permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

 Steve Diver at steved@ncatark.uark.edu wrote:

> Perennial plants foster a
> fungal-dominated rhizosphere.  Secondly, the tillage associatd
> with annual cropping systems disrupts fungi and favors bacteria.

Right. Fungi are slower growing than bacteria and are multicellular (hence
tillage disrupts them more) and are capable of far more complex chemical
transformations than bacteria (hence better at busting up fancy
petrochemicals). For the latter reason, fungi are better at decomposing
wood, with its lignins and other convoluted compounds. Thus you'll find more
fungi in wood-dominated (perennial) ecosystems, and more bacteria in
non-woody (annual, pioneer, row-crop ) ones. Develop the food source that
attracts the microbes you want.

Rick Valley wrote:

> Can you turn the land into a forest? A productive forest?

Hawaii is a great place to get tree-based agroecosystems up and running
fast. La'akea Permaculture Gardens near Pahoa
(http://www.permaculture-hawaii.com) is starting to show some good examples,
and a guy named Sean Canetta (off of Papaya Farms Road, I believe) is a
tremendous resource for doing just that; he hangs at La'akea.  Oh, and I'll
be teaching a design course at La'akea in August if you want to learn more.

Toby
_____________________________________________
For a look at my new book on ecological gardening,
Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, visit
http://www.chelseagreen.com/Garden/GaiasGarden.htm