What & How to Plant

Side yard, 2014. It's a jungle out there.

WHAT & HOW TO PLANT

Permaculture Principles:
1. No Tilling
2. No Bare Ground
3. Grow Plants that Attract
Beneficial Insects
4. Food from Perennials
5. Grow Multipurpose Plants
6. Create Plant Guilds & Food Forests

In the previous parts of Permaculture 101, we've talked about understanding how natural ecosystems grow
so that we can mimic them in our own gardens,
why and how to get rid of your lawns,
and some basic garden layouts in
permaculture design principles.

This section continues discussing what and how to plant
in order to create a low maintenance garden that mimics Nature, while still producing food for humans
and habitat for other animals.

1. PERMACULTURE PRINCIPLE: NO TILLING

Permaculturists try to mimic Nature in order to create sustainable ecosystems in their own yards. This means rethinking some of the ideas behind traditional gardening. Forests and other natural areas are not tilled, yet they produce an abundance of plants. In contrast, in traditional gardening and agriculture, we are taught that we must till every year to increase fertility. Tillling breaks up compacted soil and flushes it with oxygen. The increased surface area in the loosened soil particles along with the increase in oxygen lets the soil microbes have a party. This does temporarily increase fertility, but soil nutrients are released so fast that they can’t all be taken up by the plants.

After many years of tilling:

Soil fertility becomes very depleted through loss of nutrients, and we become dependent upon dangerous chemical fertilizers to produce a crop.
Tilling also causes more weeds to grow by bringing weed seeds to the surface where they are exposed to sunlight and sprout. Then we become dependent upon more dangerous chemicals to kill the weeds.

No one tills the forest. How does it get great soil?

It has lots of decomposing organic matter added to its system each Autumn and Winter when leaves and dead plants fall to the ground.
Organic matter decomposes into humus, which is the ideal soil. It soaks up water like a sponge and holds it so that the plants can keep drinking from it. It is light enough that roots can easily grow through it.

How can we mimic the forest in our gardens?

Remember that the soil is just as alive as the plants you want to grow in it. It must be fed so that it can in turn feed the plants. So add as much organic matter as you can to feed your soil.

The first year we were in our house, Bear asked if he should rake all the leaves that had gathered behind the row of hostas growing along one side of the foundation. I said, No! That's food for the plants. Why would you remove it?

Let your leaves stay where they fall :

No one rakes the forest. The best garden soil I have is under a magnolia tree where I haven't raked the leaves for the last 10 years. I can plunged my fingers right into the loose soil there.
If you leave your leaves in place, it may create a heavy wet layer on top of your soil in Spring when the snow melts. Sometimes I will loosen up this wet leaf layer a bit with a rake to help the sprouting plants break through the leaves. This probably isn't necessary, but it gives me something to do in the garden in early Spring.

You can also use leaves as mulch:

Olbrich Gardens in Madison, WI (olbrich.org) has a leaf mulch sale every April. They sell composted leaves that residents have raked off of their lawns (note that some of it won't be organic).
Or you can compost your own leaves if you don't want to just leave them in place.
Or if you have a composting mower, mow over your leaves and use the chopped up bits as mulch.

Compost in place rather than in one central compost pile:

Turning the compost pile has the same effect as tilling. I have been experimenting with putting kitchen scraps directly around plants under mulch. (This won’t kill seeds, so use seedless scraps.)
When you pull weeds, let them lay where they were growing so they will rot and return their nutrients to the soil.

The leaves have been left to decompose under this magnolia tree for almost 10 years now, producing a most wonderful soil full of humus. When we moved in, this area was barren lawn.

This is our side shade garden later in the Spring. The still bare branches of the magnolia tree are at the top right.

2 Permaculture Principle: No Bare Ground

If we have bare ground in our vegetable gardens, Nature will send weed seeds to colonize it and we are stuck weeding.
Rain drops pounding on bare soil can wash away the soil nutrients, or wash away the soil itself.

How do we avoid bare ground?

a. Avoiding Bare Ground: Plant living mulch

Grow non-competing plants between the food plants to protect the soil. In our yard, these ground covers have worked well:

Ground covers/living mulch for sunny areas:

white dutch clover (fixes nitrogen so nourishes the soil and bees love the flowers)
thyme (edible seasoning and bees love the flowers)
wild strawberries (with edible leaves and fruit)

Ground covers/living mulch for shady areas:

sweet woodruff (beautiful and makes a great potpourri)
bugleweed/ ajuga (blooms early for the bees)
violets (edible leaves are great for salad)

After laying these pavers to create a path, we seeded white clover around the edges. By mid-summer you can't see the path anymore, and the clover fertilizes the nearby plants.

The lavender colored blooms in the middle of our front yard bird & bee garden are thyme blossoms. The thyme has filled in around the other perennial flowers so that we no longer need to weed this area.

These are wild violets blooming in the Spring. They volunteered in a patch of bare ground in our backyard several years ago. Now we eat the leaves in salad.

b. Avoiding Bare Ground:
Companion planting of vegetables:

Interplant vegetables & flowers that can grow well right next to each other.
Weed seeds between the plants will be shaded out and won’t be able to grow.
This will also avoid mono-cropping, so that you aren’t giving the bad bugs lots of similar plants to feast on side-by-side.
Example: carrots, beets, and onions can be spaced 3-4 inches apart. They grow at different depths so don’t compete with each other.
In the photo to the right, taken the first Summer in our Celtic Cross Garden, flowers include (clockwise from the top): cleome, borage, nasturtium, coriander just starting to bloom (bottom), and calendula on the left. They are growing among summer squash, cabbage, onion, and kitchen herbs.
The path we created in this garden is made of gravel and fines (very small rocks). I naively thought that nothing would grow in the gravel. Years later this path is pretty covered with low growing weeds. If I were going to do it over, I would have seeded it with white clover from the beginning.
Here's my favorite resource for figuring out what annual vegetables and flowers grow well together:

Great Garden Companions: A Companion-Planting System for a Beautiful, Chemical-Free Vegetable Garden by Sally Jean Cuningham. ISBN: 0-87596-847-3.

c. Avoiding Bare Ground:
Use triangular spacing of seeds or plants

Triangular spacing results in annual plants that grow closer together.
This allows more seeds to be planted in the same space.
It reduces the bare ground between plants as opposed to the usual rectangular patterns used when planting in rows (as shown in the diagram to the right).
After planting seeds, sprinkle a light covering of straw to protect the soil from rain until the plants grow enough to protect the bare soil (below).

3. Beneficial Plants for Insects: Attract the Good Bugs with Flower Friends

Another reason to interplant flowers and vegetables is that the flowers can attract "good" bugs.

The “good” bugs are those that eat the “bad” bugs that eat your food.
When Nature is out of balance, there are enough bad bugs to destroy crops.
When Nature is in balance, there are enough good bugs to keep down the population of bad bugs so the crops aren’t badly damaged.
Grow plants that will attract the good bugs to live in your garden, so they can keep the bad bugs in balance. Sally Jean Cunningham calls these "Flower Friends" in her book, Great Garden Companions (see above for book information).

NOTE: you need both good and bad bugs to maintain the equilibrium. If all the bad bugs go away, the good bugs will get too hungry and leave. Therefore, it is necessary to have some bad bugs in your yard. So you need to be willing to accept some minimal crop damage.

Spiders eat many bugs, both the good and the bad.

Plants that Attract Good Bugs

They provide nectar or pollen as an additional food source for the good bugs.
Plant as many as you can.
Try to have something in bloom during the whole gardening season.
Many of these are annuals that may self-seed in your yard.
The perennial plants will grow back every year, so place them where you don't need to move them.
Plant flower friends among the vegetables to attract the bugs where you want them and add to the garden's beauty.

Here are some of the flowers friends
we've tried in our yard:

From the Aster Family:

Spring bloom:

dandelions (you probably don't need to plant these)

Summer bloom,:

self-seeding annuals: cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, tansy, calendula (which is also medicinal & edible)
perennials: chamomile, chicory

Fall bloom:

perennials: echinacea (purple coneflower), asters

Beautiful cosmos.

Purple coneflower/ Echinacea is also medicinal.

Asters are the last flowers to bloom in our yard, bringing a lot of color to our Fall gardens.

Other Good Flower Friends:

Annuals:

Borage is a very self-seeding annual. Bees love it. It flowers in Spring and you can eat the flowers (usually in salads or drinks).
Coriander and dill (if you let them bloom)
Parsley and broccoli (you need to let them flower too)
Sweet alyssum
Queen-Anne’s lace (considered a weed in many places, but it is very beautiful and has medicinal properties)

Perennials:

bee balm/monarda
catnip
spearmint
lovage
fennel

Bees loves bee balm, which flowers in the Summer.
The flowers and leaves can also be used for tea.

Interplanting flowers and vegetables also makes the garden beautiful:

Flowers include calendula, coriander, borage, chives, cleome, and Queen Anne's Lace. Can you find them all?

Good Bugs Also Need:

Water to drink:

Put shallow dishes filled with rocks within your garden (below is a plastic tray filled with rocks that I put in our rain garden).
Use rocks with small pits that will collect water as path edging..
Both of the above will get filled up when you water the garden or when it rains.
Bugs will also drink from all the drops of water that collect on crevices in your plants.

Shelter:

Don’t remove your dead plants until Spring, bugs will hibernate in the hollow stems.
Bugs also hibernate in mulch or leaf piles, so leave some undisturbed all Winter.
Crevices in rock or wood piles are also good shelter.

4. PERMACULTURE PRINCIPLE: Food from Perennials

This is one of the ways that permaculture differs from many other types of gardening.
Many of the plants we grow as annuals aren’t really annuals- we just force them to grow as annuals. We let our cold Winters kill them, but if they were planted in warmer climates, they would be perennial (live for years).
True annuals are self-seeding: they do naturally die every winter, but they can create seeds during only one Summer of growth, which will sprout next Spring.
We can imitate Nature by growing as many edible perennials as possible. Perennials don’t require disturbing the soil every year. Perennials recover more quickly from a harvest because they have more biomass. The rest of the plant is there to help it grow back.
Perennials are easier to care for- once established, perennials need little care and usually no supplemental watering.
Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to grow our food plants from seed every year?
We will be adding a lot more information on the perennial edibles that we're growing in our garden. Many of them have been growing for enough years that we can start harvesting them, so we can let you know how they taste.
In the meantime, consider including some of the perennials mentioned below in your garden. Some are familiar and others we are starting to reclaim as valuable foods that used to be eaten before our current popular crops came into vogue.

Part of our wild raspberry patch.

Perennial Fruits:

Many fruits grow as perennials in our area (Zone 5). If you are going to plant a bush, why not plant a fruiting one? If you have room to add trees, why not add one that has edible fruit? Even if you don’t harvest the fruit, it will provide food for wildlife.

Fruit trees for our area: apples, pears, peaches, cherry, paw-paws (a native)

Not-so well known fruits that can be eaten by humans:

currants, gooseberry, jostaberry, lingonberry, elderberry (also medicinal)
serviceberry (These are my favorite tasting berries. They have a great sweet taste right off the bush, but I cannot get them to grow near our walnut trees.)

Other fruits:

berries (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries)
grapes
kiwi vines

Perennial Nuts:

If you have the space, also consider planting nuts:

pecans
walnut
hazelnuts
chestnuts
almonds

Black walnuts waiting to have their husks removed.

Well-Known Perennial Vegetables:

Why not grow some of these? They're easy to find in garden centers, lots of growing information is available, and they taste good enough that they can be worth the wait:

Asparagus
Rhubarb (pictured to the left- it is one of the earliest edibles in the Spring garden)

Reclaim Some Little Known Perennial Vegetables:

I am working hard to reclaim these as edibles in our garden (click on the links for more details). To learn about these plants, I have researched them from three different angles:

Edible Weeds: I'm learning about edible, tasty, and nutritious weeds that grow in my garden and everywhere, such as dandelions, lamb's quarters, chickweed, and nettles.
Wild Edibles: Instead of foraging for these in the woods, I am trying to grow them in my yard, so I can forage closer to home. Examples include: Solomon's seal, mayapple, wild strawberries, wild ginger, wild grapes, etc.
Little Known Perennial Vegetables: I've been learning a lot about perennial vegetables that were popular before our current annual crops came into vogue. These include: groundnuts, sunchokes, skirret, arrowhead, Good King Henry, turkish rocket, sea kale, etc.

Ground nut vines (Apios americana) have tubers that taste wonderful!

These are the flowers of skirret, which attract beneficial insects. You can eat the roots of this plant, replanting some to regrow the next year.

These are the yellow flowers of turkish rocket. You eat the flower heads before they bloom (I was too late) and treat them like broccoli. The leaves are also edible if you don't take too many to harm the plant.

Here are my favorite sources for learning about little known perennial vegetables
(if you click on the links or images, you can buy them from Amazon):

Perennial Vegetables: From Artichoke to “Zuiki” Taro, a Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-Grow Edibles by Eric Toensmeier. A great source for information about little known perennial vegetables. ISBN: 978-1-931498-40-1.

How to Grow Perennial Vegetables: Low-maintenance, Low-impact Vegetable Gardening by Martin Crawford. ISBN: 978-1-900322-84-3.

Edible Perennial Gardening: Growing Successful Polycultures in Small Spacesby Anni Kelsey. ISBN: 978-1-85623-149-7

Here are my favorite sources for learning about wild edibles and tasty weeds:

Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer. Wild forging book. This author lives in Wisconsin so everything in the book is applicable to my area. ISBN: 978-0-9766266-1-9.

Wild Seasons: Gathering and Cooking Wild Plants of the Great Plains by Kay Young. A wild foraging book with the best instructions I've seen so far for cooking, and more than the usual recipes. I finally know how to eat our prickly pear cactus without getting stuck by a needle. ISBN: 0-8032-9904-4

Stalking The Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons. A classic published in 1962 about edible weeds and wild foraging. Has very good instructions on preparing wild foods. ISBN: 0-911469-03-6.

Also check out this great website:

Plants for a Future Database (http://pfaf.org): an amazing, non-profit website from the UK that lists the edible and other useful qualities of 7000 plants. It is their belief that plants can provide people with the majority of their needs in a way that cares for the planet's health.

5. PERMACULTURE PRINCIPLE: Grow Multipurpose Plants

Permaculturists try to choose plants that serve multiple purposes, for various reasons:

This is another way they imitate Nature, where having multi-purpose plants creates redundancy in the system, allowing for an ecosystem's survival.
If you have a small yard like we do, using multi-purpose plants saves space, allowing you to produce multiple crops and create as many niches as possible.

Some possible plant purposes:

attracts good bugs
provides food for humans or wildlife
provides wildlife shelter
creates windbreaks
are medicinal
are beautiful
helps other plants grow

Plants that help each other grow:

Nitrogen Fixing plants fertilize the plants around them. Examples include: clover, beans
Nutrient Accumulators: these plants have long roots that can reach nutrients deep in the soil, which are returned to the top soil and become available to nearby plants when the leaves die back. Examples: dandelion, yarrow, lamb’s quarters, chamomile, plantain, chicory.
Living Mulch: plants that provide ground cover to hold in moisture and prevent weeds from growing, then add nutrients to the soil when they decompose. Examples are mentioned above.
Pest Repellents: plants that secrete compounds that repel some pests. Examples: nasturtium, elderberry, some marigolds.

Multipurpose Plant: Comfrey

It can be used as:

A Windbreak: grows to 5’ in the sun
Wildlife Food: bees & hummingbirds love the flowers
Plant Mulch: can be cut down every 6 weeks and the leaves used as a nutrient rich mulch- just spread them around (but not on acid loving plants like asparagus or strawberries)
To Make Compost: Comfrey leaves added to your compost pile can help it decompose.
As Liquid fertilizer: let chopped leaves steep in a bucket for a day to a month (along with nettles) and use to water plants or spray on leaves.
As Medicine: Comfrey is good for healing shallow skin wounds (cuts & abrasions) and deeper musculoskeletal problems (sprains and broken bones).

Comfrey plants.

Purple comfrey flowers help feed bees and hummingbirds.

A closer look at comfrey flowers.

Growing Comfrey:

Comfrey grows in full sun to part shade. It gets much larger in the sunnier parts of our yard.
Once planted, comfrey cannot be removed, so be sure to plant it where you want it. It will grow back from even a small piece of root. The wild variety (Symphytum officinalis) spreads freely by seed, but I've read that it is the best for medicinal uses. The hybrid Russian variety (Symphytum x uplandicum) has sterile seeds so won't take over your garden.
Hardy to Zone 3.

Multipurpose Plant: Rosa rugosa

Rugosa roses (the easy to grow natives) have a single layer of petals.
Flower petals are edible and make awesome desserts. You can usually taste them at the Madison Herb Society Annual Herb Fair (madisonherbsociety.org).
The flowers are good for insects and bees.
Rose hips (the fruit that develops after the flowers) are very high in vitamin C and make a good tea. Try to find a variety with large hips. Birds eat them too.
Large rose bushes or hedges are great shelter for nesting birds and can be good wind breaks.
The native flowers smell wonderful, unlike the overbred hybrids
They are beautiful.

We grow these roses in our yard:

Frau Dagmar Hartopp. This is a compact, 3’ bush for small spaces. It has large hips and great fragrance (Pictured above right). I got it from Jung's, but they don't seem to stock it anymore.

Rosa carolina. (Pictured with rose hips to the right). This native rose grows 3-6’, spreads via runners, and can become a hedge. I bought it from the Friends of the Arboretum Native Plant Sale in Madison, WI. The literature I got from it said it would stay short and not create a hedge, but that has not proved to the be case. It's so happy in our yard, that we will probably have to put a metal barrier around it to keep it in check.

Easy to grow roses have a single layer of petals.

Fall rose hips.

Multipurpose Plant: Anise Hyssop

Here's a third great plant with many uses:

Medicinal: treats coughs, rheumatism.
Wildlife: Flowers keep bees healthy, birds eat the seed.
Deters: white fly and cabbage butterfly.
Edible: small quantities of bitter leaves flavor fatty foods, stuffings, sausages, etc.; used as a flavoring for gamey meats; flowers flavor cordials. It has a licorice flavor.
Cleaning agent: I've read that it is used as an aromatic, non-toxic cleaning agent for floors, bathroom fixtures, linens, but I have never tried it.
It's beautiful: with very striking spiked purple flowers.

The purple flowers of anise hyssop.

Gardening notes:

Anise Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) grows 2’-5’.
It's hardy to Zone 4 and can grow in full sun or part shade.
It readily self-seeds (it's part of the Mint family).
Strong stems makes it good for growing in a windy area.

6. PERMACULTURE PRINCIPLE: Create Plant Guilds & Food Forests

Guilds are plant communities we create that act and feel like natural landscapes, but include humans in their networks- they are good for the Earth, for wildlife, and for us.
Each plant in the guild serves multiple purposes and helps the other plants grow.
The first guilds were centered around a food producing tree and were developed by observing what grows naturally with that tree. Lately I have begun reading about people trying to apply guild design to plants other than fruit trees.
Here's a tree guild we're attempting to create in our yard:

Walnut Guild for Zone 4:

Since we have two walnut trees covering most of our back yard, and most people say nothing can grow near them, I was excited to find information about walnut guilds.
Walnuts secrete a toxic substance (called juglone) meant to stunt the growth of any nearby competing plants, so many types of plants won’t grow under a walnut tree. However, I have found that many more plants will grow there, if they can tolerate the shade.
When observed in Nature, walnut trees grow with the following, which I have planted in our yard:

Hackberry trees (Celtis species)

Normally grows to 75 feet. I bought a dwarf variety that grows to 15’ from Forest Farm (www.forestfarm.com) in Oregon. However, it no longer seems to be in their catalog.
Hackberries also secrete a toxic substance that suppresses nearby grasses and shallow rooted plants.
The berries are edible for humans (and are supposed to be tasty in spite of the name) and wildlife (cedar wax wings like them).
It's great for butterflies: it is the sole host for the Hackberry butterfly, Question Mark butterflies need it for their caterpillars, and Mourning Cloak butterflies feed on the sap.

Currant bushes:

In the wild, currant bushes grow near hackberries that are under walnut trees.
Why? Decomposing walnut leaves and husks give off citronella fumes that repel insects that possibly keep away aphids and other pests that like currants.
There are several varieties, growing 2'-6'.
Currants like growing in the shade of the hackberries and benefit from the hackberry’s grass suppression qualities.
Currant berries are edible (our red currants pictured to the right). They are used for jams and wine. Our berries are too bitter to eat straight from the bush. I've read that you can dehydrate them and use them like raisins, but so far mine have come out way too hard.
Black currants are medicinal: they're good for sore throats.

Snapshot of Our Yard:

Below are some not so great shots from 2014 of our hackberry tree and our short, red currant bushes. In the photo on the left, the hackberry is the small tree on the right in the foreground. It was a couple feet tall when I planted it in 2009. I'm not sure it's happy in this location, but it was the only spot I had for it in my yard. I think it would have preferred more Sun. You can't tell in the photo, but the upper branches are growing at a weird angel, stretching toward the Sun. We recently trimmed one part of the black walnut tree's branches in hopes of getting a little more light into this area. The large space behind the hackberry, where we are in the process of removing our labyrinth (a story for another time), is currently being left to go to weeds, although many of the weeds are edible, including violets, dandelions, wild salsify, wild raspberry, and probably others that I haven't identified yet.

In the photo on the right, the hackberry is on the left, with the white shed behind it. The much shorter bushes to the right of it are our two Jonkheer van Tets red currants, purchased from Jung's (www.jungseed.com). I also tried a black currant closer to the hackberry, but it didn't make it, probably due to insufficient sunlight. The currants have been planted at different times and are a few years old. They have produced berries, so far enough to make one small jar of jam. I expect they would produce more if they got more sunlight. The straw in the foreground is the sheet mulch we put down to kill the grass in this area so we can plant more useful plants. To the right and behind the currant bushes is black plastic, another type of sheet mulch. This is the edge of our property. You can see the contrasting lawn on the right, which our neighbors spray to keep weed free.

Russian Olive aka Silverberry (Elaeagnus species) bush:

A 4'-6’ shrub, it needs a half day of Sun.
It is a nitrogen fixer that helps fertilize other plants in the guild.
It is drought tolerant, and doesn’t mind the juglone from the walnut trees.
Its berries are good for wildlife. Some domesticated varieties are edible for humans.
We have an edible Sweet Scarlet Goumi (Eleagnus multiflora) that is self-fertile (because I don't have room to grow two), which I ordered from Jungs (www.jungseed.com). It came in a 3 1/2' pot that I planted in 2009. It started bearing fruit in 2013. In 2014 it was about 5 feet tall.
Note that this is a type of buckthorn, which is considered an invasive species by some.

Our Russian Olive bush with berries just starting. You can't tell from this photo, but the undersides of the leaves are a greyish color, which contrasts nicely with the green tops.

The berries are small and red, with a slightly shimmering gold color on the skin. I thought they tasted great straight off the bush, but Bear didn't like them. This was our entire first harvest.

Elderberry bush (Sambucus species):

A 6'-8’ shrub.
Its Spring flowers are high in potassium and are used in tea and cordials. The flowers are white and very pretty.
It bears small, purple berries in Fall that are high in Vitamin C and are used in pies, jams, & wine.
It's a wonderful medicinal plant with anti-viral properties. I make a simple syrup from the berries and drink a teaspoon of it every day in the Winter to help keep away colds and flu.
The native variety is Sambuscus canadensis. It's self-fertile, so you only need one plant to produce fruit.

Walnut Guild Notes:

In between the trees and shrubs or on the edges of the guild, plant other edible or useful plants as the light permits: comfrey, perennial vegetables, or annual vegetables that can tolerate some shade.
Guilds should always include nitrogen fixers (such as the Goumi above) so the system is self-fertilizing.
Other nitrogen fixing trees that can grow near walnut trees, but not in my small yard include: black locusts and acacias.
When buying fruiting shrubs or trees, check to see if they are self-fertile. If not, you will need to have space to plant two of them, so that they will pollinate each other and produce fruit.
Below is a diagram of where the plants in our walnut guild were placed. Since we already had mature trees, I planted everything on the edge of the tree's reach, so they could get the most Sun.
If you're creating a fruit tree guild from scratch, make sure you take into account the final size of the tree when planting around it. You can fill in the empty areas with annuals while the tree is maturing.

Walnuts with the husks removed. Next they need to dry for several weeks at least until they can be cracked open to get the edible parts.

Original Placement of Plants in our Walnut Guild:

The Ultimate Goal: Create a Food Forest

One of the end goals in permaculture gardening is to create a Food Forest: a forest that is self-sustaining like natural forests, but also produces food and other products for humans as part of the ecosystem.
Food forests are low maintenance. They take a long time to grow, but once they're mature they require no mowing, tilling, weeding, fertilizing, or raking. Just harvesting. Doesn't that sound ideal?
Our food forest is still very young, and not yet very forest like. In later pages we'll share what we've accomplished.

This is the end of Permaculture 101, and if you've read all the sections, you now know some of the basic principles used in creating permaculture gardens. We'll be adding more pages about how we've applied these principles in our gardens.