The Ecosystem: From Garden to Gaia

[Buddy]

This thread is offered as a repository for information as suggested by Breton here. I don't know anything about the permaculture movement at the moment, but if anyone is a horticulturist or simply has a garden and would like to share their knowledge, it might go a long way towards helping us gain an integrated awareness of the interdependencies in ecosystems. Who knows if a day will come when a roaming band of humans need to settle temporarily and grow some food.

An ecosystem is a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro-organisms (biotic factors) in an area functioning together with all of the physical (abiotic) factors of the environment. An ecosystem is a unit of interdependent organisms which share the same habitat. Ecosystems usually form a number of food webs which show the interdependence of the organisms within the ecosystem.
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem


All of us live within ecological systems, or "ecosystems", and through our commerce, food distribution, and use of natural resources we each indirectly participate in the custodianship of many ecosystems worldwide. Ironically, we are simultaneously the most potent forces within most ecosystems, and yet nearly oblivious to the ecological effects of our daily lifestyles. There has never been a time when a deep understanding of ecosystems and our roles within them has been more critical. Indeed, the world's freshwater ecosystems are so degraded that their ability to support plant and animal life, including humans, is viewed by many as being in peril (Revenga, Brunner, Henninger, Kassem, & Payne, 2000).
_http://www.ericdigests.org/2004-1/ecosystems.htm

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise."
"Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land"
Aldo Leopold

Lets start by describing what an ecosystem, which is short for ecological system, is. Imagine yourself standing in the middle of a forest observing everything around you. You will see a group of plants, animals, soil, sunlight, air, water, minerals, and nutrients. The plants and animals in that forest depend on each other for survival. What is more difficult to see are the interrelationships between the living organisms (some which can't be seen without a microscope) and the environment. The dependencies between all of these elements can be very complex. Complex systems like this, with different organisms and their interrelationships with the physical environment and contained in a specific unit of space (or area) are called ecosystems. "Contained in a specific unit of space" means that all the elements in the ecosystem might have intricate and complex interdependencies between each other but only within the confines of that space and independent from anything outside the area. Of course, things like the energy radiated by the sun or the climate and air are special cases. Ecologists are scientists that study complex ecosystems with the fine and interesting dependencies amongst all the different elements. Their objective is to understand what every element brings into the system and what every element needs from the system. They try to understand, from a scientific point of view, what keeps everything living and existing in a balanced and stable way for very long periods of time.
_http://www.arcytech.org/java/population/popintro.html#ecosystem


For all of human history, people have managed to feed themselves, either by fishing, hunting, gathering and/or subsistence farming. Now, with large-scale food production, gardening is often only a hobby. But growing one's own food could mean increased security, health, and enjoyment. Since the details of growing your own food depend on your unique locale, here's a general overview to get you started.

Planning

1. Determine what crops you can raise in your location. Obvious factors include climate, soil, rainfall, and available space. A fast and fun way to learn what grows well in your climate is to visit a nearby farm or garden. Here are some details to ask seasoned growers about or investigate yourself:

* Climate. Some locales only have a brief growing season, such as Northern Europe and Canada. This means growing quick producing plant varieties that can be harvested and stored for the winter. Other areas have year-long warm weather, where fresh vegetables and grain can be harvested on demand.
* Soil. Depending on the type you have available, you may expect very high yields from a small area, or meager yields from large areas. The best plan to follow is to plant a food crop which flourishes in your conditions as a staple, and use surplus land to grow "luxury" foods that require more fertilisation and effort.
* Rainfall. Some plants thrive with minimal rainfall, but most food crops require substantial amounts of water from irrigation or rainfall. Consider the normal rainfall rate for your area, and the availability of irrigation when choosing crops. If you live in a dry area, consider collecting rainwater.
* Space. If sufficient space is available, you may be able to grow plenty of food using conventional methods, but where space is limited, you may have to look at other techniques, including hydroponics, container gardening, sharecropping, and vertical gardening.
2. Understand how a growing season plays out. Growing food is more than just planting seeds and waiting for a harvest. Below, in the "Growing" section, is a typical sequence of steps in growing a single crop of one plant. You will need to prepare each different plant crop basically the same way, but when you have prepared the soil for planting, you can plant as many different crops as you like at one time.
3. Become familiar with the different types of food crops. We often think of the vegetables we see in the produce section of a market as the garden vegetables, and in a sense, this is true, but to truly grow your own food, you need to consider your whole diet.
_http://www.wikihow.com/Grow-Your-Own-Food

Organic Gardening

Organic gardeners grow the healthiest, highest quality foods and flowers without using any chemicals. Organic methods are healthier, better for the environment, and wildlife, and are less expensive because there are no chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides to buy. All of this is accomplished by working with nature instead of against it, and best of all you can be an organic gardener even if you only have a few square feet of sunny space for your garden.

# Choose a site for your organic garden.

* Think small, especially at first. A small garden takes less work and fewer materials than a large one. A well-maintained 4' by 4' garden can furnish all of the fresh vegetables that one person will eat.
* Don't over-plant. If you're growing food, think in terms of yield, and plan in terms of meals per person.
* Even a window box or a few containers can be a starter garden.

# Make a compost pile. Compost is the main ingredient for developing rich organic soil. You can use almost any kind of organic material to make compost that will enrich your soil, but the best things to start with are usually right there in your garden: fallen leaves, weeds (preferably before they go to seed) and grass clippings, to name a few.
# Add the right soil. The key to organic agriculture is great soil. Add as much organic material to your soil as you can. This can be from your compost heap. Soil that has been built up with plenty of organic matter is good for your garden for a lot of reasons.

* It will nourish your plants without chemical fertilizers, keeping them more natural, rather than encouraging bursts of fast growth that can weaken plants.
* It is easier to get shovels into, and weeds out of, enriched soil that isn't so hard packed.
* It is softer, so plants' roots can penetrate more easily and more deeply.
* It will help water and air spend the right amount of time in contact with roots. Clay soils can be heavy and stay wet a long time. Sandy soils can drain water too quickly.

# Control weeds. Weeds are any plant you don't want growing in an area, and may include invasive ornamental or productive plants, such as ivy and mint.

* Use a hoe and keep it sharp. You can use a grinding wheel to put an edge on it. Try a Dutch hoe or scuffle hoe if you have only used a conventional gooseneck style hoe. Hoe each area frequently enough to keep green weeds down. Regularly taking off all green portions of weeds deprives them of the nourishment they need to continue regrowing.
* Hand weed to remove the roots of perennial weeds that grow back. Also hand weed carefully around established plants, to avoid uprooting the plants you want.
* Plant thickly, particularly for ornamental or decorative areas. Companion plantings can fill in spaces in vegetable gardens, too, and make the most of a small space. Spaces that are planted thickly enough will discourage weeds from growing between plants that you want.
* Thickly mulch unplanted areas around plants and trees where you wish to have no weeds. Organic mulches, including bark, wood chips, grass clippings, and mulch, gradually break down and enrich the soil. In the meantime, they control weeds, help to moderate soil temperatures, and slow evaporation in dry areas, meaning that you can water less.
* Try heat to control weeds in cracks, in the form of steam, a heat gun, boiling water, or even a small blowtorch, carefully applied. If you want space between slabs or stepping stones, try planting between them with a low, decorative plant that can withstand some foot traffic, such as thyme.

# Rethink your lawn. A pristine lawn is a lot of work, and depending on your climate may require a lot of fertilizer and water to maintain. It's also a monoculture that is difficult to maintain. At the very least, consider letting clover and other plants in, and don't panic if a few weeds spring up. Consider planting something besides lawn or making your lawn smaller, especially in arid climates.
# Invite birds, worms, and friendly insects. Many creatures can help your garden. Learn which ones they are and arrange conditions to encourage them.

Tips

* Organic means that you don't use any kinds of chemicals or materials such as paper or cardboard which contain chemicals, but especially not fertilizer or pesticides.
* You can use almost any kind of organic material to make compost that will enrich your soil, but try to avoid materials that have been treated with chemicals like grass clippings from that really beautiful lawn that has been sprayed with herbicides and pesticides.
* You don't really need compost bins or tumblers - just pile up your material and wait for them to decompose. If you want to speed things up "turn" the pile every once in a while to mix it up and incorporate air.
* You can also just add things like leaves and grass clippings directly to your garden as a weed suppressing mulch. It will still enrich the soil. Although until the leaves or grass dies it will leach nitrogen from the soil to help it decompose, better off in the compost heap.
* If insects attack your plants the very best way to control them is to just pick them off by hand. Practice crop rotation as in Permaculture Methods and Companion Planting. These systems can greatly reduce pests and in some cases render them non-existent.
* Aphids (tiny soft bodied crawling insects that multiply like crazy in the spring and early summer) can be removed from your plants with just a strong stream of water.
* The key to pest and weed control is to act early and often and keep them from becoming a problem.
* Make planting beds of a moderate size so that you can reach the whole thing. Plan paths that require a minimum of upkeep.

Warnings

* Don't use the following for your compost pile, even though they are organic. Doing so is risking the spread of disease and/or attraction of pests.

* meat, flesh, bones or fat of any kind
* feces from any animal that eats meat, especially from dogs, cats, or people
* large amounts of watery fruits or vegetables such as tomatoes, oranges, cucumbers, melons, etc.
o large quantities of prepared food
o oil or grease
* Don't ever use bark mulch! It might look good but it robs nitrogen from the soil as it rots and will keep almost anything from growing well, and it attracts termites.
_http://www.wikihow.com/Start-an-Organic-Garden

 

[Gimpy]

I'd add only one item that should never be incorporated into a mulch pile, and that would be walnut hulls, shells, or leaves.

Juglone is a poison excreted by walnut trees to kill off any competitors for room in a woods. It will kill almost anything but ground cover plant species. If you live in an area that has a lot of walnut trees, do not put a vegetable garden anywhere near them. Our entire front yard is full of large walnut trees, and we can't even get grass to grow well there. :( If you put walnut leaves in your mulch pile the juglone will kill your plants.

Just an fyi. :)

Here's a site with a list of juglone tolerant species: http://wihort.uwex.edu/landscape/Juglone.htm

Should help if anyone has trouble with walnut trees.

 

[RyanX]

Thanks for the excellent tips Buddy! In the past couple years I've given this subject a lot of thought. Mostly because I moved into a house where planting a garden was possible, but also because of a certain awareness that growing food and tending to the land might become necessary in the near future. Here are some things I might add:

Building soil takes time!

Especially if your compost is mostly composed of the leaves each fall. This does depend on the soil type as well. Some people are blessed with a dark rich loam soil, which is ideal for all types of crops. I, on the other hand, have mostly clay in my soil. This makes growing any sort of tuber difficult as well as most other garden plants. I've been slowing building the soil for the past couple years, but the process is slow. Only now is the soil starting to resemble something like the garden soil I'm typically used to seeing in more productive gardens. I've learned there are certain plants I just can't grow well in my garden.

I would also add the don't just think of growing in soil, consider hydroponics as well if you're working on limited space. I tried growing some lettuce and radishes in a small hydroponic bed with some success. People typically buy pre-mixed fertilizers for these systems, but it is also possible to make your own by making a compost tea out of home-made worm castings. Hydroponic systems would be ideal for the person with a nice south facing porch or greenhouse.

Weeds can be your friends.

I would suggest getting a wild-plant guide suitable for your locale and learning about the various wild species that seem to grow with no problem at all. Some of these plants, although tend to be invasive, can also be quite valuable in various ways. A good example would be the common dandelion. People talk of these plants like they were the plague of the typical American lawn, but I've found them to be quite valuable! The young leaves can be eaten in a salad, the flowers can also be eaten or used in wine-making. The roots, when dried, make a great chocolate-like tea! One of my favorite tea blends is peppermint + dandelion root! Mmmmm :)

In my area the black walnuts grow like weeds as well. These are an extremely valuable tree for medicinal purposes as well as for nuts. People often complain about these young black-walnut trees growing in their hedges. They also complain about running over the nuts with their lawnmowers. Ironically, I've seen more than a few people with various stomach aliments and cancers with black-walnut trees growing in their backyards! If only they knew what lay under their noses - so to speak! Just don't try planting any garden plants next to a black walnut tree. The same chemicals that make it such a great medicinal species also make it intolerable for most plants.

Edit: Sorry Gimpy, I didn't get a chance to read your post before posting mine. Funny we were thinking the same thing regarding black walnut trees! :)

Otherwise, gardening requires a lot of patience. I've read many gardening books, but nothing can compare to the actual experience of trying to grow plants yourself. I find something new to learn or try each year. For instance this year I'm trying to propagate my own grape cuttings. I was kind of amazed this actually worked! Experimenting and exercising ones creativity is one of the best parts of having a garden.

Ryan

 

[Buddy]

I've read many gardening books, but nothing can compare to the actual experience of trying to grow plants yourself. I find something new to learn or try each year.

I don't know what all you've grown, but have you had any issues with pests? If so, what kind of solutions have you used or experimented with - preferably of the organic variety?

 

[RyanX]

I've read many gardening books, but nothing can compare to the actual experience of trying to grow plants yourself. I find something new to learn or try each year.

I don't know what all you've grown, but have you had any issues with pests? If so, what kind of solutions have you used or experimented with - preferably of the organic variety?

Yes, I've had worms eat my broccoli and cabbage. I tried picking them off for awhile, but then gave up and decided to get some dipel powder. Supposedly the powder is just a friendly bacteria that kills the worms when they eat it. I've been told this is what a lot of organic gardeners use.

_http://www.motherearthnews.com/How-To-Get-Rid-Of-Cabbage-Worms-On-Brassicas-With-Organic-Methods.aspx

This worked fairly well. It kept the broccoli safe, but the cabbage still had problems. I don't think I got the powder in the places where the worms were.

Last year I had a white mildew in my grapes. I read in an article awhile back that said spraying milk on them helps to control that. I'm hoping to try it this year. I think my main problem is that the grape vines are in an area that doesn't get a lot of wind. If my cuttings take off, I'm going to plant some out further from the house where it gets more wind and see if there is a difference.

Ryan

 

[Hildegarda]

I don't know what all you've grown, but have you had any issues with pests? If so, what kind of solutions have you used or experimented with - preferably of the organic variety?

slugs -- trap them with beer: leave a nearly empty bottle in the garden, or, bury an empty yogurt container at the ground level and put some beer in it.

rabbits and deer -- rabbit fence, or sprinkle with cayenne pepper around a plant that you want to protect, repeat after a rain

vine bores (zucchini pests) -- plant an early squash with the zucchinis to catch them on, or turn the ground in the spring while it's still cold so the larvae die, or skip the zucchini for a year to break the breading cycle

 

[Mr. Premise]

Here is more stuff on forest gardening from Dave Jacke's website http://www.edibleforestgardens.com. Again, there probably isn't time or enough climate stability to do this now, but the esoteric significance is interesting, I think...

Vision

Picture yourself in a forest where almost everything around you is food. Mature and maturing fruit and nut trees form an open canopy. If you look carefully, you can see fruits swelling on many branches—pears, apples, persimmons, pecans, and chestnuts. Shrubs fill the gaps in the canopy. They bear raspberries, blueberries, currants, hazelnuts, and other lesser-known fruits, flowers, and nuts at different times of the year. Assorted native wildflowers, wild edibles, herbs, and perennial vegetables thickly cover the ground. You use many of these plants for food or medicine. Some attract beneficial insects, birds, and butterflies. Others act as soil builders, or simply help keep out weeds. Here and there vines climb on trees, shrubs, or arbors with fruit hanging through the foliage—hardy kiwis, grapes, and passionflower fruits. In sunnier glades large stands of Jerusalem artichokes grow together with groundnut vines. These plants support one another as they store energy in their roots for later harvest and winter storage. Their bright yellow and deep violet flowers enjoy the radiant warmth from the sky. This is an edible forest garden.

What is Edible Forest Gardening?
Edible forest gardening is the art and science of putting plants together in woodlandlike patterns that forge mutually beneficial relationships, creating a garden ecosystem that is more than the sum of its parts. You can grow fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, other useful plants, and animals in a way that mimics natural ecosystems. You can create a beautiful, diverse, high-yield garden. If designed with care and deep understanding of ecosystem function, you can also design a garden that is largely self-maintaining. In many of the world's temperate-climate regions, your garden would soon start reverting to forest if you were to stop managing it. We humans work hard to hold back succession—mowing, weeding, plowing, and spraying. If the successional process were the wind, we would be constantly motoring against it. Why not put up a sail and glide along with the land's natural tendency to grow trees? By mimicking the structure and function of forest ecosystems we can gain a number of benefits.

Why Grow an Edible Forest Garden?
While each forest gardener will have unique design goals, forest gardening in general has three primary practical intentions:

High yields of diverse products such as food, fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizer, 'farmaceuticals' and fun;
A largely self-maintaining garden and;
A healthy ecosystem.
These three goals are mutually reinforcing. For example, diverse crops make it easier to design a healthy, self-maintaining ecosystem, and a healthy garden ecosystem should have reduced maintenance requirements. However, forest gardening also has higher aims.

As Masanobu Fukuoka once said, "The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings." How we garden reflects our worldview. The ultimate goal of forest gardening is not only the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of new ways of seeing, of thinking, and of acting in the world. Forest gardening gives us a visceral experience of ecology in action, teaching us how the planet works and changing our self-perceptions. Forest gardening helps us take our rightful place as part of nature doing nature's work, rather than as separate entities intervening in and dominating the natural world.

Where Can You Grow an Edible Forest Garden?
Anyone with a patch of land can grow a forest garden. They've been created in small urban yards and large parks, on suburban lots, and in small plots of rural farms. The smallest we have seen was a 30 by 50 foot (9 by 15 m) embankment behind an urban housing project, and smaller versions are definitely possible. The largest we have seen spanned 2 acres in a rural research garden. Forest gardeners are doing their thing at 7,000 feet (2,100 m) of elevation in the Rocky Mountains, on the coastal plain of the mid-Atlantic, and in chilly New Hampshire and Vermont. Forest gardening has a long history in the tropics, where there is evidence of the practice extending over 1,500 years. While you can grow a forest garden in almost any climate, it is easiest if you do it in a regions where the native vegetation is forest, especially deciduous forest.

Edible forest gardening is not necessarily gardening in the forest, it is gardening like the forest. You don't need to have an existing woodland if you want to forest garden, though you can certainly work with one. Forest gardeners use the forest as a design metaphor, a model of structure and function, while adapting the design to focus on meeting human needs in a small space. While you can forest garden if you have a shady site, it is best if your garden site has good sun if you want the highest yields of fruits, nuts, berries, and most other products. Edible forest gardening is about expanding the horizons of our food gardening across the full range of the successional sequence, from field to forest, and everything in between.


Ecology

Edible forest gardens mimic the structure and function of forest ecosystems—this is how we create the high, diverse yields, self-maintenance, and healthy ecosystem we seek for our garden. It is therefore critical to understand forest ecology and its implications for design. Four aspects of forest ecology are key: community architecture, ecosystem social structure, the structures of the underground economy, and how the community changes through time, also known as succession. Brief discussions of each of these aspects and examples of their influence on garden design and management follow.

Architecture
Contrary to the prevailing wisdom on forest gardening, vegetation layers are only one of the architectural features important in forest garden design. Soil horizon structure, vegetation patterning, vegetation density, and community diversity are also critical. All five of these elements of community architecture influence yields, plant health, pest and disease dynamics, maintenance requirements, and overall community character. For example, scientific research indicates that structural diversity in forest vegetation, what we call "lumpy texture," appears to increase bird and insect population diversity and to balance insect pest populations—independent of plant species diversity. Learning how and why plants pattern themselves in nature and about the effects of the diverse kinds of diversity on ecosystem function can add great richness to the tool box of the forest gardener.


Social Structure
The unique inherent needs, yields, physical characteristics, behaviors, and adaptive strategies of an organism govern its interactions with its neighbors and its nonliving environment. They also determine the roles each organism plays within its community. The food web is one key community structure that arises from each species' characteristics. Organisms also form various kinds of "guilds" that partition resources to minimize competition or create networks of mutual support.

When we design a forest garden, we select plants and animals that will create a food web and guild structure, whether we know it or not. It behooves us to design these structures consciously so we can maximize our chances of creating a healthy, self-maintaining, high-yield garden. For example, the vast majority of solar energy captured by natural forest food webs ends up going to rot. We can capture some of this energy for our own use by growing edible and medicinal mushrooms, most of which prefer shady conditions. We can design resource-partitioning guilds by including plants with different light tolerances in different vegetation layers, for instance, or mixing taprooted trees such as pecans and other hickories with shallow-rooted species such as apples or pears. We can build mutual-support guilds by ensuring that pollinators and insect predators have nectar sources throughout the growing season. Insights into the guild structure of ecosystems provides clear direction for design as well as research into many aspects of agroecology.

The Underground Economy
The workings of nature's "underground economy" are a mystery, but the dynamics of this ecosystem are fundamental to the workings of all terrestrial communities. What is the anatomy of self-renewing soil fertility? How do plant roots interact with each other and their environment? What roles do microbes and other soil organisms play in our forest gardens, and how should we interact with them?

Plants are critical components of the structure that creates self-renewing fertility in natural ecosystems. They plug the primary nutrient leaks from the soil and energize a networked system of plants, soil organic matter, soil organisms, and soil particles that gathers, concentrates, and cycles nutrients conservatively. Maintaining perennial plant cover greatly aids this process. In addition "dynamic accumulator" plants like comfrey (Symphytum officinale) selectively accumulate mineral nutrients to high levels in their leaf tissues, adding them to the topsoil each fall. As we enter the post-oil age, our understanding of the anatomy of self-renewing fertility will become more and more critical to our success in temperate climates.

Understanding the dynamics of woody and herbaceous plant roots is critical to learning how to design and manage forest gardens. In what patterns do plant roots grow, why, and when? While the majority of tree roots grow in the top two to three feet of soil, it turns out that fruit trees that can get even a small percentage of their roots deep into the soil profile produce more fruit more consistently, resist pests and diseases more effectively, and live longer than those that have only shallow root systems. Good pre-planting site preparation is therefore a highly worthwhile endeavor. Root system understanding provides a solid foundation for plant species selection and polyculture design.

Soil organisms perform numerous critical functions in forest and garden ecosystems, and we can easily disrupt these allies and their work with unthinking actions. Luckily, basic forest gardening principles like using mulch and leaving the soil undisturbed provide just the kind of benign neglect our tiny friends need. However, good soil preparation can make all the difference, as well. For example, compacted or poorly drained soils can severely hamper the development of healthy soil food webs, and hence healthy forest gardens. Understanding the soil food web also provides insight into how to manage for healthy mycorrhizal fungi populations and how to ensure that nitrogen-fixing plants actually do their soil-building work.

Succession
Ecosystems are dynamic, and ever-changing. Plant succession used to be thought of as the directional change of a community over time from "immature" stages toward a "mature" "climax" community typical of a given region and environment, such as a field changing to shrubland and then to, say, oak-hickory forest. However, new models of succession have arisen in recent years that articulate the complex reality of plant community change over time without so blatantly projecting human cultural constructs upon natural phenomena. Plant succession is nonlinear and occurs patch by patch within the ecosystem, and rarely do ecosystems ever attain a climax or equilibrium state. Disturbances of various kinds are a natural part of every successional process—windstorms, fires, insect attacks, and human intervention. Nonetheless, linear succession to a "horizon" is a valid model to use when designing forest garden successions, as are various other permutations that mimic garden crop rotations or represent an ever-changing dance responding to the forces, needs, and whims of the moment.

While the practical applications of these new successional theories are of necessity somewhat vague, we do know that the most productive stages of succession are those in the middle—such as shrublands, oldfield mosaics, and woodlands—not necessarily full-fledged forests. In addition, most of our developed tree crops are species adapted to such midsuccession environments. Our highest yielding forest gardens are therefore most likely to contain, not the dense tree canopies of late succession forests, but lush mixtures of trees, shrubs, vines, and herbs all occupying the same space in patches of varying density and character. Succession theory also teaches us many different approaches to directing ecological succession in our gardens.

 

[Buddy]

Mr. Premise, thanks for that information (RyanX, Gimpy and Hildegarda as well). Indeed, there may not be enough 'time or enough climate stability' to implement such on a large scale. Perhaps all the relevant concepts scale down to the home garden as well?
Re:
[quote author=_http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/about_gardening]
The ecology and design of home scale food forests:
At its simplest, forest garden design involves choosing what plants to place in your garden in which locations, at which times. You can use design patterns drawn from natural ecosystem examples or invent your own patterns that solve specific problems your design faces to help you do this.[/quote]


The esoteric significance (as I see it) is interesting. It seems to scale as well, from the individual level to the planetary:

[quote author=_http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/about_gardening]
These questions are, however, part of the process of shifting from a paradigm of command and control to one of cocreative participation as part of a natural system.[/quote]


Here's some links that may be useful:


Table for approximate yields of selected fruits, nuts and berries (4 pg pdf)
_http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/files/docs/REVTab7.9Yields1-07.pdf

Table for plant hardiness and heat zone data for edible forest gardens species (8 pg pdf)
_http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/files/docs/07.Hardiness-Heat.pdf


AppleSeed Permaculture presents: Fall-winter 2007-2008 Permaculture Design Certification Course research projects!
_http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1859025682582906904

Productive vegetable growing (1918) - 366 pages, 194 illustrations (pdf)
Author: Lloyd, John W. (John William)
Subject: Vegetable gardening
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott
Possible copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT
Language: English
Digitizing sponsor: NCSU Libraries
Book contributor: NCSU Libraries
Location: _http://www.archive.org/details/productiveveget00lloy

 

[Arctodus]

Again, thank you Buddy! Mr. Premise :D

This is definitely a doable large scale project. What if we could return Eastern and NorthWestern Coast North American to their natural forested biomes? rotate the Gardened forests throughout tracts of land every few generations. The Wild forests could be logged for valuable timber and a gardened succession could arise.
The wildlife component would be fantastic. If we could resurrect native megafauna or introduce viable living alternates, they could provide a seasonal quota for city markets.

This also reminds me of the re-wilding concept. Introducing megafauna into barely utilized ecosystems like abandoned plains, deserts or tundra to enrich them and provide touristry, food resource and ecological mosaic equilibrium. Sergei Zimov has been working to demonstrate that the modern Arctic Bog Tundra is an anomaly.[/url][/url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park.

Some things to remember Buddy, the ability of humans to cultivate from _very_ early times in the form of seedballs scattered around camping sites and fire-stick farming allowed us to endure extreme hard periods much more easily than other megafauna. We are consummate omnivores, but we are also extremely predatory. *Sapiens* Humans can survive easily on weedy species. That is why slow-breeding terrestrial and near-shore megafauna tended to be disproportionally affected over the last 50,000 years.

If the C's are correct, massive cometary impacts have been a fact of life for pretty much the entire 2 million years of the Pleistocene, yet the loss of Megafauna has been very minimal. Each time the great majority of species rebounded until the last 50,000 years. That's not to say hominins haven't been gleefully devouring megafauna before that time. I suggest reading this http://www.megafauna.com/ it's very long, but it it is also quite an eye-opener.

 

[Arctodus]

There needs to be some clarification about South America. Contrary to popular consensus, the 62 million years of isolation didn’t result in a “weakened” fauna and flora just ripe for colonization by North American analogues during the GAFI. Ground Sloths show up in North America by the Miocene 10 million years ago and Phorusrhacids (the awesome terror birds) were present in Texas by 5 million years ago. There is some inconclusive evidence for a rainforest notoungulate present in Central America by 5 million years ago. Gomphothere Proboscideans, Tapirs and Procyonids were present in South America by 10-8 million years ago. Neither continent (Central America is part of North America) suffered mega faunal loss as a result.

It seems that both ground sloths and Terror Birds were opportunistic species that island hopped or crossed over from South American into North America due to vast open Central American volcanic landscapes during the Pliocene. Terror Birds survived on both continents until around 1.8 million years ago. The various Ground Sloth clades shucked it up on both until 10,000 years ago.

Okay, I’m getting to the point, it’ll take a while, sorry. The old idea that the “advanced” Placental Eutherians of North America were simply too much for the antiquated South has recently been chucked into the waste bucket because of gathering new evidence. It seems that around 3.3 million years ago an extraterrestrial bolide impacted South America just off the Argentina coast. 300,000 years later, a permanent land connection between North and South America was erected, The intense volcanism during this time has been documented to have resulted in a mosaic ecosystem of grasslands, scrubby barrens and open woodlands. Allowing the GAFI.

Set in stone, pretty clear, impacts are responsible for lack of diverse species right? Ehhhh, not so much. South America during the Paleogene and early Neogene. The carnivorous Metatherian Sparassodonta were dwindling during the Miocene with their last two genera dying out by the earliest Pliestocene. The very (sadly) unknown primatimorphic Marsupial Polydolopoidea. The rodentimorphic Paucituberculatan Marsupials and wastebasket rodentimorphic “Meridiungulata” all began a several million year decline from the Oligocene into the early Pliocene because of the African rafting of Hystricomorphic rodents and Ceboidea primates. The very cool Sebecian crocodiylmorphans were around until the early Pliocene. The rodent-like and primate-like marsupials died out by the middle Miocene.

By 3.3 million years ago, South America was dominated mostly by verified Placentals such as monkeys, rodents, procyonids, tapirs and gomphothere proboscideans . The main mega-carnivores were terror birds, and saber-toothed sparassodonts. The main mega faunal herbivores were “Meridiungulatans”, and Placental xenarthrans such as ground sloths, glyptodonts and pampatheres.

By 3.3 million years ago in South America, the last Sparassodonts, Sebecians, virtually all the archaic procyonids and the majority of the Meridiungulatans were extinct. The terror birds hung on until the early Pleistocene. However, the next 3 million years doesn’t see the extinction of native South American fauna. The very weird and possibly wastebasket “Meridiungulatans” slowly rebuild their numbers and spread back across South and Central America. They diversify up until around 10,000 years ago.
The xenarthrans just explode. Glyptodonts, Pampatheres and anteaters spread across both South America and the more temperate portions of North America. Ground Sloths and *Dasypus* armadillos can be found across the warm and cold temperate regions as far north as the Great Lakes. One Ground Sloth makes it to Alaska. Opossums also do well, with one species reaching southern Alaska in modern times (courtesy of humans).

Lots of Megafauna from North America, such as Carnivorans, Equine Perissodactyls, camelids, Capreolinine deer, peccaries and others “take” over South America. However, micro fauna such as squirrels and shrews have limited success. Only Cricetid rodents manage to really penetrate.

(And I’m not even doing the Sauropsids aside from the Terror Birds or the invertebrates, Yikes!)

From 3 million to 20,000-10,000 years ago everything is fine and even building up in complexity. Then *Sapiens* arrives. Then the North American Bolide event strikes.
The problem is, as terrible as _that_ was, many mega faunal species in both South _and_ North America survive it for up to 4,000 years afterwards.

Personally, I think that The Pleistocene Mega fauna (including us) had adapted to this massive increase in extraterrestrial impacts. But the rest of the mega fauna had not had the chance to adapt to an extremely clever(and desperate) predator willing to extirpate them for food.

Off topic: maybe there was an intelligent species around 65 million years ago like us who wiped out the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, enantiornithid and non-Neornithine Carinate birds among a host of other critters terrestrial and marine? Paving the way for us Therian mammals*? This time around, the most likely therian mammals to survive us in desperate times would be the muroid rodents.

*Not all mammals of the Paleogene were Therians. The sprawling Multituberculates and Gondwanotheres had their heyday in the Paleocene. Like modern day monotremes, they likely laid eggs and had venomous spurs.

**The meridungulatans are up in the air on their relationships. They may be laurasiatherians, Afrotherians, Xenarthrans, or even primitive Eutherians, we just don't have good phylogenies as of yet.

 

[Buddy]

The following might be worth a read if you can foresee yourself growing your own food in the years to come. Mr. Premise made reference to Masanobu Fukuoka in the post above, so this is also like a follow up.

"The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming" by Masanobu Fukuoka (225 pgs)

[quote author=From The One-Straw Revolution]

One Reason That Natural Farming Has Not Spread

Over the past twenty or thirty years this method of growing rice and winter grain has been tested over a wide range of climates and natural conditions. Almost every prefecture in Japan has run tests comparing
yields of "direct seeding non-cultivation" with those of paddy rice growing and the usual ridge and furrow rye and barley cultivation. These tests have produced no evidence to contradict the universal applicability
of natural farming. And so one may ask why this truth has not spread.

I think that one of the reasons is that the world has become so specialized that it has become impossible for people to grasp anything in its entirety.

For example, an expert in insect damage prevention from the Kochi Prefectural Testing Center came to inquire why there were so few rice leaf-hoppers in my fields even though I had not used insecticide. Upon investigating the habitat, the balance between insects and their natural enemies, the rate of spider propagation and so on, the leaf-hoppers were found to be just as scarce in my fields as in the Center's fields, which are sprayed countless times with a variety of deadly chemicals.

The professor was also surprised to find that while the harmful insects were few, their natural predators were far more numerous in my fields than in the sprayed fields. Then it dawned on him that the fields were being maintained in this state by means of a natural balance established among the various insect communities. He acknowledged that if my method were generally adopted, the problem of crop devastation by leaf-hoppers could be solved. He then got into his car and returned to Kochi.

Humanity Does Not Know Nature

Lately I have been thinking that the point must be reached when scientists, politicians, artists, philosophers, men of religion, and all those who work in the fields should gather here, gaze out over these fields, and talk things over together. I think this is the kind of thing that must happen if people are to see beyond their specialties.

Scientists think they can understand nature. That is the stand they take. Because they are convinced that they can understand nature, they are committed to investigating nature and putting it to use. But I think an understanding of nature lies beyond the reach of human intelligence.

I often tell the young people in the huts on the mountain, who come here to help out and to learn about natural farming, that anybody can see the trees up on the- mountain. They can see the green of the leaves; they can see the rice plants. They think they know what green is. In contact
with nature morning and night, they sometimes come to think that they know nature.

But when they think they are beginning to understand nature, they can be sure that they are on the wrong track.

Why is it impossible to know nature? That which is conceived to be nature is only the idea of nature arising in each person's mind. The ones who see true nature are infants. They see without thinking, straight and clear. If even the names of plants are known, a mandarin orange tree of the citrus family, a pine of the pine family, nature is not seen in its true form. An object seen in isolation from the whole is not the real thing.

Specialists in various fields gather together and observe a stalk of rice. The insect disease specialist sees only insect damage, the specialist in plant nutrition considers only the plant's vigor. This is unavoidable as things are now.

As an example, I told the gentleman from the research station when he was investigating the relation between rice leaf-hoppers and spiders in my fields, "Professor, since you are researching spiders, you are interested in only one among the many natural predators of the leaf-hopper. This year spiders appeared in great numbers, but last year it was toads. Before that, it was frogs that predominated. There are countless variations."

It is impossible for specialized research to grasp the role of a single predator at a certain time within the intricacy of insect inter-relationships. There are seasons when the leaf-hopper population is low because there are many spiders. There are times when a lot of rain falls and frogs cause the spiders to disappear, or when little rain falls and neither leaf-hoppers nor frogs appear at all.

Methods of insect control which ignore the relationships among the insects themselves are truly useless. Research on spiders and leaf-hoppers must also consider the relation between frogs and spiders.

We will harvest about 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice, and 22 bushels of winter grain from each quarter acre of this land. If the harvest reaches 29 bushels, as it sometimes does, you might not be able to find a greater harvest if you searched the whole country.

Since advanced technology had nothing to do with growing this grain, it stands as a contradiction to the assumptions of modern science. Anyone who will come and see these fields and accept their testimony, will feel deep misgivings over the question of whether or not humans know nature, and of whether or not nature can be known within the confines of human understanding.

The irony is that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is.
[/quote]
pgs. 65-70
_http://gyanpedia.in/tft/Resources/books/onestraw.pdf
_http://www.amazon.com/One-Straw-Revolution-Introduction-Natural-Farming/dp/0878572201


Fukuoka passed away in 2008 ( ), but permaculture and natural farming educator, consultant, editor and author Larry Korn, was a student of Fukuoka. Korn helped translate and edit "The One-Straw Revolution" and has continued to promote the teachings and philosophy of Fukuoka.

Referring to Fukuoka, Korn writes:

Sensei, as the title implies, was a great teacher, not only of farming but of life in general. As Sensei wrote, "Natural farming is not simply a way of growing crops; it is the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
_http://www.onestrawrevolution.net/
_http://www.onestrawrevolution.net/MasanobuFukuoka.htm

 

[Nimue]

I don't know what all you've grown, but have you had any issues with pests? If so, what kind of solutions have you used or experimented with - preferably of the organic variety?

I use a stock of stingling nettles, this is manuring and pest fighting in a natural way. I my location we find stingling nettles everywhere (don´t collect them near
roads with a lot of traffic).

How to make the stock: Put the nettles + water(1:1) in a basin (Terra Cotta or other natural material no plastic !), close the basin and place it directly in the sun and let
the stock ferment approx. 5 - 7 days, then you will have a stingling slurry (Better you don´t breath to deep, when you open the basin after fermentation )
Now you can manure your plants with the slurry an hold the pest off, furthermore a very low price variante.


mod's note - fixed quotes

 

[Nimue]

Sorry I think i don´t quote the right way ! I tried to quote Bud , and curtainly i mean stinging nettles and not stingling nettles !