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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, hobbsj@efn.org
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Persimmon Guild
  • Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 19:50:34 -0500

Jude,
JB will never read your reply, nor even this one, because he is not on the list. I forwarded to the list with instructions in the first line to reply directly to him. I no longer have his email address so I cannot forward to him. If you still have the original mail you can find his address there and actually get your message to him which I'm sure he will appreciate (even if he, like some of my students tend to do, turns it into holy writ and thinks he can ONLY plant what you planted and find that many of them fail to thrive if he's in North Carolina, for example).

This guild business is consistently overcomplicated in many folks minds who seem to think it has hard and fast rules when it is really only a young science suggesting a rough outline to create a cooperative polyculture family of elements that get along with each other by including plants that provide nutrients, attract beneficials, create mulch, control diseases, suppress grasses, etc. We could, and will most likely, create hundreds of "recipes" for guilds that work with persimmons (or almonds or sassafras) and they would all be right, or not, for the region in which we are working. JB seems to think that he is "stuck" with the image of an apple guild but in fact is likely to do just fine using the very same guild as he selected for the apples (which he does not describe but perhaps lifted whole cloth from Toby's book. He also neglects to tell us where he is located, nor have we asked). The guild concept, even though there are historical precedents, is a field of experimentation and discovery. The limit to our design is the degree of familiarity with at least hundreds of plant choices. Its the GENERAL PATTERN of mutually beneficial influences that are the point and secondarily the local-conditions-specific options, which are themselves hugely variable.

Someone, someday, might write The Bible of Plant Guilds, but I find myself hoping it doesn't happen. For the cultic mind it just becomes another crutch to replace thoughtful observation.
(If anyone detects a mood of agravation in this its because I'm struggling at my personal limits of understanding around shopping carts, SQL, PHP and other arcane subjects. Please forgive me.)
K

J Hobbs wrote:
Hello JB.

I, too, love persimmons-- especially dried. I planted a 'Fuyu' in front of our office in Eugene, Oregon. Finally produced fruit after 7 years!! It is a mid-story plant with a 50 year old Acer macrophyllum (Bigleaf maple) as an overstory to the Northwest -- as a persimmon guild I planted Lonicera piliata (evergreen honeysuckle), pyracantha prostrata, Lion's Mane- which blooms a similar color to the ripe persimmon, yarrow, echinacea- germander, low gro companula, bulbs-daffodils, violas, daylillies, african daisies, heirloom roses from original planting, Arbutus unedo (strawberry tree,) Ceonothus 'Pt. Reyes' (as N-fixer), low ground covers, Arctostaphylos uva ursi (Kinnickinnick- on south edge) Asarum caudatum (wild ginger on north side) ...

That's all I can think of, at the moment..

Good Luck,

Jude


I'm familiar on a basic/moderate level with guild design and the principals used to determine good ecological foodscapes... however, i
haven't gotten past what i've read on more than a basic level... what i mean by that is that i understand the principals in the apple guild and
the walnut guild, but when it comes to building something around a persimmon or an almond or a sassifrass, i'm stuck trying to apply the
same principals to those trees as are applied to the walnut and apple, and while i think that it would work, its probably not going to work as
well as if things were geared toward the individual trees specifically.

So, what i ask of you is either one of two things.
1) A list of several successful guild designs that you've created (especially one built with the persimmon... I just love persimmons)
2) A reference that would provide that knowledge, or explain it better than i already know.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, i do mean that. Permaculture has become probably the most active interest i've ever had, and this is
where i'm stuck right now. Thank you very much.

JB

--
Keith Johnson
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 1209
Black Mountain, NC 28711
(828)669-6336

also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
Culture's Edge at Earthaven Ecovillage
http://www.permacultureactivist.net
http://www.earthaven.org
http://www.bioregionalcongress.org





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