permaculture

["Charles de Matas" <cdematas@hotmail.com>]

My copy of The Scythe Book has arrived at the bookshop so I'm anxious to go 
and collect it.  I'll put in an order for Jeremy Rifkin's entropy book when 
I go also.
   The books I've read so far my Mollison and Jeavons have really inspired 
me and given me so many ideas that I would like to try out.  "Permaculture: 
a Designer's Manual"  opened a whole new world to me.  I was particularly 
impressed by Chapter 10 on the tropics.  I never came across a book with 
such a good understanding of the problems faced in the tropics and so many 
ideas for improving conditions in these areas.  I remember sometimes waking 
up in the middle of the night and if I could not get back to sleep I would 
go to P:aDM and read parts of Chapter 10.
   I got a new copy of "How to Grow more Vegetables ........" recently.  
Actually before I received it I was searching through some old boxes of 
books and found an old edition that I bought about 10 years ago.  Anyway the 
new edition was still a good buy.  There is more information on what Jeavons 
calls energy-efficient and space-efficient crops and what fraction of your 
acreage should be planted in these crops.  Jeavons encourages people to be 
as self sufficient as  possible in food from the land available. One should 
try to grow energy-efficient crops to meet our calorie needs as these crops 
produce foods that have a high calorie density.  Jeavons is way ahead of our 
time in his thinking.  When more people adopt organic methods there will be 
a shortage of organic matter with which to make compost, mulch etc. (At 
present though not enough organic material is recycled)  Jeavons is working 
to find solutions to this problem. He recommends we grow our own materials 
for composting by using space-efficient crops which will produce a large 
amount of biomass per unit area.
  One might think that Mollison's permaculture and Jeavons' intensive 
approach are distinct or mutually exclusive: one seeks to minimize human 
labour and the other is considered by many to be labour intensive.  But 
intensive methods can possible reduce the amount of labour if only done on a 
small area.  I'm still interested in biointensive methods because land here 
is very expensive and I don't want to buy any more land, I just want to use 
what I have more effectively, I'm also getting interested in container 
gardening.

Charles.

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