PERMACULTURE IN ACTION

Permaculture In Action #2

Spiral Herb Garden

Permaculture principles say to put what you need to access, closest to you.  If our garden were at home, we would want to access our herbs often.  We can simulate that by having our spiral herb garden close to the entrance of our garden.  A spiral folds up the garden into a smaller space keeping the herbs yet closer.  In our garden instead of using 25  linear feet, we have a mound that is about 5 feet across and about three feet high. In addition, the spiral creates microclimates because it has slopes that face all directions.  The sunny south will be hotter than the north, the east side with morning sun will dry out faster than the west.  We can plant accordingly to take advantage of the miroclimates for each plant.  Examples would be plants that thrive in hot, dry climates like oregano, rosemary, and thyme would prefer the south side while parsley and chive may prefer the north side because they grow in cooler, moister conditions.  In nature spirals are a repeating pattern, often the result of growth or expansion.  My source for this information is Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway.  I recommend this book to anyone interested in permaculture.

Permaculture in Action #1

Sheet mulching

One of our goals with this project is to integrate some permaculture concepts into our garden area.  Plants need soil to grow.  There is not much soil in this area, in fact it is full of rubble that was previously used as fill.  In order to successfully grow our plants we need more soil.  We could make a phone call, pay some money and have soil from another location delivered to our site, but soil is a limited resource.   In permaculture we use plants and existing materials to build up the soil.  In this case, we stripped some grass to make a classroom pad, and then turned the grass upside down and covered it with cardboard.  The cardboard provides a sun barrier so the grass cannot grow.  Both the grass and cardboard will decompose into compost which is rich in organic matter, eventually becoming suitable planting material.  It isn't pretty but it is a more sustainable way to get our soil.  We will also make careful plant selections (future permaculture in action post) to further increase the  quality of our soil.