by Larry Santoyo

In the past, I’ve written several permaculture articles that have included my experiences with homesteading and my fascination with what I call the back-to- the-city movement. Contrary to popular belief, permaculture is not specifically about growing plants, but it does have a great deal to offer when it comes to solving food needs in the country or the city.

Food has been cultivated for thousands of years, and it’s just not that hard to do, especially when you compare it to the energy inputs required for many of our other needs. I don’t mean to trivialize, by any means, the proud producers of fruits, vegetables and medicines (I do come from a long-line of farm workers).You have to use the right methods, of course, but I think that mostly it’s about having the right mindset.
 
Growing food is a way of seeing relationships: the alchemy of soil, water and sunlight.  When you seek the highest generalization of what growing food and gardening are, you will realize that food production is merely a byproduct of soil management.  In permaculture classes, I talk about not only gardening, but about “creating the conditions for vegetables to happen.”  If you are properly understanding and managing the soil, you can’t help but have healthy and abundant produce.

Adequate-to-abundant crop production is dependent upon an understanding of the inter-relationship of soil, sunlight, water, configuration and frequency.

The Foundation is Soil
Soil fertility is a matter of ensuring that the potential energy stored in organic matter is made available to plants. This process of converting organic matter to available nutrients depends on a complex network of active connections in the soil that include microfauna like bacteria, algae, cyanobacteria, fungi, protozoa, and macrofauna: worms, nematodes, and arthropods. Also needed to insure the health of the soil are plants themselves, their roots and many other organisms including the megafauna: larger animals like gophers, squirrels, birds and even heavier grazing animals that are part of this working biological community.

Always Provide Compost
The simplest way to build the nutrient reserves in the soil is to ensure that these working connections between organisms are present in and around the soil and that their populations are properly maintained.  The very life cycle of these elements – their exudates and excretions, their decaying bodies – provides needed organic matter for plants to flourish. Plants are the ultimate carnivores!

Radiation: Sunshine
Plants use sunlight to convert carbon into usable sugars required for growth. The increased biomass later provides the materials needed to feed the soil organisms which cycle it back to carbon again. There really is no such thing as carbon neutral!

Precipitation: Hydrology
 The sun’s heat drives the ocean currents and secures a (somewhat) constant water cycle.  Water is one of the most vital of elements that allows the soil organisms to flourish.  Soil composition should include about 10 to 20% water. As rain, water makes a mild carbonic acid solution that, along with root exudates, enzymes and bacteria, helps initiate a chemical reaction that breaks down and releases soil nutrients from minerals and – with the help of additional bacterial and fungal colonies – carries the nutrients to the waiting plant roots. Directing greywater recycled from sinks, showers and baths to the garden is an easy and smart way to irrigate, add nutrients and conserve a precious resource. All life on earth is solar or hydro-powered!

Configuration: Guilds
Looking above the soil level, we see that plants in natural systems also organize (like soil organisms) in increasingly complex arrangements of working connections. Because permaculture design works with the concept of mimicking nature, we choose to configure plants (vegetables, fruits, berries, trees) with insects and animals in very specific relationships called guilds.

A guild can be thought of not so much as the specific species that go together, but rather as the specific functions that a species brings to the collective. Usually guild associates support a central plant. In a permaculture design for apple production, a backyard apple tree or an entire orchard will have supporting guild members, and will take on more of a look and feel of a forest – a food forest.  So the apple could have associates of spring bulbs, planted to accumulate needed potassium or calcium, and mint and nasturtiums to repel some over-wintering insect pests. Also planted near the tree could be artichokes and dill to house tiny beneficial wasps that attack other insects that are attacking the fruit. In addition to repelling certain insects, other small fruiting and flowering shrubs can be planted to attract insects, which then attract birds with their nutrient-rich deposits. 

If we have the space, we can add to the apple guild a mulberry tree for additional fruit, and then some free-ranging chickens underneath to eat bugs and fallen fruit and contribute their own fertilizer, all increasing the performance of the low-input, high-yielding guild system.

The trees, flowers, bugs and birds all feed the soil organisms, which feed the soil, which feeds them, and on and on continues the cycle of connections… Every plant, every animal – every place –has a function!

Location: Plant Everywhere
There is no food shortage.  We already grow enough calories of nutrition around the world to exceed demand. Food is lost or wasted in harvesting, storing and especially in transporting to consumers.  Instead of thousands of acres of single crops, trucked hundreds or shipped thousands of energy-intensive miles, we can produce food crops and protein yields more efficiently by planting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of backyard and neighborhood gardens – a reverse trend!

History has shown that it takes just a few dedicated people to easily and efficiently grow enough food to feed a hundred people. Knowing that, we can duplicate this same strategy over and over. By managing soil, harvesting water and guild planting at every opportunity, we will ensure a neighborhood food supply that will then allow us to focus our attention on solving other vital community issues. Food is not the weak link of the food-chain!

Larry Santoyo is eating a plump quail that came to explore his garden – find out more at www.earthflow.com