An Introduction to Permaculture - a few examples
At this year's London Permaculture Festival I held a talk on introducing Permaculture. This round-up highlights some of the key conversations that we had.
Hello and welcome to the final newsletter about this year’s London Permaculture Festival. This year I gave a talk about introducing Permaculture in the morning garden slot. Unlike the previous year where It talked about chickens, this year the rain held off. There were about twenty people in the audience and I purposefully made the session interactive with discussions in pairs and as a whole group.
I talked about the general outline of my part of the talk in a previous essay, so today I just want to touch on some of the discussion points and examples. As per usual, please feel free to leave a comment or like this post, if you enjoy it!
An Introduction to Permaculture
This year, I gave a talk at the beginning of the day in the garden space as an Introduction to Permaculture. I talked about the basics of this talk in the previous essay.
This time, I want to delve into some of the examples that came up during our discussions.
Reciprocal approaches
The idea of sharing resources between neighbours, friends, and family, came up. This is the simple idea of only one person needing a spade and sharing it freely, while you might borrow from time to time a lawnmower (as an example). Such reciprocal activity can go beyond the sharing of tools though. How about sharing ideas or offering your labour in return for their labour down the road? Permablitz London works on this basis but on a slightly larger scale. If you offer yourself up for three permablitz’ you can then ask for one on your land in return.
Reuse and waste less
Holmgren’s sixth principle is to produce no waste. Such a lens reminds us of the importance of reusing, wasting less by repairing, and finding ways to create enclosed systems. In this instance my key example is zero-organic waste at home, which we achieve through a combination of cold composting, a wormery, and Bokashi. Our approach derived out of our thinking about principle 6, but also taking account of the ninth principle “small and slow solutions”. Also key, was the maxim (which is my personal favourite), “the problem is the solution”.
In our case the problem only occurred when we moved from Kent to London and suddenly discovered that our new council did not take away food waste. As we had a young child in our house there was a higher amount of food waste than we had previously produced, leading to a very smelly bin! Much of that waste was cooked food including dairy and meat, so it couldn’t just be sent to the cold compost bin as it would attract rats and activate bad bacteria.
Our solution was already partly in operation. We had with us a wormery. They are extremely useful at taking a certain amount of cooked waste (including meat and dairy), but they could only take so much, and items such as citrus are best avoided. They also couldn’t take the scraps found in the sink after doing the washing up.
By introducing two Bokashi bins we solved our problem. Whilst Bokashi requires an external input (Bokashi bran) its cheap and a big bag will easily last a year. Having two bins means you can fill one up, leave it to rest for a month, and continue uninterrupted with a second bin.
The Bokashi method essentially ferments left-over food and scraps meaning that virtually anything can be included as long as you sprinkle a good heap of the bran over it and keep the lid sealed. It’s also important to drain the liquid regularly as Bokashi works on the basis of drying and fermenting the organic matter.
By adding Bokashi to our system we were able to ferment excess food waste and scraps that were otherwise unsuitable to the compost bin or wormery. When the bin has finished fermenting the waste we tend to add it to the compost bin (at which point it’s not a rat attractor). We’ve found that it helps to speed up the composting reaction in the bin, which is an added benefit.
Therefore, by combining Bokashi, worms, and an ordinary compost bin we’ve managed to remove all organic waste from the bin, bar the occasional food item that gets green mould. This is, therefore, an example of reuse and recycling as our food waste is turned into compost, which is used in the garden to grow more food, which is then consumed and partly returned to the composting system.
Adding animals into the system
This is one that I added into the conversation, using my example of incorporating chickens into our garden in Kent (which made use of their scratching abilities to reduce gooseberry fly, and their poo and bedding to enrich our compost). Chickens are also great at reducing the snail and slug population (if properly trained). They don’t get rid of them all, but they certainly reduce their population to a more manageable level.
Our current animal introduction to the garden though are quails. These are more difficult to integrate as they require caging at all times (otherwise they would easily be lost and eaten by a fox or cat). This is a problem we are still working on, and we are somewhat limited by our rental situation (we can’t just make major renovations to the garden to make it more quail-focused). In the longer term we are looking into the option of a DIY run for the quails which could double-up as a type of Quail-tractor. Our hope is to move the quails every few weeks to different sites in the garden so that we can use them for pest control and fertilisation of the ground. In addition we would aim to grow particular plants that will offer them key benefits such as shelter, food, and self-medicating options.
Plants Guilds and Companion Planting
Another important aspect to Permaculture is the use of companion planting (the classic example is the three sisters where sweetcorn offers climbing support for climbing beans [which fix nitrogen], and squashes grow under their shade. This system also helps to retain moisture under the leaves and increases the humidity for beans. It also reduces weed growth).
Another example of companion planting is to grow carrots and onions together. The onions help to mask the smell of carrots from carrot root fly.
It’s possible to go even further than companion planting, however, and that is to use plant guilds. A guild usually forms around one key plant, which might be a tree or shrub, with other plants providing support for each other and for that key plant.
Plant guilds focus on key elements that the plants need to survive and thrive,
Nitrogen fixing
Pest deterrent
Beneficial insect attractor
Groundcover (living mulch/moisture retention/protection)
Roots (mix of long tap roots and shorter roots)
One example of a plant guild is to place a small apple tree at the centre and then surround it by comfrey (which acts as a multch and nutrient accumulator), daffodils and garlic (working to control pests and reduce the intrusion of grass), and bee balm (to attract pollinators).
Small Spaces
Finally, we discussed smaller spaces. Many of us do not have a garden. We might have a balcony or simply a windowsill. Can we still do Permaculture in those circumstances. We definitely can, although it’s necessary to be creative about it. Pot planting is a key option but having a small inside wormery and/or bokashi bin is possible too. Obviously, it’s harder to find uses for the fermented material from Bokashi, but there might be an opportunity to share this with others or to lace the base of plant pots with the fermented material, put a layer of compost above, and grow plants which will feed on this material.
Summary on the Introduction to Permaculture talk
I hope that the session was a good mix of me talking about Permaculture and everyone in the audience having an opportunity to share their ideas and experiences. It was, I hope, also an opportunity for people to meet like-minded people, which is an important part of festivals like this one. A few people came up to me afterwards seemingly satisfied and having taken something useful away, so I’m hoping that’s a good sign.
Until next time,
Matt
This article is free for all readers. If you would like to support our work with a one-off contribution, click the “Buy me a Coffee” button below.
If you would like to support Side Stepping Normal with a monthly or annual subscription, and receive more of our writing about finding a good life in a time of climate change and ecological decline, click the “Subscribe now” button below for options.