Any size property or garden begins with a plan. What is your dream? Would you like a salsa garden to have all the ingredients near your front door? Or maybe integrate animals for meat and eggs while installing a plan to feed them off the land and continually replenish the soil? Or growing grains using interplanting to hold moisture, reduce weeds and harvest more than one crop at a time?
Permaculture principles can encourage success in any situation. Most people come to know of permaculture through gardening and their love of plants.
Why not begin with one simple technique we use often at Paradise Permaculture Institute (PPI), creating natural plant communities as found in guilds or polyculture. One of our productive areas features a very happy cherry tree surrounded by strawberries and...
COMFREY: A dynamic accumulator to bring up nutrients toward the surface with its deep tap root and it provides mulch several times a year when we “chop and drop” it around the plants to keep the ground cool and add nutrients to the soil.
BORAGE: For attracting beneficial pollinators and adding minerals to the soil.
YARROW: Attracting beneficial insects like ladybugs, lacewings and hover flies to control damaging insects.
GARLIC: Reseeds itself for grass and weed suppression. It is also food as garlic and scallions.
Strawberries: For ground cover, food and weed suppression.