permaculture

["John Schinnerer" <johns@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

Good conversation, this!

There is also the issue of what state a piece of land (and surroundings) is
in when one begins working with it.  Is it relatively stable and
slow-changing, or in the midst of some rapid/recent change(s), or somewhere
in between?  Different current states (e.g. different histories) may require
different approaches.  For example:

My acre in Hawai'i has some endemic plants, some non-natives, and a limited
amount of "invasive" exotics, a few of which I would indeed call "weeds."
It has also been more or less undisturbed for perhaps as long as 30 years,
as have the adjacent acres.  The worst invasives have not "succeeded" to any
great degree.  They are prevalent only for a few meters from the road edge,
where most of them spread from, and in a few isolated spots further from the
road (except for guava, spread more evenly by birds but mostly shaded out by
endemic 'ohia trees).

From this I deduce that the mix that is on the land now has been fairly
stable for quite some time (in human terms, anyhow ;-).  My approach on that
piece of land is therefore to disturb the existing balance as little as
possible while adding to the mix non-invasive natives and non-natives that
will produce food and fiber not provided by what is already there.

If I had instead an acre like others in the area that had been cleared
recently, or cleared long ago and since overrun by invasive exotics, I would
definitely need other approaches.

Surrounding systems - their nature and proximity - can also play a
significant role.  I have the luxury of the surrounding land being also
relatively free of the worst invasive exotics - I do not have them right at
my borders.  If the land next door were overrun by banana poka, strawberry
guava, etc. I would need other strategies to keep it at bay.  If there were
more guava and more birds in the immediate vicinity, I might have a greater
degree of invasion by guava.  And so on...

John Schinnerer
----------------------------------------------
Cultural & Ecological Designing
Human Habitat Design
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net