The Permaculture Home Garden PDF
Preview The Permaculture Home Garden
~ Permaculture Home Garden How to grow great- tasting fruit and vegetables the organic way- free of pesticides and chemicals VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (Australia) 250 Camberwell Road. Camberwell. Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street. New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada) 90 Eglinton Avenue East. Suite 700, Toronto. Canada ON M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd . . 80 Strand; LOndon WC2R ORL Ehgland Penguin lrel<ind. .. . .· . 25 St Stephen'sGreen, Dublin 2,lreland (a division of Penguin Bdoks Ltd) Penguin Books hidia Pvt Ltd 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi -110017, India Penguin Group (NZ) 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale. North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltdl Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd 24 Sturdee Avenue; Rosebank, tohannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL. England First published by Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 1996 This edition published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2007 22 21 20 19 18 17 Copyright© Linda Woodrow 1996 lllustrations copyright © Penguin Books Australia Ltd 1996 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduc_-ed, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Typeset in Novarese by Post Pre-press Group. Brisbane, Queensland Illustrations by Michelle Ryan Diagrams by Alan Laver Printed and bound in China by Bookbuilders National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Woodrow, Linda, 1957- . The permaculture home garden. Includes index. ISBN 978 0 670 86599 4 l. Organic gardening. I. Title. 635.987 • i)enguin~com.au FOREWORD Permaculture ('permanent agriculture') is a word I coined in the I 970s. It means the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems that have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural eco~ systems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people, provid~ ing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non~material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order. The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with. rather than against, nature: of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than pro tracted and thoughtless action: of looking at systems in all their functions. rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions. Linda Woodrow studied permaculture intensively, and has written a fresh and lively book based on her wide experience. Her careful and inten~ sive designs minimise work but allow nature to exist while encouraging nat ural controls. She includes personal self~management. time-and-motion studies and a variety of findings suited to our Australian climates. includ ing the subtropical. I think Linda conveys, in detail, all the essentials for good gardening or mini~farming. There is very little derivative material, and the text has a first~ hand and authentic ring to it, a feeling for soil and plants. I can only recommend this book to all home gardeners who respect good soil husbandry, nutrition and design. Bill Mollison ~;":UJ=~~~~~~7h~ep~:r<liil\ ~&;~if~· 119 13 Green Gatecrashers 130 14 Water 135 Part 5 Alphabet Sq. 141 }i ' ~~ Index 181 PREFACE Some who read this book will say, 'It's easy for you. You live in northern New South Wales where the climate is mild and the growing season long.' And it's true. I live quite close to the Border Ranges World Heritage Area, a wonderful natural garden with productivity unmatched by anything humans have ever created. But I haven't always lived here. I have established gardens on windswept desert land in Western Australia. with local bush goats who thought it was too good to be true. and on an old schoolyard in Darwin. I have gardened in tiny courtyards and on a scale large enough to supply a Brisbane organic greengrocer. I have created a vegie garden out of the overgrown backyard of a squat in the inner-city Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. I have taught gardening in Glen Innes. where the first frost can be expected around Anzac Day and the last around Melbourne Cup Day. I am convinced that it is possible to grow most of your own food anywhere, under any circumstances. I don't come from a gardening family. My mother still waits for the day when I will put my degree to 'proper' use. In the heady 1970s. when it seemed that turn ing the whole world into paradise was a perfectly reasonable goal. I decided that food production was the place to start, and I've stayed with it ever since. Some hippies never give up. But I must admit that these days I do have it easy. For the last twelve years I have lived with my partner and our two children in a very beautiful valley near the Oueenslancl!NSW border. My site is high, sloping, windy, and beloved by the local wallabies. The virgin soil is what is locally known as 'black pug' - a very heavy day that cracks when dry and swallows gumboots whole when wet. For most of the last four years my area has been drought-declared. But it is also THE PERMACULTURE HOME GARDEN pretty nearly frost~free, faces north~east, and is surrounded by a forest that harbours over eighty species of birds. Lately I have scaled back from commercial production to allow time for teaching and writing, keeping my garden just large enough to supply my family and community. But much of the credit for this book goes to my former partners in commercial gardening at different times. Alii son Gillies tackled my Virgo ins is~ tence on use, and taught me that flowers, smells and contemplative time are as vital to farming as they are to gardening. Mark 'Carrot' Garrett taught me to have fun, exercise my curiosity, and examine and question what I do. While I am on credits I must mention Bill Mollison, founder of the perma~ culture philosophy, whose works have influenced and informed me more than any other literature on gardening. My community at Black Horse Creek has sup~ plied endless cups of coffee, listening ears and inspiration. And of course thanks go to my partner, Peter Lewis, without whom, as they say, none of this would be possible. Linda Woodrow INTRODUCTION This is a book about saving the planet and living to be a hundred, while throw~ ing very impressive dinner parties and organising other creatures to do most of the work. It is a book about a very different style of growing food. I am a passionate gardener. I can't imagine not having a garden. I would feel both deprived and irresponsible. 1b me, gardening for the joy of it is for everyone who eats. My aims are very ordinary: good. healthy, unpoisoned food that tastes like it should; a bit of stretch to the household budget; work that feels like play, and not too much of it; greenery and bird calls and flower smells around the house; and a world that is fit for my grandchildren. The trouble is that no con~ ventional system of gardening-or farming either-has it all. If you follow conventional gardening systems, growing your own food is a very expensive hobby. It is a full~time job, and not exactly an inspiring one, just to provide some of your family's food. If you account for the cost of your own labour, those supermarket beans begin to look very cheap. Conventional farming systems can produce cheap beans. but by using poisons. drudgery and mined resources-and they taste like it! Neither system even aspires to the aesthetic and creative satisfaction of a landscaped garden, and both involve making ene~ mies of almost every other creature. I could never decide which of my aims to sacrifice. so I have had to develop an unconventional style of gardening. I like sensory delight. Not just in taste that is an obvious one for gardeners. No bought food is a patch on food you grow yourself for taste. If I could find a way to persuade earthworms to wash the dishes, restaurants would lose their last attraction. But I like many other sensory delights too-weekends at the beach, long hot baths with a glass of wine, a good book. I don't mind physical work, but I hate drudgery. There are too many things
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