IX

PERMACULTURE TECHNIQUES
BY BILL MOLLISON
Pamphlet IX in the Permaculture Design Course Series
PUBLISHED BY
YANKEE PERMACULTURE
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Barking Frogs Permaculture Center
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PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE PAMPHLET IX--PERMACULTURE TECHNIQUES
ThIs is the ninth in a series of 15 pamphlets based on the 1981
Permaculture Design Course given by Bill Mollison at The Rural Education Center,
Wilton, New Hampshire, USA. Elizabeth Beyor, without compensation, undertook
the transcription of tape recordings of the course and subsequent editing of the
transcripts into 15 pamphlets. Later, Thelma Snell produced the typescript for all
pamphlets again without compensation. Lisa Barnes laid out and made
mechanicals of the original editions, and provided many of the drawings. More
recently, Meara Culligan entered all 15 pamphlets onto computer disk. I have
since added further light editing to increase the readability of the pamphlets.
Cynthia Baxter Hemenway spent many hours copyediting the new editions. In
deference to the monumental task of love represented by Bill's assembly of the
Permaculture Design Course, and by the subsequent volunteer efforts leading to
these pamphlets, Yankee Permaculture has placed them in the public domain.
Their reproduction is free to all and highly encouraged. The pamphlets are now
available I electronic form as a set.
We have some pamphlets translated into Spanish, French and German.
Volunteers are now needed to complete these translations and to translate
these pamphlets into other languages. Yankee Permaculture continues to depend
on volunteers for all of our publications. To help, contact us at the address on the
cover.
For Mother Earth
Dan Hemenway, Sparr, Florida, July, 2001.

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 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 1.
PLANNING IN ZONE ONE peppers in pots -- at least six or eight
of them. Prune them in the fall and
bring them in over the winter, and put
them out again in the spring. You will
have big, strong plants. We have had
them going five years.
You will have worked out pathways
out of this system, where you come
from parking, paths to the barn,
wherever you come and go. Take a
section of this tract, and start to zone
your plants along that track. Then
start putting your beds in. Afterward,
this will get messy in the ideal Per-
maculture garden. You can start put-
ting crops in rows in there, rows of
lettuce, rows of cabbage, your pluck-
ing herbs, the plants you are continu-
ally pulling from, that are long stand-
ing. They may include celery, a minor
quantity of tomatoes, New Zealand
spinach, broccoli, zucchini and patty-
You are very likely to do more zone that nothing else fits. If you have a pan squash. Typically, you have a path
one planning than anything else. If hole, put in a clove of garlic, and with some chives or celery. Put cel-
your architects are half way capable, that's it. Then plot the common herbs- ery here, too. Scatter chard along
and often they are not, what you have -there are only three or four of them. there, because it stands a long time.
is a set up something like this. They are tarragon, thyme, rosemary Peppers and tomatoes go further
You have mud room, pantry, kitch- and sage. That's it. Add a couple of along. Radishes are a catch crop eve-
en, living room, bed, bed, bed--or pots of mint. Dill does well here and rywhere. Everything has radishes
bed, bed, bed upstairs, each with an there throughout the garden. If you planted with it.
en suite toilet, of course! only gather the seed, it doesn't have I don't think it is worth growing
The set-up of the house has to be to be close to the door. anything but trellising peas and beans.
like this for the functions to follow There are three or four sorts of Now your common root crops go
the zone. You can't depart very much chives, the Chinese chives, the ordi- further out, except, occasionally,
from it. You can play around with ins nary chives with the little purple top, things like beets from which you take
and outs, jog it in, extend it out, and the fine-leaf blue ones. They are some greens. Then comes the main
screen it, trellis it; but, basically, all worth planting. They have slightly crop, which will include the winter
your set-up is like that. It is the only different yields in time. keeping squashes, corn, some car-
efficient set-up. Yet, you are very As for parsley, what I do is start a rots, main crop onions, parsnips, long
likely to find kitchens on the north bed of it going, and let that go to seed.
side, living rooms on the north side, I start a bed the following year. Then
and beds on the south, where you I pepper the heads all over the place,
can't sleep at night because of the so that I get parsley throughout
heat. everything. I just take the heads and
But let's assume we've had some shake them out all over the garden. I
say in the layout here, and often we throw it out where I want it to grow.
do. I use it as mulch. So parsley is thick-
In that case, the most intensive ish. Once you get parsley
garden section is around the garden thick, you never have to
entries. In there, place a little herb worry about it again. You
spiral, and then a great mass of par- always get parsley thick
sley. You can't have too much parsley. where you had a parsley
Chives also go here. They are your bed.
two critical herbs. Garlic is a crop Our winter is not as se-
that you pull at the end of the sum- vere as yours. What we
mer, and it can go in just everywhere have been doing successful-
ly is to put out our bell
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 2.
term cabbages. I always put a nastur- keep it from spreading. into the Earth's surface.
tium in here and there. The leaves are The base of your straw box is a Nearly everything we measure in
tasty in salad. good environment for horseradish, compost is less that what we measure
By summer, the Jerusalem arti- which is a good companion plant for in the soil after sheet mulching. What
choke is really up and out of the potatoes. You can make a special place you tend to have is a hyper-rich area
ground, forming a quick barrier hedge. for your horseradish. Get four old around your compost heap, but you do
Within the garden, you will have a few broken earthenware pots and sink not have that on your garden when
oddities scattered here and there. Cu- them in the ground, leaving them out a you apply compost.
cumbers are part of the trellising little bit at the top. Every year, you The best thing to do with mulch is to
system, and probably need to be on refill these with good Earth and stick put it somewhere dry until you need
the hot side. There will be other your horseradish root in it. Other- it. If you are piling up leaves, pile
things that can go on the cool side, wise, you can't dig your horseradish. them up underneath pine trees. They
like those scarlet runner beans. They It grows straight, is easy to break, stay dry there, undecomposed. I
are just about the best beans in the and very easy to lift. mulch up to two-inch thick branches.
world. Now let me tell you about compost- Just lay them between the peas and
You can establish conditions for a ing as against mulch. Every time you the mulch. I use all the large bark
particular plant, or plants, and you compost, you decrease the nutrients, sheets off trees. This creates a thick
keep that plant going in this spot year sometimes to one 20th of the original. mulched area where you are going to
after year. Usually, though, you get about a 12th put in plants. You can't put small
If you are dealing with a really of the nutrient out of compost that seeds in a thick mulch.
small garden, it will pay you to set up you get out of mulch. So what have Kitchen wastes can go directly to
a straw-box of potatoes, which is you done by composting? You have the garden. Just pick up a handful of
permanent. Board up an area some- worked hard to decrease the nutrients mulch, scatter the garbage around a
thing like eight feet by five feet. badly. Most of them go into the air. bit and put the mulch back. In winter, I
Throw some straw or seaweed into it. Composting consumes them. We want freeze kitchen wastes into blocks. You
Set your potatoes 9" x 9". Scatter a to get right out of composting. We can take a lot of tea leaves out and put
bit of ashes on, then fill up the box want to get back into sheet mulching. it on the mulch and go back the next
with straw, and let your client just In composting, you are taking a lot of morning and they will have disap-
pick potatoes from the straw. Some material, putting it into a small place, peared. It is the same with banana
will grow green on top. Just push and letting the whole of the decompo- peels. I just take fat out and pour it on
them down underneath. Keep the sition activity happen under hot con- the ground.
whole thing ticking all the time. No ditions which can be appropriate for Deal with weeds the same as with
soil, no bottom. Poles make a very some things. When you mulch, you are kitchen wastes. They lift out easily,
good frame. The bark rots off and spreading those materials and letting even docks. I reverse them so their
adds nutrient. Never use much saw- the process occur much more slowly roots are in the air. Lift up the straw
dust, unless it is quite scattered. It on the surface of the soil. Any leach and drop it back on the top of the
tends to cut off all the air. If you put loss goes into the soil, and the general weed. I let those weeds grow big, too.
in much leaf material, it mats, and level of activity spreads across the They're good.
you get an anaerobic condition. Use whole of it. By the time the mulch has If you dig this material into your
the same straw-box every year for reduced to compost, most of the ac- soil, you'll rob the soil of nitrogen. If
your potatoes. We have had potatoes tion has finished. If you want to get you mulch with it, you will never see
growing for 12 years in straw boxes. maximum value out of what you have, nitrogen deficiency. Your mulch is
Some of the people I know, for as long sheet mulch it. If you want to in- permeated with 70% nitrogen. Every-
as I can remember, have had their crease your nutrient base, do it thing that wants nitrogen takes it
straw beds of potatoes. It doesn't efficiently. right out of the air. The soils with this
matter if it is on concrete. There are some items that are good acid rain are getting nitric acids fall-
Near that, you grow a couple of to compost, but you need a very, ing on them.
comfrey plants, because for later very small amount of compost, maybe Worm manure, which is the highest
plantings you should always include a a cubic yard, a four cubic foot box. tonnage per acre, is the best manure.
comfrey leaf. Pick a comfrey leaf, put That's for a king size gardener. For an Again, that's a good reason for not
your potato in it, wrap it up, put it average household, they need one of composting. Instead of the material
under the straw, and that is your pot- those drums. Just strew a little bit of burning down in the composting bin,
ash and nutrients. Another thing you compost on the seed bed, a little bit in the worms are eating it all over the
grow near the potato box is a little seed trays, a little bit in your glass surface, and you have a lot of worm
pot of mint to cook with your potato. house. That is all you need. Most com- manure. It takes three days, proba-
As you are picking your potato, you post that you eventually get comes bly, in most gardens for worm cast to
pick your mint. Grow it in a pot to off your box of mulch. It incorporates completely cover the layer of saw-
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 3.
dust. You are getting high nitrogen, intentioned idiot comes into your gar- It is the work of a few months study
high potash, high phosphate. Worm den and pulls your leeks out because to determine which ones suit a partic-
castings test alkaline, which might be they are running to seed. So you are ular site. In the dessert, we grow
of interest to you, so that your mulch two years behind again. They pull tamarisk and casuarina for their
stratification after two or three your lettuce out because it is going to mulch. All bark is high in calcium.
years may go from a pH 6 to pH 3, if seed. Of course, that is why you had If the area where you want to start
you are using some pine needles. What it growing there. They plant some- your garden has heavy wet clay, you
you have is a stratification of pH. If thing over the top of an area that you are in a happy situation. You are in for
somebody says, "What pH have you had pre-planted and were waiting for real trouble where there is siliceous
got?", you say, "Everything." You it to come up. So you are a long way sand. Clay is fantastic for water re-
will find plants putting out feeder behind. You can be up to four years tention. Because you are mulching,
roots at completely different levels, behind; and if they destroy something your roots are well up in surface
and you will find high alkaline and high you have been working on over a long area, and don't have to encounter the
acid plants side by side. time, they can set back 10 years of clay. The clay holds enormous quanti-
You have mussels in your creek. You work. ties of water. Sturdy clay gardens
can scatter the shells under your If you can point out what you are make the best mulch gardens.
mulch and slowly they will all disap- doing, and if you have a very sympa- If you wish to start a garden on
pear. It takes three years. They just thetic friend and you work closely to- lawn, just go straight on to it. At
disappear on demand. I mulch oyster gether, that's all right too. If you home, we have people who keep
shells, scallop shells, pine needles, break functions up, one person at- mulching across their lawn. This
seaweed, hay, straw. We mulch some tending to the compost, the other do- year, you decide that a bit of lawn is
tin cans, particularly around our ing the planting, it is possible to work going to be a garden, so you mulch
citrus. together over the same spot. Howev- straight across it, and in a small
Algae, a lot of lawn clippings, a lot er, it should be in different functions, handful of soil you plant all your little
of hops- these things get slimy. Don't one measuring and supplying, the oth- plants through the mulch. Put your
apply a thick mulch of anything that is er doing the actual structuring. potatoes at the base, and go straight
wet. You will get good gley, but it is If you are going to mulch, you plant into garden.
not good for your garden. It must have a quick-maturing lettuce leaf seed. If you want to convert a lawn, it's a
air. Hay should first be put through You seed down an area and just put day's work. You never dig it. Here is
chicken pens; straw you put straight out seedlings. If you are growing one way to do it: You get a number of
on. seedlings in trays, just seize the op- old tick mattresses. Take them home
Now what you do is set up proper, portunity to put them in anywhere. and just flop them on to the lawn. Cut
permanent, well-designed small sys- Hay is full of seeds. You don't want little holes in these mattresses and
tems for each plant you are going to to throw those seeds in your garden. drop potatoes through them. Put a
grow. If you are going to grow cu- So undo your bales of hay in your handful of hay over them and that's all
cumbers, you make these holes, put chicken run. The chickens can eat the there is to it.
up a wire mesh cylinder, about four seed. They also help to shred the hay, You work things out for each plant.
feet high, and it's permanent, and you and add some manurial coating. After There are certain crops that are tra-
always grow your cucumbers there. they have kicked it all over the place, ditionally planted with corn. Through-
You work all this out. In the general you fork it out and put it on as mulch. out the whole of Yugoslavia and south-
garden, you do a sort of spot rotation. If you are mulching in this way, may- ern Europe, and where there is a hot
Wherever you are manuring, as in cu- be you won't need much manure. summer sun, corn goes with cucur-
cumbers, potatoes, and things like In the future, we
your asparagus bed, you never rotate. will become more
For tomatoes, rotation is disadvanta- sophisticated about
geous. Tomatoes grow better on the mulch, and will be
same spot. So you set up a permanent growing certain
tomato bed. You treat each vegetable trees for their
as a design problem. mulch. I am yet not
In any community situation, it is a certain which ones.
very good idea to give responsibility We know some of
to different individuals for different them. We know some
areas. As an example, I never re- produce an alkaline
plant leeks. I let a certain number of mulch, some acid,
them go to seed, then I take the bulbs and some have high
off and set them straight out. I just potash, and some a
did this before I left. Then some well- nitrogen leaf litter.
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 4.
bits. In the cornfields of southern Eu- can put a few in among your Try to deal with each thing in your
rope, manure and compost is shoveled tomatoes. annual garden system. Set up a sys-
off oxcarts in random little mounds If you worry about eelworm (nema- tem for your area, tune it up. Then
three feet in diameter and two feet todes) in tomato, you will need mari- write up a standard design, which can
high. These little garden compost golds--Tagetes minutia. Gooseber- be printed and tucked in with every
heaps may run right over a hundred ries are good for the control of subsequent report, when it suits. It
acre area. Corn is planted in rows. specific tomato pests. So if you want would suit an acre garden; it would
But in these mounds they put runner to grow a few gooseberries, do that not suit a 20-acre garden. You won't
pumpkins, melons, watermelons, and just outside, on the cool side of the have to keep on telling people how to
all sorts of cucurbits. The corn comes tires. grow their tomatoes.
up and is harvested and the melons We have our basil on the hot side, I will continue to insist that a pond,
drop off. They are sitting all over the parsley on the cool side, marigolds in probably central, in some of these
field like a million footballs. random little clumps, windbreak of non-eroded areas is worth its place. A
Climbing beans are a second group Jerusalem artichoke, and cool wide little pond in the herb spot is worth
of companion plants to corn. There windbreak of gooseberries. That is a its place. After just a little bit of re-
may very well be others. In the event good tomato production system. search, and going on data that is al-
you are growing sweet corn, and are As we close up in the autumn, we ready extracted, we can find a great
not interested in the cobs drying off, take some good tomatoes and put them many very high yielding pond plants.
you will have to go out and get them. whole under mulch. You get about 200 These plants are in fairly constant
You also have to pick the beans. How plants at each spot. This enclosure is production, because they are in a con-
are you going to wade through that thick with seedlings. Every remaining stant environment. Some of those be-
crop? tomato is just remulched annually. long in the annual garden. They belong
Work out a band of corn about four When I started my bed, I just in the high turnover garden. Some of
feet across, hollow in the middle. In brought a carpet out, mulched the top the perennial pond plants belong in the
there, put your manure pile and plant of it, and planted tomatoes in little annual garden of course.
your cucurbits. This way, you have mounds on top of the total. Plastic su- So put in a couple of small ponds,
also set up what is basically an edge. perphosphate bags, cut in half, slipped perhaps four feet across and 18 inch-
Plant your beans around it. Now you over four sticks, made a greenhouse es deep. Some of them filled with
can pick all the corn and beans, and for the newly transplanted tomato. about 12 inches of soil, and some of
when it is time to harvest the pump- Never re-buy your tomato seed. I them filled with about four or five
kins, your corn is finished up and you never bought but one lot of tomato inches of soil.
can get to them. That is a rich little seed. When you throw your tomatoes A pond that size will turn out about
area there, and you can keep it for under mulch, there is always the two hundred or three hundred frogs
your corn patch. If some of the beans starting of your main crop tomato. about twice a summer. The tadpoles
get away, there is your bean seed. If Tomatoes from these seedlings al- live in the pond, and the frogs live in
some of your corn gets away, there is ways ripen in time. the cabbages, lettuces, and mulch.
your corn seed. If you pinch out the tomato axil They return to the pond and you must
The tomato won't stand the wind. It shoots and plant them right away, you make a place for them to get out. A
doesn't like it at all. So it needs a lit- can also have a whole succession of good sort of pond is one that is slight-
tle shelter around it. It needs to be a plants going. At the end of the ses- ly higher than the surrounding soil
south-facing shelter. Grow Jerusalem sion, if you have a good tomato plant, level, built up and paved with stones.
artichokes around the outside. They take its axil shoots out, plant these in We put sweet alyssum and thyme and
are well up before the tomatoes are in peat pots and put them in the glass garlic between the stones. The alys-
trouble with the wind. You can stake house. In the spring, you can plant sum trails into the edge of the water,
the tomatoes, if you want to. them out. and the little frogs climb out on it.
Basil and parsley are good compan- We give our plants their culinary Another thing you can do is to build up
ion plants for tomatoes. So plant some associates, which have a secondary a little stone pile in the pond. Frogs
parsley in there and quite a lot of ba- effect of being weed barriers. When will drown if they can't get out of
sil in the hot spots. Your basil goes in you go for your tomatoes, you get ponds, so let them have a way out.
on the south facing edge. Parsley some basil and parsley right in the Mosquito control is accomplished in
doesn't care, it can go on the cold same basket. two ways. I always put a bit of garlic
edge. If you want to put a couple of com- around the pond and just squeeze the
For white fly, we want nasturtium, frey plants out there, do it. A com- bulbs out into it. That is the best. That
which gives the essential root con- frey leaf under the mulch near the kills the larva. Just float off your
tact. There is an all-yellow, bunching root of your tomato will supply garlic oils. It's about 100% kill. The
nasturtium that doesn't run; it is a potash. garlic doesn't kill tadpoles. The tad-
small plant and a fixed species. You poles eat some mosquitoes, but they
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 5.
are not a control measure. The second If you are dealing with a retrofit on shelf, so they are flying out above
mosquito control measure is back- a brick house, give them ivy on the your head.
swimmers. They, again, don't affect north facing walls. It makes a differ- Then you must think where your
the tadpoles. Backswimmers fly in. If ence. It is 40% efficient against heat weed barriers, paths, car park, en-
they don't, go and get them and put escape, and it cuts that wind drag try, and mulch dump with go. The ac-
them in--not the big ones, not assas- against the wall right out. It also pre- cess paths will probably be
sin bugs, but backswimmers. We have serves the wall marvelously. A brick established.
mosquito control standard design that wall under ivy is in much better con- Once you have the garden set up into
we have never printed up. It was dition after a hundred years than it those little productive units, then
written by a Ph.D. in mosquito con- would be without it. This does not ap- your work is routine, easily achieved,
trol. Garlic is a lot more efficient than ply to wood, just to brick. However, almost self-done. The potatoes keep
oil, and it leaves other organisms. if you want to go to the trouble of on potatoing, the tomatoes keep on to-
Ponds can be constructed from old putting up a trellis just out from your matoing; your corn is an established
stock tanks, an old bath, or, it's what wood walls, you can use ivy on the system that continues to produce.
you have. You can also make them on trellis. It will still the air flow. Many If our design is for an eighth acre
site, brick up the sides, plaster them people won't go to that sort of trou- with a large building on it, we would
inside. All sorts of variations are ble, so you can use trellising need to throw out all low yielding
possible. In some areas where we systems. plants, such as globe artichokes,
work, we just dig a pond in the clay, It is a very good idea, though, just which take up a square meter and give
and get a rammer and just ram it in. to back up your trellis with something three teaspoonsful of food. However,
Hot exposures around the house are permanent, so that the trellis be- if we move out into a quarter acre,
good trellising situations. Trellis can comes a permanent part of the gar- we could include a few low-yielding
effectively contribute to climate con- den. If you are going to use stone, use plants here and there. In limited space
trol. Use trellis right around to the something that comes above the stone don't use sunflower, use Jerusalem
kitchen windows. It should be decidu- that is not stone, because stone caus- artichoke. The Jerusalem artichoke is
ous trellis, up in summer and gone in es high turbulence. If you are going to a really high yielding plant compared
winter: hops, grapes, runner beans. use stone walling, pick flat stones and to sunflowers.
The hop is a noble vine, excellent for give it 40% penetrability. Have lots Into this area of permanent, undis-
light pillows for children. It puts them of holes right through it--not for the turbed garden will come your little
off to sleep without a whimper, and a lower two feet, but thereafter. It is hedgerows. Fennel and other perennial
child can not choke on a hop pillow. much better to soften a stone wall umbelliferae ought to be dotted here
You don't want a cold wind across with a plant that is higher than the and there for their value to wasps.
your house. You can control that with wall and softish; otherwise you get Other things to build in around there
trellis. We continue our trellis sys- real turbulence, low pressure zones, are things that we have previously
tems, but for different reasons. Now quick evaporation--all the things you discussed, the weed barriers, the fire
we can go to evergreen climbers. don't want. barrier plants, little permanent places
Use aromatic plants around the en- Trellising can be horizontal as well where wrens can nest and wasps can
try--honeysuckles, jasmine, lilac. A as vertical. Often when you retrofit winter over. Put in the sort of fruits
garden should smell like a garden. It is you can use horizontal trellising very you would normally be picking fre-
pleasant to step out on a quiet evening effectively. You will be trying to quently, some of your raspberries and
into good smells. Stick some lily of prevent excess summer heating. Hor- everbearing strawberries. Because
the valley among your chives, right izontal trellising is the way to go they flower all year, I always put a
near the door. The formal entry about that. On the horizontal trellis few fuchsias outside the bedroom
should be visually pleasing, but also you will need summer green crops, window. They are nice to look at when
work in some things that need that re- winter deciduous crops. It is easy to you first look out in the morning.
flection off the walls. It may be a good adjust a trellis to cut out the summer You can sit down and take a vegeta-
place for a few peppers. sun and let the winter sun right in. As ble list from any good vegetable book
There is a whole category of plants soon as you get to deserts, you can and throw half of them out and put the
that will live in shade, but they won't start to use the horizontal trellis as rest of them in here. List the ones you
yield as understory. Nearly all the your major trellis. A horizontal trel- are going to put in here, and exactly
small fruits will do reasonably well in lis placed close in against the house where you are going to put them. Your
the shade pattern of a small tree. The gives a place to go when the weather glass house space is reserved and
raspberry and strawberry bed will go gets bad. There are little animals that structured. It can wrap around a bit.
there, and black currents, if you are might come in there: pigeons, quail, We don't put any west windows in the
permitted to grow them. Gooseberries rabbits in hutches, doves and pigeons glass house. Those are insulated
do perfectly well in shade, particular- in lofts; bees. Bees are best put up walls. There is absolutely no (net)
ly the green gooseberry group. above pedestrian traffic, up on a gain from windows in those walls. We
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 6.
use them as storage walls, a heat high, which has these blind windows, ly practical, easily applied. Imagine a
base. copper glazed, or gold glazed win- block of that in your glass house.
Look at your house. If you have a dows. Its focal point is about 15 feet Do you want me to digress for a
thousand foot hill on the west, swing above the heads of pedestrians. You minute? I will give you another free
the whole glasshouse to mid-sky; for- have a column of hot air just con- invention, called "Mollison's sliding
get about due south, come to mid-sky. stantly ascending and the cold air is infinity parabolic calculator." I was
Don't be so silly as to take a house and just rushing in and going up. Very the man that made the 35¢-Geiger
align it due south, when from 3 p.m. rapidly, they didn't like the bottom counter. The sun, infinity, parabolic
there is not going to be any sun on it, floors. ray--it came to me. I took it down to
because your sun time is from eight to I have other solutions to your ener- the physics professors. They swore
three. So put it in the middle of the gy dilemma. The best one is this. You and cursed. There is always a me-
sun time. have a stone used by the Indians-- chanical solution, always a simple so-
soapstone--with a fantastic thermal lution. Do you want to throw a proper
MOLLISON'S SOLUTIONS TO EN- capacity. Heat it up, put it inside the bamboo screen up at the right curve?
ERGY PROBLEMS house structure where we need it No problem. I will give you a few
most to cook and to heat the house. more inventions that are critical Per-
You build a glass house front as a We will lead a little tube into it and maculture inventions.
focusing system. Then you beg, buy or plug it in. Any sunny day that you are "Mollison's ultra-sophisticated,
borrow sun reflecting mirror systems running low, we will come along with cheap, fast, solar heater." This in-
and place them under the eaves so the our pickup truck and we will take out vention came to me as I was walking
focus is about eight feet off the of our pickup truck a big fold-out fo- along the beach at Molokai in my
ground out front of the house, and cusing mirror. We will fire that heat thongs, looking at the golf course. I
there's your driveway. You run your back into your soapstone block. We thought I would head up into the bush
car under there, put a magnet on it have our meter. We will read the to look at some date trees. I took off
and bring it up into focus and it melts. amount of calories we give you, and my thongs and started wandering
You have a hole in the ground and a make it a little bit cheaper than oil. across the sand. My feet started to
copper pipe around the hole. Your car Now that is practical, easily done. cook. I was hopping from foot to foot.
melts and drips in this hole. That's at It seems to me that the technologi- In agony, I put my thongs back on, and
the end of autumn. Then you cover the cal society seems to be looking for thought: My feet would cook here. The
hole up, and this copper pipe heats all the technological solution, whereas black sand was intolerably hot.
your house and your hot water, and this isn't really a high technology so- So what you do is run water pipes
that runs all winter because you have lution. It is more like an old Indian through a box of black sand. If your
molten metal down there. I reckon trick. The Indian used to stick a slab sand isn't black, you blacken it. Put
that is the solution to the American of it up top of the communal fire and some glass on top of it. What you have
energy dilemma. Melt your car. cart it back somewhere where they is something far more efficient than
I do think, though, we could build wanted to cook, and cook on it. They these metal collectors. You have a
houses that would of themselves be cooked on it for a couple of hours, fantastic transmission of heat, end-
enormous energy collecting surfaces. then carried it back on a couple of less hot water, at no cost.
We accidentally got it in Australia green branches. I reckon that is a You want another invention?
with an office building five stories non-polluting system that is eminent- "Mollison's third world endless ni-
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 7.
maculture technology. the amount of sea salt. When it rains,
You are asking me the rain water sits on it. So you get
whether people use tita- fresh water sitting on salt water. You
nium oxide to create can't dip your hand into that pool. It is
this reaction? No, they a total sky focuser, a lens. The whole
don't. They just haven't sky of light is focusing into this hole.
thought of it. In chemi- Down there in that hole you have a
cal abstracts, around high heat capacity solution that, you
1977, a researcher will note, is insulated at the top by
noted this, and then water, which is a good insulator. So
went to a discussion of heat gathers in there, and it 's in ba-
the whole atmospheric salt. All this is hot.
circulation. One of the If you look in there, it is fascinat-
mysteries of the atmos- ing. You have a hot saline alga growing
phere is that it has an in there, violent looking stuff. You
excess of ammonia. have different layers of mosquito lar-
They have never ac- vae, belonging to different species of
trogen fertilizer supply system." You counted for it. When he considered the mosquito, but which are quite specific
will need a sand box, with a trickle-in amount of dunes and deserts in the to that stratum. This demonstrates
system of water, and a couple of sub- world, he said, "This is it!" Where do how common those sites must have
surface barriers to make the water we get titanic oxide from? Sands. So been, over ages of time, when species
dodge about. Fill the box with white he calculated it. Three acres of desert have adapted just to that particular
sand and about a quarter ounce of ti- under this system would supply as condition. It is real interesting.
tanium oxide (a common paint pig- much as a commercial fertilizer plant. It I were to make one, I would make
ment). In the presence of sunlight, ti- But we are not really interested in it out of black concrete and I would
tanium oxide catalyzes atmospheric three acres of desert. We are inter- put a straw right around it. Cook your
nitrogen into ammonia, endlessly. You ested in three square feet in some spuds down in there.
don't use up any sand or titanium ox- peasant's garden in Guatemala, or Again, the body is a sensor. If you
ide in this reaction. It is a catalytic somewhere else. I obtained a bottle of are playing around with a situation
reaction. Ammonia is highly water titanium oxide for our village. I never and you find a peculiar condition, you
soluble. You run this ammonia solution got any more of it. You can buy it by know, where your finger suddenly
off and cork the system up again. You the pound if you want to. It is a com- gets burned, or your feet get cooked,
don't run it continuously, because you mon filler in white paint, after they take note, take note! You think, as you
don't want an algae buildup in the got rid of lead. In the deserts, his ni- are cooking away at the base, Eureka!
sand. You just flush out the system trogen evaporates into the atmos- Everywhere, all this is happening
with water. Water your garden with phere. That's why it is there. Rain oc- naturally. A civil engineer on Molokai
it. Endless nitrogen fertilizer. If you casionally carries it down. That's has a thermometer stuck in this
have a situation where you want to why deserts grow plants. That's why beach, and he is busy with the idea.
plant in sand dunes, use a pound or you can start into a system in a We could build these black sand heat
two of titanium oxide. You will quickly desert without necessarily starting collectors on top of people's water
establish plants in the sand, because off with nitrogen fixing plants. tanks. You wouldn't even need a glass
nitrogen is continually produced after But, look! I have no time to try any- top of it.
a rain. This solution is carried down thing. I just know that it works. I Well, well, well, where were we?
into the sand. If you are going to lay never tried that black sand box as a We were just concluding planning in
down a clover patch on a sand dune, water heater, but I did a dance across zone one. Parabolic house--that's how
this is how you do it. the beach and I was persuaded. we got there. Right on the edge of
What I am saying is that every- My home is a good example of a zone one, you can recommend growing
where around us, in the natural condi- place where it is always working. It multi-graft fruit, a mini-orchard.
tion, these factories are working. has a basaltic coastline with many lit- There is some validity in cordon
That black sand has been cooking and tle steam holes in the basalt. Some fruit--just single cordons, perhaps
dehydrating materials for ages. Just are quite big. The sea is crashing in four feet long, each one a different
get a fish, split it, put it between two here, and the waves drifting inland, apple. It's whip graft here. Just a lit-
banana leaves, put it out there on the and it is also raining at times. So tle cordon fence made up of five sorts
beach. Dehydrated fish. No flies. You what really happens is that in these of apples. There's a man in California
can cook in it. That's better than your black basalt holes, you get seawater that has set up a cordon system in his
$3,000 metal collectors. Those things evaporating. What you have in those back yard. He gets bushels and bushels
are applicable everywhere. Good per- holes is a high saline solution, twice of apples out of a tiny back yard. He
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 8.
grows 150 varieties. That is an ex- the glass house, but within the house. for themselves. We do that just so we
traordinarily high-value quarter acre. It was the ordinary sort of indoor can have non-food items.
Dwarf fruit trees are very good in plant of the 1850's in England. So I think it is time we built some
this zone, particularly peaches and The pineapple needs a little tech- glasshouses to produce these items
citrus. This is the only area where I nique. It needs ethylene to set fruit. ourselves, and take our weight off
would recommend this. I would go to Apples produce ethylene. You have to other people. If somebody igrows five
the cordon for pear and apple, and to enclose the pineapple with an apple. or six tea plants in their glasshouse,
the dwarfs for most the rest. Have a few apples ready as the pine- they will have enough tea to supply 20
apple flowers. Put them down at the or 30 households. If you grow cinna-
THE GREENHOUSE
base of the plant. Another thing you mon, you can grow enough for 100
While we are still in zone one, we
might do is to plant a single dandelion households. These are species that I
might look inside the glass house. This
plant in a pot nearby, because it has think we are morally obligated to
glass house is adjusted to use the re-
constant ethylene production. grow in some of our animal heated or
flection of the winter snow. It would
Vanilla is a fairly hardy orchid. It solar heated glasshouses.
not have to be the winter snow,
will grow up the rear wall of any In inland Australia, where I put in
though; it could be white quartzite.
greenhouse, any place that has some two story glasshouses, there is no
As soon as that system is a little
heat in it. problem with growing bananas. Two
larger, we put up two or three glass
Cinnamon is a very easily propagat- banana plants would normally supply
houses for different reasons. It seems
ed tree that grows from cuttings, and all the bananas that you would use for
to me that the glass house is a very
it coppices. When you cut a cinnamon a family. You can get the necessary
sensible thing. However, they are not
stick off, you get four more. It is a height in two ways. One is to build a
being sensibly used. Often, they are
two-year cycle crop. In a pot, it single story glass house and drop the
only used to extend the season with
takes up about a square foot in a glass floor of it a story to make room for
the same crops you would in any case
house. You can produce cinnamon for these tall plants. The other way is to
grow in your garden and store. You
everybody in your area with one pot. build a two-story glass house. It is
want a minimal amount of that sort of
Cinnamon is a very common roadside very effective, however, to drop it a
crop in your glass house. Maybe just
plant of the near tropics. You can dis- story below ground, providing it is
one of the glass houses you build will
till the leaves for cinnamon oils. The drained. It is good heat buffer, and
have that crop. One alone should sup-
leaves are a very high value fertiliz- your plants will get up to the light
ply enough winter greens.
er. It's a useful little plant. fast enough. You could grow vanilla
Now what other sort of crops would
Tea is a small shrub, which is a Ca- beans and bananas in a pit glass house
be appropriate? There are really two
m e l l i a , a fairly cold-hardy shrub. In with just one story at ground level.
groups. There is a set of critical spe-
the tropics, it is a high altitude shrub. Grow the dwarf cavendish banana.
cies, and there is an income set.
It is better as a green tea, but you [There are several other dwarf va-
One of the reasons that we are a rieties such as Raja Puri, Dwarf Ori-
can ferment it. Again, one plant gives
heavy load on other parts of the world noco, etc. Also, beware of severe
you all the Camellia tea you want. It
is that we keep turning their peasant thermal stratification problems in 2-
economies into production economies will grow in the open up to a latitude
of about 40 degrees. Wherever Ca- story greenhouses. One story with
for species out of our climate range, dwarfs performs much better. --DH]
and much of our food is of that sort. mellias grow, you can grow tea.
Turmeric is equally easy to grow.
Many spices and beverages fall into Coffee is a very shade tolerant in-
There are many opportunities at
that category. Although some of them door shrub that has beautiful flowers
present for deriving an income from
are beginning to be home grown, they and a nice aroma. It will live in offic-
plants grown in the glass house. The
need a high labor input. I have a list es quite well, in just a well-lighted
highest return is from flowers, bulbs,
that I have extracted for Tasmania, office, under fairly artificial light
ferns and indoor plants. But you might
which I thought out very carefully, conditions. It bears heavy crops of
profitably grow vanilla beans. These
and which you can think out for your berries. You can eat the berries. Spit
have to be hand pollinated. You do it
area, which isn't so very different. out pits and take them home and roast
with a feather. You really have to
Just look through your grocery list them. You will get pounds and pounds
make but three trips to the vanilla
and your shelves. Maybe you use 20 of coffee berries off a single plant. It
bean, one to cut it and bend it down,
fresh ginger roots a year. You put a is a kind of weed tree of the shade.
one to pollinate it when it flowers,
green ginger root in a small tub and To the extent that we import tea,
and one to clip the beans. You sweat
away it grows. You have a continuous coffee, cinnamon and ginger, we lay
the beans in a woolen blanket, and
ginger supply. You might--and I would waste to a lot of distant peasant
that's it. One plant gives you hundreds
doubt it--eat as many as 20 pineap- economies, cutting into their available
of beans. It is a better commercial
ples a year. This is another plant that land, using their land to grow this
crop than tomatoes. It is up to your
is very easily grown, not only within food for us, rather than growing food
ingenuity, really.
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 9.
The alienation of third world land that does well rooted in a pond is sal- seed and plant from bulbs all around
from food production is increasing. So able bulbs. Suspend them on mesh the base, then sell the seed to some-
if you can start into these crops, you above the water. one else.
will be doing a good job. Most of them I'll tell you what my friend does in If you don't already know how to
are vegetatively reproduced. Melbourne. He rents people's swim- cross cut your cabbage stems, start
The banana sends up four shoots. ming pools and grows all of his spring in. Cut your cabbage, cross cut the
Give these to your friends. Cut off bulbs in them before they start using stem, and you get four good little
your spice plant and stick it in the the pools for swimming. He grows heads growing off that. I've gone fur-
ground, and off it grows. So will the them on rafts. ther. I have cut right through, let the
papaw [papaya]. Anyhow, papaws are Retrofit a swimming pool for bio- heads spread out, separate the four
really self-seeding. They will come up logical production, with blueberry things and replant them as plants.
all over the place. In cool areas they edges and frogs. Celery is an interesting plant. It is a
last for 30 or 40 years; whereas, in I don't feel we have got very excit- perennial plant, not an annual. In all
the real tropics, a papaw only lives ed about glasshouses yet. We have the Tasmanian gardens, they still have
for about four years. technology. We have the uses right, the perennial variety. Just keep pull-
So I would think about this aspect the construction right, and we have ing bunches off the side of it.
of glass house production. You have started to get some of the crops The trade has made annuals of many
an opportunity to provide more than right. But I think we have a long way perennials because they are into seed
cabbages, you know. You can be sup- to go. It should not take us long; but production. I have found a wild lovage
plying foods otherwise that you bring still, we have a long way to go. in Tasmania that tastes as celery and
from a great distance at a great hu- that is perennial.
man cost. KEEPING THE ANNUALS With many plants, I just take the
I haven't given much thought to the PERENNIAL seed heads and shake them all over
interior of the glass house. It would be You may be able to get a system go- the garden in autumn. They fall
good to do so. I can simply point out to ing so that there is no reason to buy through the mulch. I get celery, par-
you that there are strategies. Quail seed again. Keep little bits of purple sley, lettuces, and all that, coming up
are good inside the glass house. They ribbon right by the door, and tie a at random. It is very wasteful of
keep cockroaches and whitefly down. piece of it around the plant you don't seed. The same amount of seed would
Bring them into the house to clean up want to pull. Everyone should know sell for $20. I am trying to shortcut
cockroaches periodically. The ideal what the sign is. this whole business of buying seed,
nesting place for quail is under the Just keep bringing the seeds in, or growing and purchasing seedlings,
curve of a pineapple plant. They will even hanging the plants up to dry transplanting them out, cutting off the
eat tiny insects; they eat whitefly. without ever shelling them out. I think whole plant at harvest, and buying
Run a pipe from the outside pond to this is becoming critically important more seed every year. We are trying
a small pond inside the glass house. to us all. to get plants suited to the site, and
Fish will come in and overwinter in You have, maybe, eight species of reduce the seed packet buying as much
the glass house. non cross-pollinating squash. If you as we can.
I had a thought about taro produc- are smart, you settle on a really sat- In Tasmania, we have found that we
tion. Taro is a very ordinary root isfactory long-keeping pumpkin, a get many apple seedlings from apple
crop. It grows in water. But it is no good cucumber, and agree with your pips that have been tossed out along
use trying to grow it where it is fro- friends that they set seed of one of a roadsides. Every seedling apple we
zen. So we can move our four or five slightly different group. There is a grow is a good apple, so we never
taro plants indoors. perennial squash that just does not bother to graft. They are already
One critical plant that must be cross pollinate; it is quite a different heavily selected apples, and we grow
moved in is the Azolla, a nitrogen- species. There is a wide variety of them from seed. All the deciduous
fixing fern that grows on water. So species of squash--Chinese and Japa- trees that we have were imported.
we bring Azolla in, and, grateful plant nese. You have a very large selection. There are no wild apple species.
that it is, it starts spreading all over You could grow nine sorts of squash We got a frost resistant orange
within a week or two. There are 18 that are not going to worry each oth- from pips. Nectarines are always good
species of Azolla. They run right up er. We have dealt with pinching out from pips. Lemon will take frost. So
to the Canadian border and right down the axillary shoots of tomatoes and will mandarin oranges. I've been run-
to the equator. Sometimes it's red; peppers and bringing them in over ning around New South Wales when all
most species are green. winter, either under glass or just as the mandarins were frosted to the
Everything in the greenhouse is a sill plant. ground. Break them off the ground,
waste high. Underneath is rubble. So Leeks should be permanent in the and their skins would be stuck on the
why not put a pond there? One thing system. You should let some go to ground. These trees don't mind frost-
ing up of a night, a few degrees below.
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 10.
A seed bed should be incorporated Really, what we should look to car- Just before you plant, let the chick-
into the annual garden--a little five ry us through a drought would be the ens and ducks in to dig out the slugs
square meter place for putting out Siberian pea tree. They are common and clean up the ground. They won't
seedlings. You want them coming all here; and they are very good nitrogen get many of the seeds. Slugs and
the time. fixers, producing a lot of seed. The worms are much more delicious.
We save almost all the seeds of the peasants of Siberia fed their poultry If we want to set up a new sort of
fruit we eat, the pips. We let them on this tree alone. This sort of seed is chicken farm, we separate the chicken
dry, just along the windowsills. At always there. The chickens will go on houses by about 150 feet. If you want
the end of summer, when we have ac- and off it. They don't pay it much at- to make it 200 feet, go right ahead.
cumulated many of them, we pack tention when they are chasing mul- That's as far as a group of chickens
them in sawdust and put them outside berries. And they eat a lot of greens range. You won't get any mixing up of
in a box. The rains fall on them and in the summer. But at some periods the flocks.
the frosts attack them. From then on, when maybe there is no other seed, Here's another fact for you. If you
we start lifting the sawdust up and they hit it. It is doing handy things for don't run any more than 400 chickens
looking at it, and as soon as shoots them, like growing sprouts on its to an acre, you still have an entire
start to peep out, we start putting own. herb and regrowth, with no bare soil.
them out all over the place. They are With an acre of black locust, which Four hundred is about the break even
on their way. The more fruit you eat, is your best fence post material, you point. Three hundred is all right. It is
the more fruit you grow. You catch up may look forward to a 10,000 pound good not to exceed 80 per flock. They
with yourself in about seven years. drop, minimal. Just outside this acre, are happier with about 50 to 60 per
you have a little Fukuoka plot produc- flock. It suits their social conditions
FORAGE SYSTEMS AND ing another 2,000 pounds of grain, in best. You will need about five roost-
ANIMALS IN ZONE TWO case we made some wrong guesses in ers to the flock, otherwise, the hens
Never in the history of the world here. wander. So on an acre of ground you
has anybody designed and implemented Wherever there's frost heave, and can set out four sorts of 60-chicken
animal forage systems. we want to stabilize the soil, we drop flocks, running roosters. You can have
White mulberry as chicken forage is some sunflower seed in mud balls so four entirely different breeds of
as good as a double crop of grain. It is the birds don't eat them. You have chicken. The heavy breeds lay better
17% protein. The mulberry crop is a lots of opportunity with frost heave. in winter. The light breeds are spring
very good chicken food for the period Sow those little patches to clover or and summer layers. For details, con-
of bearing in which it occurs, and be- sunflower seed. sult your chicken fancier, not your
yond it; because the chickens are get- Now you can bring tubers in; you poultryman. You have good fanciers in
ting seed long after the mulberries can bring in some Jerusalem America. You have a pheasant socie-
are gone. You can put in quite large artichoke. ty; you have a duck fancier--all those
mulberry plants from cuttings. You Say we have a half acre of this--as ecological bandits. They are sort of oil
can put in four foot cuttings of about a modest estimate, you may have millionaires. Five acres under wire.
one and one half inch diameter. In the 5,000 pounds of chicken forage in They go out and pinch very rare ducks
first autumn, take a rooting, and you there, much higher in protein value off everybody, and escape illegally, if
can get several trees. You can com- than wheat, and a much more variable necessary, in their own yachts. They
pletely fill the area and be into full food. This would keep 40 chickens a are nuts.
mulberry production next year. In the year. By calculations I have made at
United States, you have one of the We have certain advantages here. home, I have enough food on there for
very best black mulberries in the We will have straw yards where we 800 chickens now, off the shrub
world. Two or three varieties will can grow lots of grain, by alternating growth. That's based on something
extend your harvest season. a couple of yards to chickens. We more than intuition. It's based on an
The hawthorn group are great win- have 5,000 pounds of fodder, at actual plot. Now, I don't want to put
ter forage. So is the mountain ash. present, there. This would keep 800 chickens on there, because I don't
When we come to the period of sum- chickens for seven months a year. No want bare ground.
mer drought, we look to greens--to need to go threshing and bagging your Your conditions are different, be-
comfrey, cleavers, and any amount of grains. You hang the sheaves up. The cause you have a winter close-down
chard. There are gardeners at home chickens will do all the husking and period, and you have some of your
who grow more chard for their chick- the threshing. Now that is without food in store. So grow more sunflow-
ens than they grow for themselves. In considering the forages and grasses, ers, or whatever, but not all sunflow-
this part of your garden you might and the insects in this situation. I ers, because if the chickens get too
have some throw-overs, like chard, reckon we might have at least another much sunflower seed, their feathers
or weeds. 2,000 or 3,000 pounds of just drop out. That's because there is too
protein. much oil in their body, and the feath-
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 11.
ers are very loosely attached in their doesn't hurt ducks or infest ducks. house around it, we can use the heat;
sockets. Ducks don't compete with the sheep. and if we use the methane, and the
We wouldn't argue but that we are So in this way, you set up a high hy- ammonia, and the CO2, then it is
going to get cheaper eggs. We wouldn't gienic situation. The same goes for starting to look very good.
argue but that we probably are going chickens and grain-eating herbivores. You want a few piles of quartzite
to get healthier chickens. Certainly I The chickens don't just eat grain. gravel in range; and you will need
wouldn't argue but that we are going They eat encysted parasite eggs. broken shell. The crushed shells of
to get happier chickens, because what Anything that has died, an animal that fresh water mussels are good for
you have is a chicken out there really has been run over on the highway, that.
doing its own thing. We don't seem to just hang it up in the chicken run, In North America you have a large
get much disease in these chickens. convert it into larvae. That will continent with large marshes. You had
They seem to maintain good health and sharply reduce the flies in your area, a large wildfowl population. Your
they lay until they die. It's not one of because these larvae will drop into country has wildfowl-specific forag-
these three-year systems. They often the chicken pen and be eaten before es. You had your turkey ranges, your
die at roost, having laid the day be- they can hatch flies. Ducks are great pigeon ranges, and your duck ranges.
fore. Some of them go six years in fly catchers, too. If you bait the flies Among these enormous forage ranges,
this. So no need to kill the layers. It in, ducks will catch many of them. We there are going to be critical forage
is a cheap system. You can bring out a can bring insects in to them by plant- species, very good ones. Long ago, we
cart of eggs every day, and they don't ing insect attracting plants. should have started using these sys-
cost a lot. Chickens with plum and cherries tems, and not have been relying on the
Get the system going with very sharply reduce crawling, flying pests. wheat fields to produce disease-
large cuttings and pot planted things. All the pests that go into the soil and stricken cows and poultry. I simply
Chickens cannot disturb little plants if re-emerge are sharply reduced. point out your grand opportunities
you get them going in wire mesh, With chickens given the shelter of here. If you go back and read the ac-
mulch or brush piles. Later in the sea- trees, the depredation situation is counts of your early explorers, you
son, when we get it going, we can load practically nil. will find that as they were coming up
the area with two hundred chickens. In What we are doing here is playing a the river, they weren't looking at a
a few seasons of tuning and adjusting, new game, which nobody has ever flock of ducks every half mile; they
we can bring it right up here to where played. They have played little bits of were looking at ducks by the thou-
we want it. this game here and there. The people sands. They were looking at flocks of
A pasture with above 400 chickens of Siberia and the tundra have played passenger pigeons that darkened the
will show two effects. The amount of a little bit of it. In West Australia you sky from dawn to evening. There was
nitrogen starts to weaken the pas- can identify the old chicken yards by a lot more nobility in the environment
ture, and the chickens will probably the fact that they contain the Canary then. Just imagine the transfer of
eat it out. Island tree lucerne, which, among the phosphates across this country.
What we are really setting out is a old timers, was the number one We can take some of the native ani-
much stronger root system than pas- chicken seed forage. You can find eve- mals like the turkey, and start to
ture, and we are setting up leaf ry old Tasmanian pig sty, because it manage those forests into turkey
mulch. It doesn't all have to be chicken will contain oak trees. The British ranges, or we can bring in other spe-
food in there. Chinese chestnuts and brought their oaks with their pigs and cies closely allied. In these wildlife
hazelnuts can go in there. You will their poultry--sensible people! Now forages we find many of the pioneer
double and quadruple your yield of ha- all that remains of the pig sty is the plants, the plants that step out into
zelnuts. What we have in there is high ancient oak trees. The pigs are over the grassland, plants that are not
nitrogen demand, high commercial there being fed grain, and the oaks fussy, do not require all the mulching
value crop dotted through the area. are over here with nobody feeding on and harrowing and digging. They pre-
Chickens are cutting down the grass them. Because the grandchildren of pare the site for your following
competition, and they are also eating these people went to the university plants. I would pioneer with bird rang-
the windfalls from apples and other and got educated, they found out from es across the country, and transfer
fruits. So it is a chicken-orchard: the agricultural department how to into larger tree species.
chicken plus orchard, including vine grow pigs. The old systems all went If you have existing forest of low-
crop. into decay. But there remained little forage species, you can adjust maybe
A grain-fed animal itself keeps four bits of it. five acres of it one way, five acres of
chickens on just the grain in manure. I think it is good to run our chickens it another way. You have great oppor-
Ducks with sheep are excellent. Ducks with the other animals. Then we have tunities. You have no establishment
eat two things fatal to sheep: One is animal heat and the enormous heat of problem. All you have is tuning prob-
shallow water snails that carry fluke, the decomposition of manures out lems. You worry about what vines to
and they also eat the fluke eggs. It there in the barn. If we build a glass put up those oak trees. Where there
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 12.
are no forests, our concern is how we have is unhealthy plants, because nitrogen going into this forest through
are going to get the oak tree up there. their essential mobile components are its animal populations, there is a very
Sixty per cent of the world's grains missing. The animals are needed. I rapid break down of litter. It would be
are fed to livestock. In the United think when we start to balance these reasonable to choose hardy animals
States, not only are you doing that, systems, you will see it reflected in and these pioneer forage species to
but you are bringing in something like tree health and tree growth. You may prepare for the following forest.
100% of the produce of the South even see a big tree again one day. Time and gain I have set up a situa-
American fisheries. You are importing I have seen an English walnut grow- tion, and then discovered that this
an enormous amount of protein from ing in a chicken pen, an old chicken ecology is working, and I hadn't real-
overseas. America does not feed the pen, not now active, between one and ized it until I designed it. Somebody
world. The peasant farmer of the two hundred feet across the crown, had been in there before, a good
third world feeds the world, including and still only 60 feet high, and that Designer!
America. All the fish concentrate, the tree is only 120 years old. It yields Yet it is not quite the same old game
entire crop from the Chilean coast, bags and bags of walnuts. These trees we have to play. We have to play a
comes into America as animal feed. around here don't look as if they are new game. We are not into the game of
That alone makes America a net im- ever going to be big. They will get shoving the continents together, and
porter of protein. They had put in a sick before they get big. pulling them apart, arranging all sorts
fish concentrate factory on our east You have conditions here that are of new combinations, just to see what
coast in Tasmania. Certain whole fish good for ground birds. There are all happens.
stocks were wiped out this way. sorts of places to start up these ac- We have been impoverishing the
We credit Melaleuca, which grows tivities, to create the little ecological globe, and we are into the greatest,
in most climates, with attracting islands. I don't think we need 70 per most intensive phase of impoverish-
about 60 per cent of our inland fish cent of this corn. If we could work out ment right now. We know that as a re-
food. This grows all along our inland these little alternative systems, sult we are going to wipe out tens of
waterways. It attracts a great varie- there would be no need for carting in thousands of plant and animal species.
ty of honey-loving beetles and moths. all of this protein. Whole elements are dropping out of
So we can bring insects in. We can There is a film that we have seen in ecologies everywhere.
bias the whole situation toward the Australia; you may have seen it here. The only way we can begin to make
desired product. At the same time, we It shows the fishing operation of amends for that is to bring other ele-
are not stuck on that product--the Chile, which has a desert coast. Off ments into those ecologies, in an at-
fish, the chicken, the duck. We can the coast, there are islands that were tempt to restore their function. The
move into mulberry jam, apples. I very high nitrate islands and phos- chestnuts were 80 per cent of the
have seen hazelnuts growing inside phate. Here the westerly drift comes forest cover. They are gone, killed.
and outside a chicken pen. Inside the up, and with it billions of fish. Those What do we put back? What amends
chicken pen, the bushes are about fish are being taken and processed are we going to make to every animal
three times as big, and they have at into fish protein concentrate for U.S. dependent on that forest cover? Are
least twice the amount of leaves per pigs. you going to make amends with the
cubic foot, as compared with the ones Under the conveyor belt that goes Chinese chestnuts, or what are we
outside the pen. The nut crops easily from the holds of the fishing vessels going to do? Acid rain will knock out
quadruple the ones outside the pens. up to the fish factories is a God-- many of the species in northeast
I suspect that we removed an enor- awful mess; and for a while you can't America. We may not be able to get
mous amount of biomass from this figure out what is happening. All you those species back in that area, but
landscape when we took away the can see is arms and wings. It is the we have to make amends. We have the
chisel plow--the marmots, gophers, peasant women and the pelicans fight- potential to enrich the system. The
moles; when we took away the free- ing for dropped fish, because both are chances are more than equal that we
flying pigeons. They were our phos- starving. The pelicans are invading can enrich it.
phate mobilizers. The forest produced towns 200 miles inland, fighting with Some of you keep returning to the
them and sent them out, saying "Feed people for the remaining food that rationale that there is an inherent
me." In this way, the forest attracted there is. That film indicates some- danger involved in introducing plants
the phosphate to itself. The animals thing is bloody awful. not native to an area. I have a ratio-
are the mobile part of the forest, an So I think we must go into forage nale, too. I use only native plants;
aspect of the trees. Those birds are systems seriously. These forage for- they are native to the planet Earth. I
planting those trees; they are garden- est situations are fantastic fire con- am using indigenous plants; they are
ing those trees. You cannot take them trol situations. We usually have a high indigenous to this part of the
away and expect to have a healthy growth rate, really good plants, very Universe.
forest. You can't. You can't have a little ground cover, hardly any litter Speciation is not something that is
healthy society, either. What you accumulation. Because there is more happening all the time. I believe that
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 13.
many of our systems are becoming and they start smelling good and get- You will find this happening like that
time-saturated. I believe that too ting lost in the blackberries and fer- all over the place. Geoff Wallace is
much time can accumulate in this sys- menting. At that point the cattle can't doing this deliberately. He has run
tem. It closes up. A forest that is stand it. They wade into the blackber- completely out of blackberries, wiped
rich, complex, with many other things ries up to their chest, picking out ap- blackberries right off his property.
in it, gradually evolves into a big old ples, and they tread heavy on the The main value of blackberry to
closed system, dominated by a few blackberries. Then the tree gets tree is that it prevents grass compe-
species. It is a bit like a free economy bigger, and it drops 30 bushels of ap- tition at the roots. Grasses produce
society that has resulted in a few old ples. It is now partially shading the chemicals hostile to trees. There is a
savage people accumulating every- blackberries out. It also becomes ab- fight on between grassland and trees.
thing. The die-off starts at the bot- solutely impossible for the cattle to Fire helps the grasses; brambles help
tom, and you loose a lot of genetic di- stay out. They smash the blackberries the trees. Hence there is a whole con-
versity. Then it's the time to flat, and you have this gigantic apple flict of pioneer species in grasslands.
overturn it. Any social system that tree with the big thick trunk, eight The bramble is really continually
lasts too long seems to get time pol- feet clear of branches. One of those mulching the tree, keeping its root
luted--chronically ill. trees is 70 feet across, and 60 feet system free of grass. The tree grows
There is a man who had a 14-year- high, yielding 70 bushels of apples. much better there than in an open sit-
old sow. He fed it a lot of good things, The cattle get about 40 bushels, and uation. A secondary effect is that the
including apples. He had pigs before you can pick 30. At just 17 years old, bramble growth pre-prunes the tree
her. About 17 years ago, in the cor- it's a phenomenal tree. to a standard, prevents low branch-
ner of the pig pen there was a black- I don't know whether you can ima- ing, and the tree crowns out into a
berry clump. An apple tree started gine this farm; but you should see it. really classical old British type
there, and up it came. Then the apples It has patches of eucalyptus and wat- crown--round, with a strong trunk.
started to fall, and the pigs got into tles, and here and there a gigantic fig By the time the bramble is smashed,
the blackberries and moved them out, tree, a gigantic apple tree, and an the bark is coming up from the root of
ripped them all out and left the apple enormous pear tree. Twelve pear the tree. It has all been timed. We
tree. This fellow was a man of great trees growing under similar condi- couldn't have designed it better.
sagacity. He went out and got a lot of tions yield almost seven tons of fruit Somebody designed that for us. I
apple trees, waded into the middle of per tree. They are big. They are ap- just keep on this way, discovering
his blackberries and planted trees in proaching 160 feet high. There is a something; then I go and have a look.
every blackberry clump he could find. flood plain with blackberries there, It was there anyhow. After the forest
He also planted peaches and quinces and these pear trees haven't any is gone, when we are trying to grow
and figs and pears. He had a lot of brambles at all under them. You can the apple tree away from the forest,
blackberry on his farm; he was in get on your ladder and pick the first without the cattle, without the pigs,
fairly heavy rainfall foothill country. 20 feet. The rest, from there on up, without the blackberries, we are go-
Blackberries there are not the weak drop to the sheep and cattle. ing to have a lot of apple trees that
undersized things you see around I keep seeing this happening all the are very unhealthy. In California, a
here. They are violently rampant time. I thought, Of course! Here is the lot of iris and fennel grow under apple
blackberries. They will fill gullies and old European forest, in which lived trees. What you are looking for now is
be level across the top of them with the white ox, the old European white the tree's garden, the situation in
the hills. The water flows down be- ox. On the edge of that forest, sneak- which the tree can stand against the
low. So he waded in and put in a graft- ing out into the plains, step after grass and still be very healthy. Now
ed sometimes, but often seedling step, is the bramble. On the edge of these are an interesting group of
trees. this forest, the only place where it is plants. Their main characteristic is
What happens in this situation is doing any good, is the apple. Its fruit that they are not surface fibrous-
that the tree grows straight up to the falls into the brambles. The seedlings rooted plants. They do not set up that
light. It doesn't make any low branch- come up and begin fruiting. Then mat that intercepts light, rain, and
es. It grows very fast. It is the fast- comes the white ox. He comes and prevents the percolation of water.
est growing situation you can find for rescues the forest. That is how the The nasturtium and any of the root
fruit trees. The tree doesn't have any forest advanced. Here comes your lit- thistles are very good plants. They
branches for maybe nine feet, and tle boar out of the forest, rooting are tap-rooted, large-leafed. They
then it crowns out. When the apples around in the blackberries for apples, are clumped or have feathery fronds.
start to fall, there will not be enough and they will change the soil condi- Those are the sort of plants that do
of them to attract anything except tion. They will make a high manurial well under trees. You can design the
three or four rabbits, and they eat situation, and will stimulate this edge apple garden, in which the apple will
them. Then, in a couple of seasons, growth of plants. Then on the forest thrive according to its shade and sun
maybe, a lot of apples start to fall, will go, with apples out in front of it. requirements. If you start planting
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 14.
this garden with your apples, you get for wildlife or domesticated stock. We lychees. During the four years that
healthy, fast growing, non-cultivated want a whole set of these gardens, they have been working, those guinea
trees. isolated from one another. pigs are about to make a millionaire
We are building up a set of plants Another good thing under trees is a out of him. So that is another applied
from which we can derive character- proportion of slab stone. I don't know plant-animal relationship that is a
istics that will enable us to add plants how much of the surface should be governing relationship.
with specific traits. These are very covered with slab. It may be the stone Occasionally a python comes
good grass barrier plants with a very slab is doing the pruning. Stone slab is through. He lowers the guinea pig pop-
fast rotting leaf crop, quick turnover ideal watering--instant run-off. It is ulation. But guinea pigs breed up.
plants. You can start to garden your not going to absorb and of the rainfall. Well, pythons are harmless, really.
orchard over with these species. At It is high worm cast--all the charac- It's that sort of situation that we
home, daffodils often grow under ap- teristics that we want. are trying to set up. We are attempt-
ple trees. You may want to sell daffo- Now for the fig, the rock pile is the ing to beat the grasses against the
dils and apples; or you may want to perfect condition. I feel that by adding forest, preferably in a productive
sell fennel and apples. or removing more stone, we could way.
Go and take a look at where the mul- prune those trees, because that is a
berry, the fig, the pear, the apple and very manageable proportion of the THE BEE
the quince have survived the ebb and ground cover. If we want to lengthen I don't know about America, but in
flow of human settlement. Work out the shoots, put stone on. Australia flowering is unpredictable,
the characteristics of the understory. There are biological books that will and forests are being rapidly reduced
You are seeking a tree with about a give you the perching characteristics to islands of plants. The average bee-
nine to 12 inch incremental growth of birds. Most all open country birds keeper knocks out well over a thou-
annually, continuously self-pruning at require perches. All insectivores are sand kilometers a week. Some do
the crown, so that branches are not perchers. Put a bird perch by that 1500 a week, just shifting bees and
overlaying and smashing, and the fruit little tree and you will find instant getting water to them, traveling to
will not be small and crowded. In the mobilization of the insects around that them, and carrying off the honey. It
blackberry patch, the tree is protect- point, and a substantial fall of phos- has already reached the point where,
ed until it starts to bear. When the phate there. It will make a difference. if beekeepers stayed home and started
blackberries are removed, growth We have done it, and those trees planting forage systems, they would
slows . where we have done it are healthy; be infinitely better off.
Another remarkable sight is avoca- and the trees where we have not done There is a whole set of bee forages.
dos about 60 to 80 feet high, bearing it are not. Those birds are eating They range from useful crop, such as
three to four tons per tree. They have seeds and insects and providing phos- rape and buckwheat, to marshland
a lot of cattle manure under them, be- phorus for the tree. We throw these trees, the water tupelo, and marsh-
cause cattle love avocados. perches away after the tree is up and land plants such as purple loosestrife
You are looking under the tree that providing its own perching situation. and Caltha, the marsh marigold.
you are scoring, and you are setting In a tropical location, there is a There are very reliable honey trees,
as an ideal that the tree makes the person who has done a beautiful thing. such as basswood, Tilia americana.
amount of increment a year that it His trees are lychee trees, and There are many basswoods, not con-
would make if we are actively prun- grasses are really hostile to lychee fined to America. The Tilia are else-
ing. But you wouldn't be pruning. In- trees. Those trees in grass will die. where called lime trees. Purple loo-
stead, you might put a wedge of grass He put at the base of each tree a little sestrife is a problem to marshes, but
under it, and let that prune it back. five gallon can with a hole in it, and in if it is there, it is good bee fodder. If
You would disfavor growth just a bit. each can he put four guinea pigs. Guin- you have it around you here, you
At Tagari, we've been only two ea pigs run around under the grass for might as well be using it as bee fod-
years on site, and I don't spend much a very good reason: There are a lot of der. The Tasmanian leatherwood might
time at home. When I am there, I'm owls. Those guinea pigs would leave grow in this climate. It has a super-
out stacking Russell lupines, comfrey, one stick in a hundred of grass. They high-quality honey. It has the inter-
thistles, and bamboo in under my or- build up a high and low litter. They esting characteristic that the cherry
chard. I'm trying to bring in more manure the tree. They cut most of the laurel has. It produces nectar from its
nasturtium. We are not inviting cattle grass off, allowing free water pene- leaves, and from its flowers. Leath-
into our orchard. We are doing the tration. All his trees with guinea pigs erwood has very active leaf nectar-
gardening there. are doing very well. Now here is a ies. Just before the end of the season,
Some of these situations are appro- cheap cultivation method. He has an empty the hives out and carry them
priate for chickens for forages; some army of guinea pigs there working for into the leatherwood, and they will
are appropriate for garden productiv- him, and it costs him very little. Yet put out 100 pounds of honey every
ity; and some may also be appropriate he gets a very high growth rate in his
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 15.
three days. Leatherwood will grow up profitably go into apiary work. Con- americana. We would wait four years
with the forest and flower in it at ventional hives are built to shift bees before we can get a blossom on it. So,
crown, or flower as an interface. It is around. Now we could re-think bee- we start with rape, buckwheat, sun-
an indigenous species in Tasmania. hiving altogether, given that we don't flowers, and all the other good things.
This plant is a really fine tree in it- have to lift hives around. I imagine There is a manifold system we can
self. It is good wood, a fine forest, a what we might build is the bee barn, play with.
beautiful tree, and an incredible bee in which we pay far less attention to It is easy to choose your mid-
plant. In a two mile range it is custo- the weatherproofing and insulating in- season and late-flow plants. The flow-
mary to put in about 150 to 200 dividual hives. We would insulate the ering periods are generally known.
hives. Within this range, every one of whole structure and have a whole set Your beekeeper certainly knows them.
these hives puts out 100 pounds of of exits for bees. We would work in- The whole thing we are trying to do is
honey every three days, and all the side it and have a high light escape to to bring the food to the animals.
time. Here, you would probably be which we can switch off. We unload,
lucky to hit 60 pounds in a season, un- store, and process inside. So the CATTLE FORAGE
less you have a lot of Tilia. Leather- whole operation becomes a sedentary It is very impressive to look at an
wood is an evergreen that grows in operation with a sliding in and out of ancient pasture, of which there are
wet, snowy forests. It flowers the our bee clothes. You always put in a not many in the world. It is like going
last of the season, mid-January with bee processing shed that steps down. out and looking at the unplowed prai-
us. So it is going to be mid-July here. Because honey is heavy stuff, your rie. There are a few in Yugoslavia,
What happens to a tree when it is extractor has to be no more than and in other southern European coun-
moved from Australia to North Amer- waist level, and your storage drums tries where it hasn't been their habit
ica? It keeps its wits about it. It oper- below. Honey is a flow-down thing. to plow all the land. I took a picture of
ates on day lengths as usual. We have That shed is always a step-down sys- about two square meters of pasture
shipped everything down, and it all tem--three levels. on which I can count 18 flowering
grows. You send us autumn fruits You say that in Czechoslovakia they plants; but there are many not in
from these oaks; we put them in and are using this sort of system! I didn't flower. Some of those pastures would
they don't drop till autumn. If it is know it already existed! I had to rein- have some 30 or 40 species of plants
springtime, we just plant them right vent it! Great! per square meter. It is a pleasant day
away. Often we just give them a chill We must pay attention to the fitting watching a cow going through those
factor and plant them. out of pollen traps in the beehives. pastures. It is totally different from
If you are planting for bees, there There are periods when they can be the grab and eat, grab and eat thing.
are a few rules. You plant a lot of the used, and periods when they are not The cow seeks her way through this
forage together. Clump your forages. used. Bee pollen is the best tree- complex. Inevitably, as she eats a
It is not good to dot these things about grown flour for protein we can get. good clover, she gets a mouthful, or
the landscape. If you are going to put So we are right out of grain growing. half her mouth full of a bad tasting
in leatherwoods, put 30 of them to- The plants are already growing that thing. So you have an interesting ef-
gether in 10 different places. Put grain, and it's hull-less. It has many fect. Cattle are unlikely to browse
them in full sunlight, or on the sunny good minerals, and is high in protein. that pasture severely, because many
side of the situation. Don't put them You get as much pollen as you do hon- plants are protecting others, and
near the hive. Keep them at least 100 ey. If you get 60 pounds of honey, you many semi-dangerous, or semi-
yards or more from the hives. If you get 60 pounds of pollen. So it looks as poisonous plants are in with the pre-
put them closer, the bees won't work if we might just shift right out of our ferred plants. Newman Turner, whose
them. I don't know why this is, but grain growing situation. From a hun- books have recently been reprinted,
they don't. It is impossible to have too dred hives, you will get pollen way points out in Fertility Pastures that
much low hedgerow between your beyond our individual needs. whether she likes it or not, the cow
hive sites and your forage sites. I Now we can figure that about 60 takes her medicines all the time. The
mean as low as four feet. This enables hives is a family's living. Moreover, cows in those pastures are shiny and
the bees to work in unfavorable condi- those bees and the apiarist and his glossy and have nice washed noses
tions. In very bad weather, the bees family are advantageous to any other and luminous eyes. The herdsmen go
fly along the very low hedgerows that system. They increase the apple crop; with them. They just sit with them.
lead to the forage systems. These they increase the buckwheat; they in- It's a pleasant occupation.
hedgerows are windbreaks, so they crease the seed set in our gardens. Most of the people who handle their
might as well be productive. Start out Again, we are into an interesting own cattle never use dogs or horses
with thyme, rosemary, or whatever, thing. We can go from crop and annu- or chase the cattle. Whenever they
and go on to low forage. als into perennials in a staged sys- want to change 3,000 head, they yell
Wetland plants are excellent bee tem, which keeps our flow constant. "Comeon cow!" and all the cows put
plants. People with wetlands might We don't have to start with T i l i a
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 16.
their heads down and follow him eats comfrey and a few borage grasses for winter. If we are going to
through into the next field. leaves, and we put borage leaves in raise the whole carrying capacity, we
Another friend of mine owns 700 our drinks. The main thing is, don't go store the spring and summer excess,
acres. He is an organic gardener and a to your garden and eat comfrey as using haymaking as a strategy. How-
renowned pasturist. He hasn't used your main food, like a lot of those ever, these perennial pastures, which
super-phosphate for 17 years. The people were doing. It is not the com- are of more value for that than the
health of his cattle's has improved out plete food; nothing is. Everything you annual pastures, are quite critical as
of sight. do like that is stupid. The next thing to the time when their food value is
Now you get all sorts of problems you know, somebody will start the good. The dry stalks off the grasses
with over-fertilization of grasslands. great cucumber scandal--the cucum- when the seed is gone are really poor
You get infertility; you get a rather ber diet. If you eat a hundred things, feed, just cellulose. The only way a
pulpy kidney; you get many diseases you are not very likely to die of it; ruminant can deal with cellulose is by
as a result of locking up certain ele- and you will get everything you ever additional input of two things: urea
ments. The cattle look peaked. They need. What you don't need, you spit and molasses (sugar and a high nitro-
chew on barns. They eat trees. They out. The point is, in a varied diet you gen). Farmers in the dry marginal
obviously suffer from lack of add a component where that compo- area float a half-full 40 gallon drum in
elements. nent was short. Chicory is a marve- a trough made from a from a 55 gallon
New Zealand, much more than Aus- lous plant for cattle. drum cut in half lengthwise. In the
tralia, is looking very much to tree A friend of mine in rural Tasmania trough made from the larger drum,
crops for cattle pasturage--to wil- has 8,000 acres. He plants about 500 there is a mixture of molasses and
lows and poplars, and some eucalyp- acres a year. He doesn't buy clover urea. The cattle lick this from the
tus. Cattle love the bark of these and grass seed. He buys the weed floating drum that turns within the
trees. It is quite possible to have en- seed. He gets the dandelion and the mixture. It tastes horrible. They ac-
closures of maybe five acres of tree thistles. He got a pasture chicory tually detest it. However, that sup-
leaves, which is much better than from France. His pastures are re- plies them with the basics that the
having a barn full of hay. markable pastures. There is grass and bacteria in the ruminant require to
If you want fat cows, you plant rye clover, but at a very low rate. He break down cellulose.
grass and clover, but you will still get sows clover at about one and a half If you put that out, you can feed
cows with worms and cows with defi- pounds per acre, and some of the your cattle on sawdust, newspapers,
ciency symptoms. Newman Turner gasses. But the main part is herbal and cardboard. People do. They often
recommends a whole lot of perennial pasture. He gets his herb seed form bring loads of sawdust or any kind of
herbs that should be put along hedge- other people's weeds. His cattle look cellulose they can get. Feedlots in the
rows. We know, for instance, that fantastic. These are very successful American West feed newspaper and
when cows can just browse along ha- pastures. He has never cultivated urea. That's the American beef. You
zel tips and buds, the butterfat con- more than one and a half inches deep, are eating your own newspapers, and
tent in milk increases, and the cows just scratches the soil and dribbles a lot of bad news, too! They get the
are healthier. Cows will always eat the seed along. He doesn't own any urea from chicken manure--6% chick-
some comfrey, though it is not a pre- machinery. He contracts a man in en manure with molasses. It is the
ferred plant. with a soil scratcher and a seeder, molasses that gets the bacteria
You can go nutty about something and does the rest on foot. You turn the active.
like comfrey or dandelions. But as a cattle in on it; they can bite down and The sugar pod group, the mesquites,
component in food, these things are smash it about. Turn them out, and it the honey locusts, carobs, and the
good. Some people were urging on all comes out again. sugary tips of such trees as striped
everybody to feed their children, Let's have a look at the actual cycle maple, will help cattle take advantage
chickens, horses and cows on com- of pastures in a climate which goes of the dry perennial grasses. In a win-
frey, until another gentleman said, through the year, even though it does ter climate, the demand is really for
"Look, be careful!" have a hard winter. Let's look at an carbohydrate fuels. So you design
Once a nut starts urging nutrition on annual grass. It carries on to midsum- oaks and chestnuts. What you then
someone, they are going to do it. They mer, falls away, has a blip in autumn find, to your surprise, is that this is
get their blenders down and start and falls away, and comes up in the the way it works. You don't have to
drinking green glue. It's stupid! Of spring. It is mid-spring before the design it in. God did that. Cattle grew
course it is possible, under certain herbs start. Their peak is summer. up to take advantage of what was ac-
conditions, to damage the liver. So The perennials to some extent dupli- tually seasonal.
there has been a note of caution cate this. They hang on much later in There are plants like Tagasaste and
sounded. Nobody has found that com- the summer. They collapse a bit, and Coprosma--evergreen and highly nu-
frey will kill you; we are already they have a better winter fodder val- tritious plants that go all year. Even
certain it won't. Everybody I know ue. The perennial grasses are better though you let the cattle browse
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 17.
them, while they don't respond as fast goats, you have to go into self- time, get packaged in manure, and are
over winter as they do in other sea- defended plants. That is where you usually placed in a little hole that is
sons, they still regrow again. So you use mesquite and honey locust instead stamped out near water. That's the
have three strategies, then, with of carob or apple. Apple is a good sug- best place to get your honey locust
these cattle and deer and goats and ar plant. The plum is a good sugar seed from--right from the back of the
sheep. One is, instead of just relying plant. Plums are good summer cow. Those seeds have 90% to 100%
on annual pastures, have areas of browse. However, you can't let goats germination. So the way to plant your
permanent, high-mineral mobilization into plum or apple. range is to feed the animals going on
herbs throughout all your pastures-- The British orchards used to have to the range with those pods. They
dandelion, chicory, comfrey. Have massive trees, not a branch up to plant the range. In the Hawaiian Is-
evergreens, standing, high-nutrition eight or 10 feet, and then a big lands, in Australia, and in Argentina,
tree crop within forage range that the crown. Cattle and horses could run cattle mainly propagate their own
cattle will coppice. Have high-sugar around underneath them, quietly fer- range plants.
summer pods that will carry cattle menting their own alcohol in their When you look closely, you will see
through the semi-arid seasons. This stomachs. that each animal, whether it is a tur-
group is critically important to range There are the root crops, too. If key or a bluejay, extends its own
capacity. Also, you must have a win- you can't grow oats, grow turnips and garden. Bluejays, being slightly short
ter high carbohydrate source--large fodder beets. So you have swap-offs. of connections in the brain, often put
nuts and acorns. Unless you are in severe conditions, 50 to 60 acorns in somewhere, and
These are the truly perennial com- in which winter comes crashing down forget where they put them. They
ponents--the fruit of trees that stand on you, there is absolutely no need to plant acorns quite well. Squirrels ac-
in pasture. go into hay pressing and baling. cumulate nuts in places they often
In Sholro Douglas' book on forest The dreaded pampas grass is ideal don't remember. By stuffing a few
farming, he describes an experiment shading grass. Instead of shearing the acorns down into a rotting log, they
in which he took part in East Africa, sheep and turning them out into a bar- kick the oak forest along quite well.
growing carob trees in big baskets, ren landscape, you put them in three Nearly every animal is at work plant-
planting them out on an East African acres of pampas, and the survival ing its own garden, shifting its own
cattle range. The carrying capacity of rates are about the same as if you put materials about in a forgetful and
the range went from one cow to 12 them in insulated sheds. You need sloppy manner. Humans plant melons,
acres to 12 cows to an acre. places for animals to shelter at criti- apples, tomatoes--all sorts of things.
Let's face it, what happens is, you cal periods. So you must plant dense There is no point in trying to push
add correct components at the right shelter. The losses of milk or meat cattle beyond their range. The sensi-
time of the year. If animals are eating products can reach 20% in unshel- ble thing is to swap over into moose
carob pods, they can then eat dry tered environments. Cattle and sheep or reindeer, and as soon as you get to
grass and utilize it. are simply unthrifty where they can't below 18 inches rainfall, go to black
One of the people in west Australia get shelter. You all have a mental im- buffalo, antelope, or gazelles. Ante-
has milking goats. He feeds each goat age of cattle and horses standing back lope range is on those dry savannas.
three carob pods per day. He has one to the cold winds and just shivering In America, you had a higher stocking
carob tree and it maintains eight goats away. They will lose eight or 10 rate with your natural animals. There
for the year. It is not a particularly pounds in a bad day. They look so mis- were the buffalo, and add white tail
high yielding carob tree; it is 17 erable. They are miserable. So design deer, the ground hogs, and prairie
years old. What's more, he doesn't a dense shading or shelter block, and I dogs. You had single colonies of prai-
pick up all the pods; he just picks up don't mean just a hedgerow. It must rie dogs a hundred miles in diameter.
enough pods to give his goats three a be a big clump of dense trees, or tall These were your chisel plows, and a
day, they can go out and chomp on grasses. Many forage plants, once mighty chisel plow. The high plains in
very rough forage--and the forage is they mature, protect themselves. An- Kenya, with scattered bunch grass
very rough indeed where he is, for he other thing, cattle plant all those and acacias, had maybe 20 common
is on a laterite cap. These goats milk plants, particularly sugar pod plants. herds, all of which were perfectly
well and do very well. If you read your propagation manuals, good beef. Now people get the chain
So it is obvious that if you have a you will see: "Treat this seed with saw out and whack all the trees down,
food, which is a concentrate, and of sulfuric acid, hot water, chip it, or fence it all off, plow it, sow it down
which a small amount will allow the grind it." When cattle eat honey lo- to high yielding pasture or perennial
sheep or cattle to satisfactorily pro- cust pods, they chip and grind the rye and white clover, and put up a lot
cess range plants, then you lift the seeds. They can't break them, be- of buildings. They bring in highly se-
range capacity very abruptly. cause they are too tough for their lected Hereford or King Ranch crosses
The willows and poplars are good teeth. These seeds immerse in an acid and start running them. What they
cattle-forage. If you are dealing with bath in the cow's stomach, heat for a have is one-60th of the yield that
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 18.
they had before they went to that of fishing is never throw a small fish ment. You can't let those pike into that
trouble. back. Always throw it over your pond, but we can let the little fish in
That's exactly what's happened here shoulder to your chickens. Always to the pike, and you will always have
in America. If you do your sums on return the large breeding fish, and eat pan fish in the pond. When they get too
your passenger pigeons and your mar- the medium sized fish. Don't ever big to get through to the pike, they
mots and your prairie dogs and your throw little fish back into the water; are right for us. You set that limit by
white tail deer, you will have 10 to throw them up the bank. putting in a two and one-quarter or
20 times the yield that you presently We have trout in Tasmania in heavi- two and tree-quarter inch mesh. Any-
have in a stable situation, and your ly fished waters, where the legal lim- thing that can't go through a two and
standing crop was enormously great- it for trout is seven and one half inch- one-quarter inch mesh is good enough
er. We are not very intelligent. You es. These trout breed and die at seven for you.
had a situation in which you had a full and one quarter inches. You have deer Now we have a chicken range.
on herd of swan, duck, deer, quail, population in the United States, where Hawks like chickens. If we are going
turkey. Now if you had started to you are allowed to shoot antlered to breed chickens, put a very thorny,
manage this situation, to maintain it, deer, and the only kind of deer you brambly patch in each range in which
you would have been well below food have left are antlerless. We have we permit hens to raise chicks. We
ceilings. heavily fished lobster populations that will get a high proportion of chickens
What you have to do now is to en- originally had reasonably slender from that. At home, we have a bush
courage the smaller animals, because foreparts and a rostrum. The legal called the African boxthorn. It reach-
you now have property cut up by measure was four and one quarter es the ground; it has millions of
fences. Buffalo can't move with their inches, point to point. It must have spines, and they go straight through
seasons; therefore they can't main- been a rostral fish. Now, nearly all your boots. Even cats can't prey
tain the bunch grasses. Their habit our crayfish do not have rostrums, within boxthorn. Dogs have no hope;
was to act to maintain their pasture. and those that do are still undersized. they can't get within the crown.
Cattle have a place. Cattle are forest This is like putting an electric wire Cats, if they get in there, want to
animals. They are not pasture ani- across the street, set at five feet, move real slow. Chickens just slip
mals. You have to chase them out on two inches. If you are more than five through it fast, because they have lit-
to pastures. Really, cattle belong in feet, two inches, it cuts you off. It tle hard scaly legs. So escapement
cool forest swamplands. They love it. isn't long before everybody is five governs populations there; it pro-
In summer, they spend all their time feet, one and a half inches, or else tects breeders. You must give the
up to their bellies out in swamps, eat- very tall people who are walking dou- same protection to highly selected
ing the swamp grasses. In winter they bled over. foods. You have to put them in pro-
will come back into the forest edges. What we really need to do with any tected positions. Cut limbs with slash-
That is where we got them from. sedentary population of animals is to hooks, and throw a patch of them on
That was their habit--the white ox of leave the large, fast-growers. We the ground in an animal's range, and
the forests of northern Europe. We don't need a minimum size; what we put in a tree. Your food plant gets up
are talking here of beef cattle. Dairy need is a maximum size. We need to and growing before the animal can get
cattle are much more highly evolved leave the very large, successful, at it. That's exactly what Geoff Wal-
than most beef cattle. I think, though, healthy, fast-growing animals. Eat lace did with his apple trees.
that we consume too much milk and the young and half-grown animals. If Some plants grow their own thorns,
dairy products for too long. It has a people started eating cows and bulls have their own protection; but many
place for a while. and leaving the calves, they would be don't, so we must give it to them. So
If you let an animal go into a range in a ridiculous position. The thing to wherever we are dealing with range,
where there is highly preferred food, do with crayfish is to make pots that and range management, we always
it eats the highly preferred food and only catch small crayfish and then have to think of this as a factor. We
leaves less and less of it. This is par- you will always have tons of have to give our preferred animals
ticularly true if you stock a range crayfish. some chance of not reducing their
heavily. If you want to fill this pond up with range, and a place to escape from
If we have a pond in which we put a fish, put in your bluegill or whatever, predators.
fish that breeds up--say a large- and there will be a million little fish, I want to talk briefly about animals
mouthed bass--and that pond has a and the pond goes out of fishing. Put a that are not normally considered in
certain capacity, as the fish breed up, screen across the pond, and put a systems. I will just give you a few
you can get 100 one-pound fish, 200 couple of brown trout or a pike or two examples, so that you can get an idea
half-pound fish, 400 quarter-pound in there. They will keep those little of the range.
fish At one-quarter pound, they are fish out of the system, because the On the Hawaiian Islands, and only on
hardly pan fish. At this point, your small fish can swim through to the the Hawaiian Islands, there is a sea
pond is heavily overstocked. One rule pike. That is sort of reverse escape- mollusk that comes crawling up into
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 19.
the fast streams. It is real good eat- on their knees, cutting the grass with brown trout.
ing. There is no other mollusk that I little knives. Turtles are easily con- But if we go from leaf to phreato-
know of anywhere else in the world trolled. Fencing is minimal. cide to brown trout, we only need 100
that lives in hot streams, crawling Tasmania has perhaps 60 species of pounds of leaf to produce a pound of
over rocks, browsing on algae and a strange little thing called a phrea- brown trout. So we get a hundred
converting it into good food. It exists tocid, a pedestrian amphipod. It has a times more brown trout by way of the
only on a few islands. But it is obvi- circular body section, and it walks phreatocide food chain. Every time
ously transferable to that particular slowly just below the mud and leaf you go up a trophic step, the conver-
sort of niche, and could be a food surfaces. They are primarily decom- sion consumes nine parts of every 10
source. posers in cold waters. They will be of your food. Therefore, what we
The coconut crab does all that active all the time. Under the ice, should be actively seeking out is these
shredding work and provides a lot of they will be chomping up leaves. short-cuts, and particularly the
insect control. They don't occur anywhere else in the large, low-level decomposers,
The slender blue-tongue lizard eats world except right down on the tip of chomping on leaf and algae and
slugs--nothing else, just slugs. South America. They are an Antarctic diatoms.
The whole group of tiliqua in Aus- edge species; they follow the ice caps The role of the mussels is in phos-
tralia are snail eaters. There are up and down. The only place they can phate fixation, and in calcium fixation.
desert snail eaters, sub-tropical snail do that is in Tasmania and a little bit Now in your area, you should not eat
eaters, and cool to cold temperate of South America. They have also those. It is better than you get that
snail eating lizards. adapted. Some of them have come phosphate and calcium stopped before
Then the geckos as a group are very down the mountains a bit. In the Devo- it goes to the sea, because it is phos-
good little pest controllers for glass nian ice age, you had them over here. phate and calcium that you are low on
houses. You find them as fossil. around here.
We have mentioned the frogs and Where they exist, they are a major The phreatocide is really too valua-
some of their characteristics that are food of the introduced trout. Trout eat ble to eat because it may be the only
beneficial in the control of quite spe- far more insect here in America. In thing we can use to get those leaves
cific pests that are otherwise chemi- Tasmania, they may eat 20% insect mobile again. It would be like eating all
cally controlled. and 80% phreatocide to trout, skip- the worms out of your field.
Get the woodpecker on the bark, and ping a whole lot of intermediate steps. I am pointing out that if you don't
the bantams under the trees, and the Again, in Tasmania, because it is an start maintaining these systems, you
coddling moth incidence drops down to oceanic island, because it is the rem- are in real trouble, and many of these
its usual about 1%. nant of an old continent, we have ex- things will be wiped out. Let us not
A specific orchard pig, the Glou- traordinarily large fresh water lim- pussy-foot around. There are enor-
cester, is bred as an orchard forager. pets. These occur only in one lake, mous processes of destruction. As far
That's its place. The little wallaby, and they are the only ones of their as we know now, in the Adirondacks
which are short browsers and live in sort. They are cold water limpets there is no more cycling of nutrient.
dark thickets, maintain fantastic lawn and, again, a major food of fish in the You better get busy and find an acid
systems. They are very soft in the waters where they occur, where decomposer, and quickly. What's gone
system. They don't worry plants over there are rocky bottoms on the lakes. is gone. What we are trying to do is
24 inches high. Geese are very simi- They are algae browsers, and where accommodate millions of people in
lar, but a little harder than the walla- they occur, there is a very fast con- places where a degraded and degrad-
bies when it comes to doing sward un- version to fish protein. ing environment can support but thou-
der nut trees. Geese-and-walnuts is Now if we, at least on paper, figure sands. We must make pretty smart
an ancient combination. some of the possible short cuts moves. Other than that, we can con-
The ideal farm: Sit there looking at through the trophic pyramid, we al- tinue pussy-footing around until the
your geese, and looking at your wal- ways look for our primary decompos- whole system falls on your head.
nuts. Once a year you clip both of er, the algae browser groups, the di- What I am saying is that we should
them (the geese, twice a year). atom eaters. That's why grey mullet look far more closely at the functions
Some of the large land tortoises in is such a fantastically important fish. of animals that are not normally con-
sub-tropical or semi-tropical areas It browses diatoms and it weighs 15 sidered as integral parts of con-
are short browsers and fast growers. pounds. For brown trout, we begin structed or even agricultural or
They put on about 40 pounds in two or with leaf algae, go to zooplankton, di- aquatic systems, and see what partic-
three years. They roll your lawns atom, shrimp, and then up to another ular value, what particular niche they
while they crop them. A herd of land whole group of cold water fishes, the might occupy to increase the number
tortoises would be much better for galaxid fish, then the trout. We will of useful nets in the energy flux. The
the grand Taj Mahal than 34 widows give it a 10 factor. It takes 10,000 phreatocide is a fine example. We
pounds of leaf to make a pound of have many, many species of them,
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 20.
because in the Devonian there were all, on your three separate sections. other plant associates under it, many
billions of phreatocides of varied Then next year, the section that was of which are specifically chosen to be
sorts. Their pH range, too, is enor- previously lightly pruned gets heavily the host species for wasps, which
mous. They did not come towards high pruned. The unpruned section gets a help the garden situation.
alkali. They go towards high acid. The light pruning, and the heavily pruned Now we go into zone two. Here you
normal data reading in some of our gets no pruning at all. You will find would not even bother to prune peach-
rivers is pH 3.5. It is too acid for then that you don't have a biennial es, except to cut out dead wood, be-
mollusks. bearing tree any more, and can fairly cause the least pruning you give the
Consider your guard animals, too-- competently predict the amount of whole group of peaches, cherries, and
animals that give adequate alarms to fruit per annum that you will get. apricots, the better. The only reason
other animals--guinea fowl for exam- What you will get is a fair number of you prune is to cut out dead wood and
ple. They are great for spotting prac- small fruit on the unpruned portion, a die-back, and to start branches
tically any danger, and their alarms small number of large fruit on the around them. In zone two, continue to
work for your other domestic poultry. heavily pruned portion, a small num- prune the pear and apple groups, and
very vigorous, tall
PRUNING growing trees.
SYSTEMS This is how you
do it. Let the stem
You only prune
grow to two or
very close to hous-
three feet high.
es, or on very small
Then you select
properties. You all
four buds at right
know of ordinary
angles to each oth-
cut pruning: A very
er, and you tie
low tree; keep the
them down to the
thing going out as a
stem, using a thing
low open situation.
called a twigger.
It is a good form of
Looking down the
pruning for light,
stem, you are go-
for easy picking,
ing to have four
for easy handling of pest control, and ber of large fruit on the heavily branches set out at right angles to
so on. It would be a fairly normal pruned portion, and the most fruit, of each other, spread out to maybe fif-
thing to do. It is the form of pruning medium size, on your lightly pruned teen inches. Tie these down. Then let
that most nurserymen can show you. portion. This cuts the pruning down, the stem grow on two feet clear, rub-
It varies from place to place, and as you can see, to less than half the bing out any branches that come, and
from species to species. But as a gen- cuts you used to make. Moreover, it do it again. In 18 months to two
eral method, it is perfectly adequate. makes your crop far more predicta- years, you usually have a couple of
Props between these branches keep ble, so that you can govern the mar- those done. About the time you have
them spread. You just pull a branch ket much better, or even light do- done it four times, you won't have
out when it is young and prop it into mestic demand. In total, you get any main trunk left. You have taken
position to keep it spread. The main slightly more fruit than as if you let the tree right out.
thing is to decrease the number of the thing run biennially. So you don't What you have now is a tree very
joints that are sharp, and to increase lose any fruit. But you get a variety thick at the butt, tapering very sud-
those in the main stem that come out of sizes. denly, a very strong thing. We are
fairly broad. These are the strongest
If you are going to make this the talking here about powerful trees that
ones. The idea is to force that branch
central tree in beds, you can also fol- normally grow strongly and which
out from the tree like that when it is
low in the beds a rotation around it, would otherwise get very high on you.
young. It will be much stronger.
so that you are treating your bed sec- We stop them from getting high; we
One additional thing, looking down on tions on thirds as well; and you gar- suddenly pinch them off.
that tree as a system, we are apt to den from high demand, to medium de- It is almost impossible to break
find that apples, pears, and most mand, to root crop, to high demand. those branches with fruit load. They
things are biennial bearing, so that You mulch on thirds: heavy mulch, are very powerful. Once you have it
you have heavy on, heavy off years. light mulch, no mulch. You sort of like that, you never bother with it
Now what you do is this: Think of the make for yourself a little wheel that again. Just cut off any water shoots.
tree crown as divided into three sec- you keep spinning. There is no reason It is an immensely strong and durable
tions. Start to prune around the tree, not to have that tree in the center of tree that will last many years. You
pruning heavily, lightly, and not at a garden plot, with its rosemary and take out the branches after the first
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 21.
season's growth but sometimes you
need to adjust them for part of the
grafted to seedling trees. It's too far Notes from the Editor
to get to in the summer, and particu- I'd like to elaborate on some of the top-
next season. What you have is 16 larly in spring. Drive down the road- ics Bill addresses here and in a few plac-
leaders; for each of these side sides and mark all the apple seedlings es disagree. One of the topics that I'd
branches is also a leader. So the tree this winter. Go back in spring and find
most like to comment on is the use of
is quite happy. It doesn't attempt to poultry in permaculture systems.
out from the flower what variety ¥ Bill's designs for poultry escapement
get away from the pattern. It gets they are. In mid-winter, go and lift will not work in most of the Western
fatter, produces more buds, but it them out of the roadside hedgerows. Hemisphere because we have a predator
doesn't break out of that pattern. They would eventually only be graded that is unreasonably competent, the ra-
Eventually, all these leaders turn into out or smashed down by the road
coon. Moreover, unlike most wild animal
very large systems. Broadly speak- species, the racoon will slaughter as
crew. We plant those trees out, many chickens as possible, just for fun.
ing, there is very little pruning to this sometimes by the hundreds. People Racoons swim very well. Islands will not
tree. It is a little-cared-for tree. Just keep throwing apples out of cars and protect poultry. Waterfowl are among
use this method on large pears, ap- renewing the stock. Good plums, too. their favorite victims. They can climb fenc-
ples, and plums that are very vigor- You root prune and top prune, and if
es, dig under them, or simply unlatch
ous. It is cheaper to buy from the gates and walk in. They can turn door
you are going to put it in near the knobs, un-hook hook-and-eye catches and
nurseryman a whip-graft tree the dwelling, you graft. If you are going slide barrel bolts, though they need a way
first year and start doing what you to put it farther out, just plant it out to reach these devices. If deep water is
want. there, put a stake in it, take five present, racoons will drown dogs 10 to
The zone three form of tree is even branches off, and up grows its leader.
20 times their size.
simpler. There is only one thing to do.
In this environment, poultry must be se-
Anything we have grown from seed cure at night, when racoons are active.
You see this all over Britain: Drive a gives us a very good fruit. We only Fortunately, racoons are good to eat.
very strong large stake and tie it up want a whole lot of fruit, good fruit. Never trap a racoon and release it, how-
for eight feet, or plant it in the back In summary, around our fruit trees,
ever, as it will never be fooled by that type
of the bush and keep the trunk com- trap again and will be an intractable prob-
we put in crops that will give secon- lem for you and/or others. Racoons are
pletely free of branches for eight dary yields, maybe commercial lazy and will walk into box traps to get
feet. It takes four or five years. Then yields. That ranges from flowers to husked corn, even if there is a cornfield
let it go, and it matures very rapidly edible products. Put in crops that will nearby. In fact, they will go for the husked
into a very dome. You never prune support the foraging animals, reduce
corn right in the cornfield itself. Barrel
that; you never even look at it. It will traps are reputed to work, but I've never
pests, and increase manure. Bring in encountered a racoon stupid enough to
stand animals browsing around it and the right animals. Put in structures go into one. If you want to try, put a cull
under it and through it, quite heavy like the little ponds and rock piles that hen at the bottom of an open 55 gal.
animals. will invite the right animals. Put in drum. Place a plank leading from a
So what you really have is three flat rock to decrease grass competi-
ground up to the open top of the drum.
sorts of trees, all the same species. Supposedly, the racoon will go up the
tion, and to stop soil compaction. And, plank and jump in to get at the chicken. It
One needs a fair bit of attention, giv- finally, put in the plant's culinary can't get out.
ing very predictable yields; the sec- associates. If you hear a racoon struggle in a trap,
ond one needs very little attention, do not wait until morning to deal with it.
yielding biennially. The last one gives Other racoons will work to help it escape
a huge amount of apples or pears of a and often they succeed, particularly in live
traps which otherwise minimize suffering
much smaller size, but it takes no of the animals.
work at all. ¥ In addition to the seed, chickens eat
Now another thing I would tend to do leaves. The same is true for
in the outer zones is to go from honey locust leaves, and probably hose of
other useful tree crop forage plants. If
they are set out in the chicken run, be
sure to protect them thoroughly. Other-
wise, they can be planted a foot or more
outside the fence. When the plants are
large enough to tolerate loss of leaves up
to two or three feet from the ground, you
can move the fence back to include them
in the range. Or just let the chickens out.
Geese, though they eat mainly grass,
are death to seedling and sapling trees.
They will ring the bark from them and kill
them. Probably they are protecting their
own forage. Once trees and shrubs are
too tough for this damage, geese effec-
tively suppress grass competition.
 Pamphlet IX Permaculture Techniques Page 22.
For more detailed information on poul- hold nutrients well, so the propensity of out and eat the stolons, underground
try forage, see plants to feed at the mulch/soil boun- stems by which the grasses spread. Pig
(TIPSY) , dary enables crops to take nutrient as it foraging is an excellent rotation in the
which features a special poultry forage is released, before it leaches out of permaculture garden.
section. The same issue also has a bee reach. Plan crop densities to fully utilize Of course, they also do good things in
forage section, with lists and ratings of this release. It will take some experimen- the orchard/tree crops situation. As Bill
bee forage plants. tation with specific conditions, including points out, they will brave those brambles
If you are interested in in mulch type. that have been doing other jobs for us,
particular, TIPSY #1 carries a very good Seaweed is a particularly valuable and get the fallen fruit from them. This
article on that genus by Thelma Snell. mulch for sandy and coarse soils be- prevents pests from overwintering in the
Thelma's piece is probably the best that cause it forms a gel that holds moisture fruit, and of course feeds the pigs. Pigs
has been written in English. (Most materi- between soil particles. Grass clippings, can fatten on fruit as well as on corn, but
al on is in Russian.) which could not be used on other soils be- they need a lot more fruit. Bill has written
Vol. I, No. 3 of cause they form a gley, suit sandy soils al- a special paper on pig forage, available as
(TIPS) most as well. Yankee Permaculture Paper #19,
contains a extensive survey of methods ¥ Note that there is one major draw-
for managing soil in permaculture sys- back to mulch. In fall, mulch holds heat in ¥ If you are following Bills advice on
tems. Readers of this pamphlet may be the soil. On clear nights, particularly when how to prune your tomatoes, make sure
especially interested in my comments on there is a sudden temperature drop, that they are indeterminate varieties, not
using chickens in conjunction with mulch. even hardy plants such as broccoli will re- determinate varieties. The first just keep
In temperate climates, chickens are let ceive frost damage because the soil heat on growing until something kills them. The
into the mulch before and after annual is unavailable to them. Annual plants determinate types (sometimes called
crops are grown. In tropical situations, must be mulched completely over their bush varieties) have only so many shoots.
they are rotated. I have observed that tops during cold snaps, to mitigate this ef- If you remove shoots, you cut yield. Don't
chickens get most of their food from the fect. (Old bedspreads are easier to re- prune determinate tomatoes. They are
invertebrates that live in mulch. I suspect move in the daytime than ordinary good for dense plantings and have a high
that chickens also eat raw compost. mulch.) yield per unit area. Indeterminate toma-
An ideal plant for poultry forages is the The effect is mainly with lower annuals. toes lend to trellising in various systems
black raspberry ( ), at Trees reach past the effective benefit of and have more design and companion
least in regions where raspberries are soil radiation. They benefit from having planting potential.
native. (Brambles can be rampant and soil temperatures more stable due to the ¥ Use alyssum around your plants to
should not be introduced as exotics.) The insulating effects of mulch. Roots grow attract the "beneficial" insects that re-
tip-layering black raspberries provide ex- longer into the season and chance of quire pollen and nectar in their adult stag-
cellent cover for brooding hens, and they frost heave is much less. es. It is perfect, and blossoms over a
escape the depredations of racoons and ¥ With Jerusalem artichokes, be aware very long period.
skunks while nesting. Once chicks are that they are allelopathic--they poison ¥ Bill says, don't feed sunflowers to
hatched, steps must be taken to protect some other plants as do all other types chickens because they make the feathers
the family at night. Where tip-layering or sunflowers. They can also be difficult fall out easily. Thelma Snell, reading this
blackberries grow, these may be even to exterminate from a place, unless you after initiation into the joys of chicken
more effective. does very well in have access to pigs. Pigs love them, can plucking, suggested that we should save
conjunction with chickens. smell them underground, and, released our sunflower seed to feed to those chick-
Black raspberries spontaneously asso- in an unwanted patch after tubers have ens we are about to slaughter. It will
ciated with umbrella-shaped fruit trees formed, they eliminate these plants make the feather removal operation
such as apples, growing at the drip line entirely. much easier! That's permaculture think-
where they are very productive. As Bill ¥ Pigs control grubs, slugs, and even ing folks. Just stand limitations on their
notes regarding blackberries, they benefit poison snakes when let to forage in a gar- heads to create opportunities.
the tree. Of course, there is more to it den after harvest. They are easily con- ¥ Other Yankee Permaculture publi-
than he goes into, having to do with the tained by electric fence, just inside a light- cations related to permaculture tech-
ability of the blackberries to suppress weight temporary woven wire fence. (The niques discussed here include:
grass, mobilize trace elements, and at- temporary fence slows them, and the YPC 5. Useful Climbing Plants.
tract various kinds of animal life, from soil electric repels them.) Mollison.
dwellers to birds. Raspberries do the By the way, you can also keep racoons YPC 16. Gardening Articles, by Dan
same, though not as robustly. Chickens fit from an area by putting a strand of elec- Hemenway, reprints.
these systems well. They take the lower tric fence about four inches above the YPC 20. Circle Garden Patterns,
berries, about eight inches above their top strand of woven wire. They climb the Webb & Hemenway.
height (they jump), but leave the ones eas- wire fence, which is perfectly grounded, YPC 30. Articles about soil by Dan
iest for people to pick. They get some ber- and then reach for the top, electric Hemenway, reprints.
ries, but you get more than if they were strand. Zowie! They aren't seriously hurt YPC 31. Plants for Use In Permacul-
not there. A happy chicken is a wonderful physically, but they may never return. This ture in the Tropics, Frank Martin.
asset. is very effective. YPC 36. Patiofarming in the Tropics
¥ Watch out for Bill's admonition to Back to the pigs, they can be let in clos- and Subtropics by Frank Martin.
mulch clay. It is easily overdone. The inter- er gardens as the cool weather closes And all Yankee Permaculture journal
face can be too moist, causing an anaero- them down. Cool weather means fewer issues, which are packed full of practi-
bic souring of soil and mulch that pro- smells. Pigs smell only when overcrowd- cal information that will make permacul-
motes diseases that, for example, kill ed or fed kinds of garbage they won't eat. ture techniques work better.
tomato plants. Sandy soil greatly benefits (Its the garbage that smells.) They com- Yankee Permaculture's address is on
from mulch because far less moisture is pletely eliminate witch (quack) grass and the cover of this pamphlet.
lost to evaporation. Sandy soil does not other rampant grass weeds. They root