Permaculture techniques

23 Pages·1981·0.396 MB·English

by  Bill Mollison

IX
PERMACULTURE TECHNIQUES
BY BILL MOLLISON
Pamphlet IX in the Permaculture Design Course Series
PUBLISHED BY
YANKEE PERMACULTURE
Publisher and Distributor of Permaculture Publications
Barking Frogs Permaculture Center
P.O. Box 52, Sparr FL 32192-0052 USA
[email protected]
http://barkingfrogspc.tripod.com/frames.html
or
http://www.permaculture.net/~EPTA/Hemenway.htm
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-
ish. Once you get parsley
In that case, the most intensive
thick, you never have to
garden section is around the garden
worry about it again. You
entries. In there, place a little herb
always get parsley thick
spiral, and then a great mass of par-
where you had a parsley
sley. You can't have too much parsley.
bed.
Chives also go here. They are your
Our winter is not as se-
two critical herbs. Garlic is a crop
vere as yours. What we
that you pull at the end of the sum-
have been doing successful-
mer, and it can go in just everywhere
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. They return to the pond and you must
If you pinch out the tomato axil
The tomato won't stand the wind. It make a place for them to get out. A
shoots and plant them right away, you
doesn't like it at all. So it needs a lit- good sort of pond is one that is slight-
can also have a whole succession of
tle shelter around it. It needs to be a ly higher than the surrounding soil
plants going. At the end of the ses-
south-facing shelter. Grow Jerusalem level, built up and paved with stones.
sion, if you have a good tomato plant,
artichokes around the outside. They We put sweet alyssum and thyme and
take its axil shoots out, plant these in
are well up before the tomatoes are in garlic between the stones. The alys-
peat pots and put them in the glass
trouble with the wind. You can stake sum trails into the edge of the water,
house. In the spring, you can plant
the tomatoes, if you want to. and the little frogs climb out on it.
them out.
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. around the pond and just squeeze the
If you want to put a couple of com-
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
mellia, 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
can ferment it. Again, one plant gives rieties such as Raja Puri, Dwarf Ori-
heavy load on other parts of the world
you all the Camellia tea you want. It noco, etc. Also, beware of severe
is that we keep turning their peasant
thermal stratification problems in 2-
will grow in the open up to a latitude
economies into production economies
story greenhouses. One story with
of about 40 degrees. Wherever Ca-
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.