Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] Phenology: Article by Lee Barnes

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Phenology: Article by Lee Barnes
  • Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 23:32:49 -0400


Phenology: Article by Lee Barnes

"Phenology" is the study of periodic biological phenomena, such as flowering, breeding, and migration. Observation of growth and flowering times of native and common "indicator" plants is useful for timing your garden planting times or wild food harvesting. One should begin with a medium sized calendar on which you may make notes. (many calendars are on sale now, many at 1/2 price!) Learn to observe and note flowering times of showy native perennials, and common trees and shrubs. Good indicator plants include redbud, dogwood, and sourwood. Note any wildlife migrations such as the passage of spring robins, hawks and geese. With this accumulated biological time-piece, one can make better regional planting decisions such as, "plant corn when the leaves of the hickory are the size of a squirrel's ear." - useful guide since hickory are one of the later plants to "break" bud, perhaps helping planters to avoid late frosts or cold soils. Listen for local "lore" on planting, weather changes, etc. for your micro-region, and correlate this with your seasonal notes.
We should accumulate this information for our micro-regions and share the findings - please send me your comments and recommendations so that we can develop a master list of plant phenomena and guild interactions.-- Lee Barnes




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page