Karl Treen wrote:This post represents an incredible amount of thought and consideration. The only other place that I have found such a scientific approach is in Mollison's Permaculture, a Designer's Manual. We should all strive for such precision in our work.
To sum it up, I believe what Neil is working on is a uniform way for us to describe polycultures. For some of us more earthy types this might seem totally OCD but, in truth, if we are going to establish Permaculture as a viable alternative to "modern agriculture" we need a system that the scientific community will take seriously. This could very well be that system.
At first I do this precition work for my own success. The soil on my place is so terribly poor. First some fruit
trees and banana were bearing fruits. few years later this stopped maybe because the nutrients from the dieyng plants were consumed by then. I started more serious experiments in
permaculture a few years ago and had but little success. So I know I have to pull all stops of my grand
permaculture organ to be as successfull as I want to be. I currently study the "Permaculture - a Designers' Manual" from
Bill Mollison. I extract plant names along with their functions and give me tasks to acomplish. When I'm through, I will repeat and put the things from the differen chapters together which belong together to get a really holistic concept. Bill Mollison mentioned that we don't have to pull out several Elements from his Book and think we could be successfull. Instead we have to apply every aspect of his Euvre. Just think, I've spent years not planning but trying certain Elements but not thoroughly worked out. If I would have started designing my nucleis first, Those could already work for me while I establish other nucleis. That would have saved me a lot of time in the timeframe from Start to success.
Secondary I do it for those who can see what I do, to prove that a systematic planning is essential for the success one wishes to have. This can include scientists of course.
I also like Neils post. Especially the idea with establishing stands of
mushrooms beneficial to my enterprise. And also his aproach with the databases. For me it would be important to include sources for the species (There might be a barter/exchange plattform which I don't know yet and/or for which I'm too naiv to use). This seems me a problem especially for less common ones. Another problem here is the shipping time: Bamboos, Bananas, Pineapples, Grapes, if I want specific varieties must be shipped as seedlings, rootlings, offshoot or cuttings also animals. They might die during the long (mostly 2 to 3 months) travel.