productive even in this prolongued drought we seem to be having - huge potatoes (foliage and produce) and tall sweetcorn and so on.

Because I have trouble getting large quantities of manure onto my plot, I was intrigued by the idea that you don't need animal manure or compost to grow (at least according to one permaculture video I saw)

But the trouble is no one seems to have done much research into whether permaculture techniques work- however you might judge 'working' eg how many calories it produces per square meter, as you mention or whether it's more environmentally friendly than other techniques.

To all you sceptics, I have just started my new allotment using permaculture principles and I can say after 8 weeks I think it is based on sound ideas.

I too (still) am a little confused about the terminology, so I have been putting a few youtube playlists together to help explain some of the background and ideas it encompases.

Although Bill Mollison is deemed to be the founder of the term, Geoff Lawton has come across an ancient permaculture "food forest" in vietnam, which is about 300 years old so it is not all new fangled fuddy duddy hippie *hit.

The spanish lady Emilia Hazelip shows how she built on Masanobu Fukuoka's ideas on hwe farm in France, and it is based on her ideas that I doing my allotment.

The playlist shows half a dozen 8-10 mins video's it starts with Fukuoka, who identified a new method in Japan 60 years ago, through Hazelip's farm and a couple of modern anecdotes, which I think is enough to highlight the fundamental ideas behind it.

There are spin off's (no-dig gardening) which I am trying on the second half of my plot. I will be posting images and video's to show what's going on.

Here is the link to the playlist, get yourself a cuppa and sit down and watch although each video is short they add up to about 50 mins.
http://www.youtube.com/user/mrxtianfilm#grid/user/3DB7067C1936D451


Christian

SMP - thanks for asking this question, wondered about it myself!

Hi mrxtian , and welcome to A4A. Haven't looked at your videos, but I'd be interested to hear about your "permaculture" after maybe 8 months or 8 years. To me 8 weeks seems a bit abstract. Sorry to sound like a dissenter and all that.....  :-\

mrxtian, welcome to the forum.

no-dig isn't a 'spin off' from permaculture, it goes back way before that!!

check out the Hunza tribe for real permaculture ( they lived in a closed system, a hung valley, and had no inputs or out-goings at all)

have you checked out the book 'Humanure', ( free to download) if you are going down the permaculture route, it has to be part of it!!

well there i was thinking it was where crops were grown with out soil just in water and nutrients you learn some thing diffrent  every day on here

About the low calorie per square foot: one of the things permaculture emphasizes is maximising the output per input. But for some the limiting input is land and for others time. I grow all my fruit and veg and worked full time until last week, so for me it is definitely time, so I maximise output per hour of gardening. And not calories either, because transporting dry carbohydrates has a lower carbon footprint than transporting fresh vegetables.

And please don't forget about the external inputs. Permaculture is actually refreshingly low in the "have to" department, but I do use humanure, because I think it's ridiculous to flush our nuts into the rivers and seas, and then use fossil fuels to make artificial fertilizer.

Lots of research has been done to show that permaculture works, even if lots of that was done by people like the Hunza before the word permaculture was even invented, and not so much of it by scientists, for one thing because it's difficult to get funding for research outside the status quo.

Welcome to A4A mrxtian many thanks for the link to your play list.

I looked at them and found some things interesting.  I like the idea of planting something before the previous crop finishes and went straight out and planted broccoli among my peas.  I had also bought somered clover and was at a loss as to where to put it since every inch is already taken, so sprinkled it amongst some sweet corn and some brocolli.  I shall be interested to see the results.

I would like more information about how to convert the ideas to veg rather than rice production. 

I also have sourced some straw and like the system of growing crops through it but I am not sure what it has been sprayed with. 

I nearly wet myself watching the scientists standing around peering at the crops.

QuoteI do use humanure

I also feel we are wasting a good asset but with the ecoli scares I think might be something of a slipperpy slope.

Much of agricultural research is funded by companies who are keen to sell their products.  No profit for Dow etc in what Hunza is doing.

I am also not sure about the measurement of calories per square foot.  What about brocolli I have lots of it and it is very low in calories?  I have a very high per sq ft output would actually score poorly on calories.

I also feel we are wasting a good asset but with the ecoli scares I think might be something of a slipperpy slope.

It is if it's not used properly..
My grandparents had small holding..more and less middle of nowhere..and everything was used..in those parts of the world still is.
Secret with compost loos and their 'left overs' is that none of the stuff is used as it is or even when it is recently composted.
It all have to be properly, thoroughly  processed before anything is planted...then is just like soil..
Grannies place still have their old 'out house' that is emptied once a year..great pit is dug out and all the 'left overs' tipped and soil put back on. After couple of years the area is usable again...but as the soil was dug soo deeply and 'good stuff' added..boy does it grow veg well..its more than double dug.. ;D

I certainly know that in rural parts of Austria everything is spread on the fields and as far as I know they do not have any problems and they certainly do not wait years.  I  used to work for a company that clearned drains and very surprisingly the absentee rate for health problems was very low and none related to drainage.   

But using mulch, recycling weeds, planting close together, intercropping and no bare soil and my lastest reduced digging seem to be producing good results.   So I think I am definitely going towards the permaculture camp.  But I still have not really found out what it is. 

I'm in a cynical mood so I'll say: it's the middle classes discovering and moving in on what any decent peasant has known for ages. What they do is create a fancy name, start using jargon, come up with many clever sounding ideas - which may or may not actually work in reality; ie outside the confines of a book - and generally chatter about it.  There are expensive courses that you can go on and expensive books that you can buy. Meanwhile the poor old peasant gets priced out of the market/ kicked off his land.  All he needs to do however is hang around long enough and the fashion will pass.  When it comes down to it the mud and the rain will sort a lot of them out.  And certainly the humanure will.

Despite all that I think it's a good idea.  But there's nothing new under the sun.

I think Permaculture is here to stay, no matter who thought of the idea.

Here's some Youtube links to watch - if you get the time.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=youtube&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=permaculture+site:youtube.com&sa=X&ei=gsgXTtb1IcbEmAWpwcT4Dw&ved=0CDYQ2wE&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=xzO&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=59afda2a596a80d7&biw=1422&bih=691

Quote from: Digeroo on July 08, 2011, 13:42:47
I certainly know that in rural parts of Austria everything is spread on the fields

And it's not just Austria. It happens closer to home too.

Before settling in Shropshire looked at properties in Worcestershire & Wales with no mains drainage, & not even a septic tank only cess pits (just a concrete lined hole in the ground for your human waste).

The auctioneer in both cases suggested just spraying the pit contents over the fields (the places came with some fields) as you could hide a lot with an agricultural licence! It sounded like normal practice.

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the welcome messages to A4A. Thanks for the link to the you tube search, that's how I started, however you have to plough through several tens of videos before you get to the real meat, that's why I put the original playlist together. Incidently here is one with just the Emiliia Hazelip's 3 part video (the first part you have seen), but I didn't realise parts 2 & 3 even existed until recently.

I did dig, and prepaired a soft tilth, then when I dug the paths out that was piled on top and then covered with straw. Everything was very dry and we were waiting for rain (Colchester, Essex) so I started late.

What I have noticed is that, very quickly, when I feel through the straw, it feels A) Cooler than outside in direct sun, B) Damp atmosphere, like it's own little tropical forest. C) The soil is damp even when around is dry.

The few plants I have in at the moment are small and stressed due to being too long in their seed beds, so they are slow to come on. But everything feels good, and I can see how it will insulate the soil in the winter too.

Weeding is relatively easy, as the soil is still loose.

I have 6 beds each about 5m long. Potatoes (standard method), Leguemes, Brassicas, Onions, broad B, Tomatoes, wild strawberry, Calendular mixed.

My current thinking is that it should be mixed.

Here is the Hazelip Playlist

http://www.youtube.com/user/mrxtianfilm#grid/user/21BEE926EB4F9DD6

Thanks Tonybloke, I hadn't heard about the Hunza Tribe, just like Geoff Lawton hadn't heard about the family in Vietnam, just helps proove the point, it's not all new.

It good to hear that one of you has started to experiment with brocoli and cress, would be interested to hear how this goes, please post your result obversations.


Christian