Subject: Re: [permaculture] Market Gardening is NOT Permaculture.
And it should be noted too that forest gardens aren't intrinsically
annuals versus perennials. They're both but the composition changes over
time. More annuals to begin with that are phased out as perennial
production kicks in and canopy begins to close. Correct me if I'm wrong,
but I believe Mark Shepard's farm in Wisconsin followed this model.
Alley cropping is a promising agroforestry technique that has many of
the benefits of a pernnial system yet is designed with production in mind.
Chris Carnevale
Charleston, South Carolina
On 1/31/14, 8:13 AM, Chris Carnevale wrote:
Annuals strive to complete their lifecycle including reproduction in
one year, which means they go gangbusters trying to flower, fruit,
seed, etc. because they have nothing to lose. So for fruit and
seed--yes, annuals are likely to produce relatively more than their
perennial counterparts.
For vegetables, I don't know why, biologically speaking, annuals would
do better than perennials, since much of the "maintenance functions"
are putting on vegetative growth (which could potentially be harvested
as vegetables). It's worth noting, as Eric Toensmeier has said
numerous times, that perennial vegetable breeding is at square 1
compared to annual vegetable breeding. There has been such extensive
breeding done on annuals that comparing annuals vs. perennials is not
really an apples-to-apples comparison at this point. That doesn't
necessarily make them any more productive at this moment, but it's
worth considering.
Perennial systems are able to convert more sunlight and CO2 into
biomass--whether that be edible vegetables, nuts, fruits, or other
things like trunk, branches, leaves, roots, flowers, pollen, etc.
Whatever isn't edible to humans is still often a boon to the system as
a whole by increasing soil organic matter, creating habitat for
biodiversity, etc. and there are side products such as leaves for
mulch, firewood, poles for stakes or fencing, animal forage, lumber,
etc. which have an overt economic value. It's likely that the overt
economic value of those side products won't outweigh fruit and
vegetables that are fit for direct human consumption, but it's also
worth noting that all of this biological productivity is something
that is generally minimized with just annuals--it's a missed
opportunity cost in a sense.
The context of forest gardens within zone analysis is important to
consider. Forest gardens are often better suited to zone 2 or 3 than
zone 1 because they don't necessarily need day-to-day work or
harvesting. Vegetable gardens on the other hand are typically zone 1
elements because they are harvested more frequently and need more
constant attention. Theory says that indigenous peoples once managed
many thousands or millions of acres of cultivated food forests, which
also supported game to hunt--this was supposedly feasible because of
the work:product ratio. It makes sense to me. There's no way they
could have managed that amount of land devoted to annual crops--nor
would they need to have.
Forest gardens aren't a one-size-fits-all approach, but within
context, they are powerful tools.
Chris Carnevale
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