Next-Generation Polycultures
Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Plant Systems, Trees — by Eric Toensmeier May 22, 2013
Excerpted from Paradise Lot: Two Plant Geeks, One Tenth of an Acre, and the Making of an Edible Urban Oasis by Eric Toensmeier with contributions from Jonathan Bates, available from Chelsea Green January 2013. The book tells the story of our permaculture garden from design through co-evolution nine years down the road.
One spring day in 2009, I gave a garden tour to a young man from New York City who had a forest garden in his tiny front yard. In a ten-by-ten foot patch, he had planted an Asian persimmon and a full set of companions for nitrogen fixation, groundcover, and additional perennial foods. As we walked the garden, I pointed out many species, and we sampled some fruits and greens that he had never tasted before. Usually by the end of a tour, people say how impressed they are with our garden. But this young man had obviously read my books.
“So where are the polycultures?” he asked.
Comments (4)Food from Perennial(ising) Plants in Temperate Climate Australia for March 2013
Food Plants - Perennial, Medicinal Plants — by Susan Kwong May 7, 2013
This is the early Autumn post for the ongoing research project about perennial plants and self-perpetuating annual plants providing food in temperate climate Australia. The original article introducing this project, stating its aims, and providing participant instructions, can be found here. Growers are sending me information on a month-by-month basis, then this information is collated and published the following month. All previous posts from this series can be found by clicking on my author name (Susan Kwong), just under the post title above.
I have changed the format this month to make it easier on some of my typing fingers that were caught in a car door, but by next month we’ll be back to the normal format. Please refer to previous articles for further information on the plants listed below.
Comments (1)Staple Fruits of the World
Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Trees — by Eric Toensmeier May 1, 2013
This article is an excerpt from my forthcoming book Carbon Farming: A Global Toolkit for Stabilizing the Climate with Tree Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices, and is part of a series promoting my kickstarter campaign to raise funds with which to complete the book.
Breadfruit is a remarkable staple starch that grows on trees. This species should
be much more widely grown in the humid tropics. It represents a fully-developed
perennial staple crop. Photo Wikimedia Commons.
Staple fruits provide starch, protein, and fats from fresh fruits. This is a marvelous category of perennial foods and offers much promise in sequestering carbon. Sadly for those of us in cold climates, not even one of our perennial fruits are high enough in starch, protein, or fat to make the cut. In fact almost all of these are for humid tropical climates – probably because it takes a lot of sunlight and water to produce that much food value. My source for the data here is Janick and Paull’s remarkable Encyclopedia of Fruits and Nuts, with some help from Lost Crops of Africa Volume III, Plant Resources of Southeast Asia, and Useful Plants of Neotropical Origin. I’ll profile additional species in the book.
These ’superfruits’ can and should play an important role in carbon-sequestering agriculture, agroforestry, and productive reforestation efforts.
Comments (11)“Urban Permaculture: The Micro Space” Trailer
Demonstration Sites, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Land, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Trees, Urban Projects — by Geoff Lawton April 26, 2013
The trailer for my next video is up:
"Urban Permaculture: The Micro Space" trailer
Register your email here and we’ll let you know when
the full movie is ready to watch
Many of you have been asking what Permaculture can do for you in the small Urban space.
Well, one of my students, Angelo, has transformed his tiny Melbourne backyard into an amazing productive garden and documented every detail over the last 4 years. You’ll find out how much food you could grow in the micro space when you apply Permaculture design creatively.
You will be amazed.
Comments (2)Letters from New Zealand – a Permaculture Food Forest in the Far South
Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Plant Systems, Seeds, Trees, Urban Projects — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor April 21, 2013
The home of Robert and Robyn Guyton stands amidst an abundance of food
All photos © Craig Mackintosh
Robyn Guyton stands in the Zone 5 area of her food forest
Riverton is a quaint little windswept fishing settlement on the far-south coastline of New Zealand’s beautiful South Island (map). As well as being one of the southernmost inhabited towns in the world, and one of New Zealand’s oldest European settlements, Riverton has another, more relevant, claim to fame — that of hosting one of the best food forests I’ve ever seen! With this post, and the video included, I want to give you a bit of a look at this temperate climate, biological cornucopia.
Comments (11)Carbon-Sequestering Perennial Industrial Crops
Animal Forage, Biofuels, Deforestation, Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Global Warming/Climate Change, Plant Systems, Trees — by Eric Toensmeier April 18, 2013
This article is an excerpt from my forthcoming book Carbon Farming: A Global Toolkit for Stabilizing the Climate with Tree Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices, and is part of a series promoting my kickstarter campaign to raise funds with which to complete the book.
Rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) is a common perennial industrial crop, though
typically grown in problematic monocultures. Photo Wikimedia Commons.
Industrial crops produce materials, chemicals, and energy. Some, like cotton, have been used since the dawn of agriculture. Others, like firewood, go back with our species for hundreds of thousands of years. Few of us pause to think where cardboard, rubber, fibers, solvents and biopesticides come from.
Currently much of the materials, chemicals, and energy that support our civilization are synthesized from fossil fuels. To address climate change this needs to end, and we need to learn to do without or use renewable feedstocks (raw materials). Of the biobased renewables used now, GMO corn may be the most frequently used, for example for ethanol and bioplastics. In addition to the social and ecological problems of GMO corn, as an annual crop it contributes to the release of soil carbon into the atmosphere. We must do the opposite, developing perennial and regenerative systems that sequester vast amounts of carbon while meeting human needs.
Comments (0)Food from Perennial(ising) Plants in Temperate Climate Australia, for February 2013
Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Trees — by Susan Kwong April 16, 2013
This is the late Summer post for the ongoing research project about perennial plants and self-perpetuating annual plants providing food in temperate climate Australia. The original article introducing this project, stating its aims, and providing participant instructions, can be found here. Growers are sending me information on a month-by-month basis, then this information is collated and published the following month. All previous posts from this series can be found by clicking on my author name (Susan Kwong), just under the post title above.
Comments (4)Industrial Starch and Bioplastic from Non-Destructively Harvested Perennials
Food Plants - Perennial, Material, Plant Systems, Trees — by Eric Toensmeier April 15, 2013
This article is an excerpt from my forthcoming book Carbon Farming: A Global Toolkit for Stabilizing the Climate with Tree Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices, and is part of a series promoting my kickstarter campaign to raise funds with which to complete the book.
Though we rarely think of it, starch is the number two most used carbohydrate in industry, coming just after cellulose which is used in great quantities in papermaking. Unlike many industrial crop categories, there is no “synthetic starch” being made from fossil fuels. The situation, however, is not much better. All, or virtually all industrial starch comes from annual food crops, grown in conventional tillage systems. In fact, 17% of European grain goes to papermaking every year. So first we’re using annuals where perennials might fill the gap, and second we’re using food to make cardboard and drywall. This seems like a waste of food, and if we want to minimize the use of annuals we need to find another strategy. Efforts are also underway to genetically modify plants to produce particular starches useful to industry. Given the wide range of starch types available in nature, and the ingenuity of chemists, I think this is unnecessary and somewhat alarming.
Osage orange is a perennial inedible starch with excellent potential as a
feedstock for industrial products like cardboard and bioplastics.
It is cold- and drought-hardy. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Layers of Healing: Realizing the Power of the Ordinary Onion
Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Medicinal Plants — by Jennifer Finelli April 12, 2013
They’re a staple in stews, a flavor in fried foods, and that ’sting’ in salads. The sharp, savory taste and juicy crunch give them versatility in the kitchen cooked and uncooked — but they really deserve a place in your permaculture medicine cabinet.
That’s right–the ordinary onion.
I’d never have believed it either, but one day, in the agony of an ear infection, I read that an onion sliver could help quell the infection and calm the pain. My ear ached so badly I would have tried almost anything short of shooting the Queen of England, so I heated a tiny onion ring and slipped it into my ear for a while. We had some extremely potent, weep-your-eyes-out young yellow onions; I could actually feel the fumes moving around in my ear. Ear pain like that usually continues for days for me, but repeated applications of onion cleared everything up within about half a day. It helped that my infection had just started, but still, the results aroused curiosity. Does the onion really have antibiotic effects, or did the potent fumes just clear up a painful pressure inside my ear? More importantly, can you lasso the power of this plant to heal you, too?
Comments (5)Food from Perennial(ising) Plants in Temperate Climate Australia, for January 2013
Food Plants - Perennial, Medicinal Plants — by Susan Kwong March 25, 2013
This is the mid-Summer post for the ongoing research project about perennial plants and self-perpetuating annual plants providing food in temperate climate Australia. The original article introducing this project, stating its aims, and providing participant instructions, can be found here. Growers are sending me information on a month-by-month basis, then this information is collated and published the following month. All previous posts from this series can be found by clicking on my author name (Susan Kwong), just under the post title above.
Comments (6)Fernglade Farm – Late Summer 2013 Update (Australia)
Conservation, Demonstration Sites, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Global Warming/Climate Change, Plant Systems, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Soil Conservation — by Chris McLeod February 23, 2013
It’s nearing the end of summer here at Fernglade farm and what a summer it has been. Two inches of rain in over five months, and extreme heat for days on end, results in a most unpleasant experience.
Still, despite it all, things are still growing and there is still food to eat. The kangaroos, wallabies and wombats are also still eating from the farm and they are here often enough now that I’m assuming that conditions are harder elsewhere.
As a response to the extreme weather conditions, in very early summer I set about heavily mulching all of the plants in the food forest and whilst overall about 10% of the plants and trees here have died, 90% have survived.
Comments (10)Stories from our Food Gardens (e-Book)
Compost, DVDs/Books, Demonstration Sites, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Land, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Soil Conservation, Trees — by David Bartlett February 21, 2013
The world is dotted with individuals that are driving change from the inside out, inspired by the principles and approach of permaculture.
I wanted to share with you “Stories from our Food Gardens” an e-publication made possible by the Saville Foundation here in South Africa, written by Melveen Jackson. Their partnership is an example of what is possible when certain individuals are backed by opportunity and funds. To me it emphasizes the well-talked-of potential that permaculture has to flow out of our backyards and influence mainstream development. South Africa (and in this particular case, the province of KwaZulu-Natal), without doubt provides a great canvas on which to show these dynamics at work, so we get excited to see it happening in reality.
Comments (3)Aronia in Permaculture
Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial — by Kevin Jarvis February 20, 2013
Aronia, also known as chokeberry, is a bush with a long history. It seems to have been forgotten for many years as a food source but has recently been “re-discovered”. There are two well-known species, named after their fruit color — red chokeberry and black chokeberry — plus a purple chokeberry whose origin is a natural hybrid of the two (Aronia arbutifolia, Aronia melanocarpa, Aronia prunifolia).
Originally cultivated and used by native Americans in the eastern USA, it is not to be confused with chokecherry — Prunus virginiana. The berries can be used to in a wide variety of uses such as wine, jam, syrup, juice, soft spreads, tea and tinctures and in smoothies. As the properties and uses of this wonderful berry come into light it is becoming more and more popular and these benefits make it especially useful in permaculture design.
Comments (2)Food Forests and Natural Pest Control – Observations
Biodiversity, Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Insects, Plant Systems, Trees — by Angelo Eliades February 12, 2013
Hearing Geoff Lawton speak about the effectiveness of natural pest control in food forests during my PDC studies is what originally prompted me to design and build a backyard food forest garden. Nature taking care of pests in the garden? It sounded too good to believe, and coming from a science background, I just had to test the concept out. After all, any good science can be replicated!
Four years later, after working out how to scale down a food forest into an urban backyard, and going through the designing, building, documenting and weighing of all produce, I inadvertently had created Melbourne’s first demonstration urban food forest and a proof of concept experiment that had more far-reaching outcomes than I first envisaged. Hundreds of people visit the garden each year to see it first hand and learn how it all works. Even our local government has taken a liking to the concept of permaculture and I’m often hired by them to present on the topics of permaculture and sustainable gardening to an equally interested general public. I put it down to a good teacher!
The garden productivity has been fantastic, and has been increasing steadily from year to year, but what has been even more impressive is how the garden I first designed has become a living ecosystem that has taken on a life of its own. Geoff warned us that would happen! With passing time, the system has increased in stability and resilience and the pests have clearly reduced. I would like to share some observations in this article which clearly demonstrate the proof of concept of natural pest control in food forests.
Comments (17)Food from Perennial(ising) Plants in Temperate Climate Australia, for December 2012
Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Recipes — by Susan Kwong January 25, 2013
Ripe Solanum muricatum (Pepino, Pepino Dulce, Melon Pear)
This is the first monthly post for Summer in the ongoing research project about perennial plants and perennialising annual plants that provide food in temperate climate Australia. The original article introducing this project, stating its aims, and providing participant instructions, can be found here. Growers are sending me information on a month-by-month basis, then this information is collated and published the following month. The first monthly posts can be found by clicking on my author name (Susan Kwong), just under the post title above.
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