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  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Market Gardening is NOT Permaculture: Closingthe loops
  • Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:19:38 -0000


That is our situation almost every year Jason. We had better apples this year than ever before, almost a bucket full. And hazelnuts did medium well. The blackberries were great as were the elderberries. They grow rampant wherever you let them. You can have a clean garden overgrown by them in two years if you don't act ferociously. But what we find pleasant are the uncultivated treecrops like hawthorn and blackthorn that give berries for medicinal :) alcoholic beverages.
The bulk of our calory intake comes from a great variety of tubers . The stachys affinis, occas, jerusalems, Apios americana and wild groundnuts and others we dig as needed and the survivors will be back the next year. We have a good variety of almost perennial green leaf crops like sweet cicely, alexanders, Veronica becabunga and arch angelica and a great variety of tea herbs and other tasty perennials that are necessary to keep life pleasant.

For bulk food, annual crops but to make life interesting perennials are necessary here. And of course meat without which we would not survive.
John

Darrell's site is definitely an example of a market garden developed
through the permaculture design process. I've been there a couple times,
and was impressed both times. Darrell also tells good stories, and thinks
deeply, and has a great library.

Food forests in my experience are a fun, enjoyable, and exciting way of
producing food. They have a lot of potential to gain productivity with
strange species and assemblies (and I hope some of us are working to
improve that for temperate climes especially), but yes, I have a couple
food forests and still live on annual agriculture. I butchered a gigantic
25# Boston Marrow winter squash the other day, and realized that just my
squash yield alone provided more food to me than my food forest this entire
year (if I don't count the alliums, and the subtropical fruits that are in
a greenhouse, or the mushrooms, it was an epic shroom year). It was a
horrible fruit and spring perennials year, or I should say a nothing year.
Nothing, not even the ever reliable gooseberries. Wicked cold and record
late heavy snow and frost really put relying on spring flowering perennials
in context. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Diversity is king. The
exciting food forest yield this year was *Stachys affinis* tubers though.
Yum!

I can't wait to break out the broadfork and loosen the soil in my annual
garden this spring. Tillage. Gasp!

Jason



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  • Re: [permaculture] Market Gardening is NOT Permaculture: Closingthe loops, John D'hondt, 01/31/2014

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