The Permaculture Handbook by Peter Bane. 

3/5 rating. 429 pages.

Book #35 of 2023. Read August 19, 2023.

This is a textbook about some of the practical basics of permaculture on small-scale agriculture.

Permaculture is a type of agriculture that revolves around self-reliance and the ability to close waste streams by using these as a way to improve the farm or garden.

-“These permaculture ethics are often shortened to the mnemonic phrase ‘EarthCare, PeopleCare, FairShare, and LimitsAware.’”

This includes using different plant stalks or non-fruiting portions as mulch, focusing on multi-use plants, and integrating animals into the farm to build soil health. The possibilities to build guilds that reinforce each other’s strengths are nearly endless.

As somewhat of an introduction, this book focused on some of the tenets of permaculture, especially in garden farms on plots much smaller than today’s farms. The largest idea he is offering is focused mainly on the ability to live off of what is available from your land (or nearly so), though he does also talk somewhat about selling produce. I’m hoping that this will help me in the future when I get land to farm! 🙂

Some great quotes:

“The conventional culture encourages us to imagine that there is a place called away where unwanted things go, but in reality away is simply out of sight or invisible in plain sight. We must change our behavior to act as though we all live downstream, because we do.”

“Noticing services, which are freely given, helps us understand the many functions that each element of landscape can provide. Almost everything has many potential functions, and the success of small-scale systems depends on observant and artful design to use them.”

“We wanted to create a productive landscape that would provide us abundant and nourishing food in all seasons, that had comfortable and functional spaces for working and living both indoors and out and that would enable us to shrink our carbon footprint as close as possible to zero within five years while we earned our livelihood at home.”

“To design permaculture systems, you must be able to think holistically or multidimensionally. You must be able to think through the logical consequences of the choices you make. You must be able to see what inputs will be required for something to function and also what outputs must be used or dealt with as a result of success. Anticipating what failures might look like helps you to avoid it and also be ready to ameliorate an unwelcome outcome.”

Additional Quotes:

“‘Well, you see, if I needed it, I planted it. And this is what happened,’ explaining that her method was to grow everything that she and her students would use for food, fiber and medicine.”

“The incidence rate of all cancers rose 1.1% per year from 1973 (the first year statistics were collected nationally in the US) to 1996, a massive increase. Approximately 400 cases of cancer occur every year per 100,000 persons, up from about 300 a generation ago.”

“These permaculture ethics are often shortened to the mnemonic phrase ‘EarthCare, PeopleCare, FairShare, and LimitsAware.’”

“Mollison has observed that slugs in a mulched garden are not a failure of the cultivation system, but merely reflect ‘a deficit of ducks.’”

“It is estimated that humans have used 100,000 plants for food, medicine, fiber, dye, fuel, and weaponry, yet today only 20 plant species make up 90% of the human diet.”

“Gardening produces two to seven times the yield per unit of land of conventional farming.”

“But because compaction makes paths into sacrifice zones, with little plant growth and limited soil development, paths should be permanent and their area kept to a minimum by good design.”

“If you have five acres or more, dogs make sense. With less land, consider fencing.”

“The orchard arrangement of grass under trees profits only the makers of mowing machines.”

“Woody plants thrive in fungally dominated soils, grasses in bacterially dominated ones. Young trees are adversely affected by grasses, which produce allelopathic chemicals to suppress tree growth.”

“Therefore, keep all soil growing some crop at all times, preferably two or more crops at different layers, sizes and states of maturity. Seed or transplant the next crop as soon as or, better, before the maturing one is harvested.”

“You must constantly monitor real costs in time, land, seed, and inputs against yield, both by volume and by market price. You must learn what you are good at, what your customers will buy and what the land will give. You also need a diverse array of crops: no fewer than four nor more than a dozen, to spread the risk of failure while avoiding unmanageable complexity. You can grow 60-100 varieties of fruits and vegetables for home use or barter – and probably should – but don’t try to make money on more than a dozen.”

“You are better advised to offer a good selection on a few days than dribs and drabs every day. Fruits, juices, honey and tomatoes in season are always a draw. A few unusual items among the staples will keep your customers coming back.”

“People in the US now eat an average of 2,000 pounds of food per person per year. This provides a daily intake of 3,800 calories per person, some 40% above the level recommended for healthy, active adults (2,700 calories).”

“Jeavons reports that it requires 4,000 square feet (0.09 acres) to grow a balanced plant-based diet of vegetables, fruits and legumes for one person for a year. Jeavons uses 70% of that 4,000 square feet to raise compost crops. These plants sustain soil fertilizer under intensive cropping conditions. In other words, only 1,200 square feet per person per year are actually needed to grow the food that gets to the table, but another 2,800 square feet are needed to grow the fertility that makes that crop land highly productive.”

“Seven tons of topsoil are lost from an acre in Iowa for each ton of grain grown, and that is considered a ‘moderate’ level of soil loss.”

“Fewer people gardened or farmed as the 20th century ripened, so the preference for flavorful, nutritious or practical varieties that suited the small grower or the home went by the way. Selection focused instead on durability, keeping qualities in storage, uniformity and ease of mechanical manipulation – all traits more suited to commerce.”

“At this point there can be no doubt that a full-court press is underway by agribusiness to institute GM crops across all major agricultural sectors and in all world markets, ensuring that these genetic forms overwhelm or supplant all other varieties, not because they are superior (yields of GM crops are in fact lower than those of conventional varieties of the same crop while nutrition is inferior if not negative), but because they are proprietary and therefore profitable.”

“We must choose our plants so they can play as many functional roles on the farm as possible.”

“These trees are widespread, generally reviled or overlooked, yet can easily be used to improve the fertility of ecosystems. That is their role. Our role is to recognize how they can be useful.”

“We do consume seven times this amount of fossil fuel each day when we eat a conventional diet, because it takes 7.3 calories of oil, coal and gas to produce and deliver a calorie of food energy to the table.”

“The process of building your market goes on for years, but it starts with simple acts of opening your gate to the neighbors and getting them interested in what you are doing.”

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