Recommended Reading.
Holmgren, D. (2004) Permaculture- principles and pathways beyond sustainability. Holmgren Design Press. You can read my review of this book here.
Whitefield, P. (2005) The Earth Care Manual. Permanent Publications. You can see my review here.
Whitefield, P. (2000) Permaculture in a Nutshell. Permanent Publications. A good light introduction.
Also highly recommended is a subscription to the Permaculture Magazine.
There is also a great interview with David Holmgren here, and recent talks by him here and here.
You can hear in interview with Bill Mollison here. A useful overview of permaculture can be found on Wikipedia. A good article by David Holmgren looking at the principles we explored can be found on his site, click on ‘Writings’ and then the fourth section down, ‘Essence of Permaculture’.
The Principles of Permaculture that we will be covering on this course are;
1. Relative location.
2. Multiple function.
3. Multiple sources.
4. Zone, Sector and Slope.
5. Energy cycling.
6. Using biological resources.
7. Stacking.
8. Diversity.
9. Edge.
10. Small scale.
11. Obtain a Yield
As to what they actually mean, all will become clear on Monday night (hopefully!).
The contents of the Zones we discussed are as follows;
Zone 0 - The house or other centre of activity.
Zone 1 - Herb spiral, pick’n’pluck vegetable beds, cut’n’come again vegetable beds, intensive annual beds, vines, container growing, wood store, workshop, small animals (rabbits, guinea pigs), compost, clothes line, rainwater harvesting, worm bin, greenhouse, pond, step-over cordon fruit trees
Zone 2 - Maincrop vegetables, forest garden, orchards, grain gardens, water storage, chicken forage, small livestock animals, tool shed, lawns (?), mushrooms
Zone 3 - unpruned and unmulched orchards, animal pasture, windbreaks, coppice woods, large nut trees and other animal forage trees
Zone 4 - semi-managed, semi-wild woodland managed for timber, wildlife and forage crops
Zone 5 - wilderness, where we are visitors, not managers
For Next Week. Have a look at Caroline Lucas’ new report, Fuelling a Food Crisis which you can read online. If nothing else, just read the introduction, but if you can read more you will find it very useful.
