permaculture

[Permacltur@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/9/99 4:45:44 PM, you wrote:

<<      If you're planning to build a grape or kiwi arbor I would highly 
encourage 
to consider using materials that will endure for the long term.  Grapes and 
kiwis can live well up to 100 years and grow to massive proportions putting 
on hundreds of pounds of food annually.  Personally, I wouldn't use any 
type of organic material for the trellis; no wood, no bamboo, etc.  They 
may last 10-20 years but inevitably they will lose integrity and collapse. 
 Nothing nastier than trying to put a trellis back up under an enormous 
vining plant.  I would opt for metal myself.  2" galvanized pipe and/or 
welded angle iron can be made to look elegant if you turn an artistic eye 
towards the design.
        Just a thought...

Best,
Kirk Hanson
Director, Permaculture West
72 Mattson Rd.
Oakville, WA 98568
ph/fx: (360) 273-7117
permawest@olywa.net>>

This is more or less correct.  However black locust will last 100 years or 
maybe more.  The sapwood is not so durable, but the hartwood endures.  

The first time that I visited New Zealand I was taken to see the very first 
kiwifruit vine planted in the country.  The trellis was long gone, but the 
vine had taken over a few trees and was doing fine.   I blush to admit that I 
don't recall the tree species.  Of course most of the crop was now borne well 
out of reach of anything except birds, but the vine had done its work.  The 
base of the vine itself was as thick as a tree trunk.  

Permaculture design involves locating elements so that they are mutually 
supporting and tending toward self-management.  Putting crops that evolved 
climbing on the forest edge in the middle of a field and then constructing 
substitute supports is kind if anti-permaculture.  In my view, vines are 
something that you install if you have the correct edge for them.  I'm not 
very interested in grapes as a matter of personal taste.  Our kiwis and kudzu 
(yes, I cultivate kudzu) are either on naturally occuring trellises or on 
poultry netting stapeled to poultry netting.  We are in very early stages of 
establishment.  By the time it is needed, we will string taut heavy wires 
(salvaged from fences used to enclose horse pasture here) stretched between 
the living trees that are the fence posts.  Most of the fence post trees are 
palms, which do not increase in circumfrence and can't be girdled.  Frankly, 
if we didn't have the place for the vines, we wouldn't have obtained the 
vines.  Permaculture works with existing conditions, making best use of 
available resources, changing as little as possible, integrating systems to 
the fullest possible extent, and bringing resource-intensive materials (such 
as steel posts our our poultry netting) to the minimum degree practical.  
When they are brought into the design, as many functions are stacked on them 
as reasonable to recover the imbedded energy if we can.  (Our electric fence 
is a nuisance in this regard as you can't trellis anything to it.  If I had 
it to do over, I'd use barbed wire, which is more energy intensive to 
produce, but works just as well when covered with vines as when bare.)  
        We utilize all manner of vines here, from annuals such as garden 
legumes, garden curcubits, perennials such as  basella (annual if killed by 
frost), apios, fo-ti, clematis, various ipomea and related food and 
ornamental crops, various passiflora (native and exotic), chayote, etc.  
Every vertical stem or surface is a design opportunity for the right vine.  
We also trellis trailing crops such as blackberry, of course.  I should not 
forget jicama.  Kiwifruit and kudzu are the only woody vines we cultivate, 
presently, though we have to deal with ubiquitous wild grape that is a bit of 
a weed.  (I do let it run up various surfaces because it is so beautiful.)  
Fortunately, our chickens eat grape leaves so we have only to cult vines low 
where chickens forage to discourage the grapes.  We have some ancient vines 
that have to be way more than 100 years old that we are protecting, though, 
because they have earned the right to be here.

So first be sure you have a place for vines.  If you are puzzeling the 
trellis, you may not have done your design work well.  And if they are in the 
middle of an open area, then it is rather like the freestanding greenouse 
that Mollison is always using as an example of a placement with no design 
consideration at all.  We need to reconsider functional connections.

OK, one more point.  I recall seeing chayote plantations in Mexico where the 
vines were trellised over a raised grid of stretched wire.  It was therefore 
possible to stand in the shade of the vines and harvest.  People were out in 
the hot sun with hoes, keeping the earth bare.  My suggestion was to plant 
legumes and grains as understory--particularly in winter, when vines were 
light and the season dry--and run poultry to harvest.  This could require a 
series of divisions so that successional planting and harvesting could be 
done.  The straw would be light mulch to protect the soil, possibly with a 
Fukuoka-type legume cover as well, and the insects and grain would be 
partially converted to fertilizer.  Supplemental feed ing would be necessary 
at times, resulting in added ferilizer.  Presumably such a system would 
produce meat-birds so that the land could rest a bit after slaughter age 
during periods of low forage.  Pulses are much better to build soil fertility 
than continuous activity.  The poultry would be a valuable crop, produced 
very inexpensively, and so any expense in dividing fields, planting grains, 
etc., would be quickly paid back.  If a Fukuoka system were developed, labor 
costs would be few.  Thus we apply permaculture design principles to a 
non-permaculture situation and make it more efficient, profitable, and 
sustainable.  Similar arrangements could be designed if you are hell-bent on 
putting your vines away from vertical edges and then building the vertical 
edges for them.  If nothing else, at least canopy your vines high enough so 
you can stand in the shade when you harvest.  
        Ok, I get another thought.  I've seen in Catalonia (a country 
occupied by Spain) grapes managed very low to the ground, severly pruned back 
to short trunks that could easily have been hundreds of years old on terraces 
that were surely a few millenia old, at least.  These vines pretty much run 
over the ground, making a low ground cover.  You would want to read up on 
this system of pruning.  I think it was used for specific varieties of grapes 
as they were grown in that region, but I have to admit that it was so 
unnatural that I didn't pay close attention.  I'm trying to remember what the 
climate was in the original post on this question, now.  I wouldn't use this 
technique in a humid climate, as I think it would promote mildew, but this 
district was very dry, due to long-standing deforestation that had dessicated 
the climate. (I suspect that most of the Mediterranean was once a maritime 
warm-temperate to subtropical climate. Then people deforested the region.)    
  
        Well that should be enough ideas to get the design cogs meshing.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since 
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses, 
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and annual correspondence 
courses via email.  Copyright, 1998, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 52, 
Sparr FL 32192 USA  Internships. YankeePerm@aol.com  

We don't have time to rush.

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-----------
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