Forest Garden: image from smartpei.typepad.com
Today, most of us are fed by large-scale industrial agriculture. I buy the bulk of my groceries in supermarkets, and so count myself among this number.
But an interesting article in yesterday’s Irish Times, written by climatechange.ie‘s John Gibbons, introduced my rather ignorant self to the idea of permaculture. Most farming is energy intensive, using ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food produced. Intensive ploughing of the soil leeches it of minerals, and it often requires chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and fungcides.
Permaculture, however, involves observing and working with nature, encouraging its systems to favour the foods we like. The almost impossibly romantic idea of “forest gardens” can, according to one expert mentioned in Gibbon’s piece, achieve double the productivity of an acre of arable farmland. It seems that, once they’re up and running, they pretty much take care of themselves. But cereals would be out.
Now, I know nothing about growing food. But I really like the sound of these forest gardens. This is my last week of country life in wonderful Wicklow before I move back to Dublin (sniff). Despite having singularly failed to grow any more than a few herbs here, I’m now enticed by Permaculture Ireland‘s courses. The next one, “Low Tech Living Weekend”, takes place from July 11-12 in Drumsna, Co. Leitrim.You’ll also find more information at the Irish Allotments site.
It all seems a bit hippy-dippy (we’ll all live in the forest and work in harmony with nature) so I know it’s tempting to slag me off. Go for it. However, as Gibbons points out, permaculture may be a sustainable, productive, and affordable way out of the mess we’re all facing when the oil runs out.
Friday 19 June, 2009 at 5:16 pm
I’m working on implementing permaculture practices on my property in the US. Another school of thought you might want to look into is Urban Farming. I personally think everyone (whether they live in a city apartment or on 10 acres can and should be growing at least a little bit of their food).
Sunday 21 June, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I was the permaculture tutor mentioned in Johns’ excellent article- you can see details of other permaculture and forest gardening courses i am running this summer around the country here:
http://zone5.org/courses/
I also teach permaculture on the 2-year full time FETAC course at Kinsale Further education centre:
http://www.kinsalefurthered.ie/
Happy gardening!
Graham
Thursday 2 July, 2009 at 9:56 pm
I don’t think a forest garden would be too hard, that’s what I want to do with my backyard. Part of the challenge is entering into the frame of mind of how would a forest do best. Things do better if they’re originally all planted in the same place and are not transplants, they seem like they are where they belong, but getting saplings is a great way to start too, just remmember to plant tree seeds too, cause they even though it takes a little longer they do grow. And I think the vegetable garden inside the forest will grow much better cause the leaves that fall each year will fertilize well and also the trees protect against bugs. Good luck, the sooner you get started the sooner you’ll have something to eat that you grew on your own I think setting up a forest garden also ultimately takes much less work than a garden all alone each year cause your setting it up so you won’t have to weed, that the plants will be green, that there will be an ecosystem. There are so many reasons