permaculture

["Robert Waldrop" <rmwj@soonernet.com>]

This weekend is our first Oklahoma City permaculture training.
Today's Daily Oklahoman has a great story with 2 big pictures of
Jerome's Colorado garden.

Robert Waldrop, http://www.oklahomafood.org

Permaculture mixes garden, landscape
2003-10-09
By Jon Denton
The Oklahoman

Mention "permaculture," and people's eyes tend to glaze over.
Yet Jerome Osentowski holds their attention. Even though he uses other
mind-bending terms, "forest gardening" among them, he has one phrase
that keeps them listening: "Edible landscape."

 It can exist on a golf course, mountain ranch, city park or back
yard. Osentowski says it's ecological and digestible. While you may
not eat everything -- a tree, a dragonfly, an apple, a bat -- together
they make a landscape healthier and the gardener happier.

On Friday, he will offer an introduction to permaculture. He will
follow with a hands-on permaculture program Saturday and Sunday at
Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.

Some heavy hitters have stepped up as workshop supporters. Urban
Harvest, Sierra Club, Noble Foundation, Oklahoma State University-
Oklahoma City Horticulture Center, Kerr Center for Sustainable
Agriculture and Office Depot are co-sponsors.

Permaculture blends the idealistic and the practical, Osentowski said
from Basalt, Colo. He operates the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture
Institute there, not far from Aspen.

He said permaculture is not a new term. It dates to the 1970s and
research by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. In its
simple form, it advocates permanent agriculture that puts as much back
in the soil as is taken out.

It has been defined as a holistic approach to landscape design and
human culture. It attempts to integrate biology, ecology, geography,
agriculture, architecture, technology, gardening and
community-building.

Noble Foundation horticulturist Steve Upson also sees permaculture as
combining the ideal and the practical. One of its concepts -- forest
gardening -- is ancient.

"What Jerome is trying to do is take advantage of different scales of
gardening, a concept we utilize," Upson said at his office in Ardmore.
"It's something like two-story gardening where you grow a crop of nut
trees, then raise cattle underneath. That's an idea that is not nearly
as developed as it could be."

Osentowski began with a successful half-acre market garden. It has
become a permanent forest garden with a mix of perennial edibles,
fruit and nitrogen-fixing trees, medicinal herbs and annual
vegetables.

While on the telephone, Osentowski was munching on a jujube fruit and
checking his orchard for signs of bears.

"They can do major damage to your fruit trees, so you don't want to
have any fruit left. I am going to have to electrify my deer fence,"
he said.

He has no problem with technology. He said what he finds intolerable
is the high-tech warfare against weeds, bugs and animals.

Now age 62, he was about 45 when he started searching for a reliable
source of chemical-free food. Before that, he was a professional
musician, carpenter and herbal farmer. The concept of an edible
landscape intrigued him, and he turned to permaculture.

Today, he says great harm was unleashed in the 1960s by the green
revolution. It encouraged monoculture crops, the giant wheat farms
that required potent pesticides and herbicides.

The poisons kill insects, birds and mammals both hostile and friendly
to crops, he said.

"People don't seem to trust natural systems any more. ... Let's say
there is a natural mosquito control system at work. Something gets out
of balance unless you maintain it," he said.

He keeps his ponds full of fish that eat mosquito larvae. He welcomes
bats that dart through the night sky, eating insects. Birds fill his
trees. His kind of agriculture uses nature's own safeguards, he said.

However, Upson said, the green revolution made it possible for
countries to feed poor people who otherwise would starve.

"It's easy for us in America to be somewhat critical of it, but if you
start working in a country where it's saving lives, it's a different
perspective," Upson said. "There is a compromise in all we do."

Osentowski tempers his idealism with the practical. A few years ago,
he designed 20 acres of a 200-acre Roaring Fork Golf Course near
Basalt. His integrated plan called for minimal use of pesticides and
herbicides.

Now, he's designing and installing a permaculture setting at Maytag
Mountain Ranch, a three-hour drive from Basalt Mountain. The
3,000-acre spread includes a one-acre forest garden, a community plot
for the residents.

The edible landscape might easily fit a city park or vacant urban lot.
Fruit trees are perfect around the perimeter.

"The biggest problem in cities is with the park maintenance people.
They say the fruit falls to the ground, and nobody eats it. That's
sort of a ridiculous argument," he said.

His solution: People have been preserving food for thousands of years.
It's time to teach city people about root cellars and cold storage.


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If you go
What: Permaculture presentations featuring Jerome Osentowski.
Introduction: 7 p.m. Friday at Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City
Horticulture Center, 400 N Portland. Free admission.

Workshop: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday at Regional Food Bank of
Oklahoma, 3355 SW Purdue. Tickets $35.

Information: 972-1111.
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http://www.newsok.com/cgi-bin/show_article?ID=1093266&pic=none&TP=getl
ifestyle

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