August Permie Corner

Previous Permie Corner articles and resources can be found here

By Lorraine Sharaf

This month, I am talking about the third Permaculture Principle: Obtaining a Yield, subtitled “You can’t work on an empty stomach.” Its icon is a vegetable with a bite taken out of it. 

I think of this principle as the “Goal” Principle, the reason for all landscaping decisions and the time to think about and define what it is that you really want for, and in, your life. Not what the prevalent culture and society says, or your friends, or your colleagues and certainly not anyone who wants to sell you something that you don’t need!

Let’s look to the Prime Directive, as stated by permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison: “The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.” To sum it up, the purpose of all of our hard work is to sustainably provide for ourselves and our families and to set up systems that will provide for future generations.

How does this edict differ from a commercially produced yield?

In commercial farming, the intended yield is profit based on the yields from one, or perhaps a handful of specific agriculture products, such as produce, grains or meat. This type of farming requires large amounts of land, water and chemicals, expensive equipment and genetically altered seeds that cannot be saved and must be purchased every year. While there has been a focus on better water management and using more sustainable energy sources, the yield is still unable to sustain itself without considerable inputs and destruction to the environment. 

In permaculture, a yield is anything that supports human life, or any output that benefits the systems that support human life. It requires that we create self-sustaining and resilient systems that benefit both people and the planet by working with existing natural systems and harnessing the abundance in nature to create self-sustaining, highly diverse, resilient systems. Every permaculture design is also based on the three ethics: Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share.

This is also a good time to revisit the first principle Observe and Interact before you decide on your yields. Spend more time observing your land and recording its features. What yields does your land already provide? What additional yields would you like? What does your land need to produce and maintain the yields you would like? How do these intersect with your current resources? What could interfere with your yields, such as too much shade or a permanent structure in the wrong place. Some of these factors can be changed and some will need to be implemented into the design.

As you think about the yields that you would like from your property, also consider intangible yields such as more leisure time since you don’t have to weed often, a space to entertain friends and new knowledge and skills gained over the year. There are less obvious yields, like tree branches used for animal fodder and lumber for fences and building. Another Bill Mollison quote is “The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited (or only limited by the information and imagination of the designer).” A daily yield for me is watching the abundance of birds and other animals feeding from our flowers, bushes and trees and drinking, bathing and playing in a small running water bird bath. It is my meditation.

“The focus is to design a landscape that provides for human needs while strengthening the ecology.” 

As you observe your ecosystem, think about all the mini (eco)systems that already support it and what additional systems that you will need to add. Each system provides yields that support itself and other systems.

Here is an example of mini systems within a larger system. On my land:

• • The trees provide oxygen, shade, protection from high winds and a home for nesting birds and the insects that the birds eat.
  • The yield of healthy birds pollinating my garden plants that produce the fruits and vegetables that we eat.
  • The yield of shade provides the environment for other plants and animals that feed the overall ecosystem as well providing a lovely spot to put out some chairs to cool off and relax during the summer.
  • In the fall, the yield of dropped leaves provides food and shelter for developing insects that help to break down the leaves to be reabsorbed back into the soil as nourishment for the tree.
  • The dropped leaves that are not supporting a tree, are free mulch for my gardens and raised beds.

Each of these mini systems provides a yield for another system as well as helping to support its own system. 

Be realistic about how much time the members of your household would like to spend on maintaining these systems. Please reconsider a landscape design that your land is not intended to support, such as growing avocados and pineapples in the northeast, unless you plan to use a greenhouse. The goal is to create yields that eventually sustain themselves, and provide surplus, with little intervention from you.

A few years ago, I got so excited about the large variety of heirloom tomato seeds available that I purchased many, many more seeds than I had room and sun for in my raised beds. So, I bought a bunch of grow bags, planted them with the additional seeds and lined them up along the driveway. Brilliant! Hmmm…not really. While the tomato plants thrived in my garden beds within the soil that I had carefully cultivated over several years with compost, mulch and cover crops and planted with companion plants, my driveway plants were catching diseases and drying out. I spent huge amounts of time dealing with diseases, protecting them from insects and figuring out clever watering systems for very little yield. I was trying to force these plants to live in an environment that was neither natural to my land nor natural to the plants.

While you create your dream list of yields, think about how often each will need your attention. Orchards and meadows can be placed further from your house, while you will want elements like chickens, a kitchen garden and compost bins close to your house. Permaculture zones are a useful tool when you are creating a whole design and later when you are adding elements.

• • 

    Permaculture zones from Beulah Acres Agroforest

    Zone 0 is your home

  • Zone 1 is an area that you will visit multiple times a day
  • Zone 2 will be visited once or twice a day
  • Zone 3 will be used regularly but not daily
  • Zone 4 is rarely visited, maybe a few times a year
  • Zone 5 is left wild.

Not every property needs all 6 zones, but they are a useful method for organizing, which can also be applied to how you organize the inside of your house!

August Permie Tip

August is a great time to start sheet mulching an area you want to convert from lawn to permaculture plantings. Fall is a perfect time to plant berries and native perennials and shrubs. You can prepare their new bed by sheet mulching the lawn area in August to give the sod and organic layers some time to decompose before planting to give your fall plantings an easier start. Click here for sheet mulching how-to. 

August is also a very crazy time in the garden, when you need to harvest vegetables daily, deadhead like crazy, and prepare for your cool weather crop planting. This reminder is not specific to permaculture gardeners. Now is the time to start your brassicas inside for fall planting and to prepare your soil for direct sowing of peas, greens and root crops, which can be sown in mid-to-late August, unless we are in a heat wave. The ideal time to sow is 4 to 6 weeks before the first expected frost date. The average first frost date in Doylestown is between October 11 and 20th.