permaculture

[Chris Carnevale <c.s.carnevale@gmail.com>]

No, market gardening is not permaculture, but market gardens can be and 
often are an expression of permaculture. Looking at nature as a model, 
there are lots of ecological niches--some things more overtly productive 
than others--yet they all work together to create systems. Think of a 
market garden as one element of an ecosystem and it may make more sense. 
If you look at the bigger picture, market gardens can be using all of 
the permaculture principles (i.e. capturing and storing energy, valuing 
biological resources, etc.) and can help increase all the good key 
metrics of a community's health (soil health, people health, 
biodiversity, etc.) Relationships formed between market gardens and the 
surrounding community can help restore (and usually more than just 
restore) any nutrients that are spread among the community (or system, 
if you will). Also, think of the influx of renewable resources that are 
always streaming in like sunshine, rain, wind, etc. Unfortunately 
probably the biggest nutrient sink from a self-reliant community is the 
human waste. That's something that needs to be worked on on community 
scale, big time.

Chris Carnevale

On 1/29/14, 6:06 PM, A Sampson-Kelly wrote:
> Market Gardens are wonderful, don't get me misquoted here,
> but they are not the permaculture message.
> Market gardens export nutrients and organic matter, they are constantly
> needing inputs to compensate for the exports.
> as we all know Permaculture design aims to be a closed nutrient cycle,
> so when something like a gorgeous market garden is branded as
> permaculture it muddies the message.
> When you need to keep importing nutrients and minerals and organic
> matter you are starting to talk about extra "work" and extra management.
>
> When I first came to this site in 1993 we spent 6 hours every second
> weekend in summer just mowing the lawns,
> we definitely invest a lot less work and time on this site now.
> So, there is no trouble with permaculture on my site and the reduced
> work load is clear here.
> http://permaculturevisions.com/what-is-permaculture-2/905-2/the-difference-between-organic-gardening-and-permaculture/