Friday, February 27, 2009

Permaculture Basics as Applied to Plants

Permaculture Basics


Sustainability- Nature is a vast sustainable system that has the ability to self-renew thus it continues on indefinitely. Ecosystems regenerate season after season, year after year creating food and habitat without any help from us. Sustainable agricultural practices seek to emulate the patterns in nature through companion planting, crop rotation, the use of animals for manure as well as other duties like sheep and goats for weeds or ducks and geese for snail patrol. Maintaining wildlife habitat can be very helpful in keeping the destructive pest populations down and the land productive.


Permaculture; permanent agriculture or permanent culture; Cultivated Ecology

Permaculture and sustainability go hand in hand and are not mutually exclusive. Permaculture is a site-specific approach to agricultural. Observation of the key elements native to the location are used to create systems of healthy ecology. The concept was defined and developed in 1978 by Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist, along with one of his students, David Holmgren. he concept of permaculture continues to grow and now has moved beyond the fields and into financial, community and personal disciplines.

Basic steps to creating permacuture;


1) See the system as a whole.


2) The elements or parts are always in connection. Observe how they relate.


3) Build a healthy system based on ideas learned from time tested working systems found in nature.

4) The connections and synergy created by the parts is the key to understanding healthy sustainable systems.

The creation of a true permacultue is a formidable undertaking, and there are the naysayers who think it can’t be done. Few things even in nature are permanent so yes the concept is somewhat idealized, and yet when a healthy balanced system is in place it can be self sustaining, and so a semi-permanent culture can be established.

So how do we apply this to self?

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