Permaculture Resources

Welcome back to the Permie Corner!!! Last month, I gave a high-level description of permaculture and introduced the first, of twelve, permaculture principles: Observe and Interact, where I suggested that you spend time observing and interacting with the outdoor places around your home: yard, trees, gardens, animals, big spaces and little spaces all the way to the corners of your property. Maybe your outdoor space is limited to a balcony, where you have some containers of herbs and flowers. You can see what types of birds and insects visit them and what is happening beyond your balcony. Perhaps you’ll find a bird’s nest.

I also took time to closely observe my 1/3rd acre and became particularly fascinated with a nest of baby robins and their mother, who spends all day, every day, collecting and delivering worms to push down the throats of their ever-open mouths. I paid attention to the habits I have developed when I work and recreate in my yard, and realized that I have developed specific patterns about how I see and move around the yard, what I look at and what I don’t, where I spend time and where I rarely visit. I intentionally turned my senses to the sky, the tree tops, and the ground. I looked up and down the trees and beneath the bushes. My major findings were that we have too much English Ivy choking trees, that a lot of our rain water is being diverted to our driveway and street and that I am pulling up too many “weeds” that could be my friend. Using a plant identifier on my cell phone, I learned that among the non-native invasive plants that need to be removed are also lovely native pollinators and ground cover “weeds” that don’t fit into the lexicon of traditional landscapers but now have a home in our yard.

This brings me to the Second Permaculture Design Principle: Catch and Store Energy.

Catch and Store Energy

The icon for this design principle represents energy being stored in a container to use later. The proverb “Make hay while the sun shines” is often referenced for this principle.

In Permaculture practice, Energy refers to any resource that supports life, growth or sustainability that we can Catch and Store for the future.

When I was first introduced to the principle, I thought of energy only in terms of the work that it could do on a farm or home environment, such as wood burning in a wood stove for heat and sun providing warmth through big windows or being converted into electricity from solar panels. But energy can encompass much, much more. One of the most common resources that fits the description of stored energy is money, which converts our work, or energy, into a paper symbol that we can use to buy what we need now and store the remainder into savings and investments to use when we need it later.

When it comes to agriculture and home life, we can also think of energy in a number of ways. Here are some examples of energy:

• Sunlight: Provides energy for plant photosynthesis and can be collected on solar panels for electricity as well as used to warm houses, and other spaces, by incorporating large south-facing windows into the house and heating other medium, such as adobe walls and barrels of water, during the day that will then release heat into houses, greenhouses, barns and other spaces, much like many boulders and rocks stay warm and release heat after the sun has gone down. Use how the sun falls on your yard for maximum plant potential. I have made the mistake of planting sun-lovers where I wanted to see them rather than where the sun is at its fullest. Design with the needs of your plants in mind!
  
• Rain: Capture, store and use rain in a variety of ways through rain barrels to water your garden and fill bird baths, mini frog ponds, swales, or soil contouring, and rain gardens.
• Wind: Provides natural cooling and can be harnessed for electricity via turbines. Work with plants to direct summer breezes to areas that benefit you, your plants and animals as well as plant trees, particularly evergreens, to block and redirect those cold winter winds. 
• Food: Can be grown with less energy and a more consistent yield by planting and nurturing perennial food plants, such as berries, fruit and nut trees, rhubarb, asparagus, and herbs. Store your harvest by canning, pickling, fermenting, freezing and drying.
• Seeds: Gather from this year’s harvest to use for next year.
• Compost: Convert the nutrients from kitchen scraps, yard clippings and leaves into food for soil and plants. Don’t throw away those fall leaves – the trees need them and so do our insects which our songbirds need for food.
• Skills: Learn and improve personal knowledge and hands-on skills that help you live sustainably. Examples include learning and practicing basic carpentry to build a chicken coop and garden beds and learning how to plant trees, build swales and preserve your harvest. 
• Money: Save for future needs.
• Time: Think of time as potential energy that you can spend learning and honing skills, planning garden beds and orchards, creating and nurturing relationships with people that you can work with on future home and community projects, planting vegetables and building structures to support and house everything.

Why is this principle important? We know that in Pennsylvania, we have growing seasons and dormant seasons, so it is important to catch and store the bounty around us when it is available. We also know that weather can be unpredictable and that we cannot take anything for granted. 

By using, not wasting, the various forms of energy around us, we can design systems that are more resilient, efficient and regenerative.

*If you aren’t already collecting rainwater, consider setting up a simple rain barrel system. Here is a link to instructions from the Tree Hugger website: https://www.treehugger.com/make-rain-barrel-system-at-home-5194982 

You can also purchase rain barrel kits at local home supply stores or from numerous websites, including attractive barrels that double as a planter. Bucks County Master Watershed Stewards have a kit available as well!

Rather than directing excess water from your yard into the road or sewer, keep it and use it for irrigation, swales, or rain gardens. 

Here are instructions for building swales from Tenth Acre Farm website: https://www.tenthacrefarm.com/permaculture-swale/

Here are instructions for how to build a rain garden from the Better Homes and Gardens website: https://www.bhg.com/gardening/landscaping-projects/landscape-basics/make-a-rain-garden/

July Permie Tip:

Chop and Drop Green Mulch

High July temperatures can quickly dry out garden soils, so this is a good time to add an extra 2 to 3 inches of organic mulch to your garden beds, both your raised beds and other landscaped beds and trees that are vulnerable to high temperatures. Mulching is also an effective way to reduce weeds in your gardens, but you need to remove the existing weeds first. 

With some exceptions, you can cut (chop) the weeds at the soil level and then drop them right back on the soil as green mulch. The remaining roots will feed the soil microbes and fungi as they decompose, which fulfills a key permaculture goal of building soil health and supports this month’s permaculture principle of capturing and storing energy by capturing the energy and nutrients of the “volunteer” plant and storing, or returning its energy and nutrients back into the soil. This creates a closed loop cycle by which resources are reused, recycled or regenerated within the system itself so that waste becomes a resource and you can rely on fewer external inputs. Permaculture systems strive to use everything that is generated, with no waste, like a healthy forest system. 

Have a separate compost pile for any weeds that have developed seeds and let that decompose for a long time; otherwise, you will be providing a cozy environment for them to grow back. Also, fully pull up weeds that are highly invasive or spread through their roots (rhizomes)* and discard them. Dampen the soil to make it easier to pull out the invasive weeds. 

This would be a good time to add compost. Cover your beds with 2 to 3 inches of organic mulch, such as leaves, straw and grass clippings. If you use straw, I suggest using shredded straw, which is easier to pack around the plants, and look for credible confirmation that it is free of seeds; otherwise, you will be growing wheat along with your vegetables. This is a good way to use those fall leaves you’ve been saving,

For those of us who grew up with mainstream American gardening and agriculture (and big grassy lawns), it will take time to shift to a self-sufficient, organic, food-producing environment. Be patient. Make small changes and see how they work in your garden before implementing big changes. Slow and Small Solutions is the ninth permaculture principle, which I will describe in February. 

Note: The best time to water outdoor plants is early in the morning, ideally between 5 and 9 AM while it is still cool, so the plants have a chance to absorb the water before the temperature gets blistering.

*Common weeds in southeastern Pennsylvania that spread by rhizomes are Canada Thistle (Cirsium arvense), Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica), Bindweed (Field & Hedge Bindweed) (Convolvulus spp.), Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), Yellow Nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus), Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense), Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) and Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens).  

Thistle is very difficult to eradicate but try this. Thistle is blooming right now and some have seeds that are starting to blow around.  Cut to the ground when it is full bloom. Because the plant is putting energy into blooming, it will work hard to recover. Once it is cut, spray the cut ends with at least 20% vinegar. Repeat if necessary. Cut the ones in seed to prevent the seeds from blowing and spreading.

See you next month! I welcome comments about your observations, as well as your permaculture questions and other thoughts and ideas. 

Please add a comment below with examples of how you use the Catch and Store Energy principle! ☺ Lorraine

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.

This month, I am introducing the fourth Permaculture Principle: Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback. The icon for this principle is the Earth, our home and the largest self-regulating system that we know. Earth has had a strong capacity to withstand the mistakes that humans have made over thousands of years and has been providing us feedback about how these stressors have been causing imbalances in many natural systems, which people have largely ignored or downplayed, such as algae blooms (source), acid rain (source) increased temperatures and more intense storms, all which also wreaks havoc on our ability to grow and harvest food. 

A 2022 MIT study confirms that “the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.” (source) Humans have been affecting earth’s systems since the beginning of agricultural societies, about 8,000 years ago, but we have significantly intensified our effect on the earth since the industrial revolution. Many scientists are referring to this time in geological history as the Anthropocene Epoch or Era, translated as “age of man” because human activities have so drastically affected the planet as to have pushed it into a new geological phase. 

What other organisms self-regulate? The human body! We are made up of numerous systems that our body continuously monitors and regulates, with and without our conscious help, such as our circulatory, respiratory and body temperature (thermoregulation). Plants and trees also regulate themselves. While trees can withstand a greater temperature range than humans, like us, trees release water to cool down, called transpiration, and they can adjust the angle of their leaves to minimize direct sun exposure. During freezing weather, plants use different strategies, such as producing an anti-freeze-like substance to protect their cells and reducing their metabolic rate into a dormant state.

Our permaculture practice is a potent tool to assist the earth back to a healthy system as we apply Permaculture Principle 4, which is the step where we monitor, Accept Feedback, the health and progress of our designs, and the elements within them, and make the necessary changes, Regulate, to keep them healthy while fulfilling our needs and goals. We apply this principle in our yard, and in our home, all the time without thinking about it. We water plants when we see that the soil is dry and the leaves are drooping, and we check the perimeter of the fence and other structures of a chicken coop when chickens are being killed or disappearing. 

The biggest difference between permaculture practice and other forms of landscaping and farming is its emphasis on working with the land and its characteristics, such as soil, wind, sun, shade and zone, rather than trying to force it into something that is not inherent to its character and by using a whole systems’ design that considers and links all the systems on your property. 

It is important to remember yourself in the equation (human capital) by keeping yourself healthy and balanced. Sometimes the work required to obtain a yield outweighs the results. You may find that the extensive time and energy needed to grow robust and beautiful organic apples simply isn’t worth it. You could decide to be satisfied with less attractive apples or purchase pretty apples at your local orchard or farm market. Other times, you may find your yield overwhelming (tomatoes, zucchini?) and decide to grow less next year or work out an agreement with your neighbors to share garden bounties. 

As an example, I put tremendous energy into tending to three okra plants that I grew specifically for my husband because he loves fried okra. My leaves and baby fruits became covered with aphids, which I didn’t realize until the leaves had become noticeably damaged. This is where I fell short on observing feedback. The aphids were collecting beneath the huge purple leaves, successfully camouflaged until the leaves began dying. I took action to remove them and continued to have an abundant healthy yield but with far more effort than I would have had if I had been more attentive to periodic “wellness checks.” There is a term called PATO, which stands for Protracted and Thoughtful Observation. It is a permaculture tool that can be applied to every aspect of your life and is especially helpful, and rewarding, when you simply observe, without preconceptions, the landscape around you and how it functions. This does not mean you need to regularly spend hours examining each plant, or design element, but is a practice that can be integrated into your normal activities and wellness check around the yard, especially over a weekend cup of coffee. 

It turns out that my husband did not like the okra, even when we fried them. He found the skin tough. The fruits were pink, not the green color that is common. Is that why? I could have decided to try again next year with a different variety and with research on growing okra with tender skin, but since he is the only one of us who likes okra, I decided that he can buy it if he wants it or find a restaurant that prepares perfect Southern fried okra. As with my Okra experiment, it’s best not to beat yourself up if things go differently than you wanted. You knew what you knew and now you know more. And, you have increased the questions you know to ask going forward. 

As you tweak your designs, keep the changes small, trying out one thing at a time. If a plant you love isn’t thriving, or an irrigation system isn’t providing enough coverage, try not to overwhelm it with solutions. Remember the scientific method? Test one thing at a time, keeping everything else the same. Simple, slow changes are the easiest to observe and least time-consuming. 

I have recently learned the term “Safe to Fail” (source) which is used in various industries. It is a technique that we have all used in different areas of our life. If you are considering making a financial investment, you begin with a small amount of money that you are willing to lose if the investment does not pan out. When choosing a new paint color, you buy a small sample of paint to test it out on a section of a wall. The same goes with farming and gardening. You experiment with new processes, changes or products at a small scale that you can afford to have fail while you learn about them, and can eliminate or tweak, without ruining your bank account and dedicating too much time and resources. If your experiment provides the results that you want, then you can scale up, but try to tamp down your enthusiasm for scaling up too quickly. Soil, shade, sun, moisture and microclimates vary around your land and may not all be conducive to large-scale implementation. We want to mimic natural ecosystems, which is also why we emphasize diversity. This principle to Accept Feedback and Apply Self-Regulation, along with the first principle, Observe and Interact, are key tools to successfully introducing new elements, living or structural to your homestead. All the principles are meant to be considered repeatedly throughout the life cycle of your gardens, farm or homestead. 

As with the earth, the effects of human activity on your yard does not stop at your neighbor’s border. Every decision that we make on our property affects those around us, even though it may not be immediately obvious: Earth Care. Investigate how your changes will affect your next-door neighbors and maybe beyond them. If you build a barn near the border of your property, will you shade out your neighbor’s garden? If you dam or divert a portion of a creek that runs through your yard, will that negatively impact the people that live below your section of the creek? Will building an elevated patio divert water into your neighbor’s yard? Vice Versa, you want to see if any factors on neighboring lands will affect your success with a new installation, maybe not now in the fall, but will that be different in the winter or summer? I’m not suggesting that you get into a state of analysis-paralysis, but time thinking about your property as a part of a bigger ecosystem will help you, your neighbors and the land. I had a permaculture instructor who told us that she always has two clients when she works on a design, the people who hired her and the land, and she puts the needs of the land first. 

I regularly remind myself that I am a part of this big, beautiful, messy system called earth and not the owner of it to do whatever I would like, but a custodian and fellow earth inhabitant. 

September Permie Tip

It is September! Even though it still feels warm and summery, it is time to clean up dead plants, discard diseased material and compost the remainder. It is also time to plant new berries and native perennials and shrubs. If you followed the sheet mulching tip from the August Permie Corner article, you will have a nicely prepared area for that. 

Other tasks include testing your garden soil and amending it accordingly with organic material and planting cover crops. Cover Plants are one of the most important amendments and protection that you have for your garden beds. Bare soil loses nutrition and is a happy habitat for undesirable volunteer plants (aka weeds) to grow. Cover plants aerate the soil with their roots, provide nutrition for the soil, food for animals and insects both above and below the soil and prevent erosion. Cover crops that are native to our area, southeastern Pennsylvania, zones 6b through 8, are crimson clover, hairy vetch, winter rye and buckwheat. For more information on planting cover crops, you can read a previous article from our website. https://bucksfoodshed.org/cover-crops/

It is officially Fall, or Autumn if you prefer, and this month I am introducing the Fifth Permaculture Principle: Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services. 

The icon for this principle is a wind turbine, representing clean, renewable energy. By capturing the natural movement of air, turbines generate electricity. Its ancestor, the windmill, dates back to 7th-century Persia and is still used to convert wind energy into mechanical power for grinding grain and pumping water. Prior to 2014, the icon was a horse, another renewable resource providing transportation, manure for soil fertility, power for plowing and companionship. As permaculture spread globally and technology advanced, the icon shifted to reflect our growing focus on harnessing Earth’s free, clean energy through wind, water and sunshine.

As I write this, I am sitting at my kitchen counter enjoying the simplest form of wind—a cool cross-breeze through my open doors.

The subtitle for this principle, Let Nature Take Its Course, reminds us that nature already provides ongoing, self-sustaining processes we can use in our designs. When the elements of your land are in balance with one another, nature takes care of the rest. 

From David Holmgren in Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability:

“The proverb ‘let nature take its course’ reminds us that human intervention and complication of processes can make things worse and that we should respect and value the wisdom in biological systems and processes.”

When I listen to people talk about nature, I notice they often make a distinction between nature and humans, pitting humans against nature. But we are part of nature. Everything we need to survive is provided by Earth. We live in a closed system that has supported all life for millions of years with no outside inputs. A permaculture designer considers how elements within a whole system work together—water, air, soil, plants, buildings, animals, energy and community all relate to and influence one another. This is called Whole-System Thinking. Without it, solutions are only temporary, like a podiatrist treating a foot condition without evaluating posture, spine, how someone walks or the shoes that they wear.

How does all of this connect to the fifth principle? Using and valuing renewable resources and services is core to regenerative agriculture and permaculture. These are words and concepts that are part of everyday English, but how do we define those words and how do they connect with one another? 

Putting the Fifth Principle into Practice

For this article, Resource means something provided by nature (wind, water, soil, plants, animals, fungi). Service means something nature provides rather than machines or chemicals (like bee pollination). Renewable means something naturally replenished equal to or faster than it’s used.

Here are free, renewable resources performing services all around us, no matter where we live:

• Sunlight → Grow herbs on your balcony or windowsill and air-dry them instead of buying store-bought. You’ll save money, reduce waste, and know exactly what you’re eating. Instructions: https://theultimatehomestead.com/how-to-dry-herbs-naturally/
• Rainwater → Capture it in barrels to water your garden or balcony plants. Direct it into swales or create a pollinator rain garden. Read the July Permie article for how-to instructions: https://bucksfoodshed.org/july-permie-corner/
• Leaves & yard trimmings → Use unsprayed leaves as mulch or add them to compost. They’re free fertilizer right outside your door.
• Trees → Provide shade, cooling, oxygen, food, habitat, and materials for building and mulch. Fallen leaves provide much needed overwintering habitat for our native insects.
• Food scraps → Feed your compost pile, worm bin, or try bokashi (fermented food scraps) to enrich your soil.
• Saved seeds & cuttings → Free starters for growing and exchanging with neighbors.
• Animals → Chickens scratch up soil, eat pests, and provide eggs. Their manure enriches your garden.
• Pollinators → Bees, wasps, and native insects keep orchards and gardens productive year after year.
• Wind & air → Dry your laundry outside and open windows for natural cooling instead of running the AC.
• People-powered transportation → Walking and biking are great exercise, build community, and produce zero emissions.
• Shared resources → Tool libraries and clothing swaps save money, build community, reduce waste, and extend the life of existing materials.

Balancing Use with Care

Caring for renewable resources means balancing personal needs with ecosystem health. If you harvest firewood from your wooded property, consider the impact on trees, animals, plants, soil, mosses and fungi. Ask yourself: how much can I take so the forest not just maintains, but improves in growth and resilience? While we don’t want to take too much, some pruning and cleanup is actually healthy for the system.

Living fully sustainably is nearly impossible for most of us, and that reality can feel demoralizing. Plastic is everywhere—even local organic lettuce comes in single-use containers. Many companies deliberately design products to fail through “planned obsolescence,” a practice dating back to the 1920s when light bulb manufacturers secretly agreed to limit bulb lifespans, even though longer-lasting versions existed.

Even green energy has its problems—producing and disposing of wind turbines, electric car batteries, and solar panels damages the earth too. But we can still make a difference. Ask storekeepers to stock sustainably produced goods. Shop resale for clothes, tools, and furniture. Before buying, ask yourself: “Do I really need this?” Evaluate the full life cycle of products when possible and make better-informed choices.

Each small action—in the garden, at the restaurant, choosing a power company, riding a bicycle—collectively moves us toward valuing sustainable resources and services.

October Permaculture Tip

Avid Permie Corner reader and permaculture practitioner, Jarrett Raiguel of Earth-Fed Living, sent in this October permaculture tip:

Falling leaves are a great example of Principle 5: Using and valuing renewable resources.

Every fall, trees drop tons of leaves that most people rake up and throw away. I see them as free, natural mulch. 

Run some over with a mower or shredder—shredded leaves break down faster, hold moisture, and won’t mat down. Use them in garden beds or toss them into your compost pile. Mix with kitchen scraps or grass clippings to balance greens and browns.

Leave some leaves whole in wilder parts of your yard, around trees and hedges. Whole leaves create vital habitat for amphibians, insects, and larvae that hibernate there and return in spring to support the ecosystem. Even some of our Pennsylvania species of bats use the leaf litter. (read more about why)

Don’t have enough leaves? Ask neighbors or check local parks or cemeteries (just make sure it’s allowed and the property hasn’t been sprayed with chemicals). By spring, your soil will be richer, your garden happier, and your yard’s ecosystem thriving—all from a free, local, renewable resource! You may not even need to buy mulch.

Send an Email!!!

Please email (admin@bucksfoodshed.org) the steps that you have taken to Use and Value Sustainable Resources and Services for us to publish in November’s newsletter! I have stopped using peat moss, because it is a limited resource that has taken thousands of years to develop. Peatlands cover only about 3% of Earth’s land, but they store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined. 

Between the feasting of Thanksgiving, the shopping frenzy of Black Friday, and December’s flood of gifts and decorations, November offers the perfect moment to pause—and introduce the Sixth Permaculture Principle: Produce No Waste.

🪱 Icon: The Earthworm — Nature’s Recycler

In nature, nothing goes to waste. Every leaf, shell, and seedpod becomes food or shelter for something else. The Produce No Waste principle reminds us to design gardens that keep materials cycling—like earthworms turning scraps into fertile soil.

Originally, this principle’s icon was the Ouroboros—a snake eating its own tail—symbolizing infinity and renewal. As permaculture co-founder David Holmgren said, “Waste is just a resource in the wrong place.”

The Culture of Waste

Modern systems often act like one-way streets: we extract resources, use them briefly, and throw them away. Unlike nature’s circular patterns, our economy thrives on continual consumption. We’ve all heard, “It’s cheaper to replace it than repair it.” Convenience and abundance have made waste seem normal—but it doesn’t have to be. Not all Americans live this way, and a growing movement of individuals, communities, and cities are working to change it through repair, reuse, composting, and circular design.

Around the world, many other cultures, including many rural and indigenous people in America, maintain a closer relationship with materials and possessions. In many places, repairing, repurposing, or sharing goods is a common practice rooted in tradition, necessity, or respect for resources. These models remind us that “waste” is a human invention, and that we can interrupt the throwaway cycle by learning from both nature and each other.

Global Perspectives

Different cultures hold vastly different relationships with possessions and waste:

• Japan: Concepts like mottainai (regret over waste) and kintsugi (repairing broken pottery with gold) honor the beauty and longevity of objects.
• Many African and Asian cultures: Strong repair economies, hand-me-down traditions, and resource conservation stem from both necessity and cultural values.
• Scandinavian countries: Global leaders in circular-economy policies and repair culture, designing systems that reduce waste before it’s created.
• Cuba: Decades of scarcity have fostered remarkable creativity in reuse, repair, and innovation.

These examples remind us that “waste” is not inevitable—it’s a cultural choice. The real question becomes: Can we learn from nature and from each other to design human systems that are regenerative rather than extractive?

Real-World Example

In Brazil, farmers are spreading basalt dust from construction quarries over their fields. This “waste” rock powder releases nutrients as it breaks down, feeding crops while capturing CO₂ from the atmosphere. What construction companies once discarded now regenerates farmland—a perfect example of closing the loop between industries and turning waste into life.

Observing the Flow

Return to the first principle: Observe and Interact. Watch how sun, water, soil, and living things interact with each other and with you. Notice where resources enter and where they’re lost. A shady spot with airflow might be perfect for compost, and fallen leaves can mulch your garden beds instead of leaving your property.

When we design our gardens as living cycles, “waste” disappears. Every output becomes an input for something else—turning problems into solutions, waste into food, and bringing the first six principles full circle with less trash, lower costs, richer soil, and a deeper connection to how nature really works.

✨ When we slow down and work with nature’s patterns, we begin to see that waste doesn’t exist—only untapped potential.

Practical Ways to Apply “Produce No Waste” in Your Garden

🪱 1. Close the Loop with Compost

Turn kitchen scraps and garden trimmings into rich soil instead of sending them to the landfill.

• Set up a compost bin or pile near your garden for easy access. If possible, place it slightly uphill so nutrient-rich rainwater runoff seeps toward your plants.
• Layer “greens” (fruit peels, coffee grounds, grass clippings) with “browns” (dry leaves, shredded paper, straw).
• In small spaces, try indoor vermicomposting—worms make great roommates! https://urbanwormcompany.com/vermicomposting-ultimate-guide-beginner-expert/

🌿 2. Reuse Materials On-Site

Before throwing anything out, ask: Can this serve another purpose?

• Use fallen branches or pruned limbs as borders for raised beds.
• Stack stones or broken concrete into retaining walls or insect habitats.
• Turn old pallets into vertical planters or compost bins.
• Use an old window for a cold frame: https://savvygardening.com/build-a-diy-cold-frame-using-an-old-window
• Repurpose plastic nursery pots to start seeds or share them with neighbors and garden clubs.
• Create a small “salvage corner” in your shed for future projects—mine holds bricks, fireplace tiles, wood offcuts, broken pottery, and even single earrings that may one day decorate a garden steppingstone.

💧 3. Capture and Reuse Water

Every drop counts—especially during hot, unpredictable summers.

• Install rain barrels at gutter downspouts to collect roof runoff.
• Channel overflow into swales (shallow ditches) that slow and spread water through your garden.
• Use mulch and drip irrigation to reduce evaporation.
• Grow moisture-loving plants like elderberry or bee balm in naturally damp areas.

🍂 4. Feed the Soil, Not the Trash Can

Keep organic matter cycling back into the earth.

• Use chopped leaves, straw, or grass clippings as mulch, and leave leaves under trees for insects and soil life.

• Bring excess leaves to township drop-off points. See our Leaf Recycling Guide.

• Let some plants die back in place—their roots feed soil microbes as they decompose.
• Collect coffee grounds from cafés or spent grain from breweries to enrich your compost.

🪴 5. Design for Durability

Choose long-lasting materials and perennial plants to reduce replacement and waste.

• Build with stone, cedar, or recycled metal instead of plastics.
• Grow perennials like asparagus, rhubarb, strawberries, and rosemary that regrow each year.
• Invest in quality tools you can repair instead of replacing.
• Maintain a simple tool-care station—learn how to sharpen and oil your tools here.

Last year, I swapped out the deteriorating wooden frames on my raised beds for bluestone slabs—durable, beautiful, and easy to repurpose later. With a little care, they’ll last for decades.

In Daily Life

In permaculture, the goal isn’t just to recycle. It’s to design systems that prevent waste from being created in the first place. Purchase items that are well-made and care for them and the possessions that you already have; learn to up style clothes, jewelry, and furniture.

• Choose reusables over disposables—cloth bags, refillable bottles, cloth towels, and glass containers.
• Repair, share, and repurpose—explore iFixit, Repair Café, The Restart Project, or the Buy Nothing Project. https://www.ifixit.com/, https://buynothingproject.org/
• Buy less, choose better—invest in durable goods, buy secondhand first, and favor quality over quantity. https://upcyclemystuff.com/upcycling-clothes-the-ultimate-guide-for-beginners/; https://furnitureflippa.com/how-to-refinish-furniture/

👉 Try this week: Before tossing something, pause and ask, “Could this serve another purpose?” You may be surprised by how many small ways you can keep materials in use—and out of the landfill.

🪴 November Permaculture Tips (Southeastern PA)

Plant bare-root fruit trees, shrubs, and berry bushes while soil is workable but before a hard freeze.

• Inspect trees and shrubs for damaged limbs and prune lightly as needed.
• Leave seed heads and grasses standing for birds to feed and shelter in over winter.
• Review and maintain your tools—sharpen, oil, and store them dry to extend their life. https://www.mastergardenersd.org/garden-tool-care/

🐦 For the Birds

• Keep seed heads and grasses standing because birds rely on them for winter food and shelter.
• Provide water that stays unfrozen with a heated birdbath or shallow dish. Leave brush piles, log piles, or dense shrubs as safe havens for roosting and predator cover.
• Learn more: Audubon PA – Bird-Friendly Habitat Tips

December is a busy time as we tumble from Thanksgiving into the holidays. Families often slip back into familiar patterns—old roles, long-running stories and arguments, and the same jokes we’ve told for decades—even though we live full, independent, dynamic lives the rest of the year. Yet these shared memories can also act as an anchor, a broader history that shapes where we come from and how we grow. Our families and communities are the trunk, and we are the branches reaching outward in our own directions.

Permaculture Principle #7: Design from Patterns to Details

🕸️ Icon: Spider Web — a large pattern that creates many smaller, connected details

December is a perfect time to introduce this seventh principle that encourages us to notice the big forces that shape our landscapes before getting into the “weeds” of building and planting.

Just as a spider begins its web by laying down the strong outer lines before adding the finer threads, permaculture design starts with the big, stable patterns that shape the land. The details fall into place more easily once the main structure is understood. The spider’s concentric and radial design shows a clear pattern, even though the smaller details vary each time, depending on its function.

Want to learn more about spider web construction and functions? Spider Web Construction

🔍 Why Principle 7 Matters

Nature starts with broad strokes—sunlight, rainfall, temperature, slope, wildlife movement—not tiny details. When we design with these patterns instead of against them, everything becomes more efficient, intuitive, and resilient. 

December, with its bare trees, low angled light, and exposed ground, is a good month to see these patterns clearly.

☀️ Sun Patterns

The sun’s arc is one of the most reliable patterns in nature. In Bucks County, the winter sun sits low and to the south, casting long shadows. Click for a year-round sun guide for Bucks County: Bucks County Seasonal Sun Guide

Winter makes it easier to notice:

• warm pockets against south-facing stone or siding
• shaded areas that stay icy
• spots that get only brief winter light
• places where snow melts first—strong microclimate clues

These observations are a good starting point for design:

• Put veggie beds where the morning sun is consistent.
• Place shade-lovers on the north/east sides of structures.
• Orient future windows or patios to capture winter warmth and avoid summer heat.

Once you see the sun pattern, the smaller questions—where to put tomatoes, trellises, or herbs—become much easier.

💧 Water Patterns

Water is predictable: it flows downhill, collects in dips, evaporates from warm spots, and runs off hard surfaces.

Observe after rain or snowmelt:

• where puddles persist
• which spots dry quickly
• how stormwater moves across your property
• icy areas that reveal drainage issues
• roof runoff zones

Designing with water might mean:

• placing rain gardens where water already lingers
• planting moisture-lovers (elderberry, bee balm, cardinal flower) in damp areas
• using trees or shrubs to slow runoff on slopes
• shaping shallow basins or swales along natural flow lines

Amazingly, there are trees and bushes that can significantly reduce or eliminate a persistently wet area.  Helpful guides: Brandywine Conservancy PA Shrubs & Trees for Wet Areas; Quick Growing Guide for Wet Loving Native PA Trees & Shrubs *

Shift the water pattern and the entire landscape changes!

* Before purchasing trees or shrubs for this—or any—purpose, be sure the salesperson or arborist understands your property and your goals. Ask them to explain what the plant will need to thrive and how its water use is expected to change as it grows.

🐾 Flow Patterns (People, Wildlife & Daily Life)

Every yard—urban, suburban, or rural—has invisible “desire lines,” also known as corridors. 

Look for:

• where you naturally walk (house → bird feeders and woodpile, kitchen → compost, hose  → plants)
• deer or fox trails along hedgerows
• bird-flight paths between shelter and berries
• rabbit and squirrel runs
• shortcuts formed by routine winter movement

These flows show where paths want to be, where fencing should (or shouldn’t) go, and where plantings will either thrive or be trampled. On my property, we have a landscaped area that also doubles as a cut-through from a garden path to the driveway. It isn’t supposed to be a cut-through, but no one wants to take the longer way that forces us to squeeze along the side of a car. As much as we have tried to be delicate with our steps, we’ve continually trampled the plants, so now it has become its own established path. 

⛰️ Landform & Slope

With vegetation dormant, it is easier to see: 

• subtle rises and dips
• natural drainage channels
• frost pockets in low spots
• erosion scars
• potential sites for swales, berms, or windbreaks

These are the bones of your landscape—the things least likely to change.

🌿 Overlapping Patterns: Where the Real Magic Happens

In nature, patterns rarely exist alone. Sun, water, wind, wildlife movement, slope, and soil all interact—often in surprising or subtle ways. When two (or more) patterns overlap, they provide clues about what will thrive in a particular spot.

Overlapping patterns are the meeting places where design becomes easier and more intuitive.

Examples of Overlapping Patterns

☀️ + 💧 Sun + Water
A south-facing low spot warms early in spring and stays moist longer—ideal for elderberry, Joe-Pye weed, and swamp milkweed.

☀️ + 🐾 Sun + Wildlife Movement
A bright morning corner crisscrossed by deer trails may be perfect for strong-smelling herbs but not for black-eyed susans. The sun invites growth, but the deer decide what survives.

💨 + ❄️ Wind + Snowmelt
Wind-exposed corners lose snow quickly but stay cold. Sheltered nooks stay warmer and melt last. Together, these patterns map your winter microclimates.

⛰️ + 💧 Slope + Water Flow
A slight dip at the bottom of a gentle slope becomes a natural water collection point—ideal for a rain garden because both slope and water flow point to the same spot.

🌳 + ☀️ Trees + Sun Path
A tree that casts a small shadow in March casts a huge one in July. The sun path + canopy pattern together tell you whether a veggie bed will thrive or struggle.

Why Overlapping Patterns Matter

• They help you choose the right plant for the right place.
• They reveal microclimates you can use to your advantage.
• They prevent costly mistakes (like planting a willow tree where water never reaches).
• They show where paths, beds, or structures naturally belong.

Overlapping patterns are often where the best, most resilient design ideas come from. If you look even closer, you’ll notice micro-versions of all of these individual and overlapping patterns.

🧭 Tool: Yeoman’s Scale of Permanence

Permaculture designers use this tool to evaluate the most permanent features to the least:

1.     🌤️ Climate – overarching weather patterns: sun, seasons, rainfall
2.     ⛰️ Landform – physical shape and features: slopes, dips, ridges
3.     💧 Water – flow, infiltration, pooling
4.     🚶 Access – roads, driveways, paths, desire lines
5.     🌳 Vegetation & Wildlife – trees and existing plant communities
6.     🌡️ Microclimates – warm pockets, shady corners
7.     🏠 Structures – houses, outbuildings, land-use boundaries/fences
8.     🌱 Soil – soil types and conditions

Designing from patterns to details means that we start at the top of this list and work down to avoid mistakes such as planting blueberries in full shade or a rain garden in a permanent dry spot.

🌿 From Pattern → to Detail

Once we understand the big patterns, the smaller decisions become obvious:

• A sunny winter corner becomes next year’s herb bed.
• A soggy patch becomes a future rain garden or a swath of Joe-Pye weed.
• A deer trail tells you where not to plant tempting shrubs.
• A well-used shortcut becomes the perfect location for a permanent path.
• A wind-exposed corner calls for evergreens to slow winter gusts.

Patterns create the framework and the details bring it to life.

🌱 December Permaculture Tip

Take a slow walk around your yard after a light snow or rain. Notice where water pools, where frost lingers, how the low sun moves, and where wildlife travels. These winter observations reveal the big patterns that shape your land and they’ll help make your spring decisions easier and more accurate.

January is the perfect time to begin planning gardens and landscape projects for the year ahead. Before rushing into something new, though, it’s worth reviewing last year’s successes, challenges—and yes—unwanted outcomes. 

I’d normally call those outcomes failures, but I’m learning to reframe my reactions to a misplaced rain garden or an over-zealously planted bed (a chaotic mess) as information gathering. After a toddler-worthy meltdown, I put on my science hat and ask what those outcomes can teach me—then let go of the thousands of hours I spent creating these “learning” projects.

The land is always offering clues about what will work. We just need to slow down enough to see them. Slope, water flow, sunlight, access, and our daily routines all tell a story about how to support both the land and us. 

In permaculture, we learn that when we separate elements, we often create more work for ourselves. But when we integrate them, the system can begin to take care of itself.

A good idea, placed without context, can turn into a lot of unnecessary work.

I’m guilty of being swept up by the new shiny thing—a herb spiral, a garden shed—and rushing past my evaluation steps. In my excitement, I’ve focused on the feature itself instead of how it would function in relation to everything else.

That’s where this month’s focus comes in.

Permaculture Principle #8: Integrate Rather Than Segregate

🤝 Icon: Many Hands — many connected parts working together so no single element carries the whole load

This principle is often illustrated as people holding hands in a circle—a reminder that many hands make light work, and that strength comes from relationship rather than isolation.

🧩 How the First Seven Principles Lead Us Here

Principle 8 brings together everything that we have already learned. The first seven principles have trained us to think in systems rather than isolated parts:

1. Observe and Interact — Spend time watching before acting. You can’t integrate what you don’t understand.
2. Catch and Store Energy — Notice resources like sunlight, rain, and seasonal abundance, and find ways to hold onto them.
3. Obtain a Yield — Design so your efforts return something meaningful, whether that’s food, beauty, or saved time.
4. Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback — Pay attention when something isn’t working and adjust.
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources — Embrace what regenerates naturally instead of relying on constant inputs.
6. Produce No Waste — Look for ways one element’s output can meet another’s need.
7. Design from Patterns to Details — Start with the big forces shaping a place before choosing specific features.

As permaculture co-founder David Holmgren puts it:

“By putting the right things in the right place, relationships are created that support each other.”

Ask “How should this all work together?” before asking “What should I add?” As with writing an article, making a film, or creating a painting, some elements just don’t fit, no matter how much we love them. I’ve removed far more words, ideas, and analogies from this article than you’re reading today.

🫀 Why Integration Matters

System design is in practice everywhere, whether naturally occurring or by design. 

Our bodies are a clear example. Just like the human body, healthy systems don’t work as isolated parts. Our bodies aren’t a collection of independent organs—they’re networks of interdependent systems. The lungs supply oxygen to the blood. Muscles rely on nerves for movement, and the digestive system feeds them all. None of these systems could survive, or thrive, on their own.

I have an aunt who lost sight in her right eye following a mild stroke. The ophthalmologist explained that there was nothing wrong with her eye itself; the problem is that the connection between what the eye receives and the brain is damaged. The eye is healthy but can no longer participate in the whole system.

Teams lose without integration. A football team is made up of many parts that must work together under constantly changing conditions. Every play relies on offense, defense, and special teams. 

An individual player may underperform or get injured, but the team adapts. Some players sacrifice personal glory—blocking instead of scoring—so the play succeeds.

That’s integration in action on “any given Sunday (or Monday night)!”

🌱 Integration in Practice

The Chicken & The Orchard: Instead of keeping chickens in a bare run and hauling manure to the trees, let the chickens roam the orchard. They eat the fallen and rotting fruit (pest control), scratch the soil (aeration), and leave behind fertilizer (feeding).

Compost Placed Where It’s Used: A compost pile works best when it’s integrated into daily routines and garden flow. When compost sits near the kitchen door and close to garden beds, scraps are added regularly and finished compost is easy to use. The result is healthier soil with far less effort—and no more trips across the yard with a heavy wheelbarrow.

Shrubs, Pollinators, and the Garden Edge: Planting flowering native shrubs along the edge of a vegetable garden creates a transition zone rather than a hard boundary. Shrubs provide habitat for pollinators and beneficial insects, slow wind, and moderate temperature, while nearby vegetables benefit from increased pollination and pest control.

🔗 From Silos to Systems

When we design for a single function at a time, we create silos and more work for ourselves. We end up hauling compost, moving water, managing waste, and fixing problems that careful placement could have prevented.

Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison says it succinctly:

“You don’t have a problem. You have a design solution.”

The challenge is to place elements and functional systems so that they can support one another naturally.

In a permaculture approach, we move from goals → functions → elements → placement, with the focus on proper placement. Less weeding. Fewer pest issues. Healthier soil. Stronger plants. Less effort.

When Integration Is Missing (and How to Fix It)

💧The Misplaced Rain Garden

A rain garden is installed with native plants intended to capture runoff or absorb water from an underground spring.

• What went wrong: It was placed where water could go, not where water regularly flows.
• What was missing: Connection to roof runoff, slope, or downspouts.
• Solutions: Redirect downspouts, add shallow swales, or gradually reshape the grade so water naturally reaches the garden—without replanting. 

🌳 The Over-Planted “Food Forest”

Trees, shrubs, vines, fruits, vegetables, herbs, flowers, and groundcovers too close and without considering their growth patterns and needs.

• What went wrong: Maintenance became overwhelming; plants competed instead of cooperating.
• What was missing: Phased planting and feedback from observation. 
• Solution: Thin or transplant aggressive plants, prioritize long-term structural plants, and reintroduce complementary plants gradually—even if patience isn’t your forte. 

Why Integration Pays Off 

Whether you’re tending a balcony herb garden or managing several acres, integration reduces work, increases resilience, and produces steadier yields over time. When one element’s “waste” becomes another’s resource, you stop being the middleman. 

Integration offers three major advantages:

1. Reduced Work: When the “waste” of one element becomes the “resource” of another, you stop being the middleman. You spend less time hauling compost and more time observing.
2. Increased Resilience: A segregated system is fragile. If your “nitrogen” comes only from a bag and you run out, your plants suffer. If your nitrogen comes from clover, beans, and compost tea, you have backups.
3. Maximum Yield: By stacking functions in space and time, you get more out of every square inch. Stacking functions means designing elements so they serve multiple purposes and support one another in the same place (space) and across seasons or years (time).

If you’re staring at a problem in your garden—too many slugs, for example—don’t ask “How do I kill them?” Ask instead, “What element am I missing that would love to eat them?”
(Got ducks?)

🌳 A Concrete Example

Consider a fruit tree planted by itself and managed intensively to maximize its yield. It may produce more fruit in a perfect year, but only with constant attention.

Now, think of that tree as part of a diverse guild*: flowering plants attract beneficial insects, groundcovers shade the soil, and deep-rooted plants cycle nutrients. The tree may grow more slowly and yield a little less some years, but if pests arrive, the solution is already present. If weather stresses the tree, the soil stays alive and protected. If one plant fails, others fill the gap. Some elements may underperform or even fail, but the system will hold.

The goal isn’t to squeeze the most out of every element; it’s to create a system that can dependably produce every year without extreme intervention.  

* A plant guild is a group of plants that support one another’s growth.

🌎 Learning from Place

Over 10,000 years before Europeans colonized the land that we call Bucks County; the Lenape people were the stewards of this region. Many of the tenets laid out in permaculture are intrinsic to how the Lenape lived—food production, water, habitat, and community life were all integrated into their lifestyle.

The Three Sisters planting—corn, beans, and squash—is one example of how elements thrive together. These systems were shaped through generations of feedback from the land.

This classic indigenous planting guild integrates corn, beans, and squash. The corn provides a ladder for the beans; the beans fix nitrogen in the soil for the corn; and the squash spreads across the ground like a living mulch to keep the soil moist.

Want to plant a three sisters guild? Three Sisters Garden

Permaculture and sustainable agriculture are not original and innovative approaches, but old and established ways of thinking about agriculture that focus on respecting relationships with the earth rather than controlling them.

Readers interested in learning more about Lenape history and land stewardship can explore the Lenape Village programs at Churchville Nature Center: Lenape Village & Information.

🧭 January’s Permaculture Tip

When designing something new to your landscape, or your daily routines, ask:

• What other systems could this support?
• What does it need, and who already provides that nearby?
• Can this element connect functions instead of standing alone?

Even small integrations—herbs near the kitchen door, compost near the garden, water-loving plants placed where runoff already collects—make systems stronger and easier to care for.

Permaculture isn’t just about growing food; it’s about designing relationships. When we stop segregating our lives and our gardens, we find that the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

It’s the second week of February. The winter solstice is behind us and, as of February 2nd, Punxsutawney Phil has declared that there will be 6 more weeks of winter. For those of you who have never heard of Punxsutawney Phil, think groundhog. If you still draw a blank, watch the movie “Ground Hog Day” or click on the link at the bottom of this section. 

A long winter means that we still have time for cold-season preparation before spring really begins. Farmers are deep into spreadsheets and weather predictions—calculating yields, planning for new CSA members, repairing equipment, monitoring soil conditions, and keeping animals healthy through the cold. Gardeners have their own winter work: sharpen tools, organize and swap seeds, order seeds, repair outdoor structures, add compost, and prune perennials. For all of us, this is the moment to review last year’s notes and refine plans for the season ahead.

It’s also the time of year when enthusiasm can outpace good sense. With nearly an hour more daylight since December 21, the urge to start seedlings too early—or drop seeds into frozen ground—can be hard to resist. That balance between action and patience is exactly what this month’s permaculture principle addresses.

Links :

• • Punxsutawney Phil Story
  • Cleaning/Sharpening Tools

Permaculture Principle #9: Use Small and Slow Solutions

🐌 Icon: The Snail — steady progress, energy efficiency, and growth at a human scale

Principle 9 is symbolized by the snail: a creature that moves slowly but with purpose, conserving energy as it carries its home. In permaculture, small and slow solutions are easier to maintain, more adaptable to change, and less likely to fail than large, fast systems. Their spiral shell exemplifies nature’s most stable and recurring pattern, growing gradually while maintaining balance and strength.

Permaculture co-founders David Holmgren and Bill Mollison arrived at this principle from slightly different angles but landed on the same essential message.

Holmgren emphasizes design intelligence: if a system grows at a manageable scale, you can observe it, learn from it, and adjust before mistakes become expensive. Small experiments are safer, because failures stay limited and educational rather than overwhelming.

Mollison, by contrast, was deeply concerned with scale and human capacity. He warned that systems designed too large or too fast can overwhelm the people responsible for maintaining them, creating dependency and fragility. Resilience, in his view, comes from systems people can understand, care for, and adapt locally over time. 

Together, their thinking reinforces a simple but powerful insight: lasting systems aren’t shaped by speed or size, but by attention, patience, and the ability to respond as conditions change.

🍳 A quick “Safe to Fail” reminder (and a kitchen example)

In my September article, I introduced the term “Safe to Fail”—testing new ideas at a small enough scale that you can afford for them not to work, learn from the results, and tweak (or abandon) the experiment without draining your budget, time, or energy.

I learned this again in the kitchen recently: I added several new “health-boosting” ingredients into my morning smoothie… and created something the compost appreciated far more than I did. 😄 Next time? One new ingredient at a time, tested in a small glass first.

🌳 Why This Principle Works in Nature

Nature rarely builds all at once. Soil forms through the gradual accumulation of organic matter. Perennial plants spend years establishing roots before putting on visible growth. Forests develop in stages, with each phase creating the conditions for what comes next.

These systems succeed because they develop at a pace that allows plants, animals, and soil to build relationships and to respond and adapt to changing circumstances. 

Learn more about the life cycle of forests: Forest Succession in Southeastern Pennsylvania―

🪴 Garden-Scale Example

Rather than redesigning an entire garden at once, try starting with a single bed or small section, and choose hardy plants that can establish themselves in your local conditions.

Building incrementally helps you preserve the soil structure and the relationships between organisms that have developed over time. It also gives you a manageable space to observe closely: you’ll notice how water moves, how soil responds, which plants thrive, and which struggle. Mistakes stay small and instructive. That information becomes the foundation for better decisions later.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Small & Slow at the Community Scale

This principle doesn’t just apply to gardens—it shows up in strong community food systems as well. Most successful local food efforts don’t appear fully formed. They begin with a handful of farmers, a small market, a pilot program, or a single partnership that’s tested, refined, and strengthened over time.

When projects grow slowly, relationships have time to form, logistics can be worked out, and trust can develop between growers, organizers, and eaters. By contrast, efforts that expand too quickly could collapse or struggle along, uneven, under-supported, and hard to maintain. Small beginnings allow communities to learn what works locally—and to build something joyful and durable. 

🧭 February’s Permaculture Tip

This month’s tip comes from avid Permie Corner reader, permaculture practitioner, and business owner Jarret Raiguel of Earth-Fed Living:

In today’s world, instant gratification is everywhere, but landscapes don’t reward speed. They reward thoughtful timing and observation. Trying to rush growth, or expecting immediate results, often leads to mistakes, wasted energy, and frustration. Patience and incremental steps allow systems to mature naturally, building resilience, yield, and self-maintaining patterns over time.

Hot Tip: Start one system at a time. If you can’t maintain it during your busiest week and can’t afford to fix it if it fails, it’s too big to scale up until it proves it can support itself.

Click here to learn about: Earth-Fed Living and to watch short instructional YouTube videos. 

🌾 Closing Reflection

Small and slow solutions remind us that we don’t need to do everything at once to move forward. When we design with patience, we allow both the land—and ourselves—to learn as we go. In fact, building slowly often leads to better outcomes, because you’ll almost certainly adjust course as you discover what your land is asking for.

Progress that lasts is built step by step.

March has arrived, and it’s time to finalize garden and crop plans. In Bucks County the average last frost date falls in mid-April, around the 19th, although many gardeners still follow the tradition of waiting until Mother’s Day to plant tender crops.

The snow that had covered the ground, trees, and picnic tables since late January has finally melted. Early perennials are beginning to emerge, and soil temperatures are slowly rising. As they do, microbial activity increases. Fungal networks extend through the soil, linking plant roots into vast underground partnerships that exchange nutrients and water. Seeds remain encased in protective coats, responding to changes in soil temperature, moisture, and light. When conditions are right, enzymes activate and the first roots begin to push downward into the soil. These hidden processes remind us that even in early spring, the landscape is more complex than it appears.

Permaculture’s Tenth Principle, described by co-founder David Holmgren, is “Use and Value Diversity.”

Not just tolerate it.
Design for it.
Depend on it.

Because diversity allows living systems to adapt and endure when conditions change.

♥ Icon: Many Figures Forming a Heart

Principle 10 is symbolized by a heart shape formed from many small human figures. Each figure is distinct, yet together they create something whole.

In permaculture, resilience emerges in the same way. Strength does not come from uniform repetition, but from interconnected differences. Multiple species, functions, and perspectives working together form systems that are far more stable than those built on a single element.

🌾 Diversity Is About Relationships

This principle can easily be misunderstood as simply “plant a lot of different things.”

But permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison emphasized that the number of elements matters far less than the number of functional connections between them. As he wrote:

“It is not the number of things, but the number of ways in which things work.”

Nature does not grow monocultures. They are human inventions designed for efficiency, but they are ecologically fragile. A single pest, disease, or heat wave can devastate an entire crop.

By contrast, diverse systems are less likely to fail. If one crop struggles, another fills its niche.

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” applies just as much to agriculture as it does to everyday life. We back up important digital files, diversify investments to spread financial risk, and apply to more than one college or job in case our first choice doesn’t work out.

In short, diversity spreads risk and builds resilience. And it makes landscapes far more interesting.

🌳 Food Forest

One way permaculture designers create diversity is through a food forest.

A food forest is a designed, multi-layered planting system that mimics the structure of a natural woodland, with edible and useful species woven throughout. Instead of isolating crops, a food forest gathers trees, shrubs, herbs, vines, and roots into cooperative layers that support one another over time.

Typical layers include:

•Canopy trees: chestnut, black walnut, pecan, and large apple varieties
• Sub-canopy fruit trees: apple, pear, plum, persimmon, and pawpaw
• Shrubs: blueberries, currants, gooseberries, elderberry, and aronia
• Herbaceous perennials: comfrey, echinacea, mint, bee balm, rhubarb, and culinary herbs
• Groundcovers: clover, creeping thyme, wild strawberry, and sweet woodruff
• Climbers: hardy kiwi, grapes, hops
• Root crops: garlic, onions, Jerusalem artichokes, and skirret

Source: Brenda Theakston

This system stacks diversity in space, with plants occupying different heights.

It also stacks diversity in time. Early blossoms appear in spring. Berries arrive in summer. Apples and pawpaws ripen in autumn.

In a small Bucks County backyard, a food forest might center around apple or pear trees, with pawpaws planted along a slightly shadier edge. Serviceberry provides early blossoms for pollinators and June fruit for birds—and us. Blueberries or currants fill the shrub layer. Comfrey, echinacea, and perennial herbs grow below, supporting soil health and beneficial insects. Clover protects the soil as living mulch while garlic and chives help deter pests. Hardy kiwi vines climb a nearby fence or pergola. Pawpaws produce rich, custard-like fruit in early fall.

🦋 Fun Fact: Pawpaws & the Zebra Swallowtail

The caterpillars of the zebra swallowtail butterfly feed exclusively on the leaves of pawpaw trees, especially the tender young foliage. In fact, pawpaws (genus Asimina) are the only plants these caterpillars can eat.

Pawpaws are also unusual. They are the only temperate members of the custard apple family (Annonaceae), whose other relatives, such as cherimoya and custard apple, grow in tropical and subtropical climates.

The zebra swallowtail butterfly has followed a similar evolutionary path. While its closest relatives live in warmer regions, this species adapted to temperate North America alongside the pawpaw. The two appear to have evolved together, forming a very specific ecological partnership.

Learn more about their unique relationship: Pawpaw Tree & Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly.

In a food forest, something is happening throughout the growing season. Blossoms appear in early spring. By June, berries ripen. Apples mature in September, and pawpaws are ready to eat in October.

Underground, an equally complex system supports this seasonal abundance. Billions of microbes, fungi, and other tiny organisms interact with plant roots, helping plants access nutrients and build resilience. Scientists are increasingly recognizing that this underground ecosystem also connects directly to human health.

In the book What Your Food Ate, authors Anne Biklé and David R. Montgomery explain how healthy soil supports nutrient-dense plants, which in turn nourish the microbial communities in our own digestive systems.

Healthy soil helps grow food that supports a healthy gut!

To explore this fascinating connection between soil health and human health, join us for an evening with Anne Bicklé and guest panelists hosted by the Bucks County Foodshed Alliance and Delaware Valley University on April 9th. Learn more and register: What Your Food Ate Event.

🌿 Plant Guilds

Within food forests, plants are often arranged into guilds, expanding the idea of companion planting. A plant guild is a community of species clustered around a central element, often a fruit tree, forming a mutual support network.

Some plants improve soil fertility. Others deter pests. Some shade roots or suppress weeds, while others create microclimates that buffer wind, frost, or heat.

Rather than simply pairing plants, guilds design relationships among many species working together. In many ways, a guild resembles a healthy human community—different strengths gathered around a shared purpose.

🐓 Including Animals

free roaming chickens

When practical, farm animals can expand diversity even further. Chickens beneath fruit trees eat fallen fruit and overwintering pests, lightly scratch the soil, and fertilize as they move, while the trees provide shade and forage. In this way, animals are not simply sources of food—they are partners in cycling nutrients and removing pests.

🦊 The Role of Wild Neighbors

When we talk about diversity in our landscapes, we often focus on plants and soil life. Yet the non-domesticated animals living around us also play important roles. Squirrels and birds disperse seeds, rabbits and deer shape plant communities through grazing, and foxes, hawks, and owls help control rodent populations. Even the much-maligned mouse serves as prey for a wide range of predators.

Each species occupies its own niche, contributing to the balance of the system. Wildlife can sometimes test a gardener’s patience, particularly the deer, but in a diverse landscape these animals are participants in a larger ecological web. Diversity includes organisms that were already here.

🌎 Diversity Beyond the Garden

This principle extends beyond plants.

Community projects thrive when diverse skills and perspectives come together. A garden group benefits from members who understand soil science, carpentry, ecology, communication, and organization. A local foodshed grows stronger when it includes vegetable growers, orchardists, livestock producers, grain farmers, and mushroom cultivators.

Diversity makes systems more creative and resilient.

🌱 Thoughtful Diversity

Of course, not everything integrates harmoniously.

Some plants compete aggressively. Some inhibit others. Animals can overgraze. Diversity without observation can become disorder.

Designing lasting systems requires careful placement, patience, and attention to long-term relationships.

Ultimately, what matters most is not how many species we include, but how many beneficial connections we cultivate.

🌿 A Steward’s Perspective

Permaculture asks us to think of ourselves as stewards of the land—not simply gardeners or beekeepers. The goal is not to control every outcome, but to care for living systems as they grow and change, recognizing that every organism has its niche and contributes to the larger whole.

When we value diversity, we begin to fall in love with the process as much as the product. We create landscapes capable of adapting and evolving long after our initial planting.

Permaculture improves our lives by strengthening the living systems around us. And the more we pay attention, the more we realize those systems are richer, more diverse, and more interconnected than they first appear.

🧭 March’s Permaculture Tip

As you plan this season:

• Add one new species to your landscape
• Plant more than one variety of a favorite crop
• Build a small guild around a fruit tree
• Invite someone with a different skill set into your garden project

🌾 Closing Reflection

Healthy landscapes rarely depend on a single species or a single solution. Instead, they rely on many organisms working together in ways that spread risk and strengthen the whole system. The more we observe these relationships, the more we see that diversity is not simply beautiful; it is how living systems endure.