Mimcry-- In a similar vein to this book, there was a tip in "The
Permaculture Orchard: Beyond Organic" DVD along the lines of nature abhorring a vacuum, so when Stefan weeds, he refills the spot with some more desirable variety of ground cover. Any suggestions on what species could mimic Asparagus Fern and Bermuda grass niches? Speaking of Bermuda, the section describing Martin Crawford's polyethylene+mulch+ground cover strategy was pretty inspirational for me. I wonder if it would work with more "opportunistic" grasses. Since I'm on a smaller urban lot, perhaps the polyethylene mat could serve double duty as a temporary outdoor living room in the interim if it could handle a little foot traffic.
I can relate to Doug's comment about the pitfalls of
PDC designs and Instant versus Relay succession strategies! It always seemed a little odd that the PDM started off by telling you how important it was to take a year to observe the land, to make incremental changes and see where complexity starts to stack up. Yet it is so tempting to finish the course by submitting this "extreme makeover"
permaculture design to apply All The Things. It was helpful to see an example of a staged design and also helpful to see some more gradual-adaptive approaches like "nuclei that merge" that might better accommodate my learning curve. I feel this most acutely on the topic of earthworks. EFG1 subtly points out that if you do a lot of land contouring, you might end up in a relay planting situation where you'll have to do your time with sun-loving early succession species before having much success moving in more of the forest layer... unless other people read pg 42 differently? Has anyone tried doing Instant succession on right after swaling? How'd it turn out?
To build Zenais'
thread about the preforest stage of succession, I found myself wondering a lot about what Dave and Eric would have to say about Tom Spellman's Backyard Orchard Culture approach. In several places now, they have critiqued a forest garden for being too densely planted to allow the trees to reach full productive capacity (Hart's pg 0, Charlie's on pg 64). I can't do Tom's whole philosophy justice in one post, but for small scale operations, he advocates taking several varieties of an edible tree and planting them close together, possibly even "in one hole." This checks their growth, which, if still too vigorous, he suggests balancing with extreme pruning sessions at several points during the year. It seems like this could put you in somewhat of a persistent preforest stage without a fully loaded canopy. You're left with less yield per tree, but with an extended fruiting season, all within reach without needing to get out the ladder or fruit picker basket or chasing away squirrels and birds that came a little early to collect the surplus. Super dense but also supporting diversity and sustained harvest. Yes? No? Has anyone tried this approach? How did it go?
Like Ann, I found the site-specific suggestions for Charlie's garden very interesting. Not only had I been neglecting insectary strategy entirely with my "if I can't eat it, I won't water it [or even bother to introduce it]" philosophy, I also hadn't put much thought into dynamic accumulators beyond the
permie go-to of comfrey (which I have yet to start successfully from seed).
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