Permaculture has made more of a positive impact on my garden’s health and productivity than any other system I’ve ever found. That said, attempting to explain the entirety of permaculture in a single blog would be, well… impossible. Whether you’ve already got a garden or if you are just starting one now, introducing some (or all) the following permaculture garden ideas into your space will definitely help to make your land a happier place!
A Note Before Beginning
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Before you begin on this beautiful gardening journey, understand that anything worth doing takes time. No permaculture garden has ever been completed in just one season! One of the ideas at the very core of permaculture is creating a garden specific to your land and needs.
Mimicking nature, creating symbiotic ecologic friendships and creating a self perpetuating environment that eventually sustains itself are a few simplistic views of permaculture that can be incorporated into your garden.
To fully understand what your needs are (as well as what your garden needs are) takes time, effort and lots of observation. Something else to bare in mind is that there is no one EXACT way to create your own permaculture garden. So, what works well for one garden may not work well for you or maybe not at all.
Basics First
There are plenty of fairly simple practices you can include to improve your overall garden’s wellbeing. I suggest starting with the simplest permaculture ideas, and expanding from there. I have been incorporating these various methods for several years now, and I build on them more each year, as I learn more about my land and what I want from it.
One of the aspects that really draws me into these methods is that they are able to grow with you, so to speak. The more you practice these methods, the more they feed into each other. Then, you learn how to better incorporate them to suit your needs. In other words, for those of us who spend most our time working on and thinking about our gardens… permaculture has become the new gospel that we preach.
In order to help give you a taste of this wonderful system, we’re going to elaborate on some of the basics. Each of these topics deserves entire blogs on their own, as the subtle intricacies can make the world of difference. If permaculture is something you really want to get into, I strongly recommend reading Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture, by Toby Hemenway.
Build Relationships Within Your Permaculture Garden
Photo credit: Pixabay
A big part of creating a permaculture garden is to mesh your land with nature—not fight against it.
Plant Friends:
Plan out your garden crops to symbiotic relationships, like one big happy village. If you have a rosemary bush growing in the same spot each year, grow cabbage near it to deter the cabbage moths. If you’re growing fennel, make sure to keep it far away from annual veggies. They find it offensive and don’t respond well when near it.
Animal Friends:
Don’t forget about your local wildlife either! They’ll no doubt find your garden interesting (or at least intriguing). If you plan your garden with them in mind, they may help you by eating insect pests. I planted mulberry trees for the birds as a trap crop, so they leave my blueberries alone. I also have some possum grapes on the outskirts of my garden as an “offering” to the critters that walk around my land at night.
Plant More Perennials
Photo credit: Pixabay
Another very important part of permaculture is growing perennial plants instead of annuals.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with annuals! I shudder to think of my garden without tomatoes, basil, or cucumbers even for just one season! But, only having to plant perennials once is pretty nice, and will give you time to work on other garden activities.
Raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, rhubarb, horseradish, sorrel, Jerusalem artichokes, and asparagus are all excellent options for next growing season. There’s even a perennial kale (Brassica oleracea ramosa) that can be grown for cool season greens.
Besides vegetables, consider all the perennial herbs and flowers that will keep coming back each year, and the pollinator friends they’ll support. The next time you buy seeds, check the package to find out if it’s a long-term plant friend or not.
Planting Diversity
Photo credit: Pixabay
Nature never places just one single type of plant in an area. Mono-cropping is a man-made construct. When planting your garden, mix it up a bit.
Plant a few flowers and herbs amongst your vegetables, and near your fruit trees. Native species, wildflowers, and even decorative landscape plants all attract different pollinators and beneficial wildlife.
Design to Fit Your Needs
Photo credit: Pixabay
One of my favorite aspects of farming is planning out my perfect garden. I arm myself with graph paper, colored pencils, pens, and a whole pot of coffee and I sketch away, oblivious to all around me.
You may not share my enthusiasm, but planning out your garden is much more important than you may realize. Having a map of what you want to grow will help you to plan, organize and design a garden that will serve you better, especially if you live in that location for a while.
Even if you can’t grow everything you want, a map will help you to visualize, discover, and remember your garden goals.
Here is a quick rundown of other things to keep in mind when mapping out your permaculture garden.
Orientation and Land Features
Photo credit: Pixabay
Take note of where your garden gets the best sunlight each growing season. Watch where sunlight and shadows fall, and draw them on your map. Typically you’ll want to plant north to south so your rows don’t shade each other out. Of course, if you want shade to block the summer sun, plant east to west.
Spring, summer, and fall sunlight will guide you on where to plant which crops each season. (You could even mark the summer and winter zenith with a rock outline if you want a physical reminder.) Winter sunlight is important too, especially if you plan to build a greenhouse or cold frames.
Micro-Climates:
Note where “pockets” of coolness exist around your garden, and where the dew stays around the longest. You can create a micro-climate by planting herbs under your fruit trees. The herbs will catch some of the passing morning fog and drip the moisture back down to your tree.
Drainage:
Does part of your garden flood? Or does it need more organic matter so that water doesn’t just run right through it?
Wind:
Cold northeastern winds can cause earlier cold season harvests, while hot southern wind can really dry everything out. You may need to plant a “living wall” to protect your crops, or cut down trees to allow breeze through so fruit trees don’t grow moulds and fungi.
Photo credit: Pixabay
Existing Native Plants:
Draw existing trees and the shadows they make. Is there a nice patch of wildflowers that pollinators visit? A blackberry bramble that could be tamed, or even some medicinal plantain (Plantago major) growing? Chickweed tends to grow in better soil, while dock and dandelion grow where there’s more clay.
Existing structures and Terrain:
A brick wall will raise the temperature of the plants growing next to it, helping extend growing seasons. Conversely, growing next to a pond or creek will cool plants down much earlier as autumn creeps into winter.
Having a small calendar attached to your map is also very useful!
Frost Dates:
Jot down your zone’s first and last frost dates somewhere on your map. The Old Farmer’s Almanac has this information every season—you can even look it up by your zip code!
Blistering Heat:
Writing down some of the hottest days and weeks will help give you a heads up to wake up earlier to water plants in the morning, or before you go to bed. By personally watching the thermometer and documenting this information, you’ll have an even stronger understanding of your garden. Plus, you earn ALL the science nerd gardener points. Haha!
Soil health
Photo credit: Pixabay
What is a garden without good, healthy soil? Boosting your soil’s health is not always a simple task, but it is definitely an endeavor worth taking on. Here are a few things to look into to help change dirt into soil.
Stop Rototilling:
Tilling violently disturbs the tiny lives in your soil, namely the worms that aerate it and the mycelia that promote good soil health. In the long run, tilling does more damage than good, depleting nutrients to the forces of erosion and exposure.
That said, I do find that rototilling can be useful for breaking up soil for a first-year garden. Doing it once makes it easier to add your own nutrients with compost and fertilizers.
Add Organic Material:
Try to keep adding to your soil each season. Compost, straw/hay, dirt and manure from the chicken coop, coffee grounds, rotting wood, feathers, and mowed leaves all help build up your soil levels, and its health.
Be careful about adding pine needles, however, as they make your soil a bit more acidic. Some plants, like carrots and blueberries, like a bit more acidity, so you can add pine around their beds. By adding organic material each season, you’ll create a thick, nutrient-filled playground for your plants to grow in happily.
One common permaculture practice is to plant daikon radishes, and let them rot where they grow. Daikons have a long tap root. After its life cycle, let the radish rot in place, creating a long downward tunnel where the root once was. This is a perfect way for earthworms and water to find their way to lower levels of your soil.
Sheet Mulching:
If you have a grassy lawn where you want to plant vegetables, try creating “garden lasagna”, aka sheet mulching. Lay down cardboard (preferably undyed) where you want to make your new bed, to kill off the grass below it. Then add layers of compost, mulch, fertilizer and/or soil on top. Continue to add new layers each season, helping to build the soil more and more over time.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Hugelculture:
When starting a new bed, digging down and burying rotting wood and cardboard will help to hold moisture in your soil. As the rotting logs and branches decompose, they create the perfect living situation for mycelia to grow as well.
Some especially deep hugel beds I made a few years ago, barely ever need watering at all, even during the hottest parts of our Arkansas summers.
Cover Crops/ Nitrogen Fixers:
Some crops such as legumes (peas and various beans) are natural nitrogen replenishers. They do this by taking nitrogen from the atmosphere and making it useable for their own needs.
As the plant dies off or gets pruned, the nitrogen held within the plant can made available to upcoming crops. Using pruned leaf material from the plant as mulch, plowing the plant under, or chop-n-dropping, are common practices.
Crop rotation, and planting cover crops after heavy feeders will help your permaculture garden soil stay healthy year after year. Heavy feeders include corn, tomatoes, beets, squash, and members of the cabbage family (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale).
Collecting and Re-directing Water
Photo credit: Pixabay
Watering your garden by hand with a hose or watering can is a pain. It’s a waste of valuable time and actually ends up wasting a lot of water too. Mulching, hugelculture, and even soaker hoses (especially on timers) are all excellent ways to hold moisture in your soil for a much longer period of time.
Berms and Swales:
A berm is an embankment used to hold back water so it doesn’t roll off or simply soak up into the ground. A swale is the body of water being held back by the berm. By taking note of your land’s natural contours, you can create berms and swales to catch and hold rain, or even greywater runoff. Having a series of small greywater swales and/or allowing the water to filter through mulch will help remove any soap residue left in it.
Rain Barrels:
You’d be surprised how fast a 55-gallon drum will fill up from just a single gutter and a few rain storms. Make sure to elevate your rain barrels a few feet for better gravity-fed pressure. Ideally, an enclosed top is preferred to prevent debris and critters from getting into your water.
You can keep it basic and just also use a screen to keep leaves out. If mosquitoes find their way in, you can drop a bit of dish soap or vegetable oil to thwart their attempts to fly out when they reach maturity. Most importantly: ONLY use food-grade barrels!
Wicking Buckets:
Although not necessarily a permaculture method, I feel this is a great time to mention wicking bucket systems. Their water efficiency and ability to create strong root systems is something to admire. It is really quite simple to turn a 5-gallon bucket into a planter with a good sized water reservoir in the bottom.
If you have a clean bucket, a few pieces of PVC pipe, some rocks, soil and a burlap bag (I prefer old trampoline material), then you can build a Wicking bucket system. The beauty of wick buckets is that your plants drink when they’re thirsty, not just when you water them. Wicking buckets are also great when you go on vacation for longer than a week, so plants stay watered in your absence.
Through my personal use of these methods in my gardens, I have definitely noticed that I water less and that I harvest more. Once this plant/insect friend network in my garden become more established, everyone seems much happier and I have fewer pests.
I still have my share of invaders, but it is definitely less than before I began using permaculture garden methods. As my journey to help my land mimic and befriend nature in this manner continues, I’m positive that it will continuously get better and better each season!
