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Food Cultivation with Permaculture • Growing food is an exciting, complex, political, social, and environmental consideration • The context, site, and goals dictate how and where food is grown • From intensive growing in small urban spaces, to cultivating tree crops and raising livestock, food can be grown everywhere

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Food Cultivation with Permaculture

• Growing food is an exciting, complex, political, social, and environmental consideration

• The context, site, and goals dictate how and where food is grown

• From intensive growing in small urban spaces, to cultivating tree crops and raising livestock, food can be grown everywhere

Food Sovereignty

• Although this presentation focuses on permaculture techniques for growing food, the political implications of food availability are critical to consider

• Food Soveirnty is defined as:the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate

food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own

food and agriculture systems. http://www.foodsovereignty.org/

Techniques for Growing FoodGardens

Raised bedsGreen roofsIntensive & VerticalKeyholesHerb Spirals

FarmingBiodynamic FarmingFour-season farming

Fruits and NutsTrellisArborsEspelliersOrchardsFood Forests

LivestockChickensRabbitsCows/Goats/Pigs &

Rotational GrazingSilvopasture

Gardens: Raised Beds

• Raised beds consist of a frame for containing soil

• Frames can be made of stone, metal, cement block, broken pavers, or wood (not pressure-treated *)

Gardens: Raised BedsRaised beds are beneficial in many contexts• Avoid lead contamination in the soil• Grow gardens in otherwise impervious surfaces (due to

either hard pan, clay soil, roof tops, or asphalt• Making gardens accessible to people with handicaps

and/or wheelchair-bound• Aesthetically pleasing• Reduce spreading of

aggressive species• Expandable; removable

Urban Community GardensNote: soil temperature more vulnerable to outside conditions

Gardens: Green roofsAlso known as “living roofs”, green roofs turn under-utilized flat, open areas in urban settings into productive foodscapes

Rooftop gardening is usually done using hydroponics, aeroponics or container gardens/raised beds.

• absorb and filter stormwater • provide insulation to buildings• create a habitat for wildlife• offer beautiful park-like amenities amidst dense urban landscapes• help to lower urban air temperatures and combat the heat island effect

Ecological purposes:

Gardens: Intensive & Vertical

• Intensive gardens are great for limited space• Maximum plant coverage, high yield• Successional and inter-planting• Plant in diamond pattern to pack more crops

into a given area• Trellis climbers on the north side to avoid

blocking sun (ex: tomatoes, peas, grapes)

Gardens: Intensive & Vertical

Gardens: Keyhole

• Applying the principle of edge effect with the wave pattern, we get keyhole gardens

• Maximize density of plants by increasing access and interiority with a curved form

• Careful not to plant aggressive species here • Maximum width for any type of bed is 4’

Gardens: Keyhole

Gardens: Herb Spirals

• Applying the principle of edge effect with the spiral pattern, we get herb spirals

• Increase micro-climate variation in a small space• Materials with thermal mass catch and store heat

(brick, stone, concrete) and serve as mini-windbreaks and shade-casters

• Spiral can be filled with soil or a bed of straw with small holes filled with soil where plants can grow

Gardens: Herb Spirals

Farming: Biodynamic Farming

• Biodynamic farming is based on Rudolph Steiner’s work

• It is planned in rhythm with cycles of the moon, stars, and energy; works with divas of the land

• Heavy use of biological resources such as compost and manure

• References: Secret Life of the Soil and Biodynamic Farming by Lovell

Farming: Biodynamic Farming

Farming: Four-season FarmingCold frames and unheated

greenhouses can help extend the short growing season in the northeast.

Integrating chickens into the greenhouse system to provide heat in the space (approximately 65 BTU’s generated from each chicken!).

In Harborside, Maine, Elliot Coleman is simulating the growing season of Georgia by combining these low-input strategies.

Fruits & Nuts: Trellis/Arbors• Provide a structure for climbing crops:– Cucumbers– Beans– Squash– Melons– Grapes– Hardy Kiwi

• Trellises and arbors can be used as elements that stack multiple functions when used to create shade, aesthetics, outdoor living rooms, and food!

• Orient east to west to get maximum sun exposure

Fruits & Nuts: Trellis/Arbors

Fruits & Nuts: Espelliers

• Espelliers function to minimize the space needed to grow fruit trees

• Site against a south facing wall or edge• The darker the paint on the wall, the warmer

the microclimate for growing heat-loving varieties such as citrus, banana, or fig trees

• High maintenance to prune and shape in the beginning, but trades off over time

Fruits & Nuts: Espelliers

Fruits & Nuts: Orchards

• Orchards do best as a polyculture (vs. a monoculture); avoids pest & disease problems

• Planting orchards maximizes food productivity on slopes over 5% and land with rocky soil

• Niche analyses should be done for each specie• Plant a groundcover under trees (ideally

nitrogen-fixing) to avoid competitor weeds

Fruits & Nuts: Orchards

Orchards with Companion Planting Orchards with Groundcover

Orchards with Diverse Species

Delicious Crops

Livestock: ChickensProvide:

- meat, eggs, fertilizer, tilling, feathers, heat, pest control, consume food scraps

Chicken Tractor

Require:- food, water, light, land, shelter, roosting area

Chicken Tractor: a cage without a bottom that moves chickens selectively around a yard to perform the above functions

Chickens can be integrated into a greenhouse system to warm the space (BTU’s)

Other poultry livestock to consider: turkeys, ducks, guinea hens

Livestock: RabbitsProvide:

- meat, companionship, fur, manure

Require:- food, water, bedding, shelter

Urban Agriculture: many cities have zoning restrictions that limit chickens, goats, etc. but rabbits are typically a non-issue since they are considered “pets.”

Rabbit Manure: considered “cold manure” because it can be directly applied to garden beds and will not burn plants.

If not directly applied, it makes great food for red wiggler worms to compost.

Placing worm bins under rabbit cages makes a good system for catching droppings and further decomposing

Livestock: Cows/Goats/Pigs & Rotational Grazing

Rotational Grazing is a system of grazing in which ruminant and non-ruminant herds are regularly and systematically moved to fresh pasture with the intent to maximize the quality and quantity of forage growth.

• can be used with cattle, sheep, goats, pigs (ruminators) and chickens, ducks (non-ruminators)

• Herds graze one portion of pasture, or a paddock, while allowing the others to recover

Rotational Grazing con’t

• Resting grazed lands allows the vegetation to renew energy reserves, rebuild shoot systems, and deepen root systems

• Grazers do better on the more tender younger plant stems

• Livestock can meet their energy requirements, on pasture grazing alone without the supplemental feed sources that are required in continuous grazing systems (soy, corn, etc.)

Silvopasture

Silvopasture: two-storey grazing; the practice of combining forestry and grazing of domesticated animals in a mutually beneficial way

Integrating trees with forage and livestock production

Perhaps the oldest agroforestry system used in the temperate regions of the world

SilvopastureAdvantages of a properly managed silvopasture operation:

• organically fertilized soil on site from manure• weed suppression due to grazing• low-maintenance and environmentally-friendly pest management (livestock eats rotting, fallen fruit before pests can inhabit it)• long-term productivity• increased income due to simultaneous production of tree crops and grazing animals

Food Cultivation

Whether you are growing food for the enjoyment of gardening, to feed your family or community, or in preparation for potential food shortages, food cultivation is an important and nourishing practice.

Applying permacultural strategies to food cultivation yields a highly productive landscape of abundance.

GROW FOOD EVERYWHERE! (a permaculture principle)