Generally, I agree with comments here that in small urban settings, rotating our beds into prairies every 3 years isn't practical. And Solomon's bare-earth strategy sometimes feels like a throwback to the way of gardening we're trying to avoid. But he's a good guy, who refuses to budge unless his experiments show him something will work.
I've been hanging out at Steve Solomon's yahoo group, which you can access through this portal:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/ There are a lot of permies in that forum who constantly challenge him, and slowly, bit by bit, he's starting to accept some ideas about permaculture. He's experimenting with some no-dig beds now and planning to report the results.
I tend to see permaculture as a double edged sword. It's sort of like probiotics in the human body. Generally, maintaining a diverse, competitive ecosystem of soil life keeps most booming pest populations in check. But if I don't rotate and the pests are too much then I just move to a new bed. Just like you'd take an antibiotic if your life depended on it. I think Solomon's concerns are real, and help me understand the challenges before me.
