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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] kinship gardens and permaculture

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  • From: miekal and <dtv@mwt.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] kinship gardens and permaculture
  • Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 13:13:37 -0600


On Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at 12:09 PM, Toby Hemenway wrote:

On Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at 08:55 AM, mIEKAL aND wrote:

I have a really hard time seeing these as mutually exclusive binaries.

There's certainly some overlap between kinship and permaculture gardens, but no one that I know of has explored how extensive it is, or whether the criteria of one can meet those of the other--are they useful for each other?


But how could one possibly know unless you embrace a spirit of experimentation & opening yourself as a designer to the possibilities the biological universe has to offer?



Plants that are closely related evolutionarily may not work well together or be useful to a human gardener.

You mean like species of cornaceae, sambucaceae, asteraceae, lobeliaceae, fabaeae, rutales, rosacease, or malaceae?


So diversity for diversity's sake--


Is this what kinship gardening is? To me it is an opportunity to observe & work with plants & genetics on a root level. Root as in root level like having access to the code which runs a machine.


growing a lot of species from one genus, say--isn't a compelling reason from a Pc perspective, though it's what Mushroom would like to see people do (along with lots of other things).


Until this week it has never occured to me that kinship gardening is anymore outside the realm of permaculture than things like seedsaving, organic philosophy, composting, companion planting etc.


Other useful ideas for permaculture being suggested by kinship gardening: If you know of two closely related genera that have qualities close to the one you're looking for, say a fiber strength or flowering time, you could use the kinship relationship to locate a genus or species intermediate to the two and see if it's got just what you want.
There are also great potentials for crossing not-too-distantly related but little-known species/varieties to yield new traits. I'm sure with a little thought we could come up with more

exactly



One interesting observation is that although Mushroom's kinship maps feature a vast array of species, the ones he is actually growing and is most excited about are domesticated varieties; same with Gabriel Howearth's, for the most part. So even in the rarefied realm of kinship gardens, there's a strong practical note.

arent domesticated varieties species that have been selected for disease resistence, hardiness, food or resource production, color, pollination?



I think Alan Kapuler should be awarded a MacArthur fellowship.

Amen.


The fact that he has to scrape up a meager living seems nearly criminal; his work is on a par with Nobelists, and offers the world a lot more than does the latest subatomic particle. His Peace Seeds Journals are expensive, it's true, but they support his work, so I've bought them all, and I ain't rich. I doubt if he will develop a website--he's too busy farming and researching--but some kindhearted developer out there ought to think about putting his work on the internet so more people can have access to it.


Sounds like a perfect job for one of our interns. We just need the permission & the materials.

co-evolutionary kinship permaculture,


mIEKAL









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