gardening, permaculture

[wispfox]

Thanks to a suggestion from ceelove, I obtained and read Gaia's Garden.

Now, I'm attempting to assimilate the contents, as well as continuing to gather additional information. As a part of this assimilation process, I feel the need to natter about it, so you all get to read. :)

I know that pesticides and herbicides are scary, scary things. The same can be said of fertilizers. It wasn't until reading this that I understood just how far out of wack things are, if they are believed necessary in order to have a garden at all.

So, right.

Forests? Don't need constant input of any of those things. Seems obvious, and yet. Forests also - at least in theory - don't allow for open spaces. (practically, trees die and fall, and create open spaces. Fires happen, also creating open spaces)

Forests are not typically associated with human foods, either. So clearly we don't actually want to have a forest in our yards, unless we have an enormous lot in which we have space for some wilder areas.

But why don't they need all this stuff? Because they have a web of interactions between microorganisms, soil bugs, insects, plants, and animals. Because they work together, instead of trying to live alone.

Trees drop leaves or needles. These decompose through the help of insects, soil microorganisms, and fungi. The decomposition makes the nutrients in the leaves and needles more available to plants and critters, as well as providing a mulch to keep in water and reduce temperature extremes.

Trees also provide shade, collect rain water, reduce evaporation, and hold in soil. They typically have insects, flowers, and some sort of fruit or seed for birds to eat, as well as providing perching and nesting locations. Some of them pull nutrients out of the soil or help grab it from nearby rocks. Some offer food for humans, as well.

Shrubs and vines are typically lower down than trees, and yet often provide many of the same things as trees do. Just at a different level.

And trees and shrubs and vines and flowers and herbs and really all sorts of different plants in the same approximate location help each other out, if they are the sorts that should live well together. Some grab nutrients, some provide mulch, some attract birds to add additional fertilizer and help keep down the insect populations. Some attract beneficial bugs to also help keep down 'bad' insect populations, or pollinate flowers, or help break down mulch.

Layers upon layers, all working together to help retain and provide soil and nutrients and food and shade and water retention.

I suspect this pattern is much of why most of our existing yard does not need a lot of input from us.

There is weeding to do. However, if we add in plants which are beneficial for some reason or another, and occupy the same nitch as the plants we don't want (aka weeds), then there will be no weeding.

And in my reading, it seemed that many weeds actually only show up when the soil and garden environment is still in the early stages of improving the soil quality and working together. Many of those weeds, or opportunists, come in in order to help prepare the soil for longer-living plants (most weeds appear to be annuals). So selecting plants which are less problematic but still do the same job, or accepting that perhaps they are less evil than you think, can reduce the need for weeding. (I was very entertained to see that morning glories don't _like_ healthy soil, and will not thrive once the soil is healthy enough)

Our yard has very little opportunities for human food production, at the moment, in part because we have not yet done a soil test. This is my immediate goal, in between homework, for this week that I have off. I would like to know that we can eat the food we grow in our soil, and how to handle it if there is, for example, lead in our soil.

Supposing that we can in fact eat our food plants, I'm hoping to put in a small veggie/herb/etc garden and thus have far less watering to do than last year with our potted vegetables. According to some of the examples in the book, there are definitely ways to grow the foods that we would like while still preventing weeds and keeping the soil relatively healthy.

I am really fascinated by the idea of a herb spiral, as well as the ability to have as many perennial (or self-seeding annuals) in the garden as possible. I like the concept of a garden that - largely - takes care of itself, except perhaps for the stuff closest to the house (as per the fabulous concept of Zones). I like the idea of not having to rake and waste the nutrients in the leaves, and thus reducing the need for mulching (well, once the soil is healthy enough to not need more inputs than the leaves).

The concepts of swales and berms and rain gardens all tickle my brain, since I know we have trouble with basement flooding (and which we have some things we can do to minimize this in the short term). I don't yet have a strong enough sense of what fits with our yard and our preferences, but the idea of having less water going into the streets and more being kept in our yard's ecosystem makes me happy. :)

I just. A garden that provides us food, shade, wind blocking, places to sit and hang out and grill, wildlife to watch (but not the raccoon that keeps fishing in our fish pond! Need to contact animal control), minimal pets because their natural competitors come into play, healthy and productive soil... that just sounds fabulous. And beneficial or food plant does not necessarily mean unattractive, either.

So much info. So much _promise_. I mean, this yard already came with lots of promise (and this year I hope to better match identifications of plants with their photos and make a map of things so I know what's were!), but it can be so much more. Garden of Eden indeed, and very individualizable.

First, though, soil testing. And probably soil improvements, in at least some places (sheet mulching!)

Tasty, tasty concepts to be thinking about, and sufficiently different from school that my brain actually feels _less_ full when I switch to it. :)