Permaculture: the Incredible Shrinking/Expanding Garden
Part Two of the GaiaCulture Series
"Our natural forest is regarded as having seven stories, as they say. The top story being tall light-demanding trees. The second story is of short shade- tolerant trees. The 3rd story is the shrub level. The fourth is the herbaceous. The fifth comprises plants that spread horizontally. Sixth is the rhizosphere or root area. And the seventh is the vertical layer comprising climbers and creepers. [Vines, mosses, symbiots, parasites ...]" Robert Hart
One snapshot from our eighteen-month-garden terracing project. Tarragon plant underneath/beside Clumping Blackberry, underneath Collard Tree, next to (not in photo) newly planted Mulberry Tree which will shade them all. {"And in the shadows bind them", to paraphrase Tolkien.}
Witness trunks of fallen trees, acting as hillside terrace retaining walls, which gardenwide along with gopher holes and stones and mulch and crevices in the sandstone, make a home for hundreds of Frogs and Toads and Lizards. These garden family members consume thousands of ants and flies and grasshoppers and earwigs and other insects daily. They are in turn consumed by the Lizards and Snakes, and some Crows and other Birds. The gophers are consumed by the plentiful Owls, and the Snakes are often taken by the Hawks. There are dozens of varieties of birds, some transient some relatively permanent or regular to the garden, and Falcons, and Squirrels, Rabbits, Bobcats and Lynx, Raccoons, Skunks, Foxes, Coyotes, Deer ... and the occasional Bear and Mountain Lion. Fortunately none of these larger varieties of our neighbors frequent the garden. The Skunks did eat many of our melons last year, which this year we have not planted.
Having finally, six months behind, completed the summer garden planting and composting and mulching and terrace-maintenance, we finally get to take a step back and witness the integrity of the hillside -- evolving from a horizontal 'organic' veggie garden towards a vertical permaculture forest.
Last summer, the Terrace-Garden's first, was in the middle of the 2007 drought. Though we did have spring water through the summer, it was insufficient to provide any pressure to the hillside garden for the months of July and August. For those two months I spent 8 to 12 hours per day hauling buckets of water into the garden, and to our adjacent baby fruit tree nursery. That was a great example of a garden which is NOT permaculture. Over the last several months we reduced our summer garden water requirements by one-half, by giving away half of the nursery trees, and moving the other half to another orchard location where they could be nurtured a few months further along before planting.
We then cut our garden watering requirements in half, again, to one-quarter, by expanding and deepening the terracing with dozens of small to medium treelimbs and trunks, and dozens of wheelbarrows of clay/sandstone mix soil, consolidating outlying or satellite plants into the main garden, and bringing in three additional pickup loads of old horse-manure compost, and six truckloads of half-composted Oak leaves as mulch. We also expanded the verticality, or Forest Garden, aspect of our hillside by adding two Mulberry Trees, in addition to a volunteer Mulberry, and a large clumping Blackberry varietal. The garden already hosts eight Strawberry Guavas, in small to medium heights, and two dwarf Figs at medium height. Also one medium WolfBerry or GojiBerry, soon to be two or three, and a Peruvian Ground Cherry aka Golden Cherry. A modest, but tall, volunteer native Tobacco tree resides over them all, closely followed by one giant, and yet another soon-to-be-giant Choko or Chayote bush(es) ... which will produce many times more by being provided with large fallen Oak and Eucalyptus limbs to climb upwards and outwards on, getting them above the ground, and providing helpful summer shade as required in the Ojai Valley for most garden vegetables and shrubs. [Below, Choko over Strawberry Guava over Squash ... 'all over Toads.']
Thus, by reducing the horizontal signature of our garden, and expanding the underground 'ferment' and the above-ground 'foresting', we have cut not only our watering time and requirements about fourfold, but we have also consolidated our distance and time investment, and included more fruit and diversity in the crop, and begun the process of creating shade and joy for ourselves and all our garden family members.
In this, the 2nd year of our Terrace-Garden Project, the bird and gopher and insect damage is less than half of what we experienced in our first year. Perhaps it also has been reduced three-quarters.
Part of that, joyfilled, celebration was the rounding up of over two hundred 'Wild' Toads last month, for introduction to our insect-filled garden. Now every morning and evening, and when we look closely during the day, we come across these offspring of GrandMother Toad, scurrying from shelter to shelter, lapping up bugs, or simply gazing out in meditation on the wonder of this mere echo, this echoing mirror, of HER divine creation.
One of Bill Mollison's video, see in particular last two minutes for an Australian example of vertical gardening ...
Bill Mollison & Permaculture, Part 6
Bill Mollison & Permaculture, Full Video
Remember when we were kids, and read "The Forest and the Sea" by Marston Bates, all about the interwoven magic tapestry/sea of life, known as the RainForest?
Comments
"two months I spent 8 to 12 hours per day hauling buckets of water into the garden"
Wow, that is some dedication.
Posted by: Hethir | July 9, 2008 07:26 PM
Wonderful.
There is no difference between I, we, and all.
GAIAculture
Posted by: David Gertner | July 10, 2008 08:05 PM
Re: GaiaCulture, Electrodynamic (Yin-Yang) Gardening ...
well met, Dave!
and kia ora, Maori blessings.
I 'conceived' the word GaiaCulture weeks back
in order to allow me to focus in on the whole of
our Global Human body/heart/mind's harmonious
relationship with, indeed 'in', our Mother Gaia,
Mother Earth -- and, indeed 'in' again, GrandMother
Sun.
and yesterday, I thought to do a Google keyword
search to see how widespread the internet presence
of the word was, and whether others had used the
word, and for what purpose, and I came across your
wondrous team/family/collective in Costa Rica!
as part of revealing the true picture, body of Song,
of the OmniRiver of our Divine Wilderness of Creation,
I also wanted to acknowledge the growing numbers of
young people world-round who are showing the way back
to global harmonious economics, and healing our Mother
Earth. As I continue expanding and refining my portrait
of the aether/light, electric/fire/plasma, air/breath,
aqueous/liquid, and stone/mineral circuits of our forests
& rainforests & continents & oceans, this entire Earth ...
to and including that of our Sun ... a hurricane of fire
or electricity WITHIN which the Earth is contained ...
it is to these young activists of all ages that we now
owe our thanks for this turning around of the world of
patriarchal/provincial corporate rapacity ...
youth and ALL of us -- I, She, We to paraphrase you --
guided by the wisdom of the indigenous GrandMothers,
stewards and 're-creators' of our Earth Mother.
so, now I get to say 'thank you' to you and the
GAIAculture family in Costa Rica. hoping to learn
much from your group, knowing that our collective,
global consciousness is now 'growing' us, returning
us, to the unbounded connectivity of all times, all
our ancestries, all our (Gaia-) Cultures!
with and for all our spirit relations,
arohanui, enfolding love,
Millennium Twain
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DiosasAncianos2012
father of the US/Intl Space Station Program,
publisher of the Structure of the Atomic Nucleus,
designer of the X49 Scramjet Spaceplane series,
lifelong organic gardener turned permaculturist ...
awakened to GaiaCulture!
Posted by: Millennium | July 11, 2008 12:55 PM
'One' Global (Secret) Language?
if, as you say, it is now indeed 'correct' to say "We are One",
then, it necessarily follows, that it cannot be spoken, and it should not be repeated, that is it would not be written, in any institution of 'higher' 'education', because ...
in all sincerity, I can only say, it must be stated:
"We IS One"!
(not many ...)
Posted by: the OneYun | July 11, 2008 03:24 PM
the Ojai Permaculture Guild had a showing last night of "The Quiet Revolution", on permaculture, shot in Brasil.
hopefully we can get a review of it here by one of the attendees ... I was home in bed after an encounter with a modest swarm of Yellow Jackets which formed in response to my taking a sledge hammer to a large old post in the middle of our new garden picnic area at the Frog Farm ...
Posted by: Millennium | July 14, 2008 10:05 AM
Life and Death
Like fear, death is not real, even in the relative sense…
it is but birth to a new life--and we shall go on and on
and on to greater and still greater planes of life—for eons upon
eons of time. The Universe is our home, and we shall
explore its farthest recesses before the end of being.
We are dwelling in the infinite mind of THE ALL and
our possibilities and opportunities are infinite, both in time
and space, and at the end of this GRAND CYCLE of EONS,
when THE ALL shall draw back into itself, all of its
creations; we will go gladly for we will know the whole
truth of being at one with the all. And in the meantime, we can
rest calm and serene…we are safe and protected by the infinite
power of the Mind of the All.
The Kybalion by the Three Initiates
-When we have all returned and are one, once again; we will remember where we come from and know our source. Until than the adventure, the wonder, the fulfillment continues in trust and harmony… if we choose! -Tevin
Posted by: Tevin | July 15, 2008 07:45 PM
aeternal Chorus, unbounded Songline
of Diosas, Mother's Mother's Mother's Mother's Mother ...
(Earth, Sun, Milky Way, Virgo Supercluster, MatterVerse)
womb within womb within womb, our umbilical 'now',
Singing thee, Singing me ...
'when' that We,
we too 'See-Ing' ..
Posted by: See-Her | July 15, 2008 10:33 PM
I doubt whether the rainforest is anywhere easy to penetrate for any great distance. There are always obstructions: occasional fallen trunks, sudden tangled thickets, and above all, stretches of swamps and countless streams. Sometimes the streams are small, clear, shallow sandy brooks, looking no different from the forest brooks of New England, and easily negotiated. And sometimes they are broad rivers, sometimes they move sluggishly over bottomless mud, sometimes they are choked with impenetrable masses of fantastic vegetation. The green jungle analogy becomes vivid enough in these forest swamps.
The rainforest everywhere has a multi-storied canopy. The layers of the canopy, like the depth zones of the sea, are hard to define ... but it is customary to refer to the upper, the middle, and the lower zones of the canopy. The multiplicity of tree layers reflects the great variety of different kinds of trees that make up the rainforest. Probably fifty species of trees is about the minimum for any rain forest, and in many places there are many hundreds of species.
Alfred Russel Wallace wrote: "If the traveller notices a particular species and wishes to find more like it, you may turn your eyes in vain in every direction. Trees of varied forms, dimensions and colours are around you, but you rarely see any of them repeated. Time after time you go towards a tree which looks like the one you seek, only to find on closer examination that it is unique. You may at length, perhaps, meet with a second specimen a half a mile off, or you may fail altogether, until on another occasion you stumble on one by accident."
Because of this immense variety, the catalog of rain forest trees is still far from complete, and anyone collecting botanical material in remote areas is liable to turn up species of trees unknown to western science. And the trees belong to almost the whole range of plant families. Families that in the north are known only as herbs -- the Compositae, or daisy family, for instance -- are represented by trees in the rainforest. Even grass takes on a tree form in bamboo; and ferns, and the tree ferns.
There is a great development of woody vines -- lianas. A considerable proportion of the foliage in the canopy, sometimes nearly half of it, is from the great vines that are supported by the trees, and these woody vines, like the trees themselves, belong to a vast variety of species and to many differing plant families.
Trees, woody vines and epiphytes are the characteristic life forms of plants in the tropical forest; and of these the epiphytes, the plants that perch on the branches and trunks of trees, are probably the strangest to the observer from the north. Lichens and mosses grow as epiphytes in northern forests, but in the rainforest the branches and trunks of trees are covered with a bewildering variety of other plants: ferns, orchids, peppers, cactuses, bromeliads. In all, something like 33 entire families of seed plants and ferns are represented by epiphytes in the rainforest flora theatre.
Posted by: Marston Bates | July 17, 2008 10:24 AM
short rough cut video -- six minutes of many hours we have recently shot -- first of many videos looking at the WHOLE living spirit web of Gaia and GaiaCulture. shot at the Frog Farm, former 'Honor Farm' prison which will be the subject of upcoming OjaiGarden GaiaCulture articles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKLHRvVtmWA
Posted by: Millennium | July 20, 2008 05:11 PM