How to Grow a Permaculture Garden

Permaculture Garden Design Guide from Julia

 While we may not be able to make large changes all at once, many little changes over time can add up to a revolution of change. A small way to make new changes is to grow a garden using permaculture techniques.
Meet Mrs. Julia. She is an ex-employee of eBay. She was part of the initial team for Pierre Omidyar and decided to retire in order to enjoy her life, her own way. Julia is an angel investor for small startups in biotechnology farms, as well as an avid traveler.

Julia installed her own large permaculture forest garden on a private 20-acre land in Queensland, Australia. We recently spent a full day with Julia at her garden cum forest.

“Julia, as we already know that you’re a top notch computer geek, spending hours after hours in the computer lab, what is happening with this transformation? How did you come to pick permaculture gardening as a hobby? I heard that you’ve recently obtained your Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC), correct?”

“Thanks Rima, yes, it looks like you’ve done your research about me!”

“Yes, of course! You are one of our inspirations. It’s something like a fairy tale to watch you achieve so many things in just 12 short years, giving up everything to stay close to nature. Tell us how you began this project.”
“You are right; computer programming was my original hobby. I was looking for a suitable hobby to be rid of my taxing and monotonous corporate lifestyle and picked up permaculture gardening. It provides food and medicinal crops, wildlife habitats and it’s attractive. It give a private, relaxing atmosphere through every season. I used keyhole and vertical gardening on the patio of my apartment with some consultation from a local organic gardening network in Ohio. The study of horticulture at TAFE helped me later when I was creating this large garden.”

I traveled to Julia’s forest and it’s an absolutely amazing experience. She share with me great advice on what qualities make a garden a small permaculture. Please read below to find the summary of our discussion about permaculture garden design.

Twelve Design Guidelines for Creating a Permaculture Garden 

You should first attempt to learn the basics of gardening, like the tools, techniques, how to plant and tend a regular garden and sustain it. This takes far less time than you may think. Another important thing to do is to make sure you have clarity on what kind of Permaculture garden you’re interested in making. Keep these tips in mind when planning for your garden and you should see some satisfying results.

1.    It is necessary to have a plan and a design, preferably printed or on paper, since that will encourage decisiveness.

2.    The idea behind permaculture gardening is to use only hand tools and minimal human labor. The only tools you need are a shovel, rake and a small trowel. The idea here is to leave the soil as undisturbed as possible.

3.    Tilling the soils will introduce too much oxygen, which will kill the organisms in the soil that live on and around the plant roots. This will allow weeds to grow. So, avoid keeping bare soil and consider a no-dig design to further protect soil.

4.    Plot preparation can be as simple as layering a mat of cardboard or thick layers of newsprint where you plan to plant. If the weeds are well established already, be sure to cut them down before you layer the cardboard. You can use green manure or follow a DIY approach for creating vermicomposting in an outdoor worm-composting unit (Vermiculture Unit). Organically produced chicken manure is high in essential elements and minerals that the soils will begin to lose when producing heavily, such as nitrogen.

5.    There isn’t any concern for existing vegetation, since the thick cardboard mulch will kill any weeds. You can eliminate dubious chemicals and spray poisons from your garden shed finally.

6.    On top of all of this, you will be layering 6-12 inches of straw, in rows so you can walk between the hills. The idea here is to keep the rows about as wide as you can reach from side to side. Notice that we didn’t till, dig or poison the garden plot. It’s so much simpler to use permaculture techniques in your garden.

7.    To plant your seeds, sprinkle them right on the soil’s surface. Then pull any mulch you have over this. The mulch acts as a moisturizer for the soil so you don’t need to water as often. The mulch will gradually break down and add nutrients to the soils, helping the seeds grow as they germinate.

8.    Planting starts like lettuce are easy. Just pull back the straw, poke a hole in the cardboard and place the little plant in, pushing the straw back overtop when you’re finished. This will work even in heavy soil. Allow the greenery of the plant to come just above the mulch. You can even pull off older leaves to stimulate growth.

9.    When it comes to weeding, it is a simple matter of snipping the emerging greenery and leaving it where it lies to become part of the mulch. The idea is to keep the weeds from getting to the flowering stage where they can spread seeds.

10.    At the time of harvest, you just take a head of lettuce (for example) and cut the head off, leaving the roots. The lettuce will continue to produce some leaves until the first frost. During this time, you can continue to harvest and use the same start.

11.    Over winter, the roots are going to die, but they’re going to add to the richness of the soil. When you’re harvesting beans or tomatoes, take the fruit, pull the greens and leave them laying on the grown to break down with the mulch. No composting makes this easy and waste free.

12.    Ants can be a problem for your fruit trees. Julia recommends wrapping the base of the tree (about 3-4 feet off the ground) with duct tape, sticky side out, for about 8-10 inches in height. Change this out every fortnight. A few drops of peppermint oil can also be used as an effective deterrent.

Permaculture design means protracted and thoughtful observations, rather than protracted and thoughtless labor. This provides for a great business model too.

Useful articles

How to raise chicken where you don't scrape/shovel/scrub any chicken poop

Ways to control slugs using natural predators like nematodes,Beetles, toads

How to save Vegetable Seed

Any interested homeowner/gardener could learn how to do this. Take a strong back and a rake to your garden next spring!