Indholdsfortegnelse for Growing Fresh Foods & Herbs i Growing Fresh Foods & Herbs

Welcome to Growing Fresh Food & Herbs, Successful Produce using Permaculture Methods! I’m delighted to be able to bring you this Good Organic Gardening special edition, and share with you the most sustainable and productive ways to grow your own food. Whether you’re new to gardening, or an experienced green thumb, there’s something in here for everyone! In this comprehensive, practical gardening guide, we’ll show you the easiest ways to produce brilliant, bountiful harvests, with less effort and cost, by working cleverly with nature. New to gardening? Start off the right way, learn how to select the best sites for garden beds, prepare the soil, sow seeds, plant seedlings, rotate crops, grow vegetables and herbs in pots, and make the most of small spaces. Want to garden more productively, without…

Garden beds provide a clear boundary that defines where the gardens finish, and the paths around them begin. They help keep gardens tidier and more structured. They also offer many benefits, which are often overlooked. When garden beds are ergonomically sized, they permit the use of highdensity plantings, which are more productive per square metre. The more closely-spaced plants in high-density plantings shade out bare soil, making it harder for weeds to grow, reducing garden maintenance. How many garden beds should I start with? When starting a new garden, it’s easiest to start with either a single garden bed or a just few, in order to keep things manageable. The main priority should be on learning gardening through hands-on practise, and enjoying the process. There’s no pressure to produce a…

When gardeners run out of space in the garden, they usually resort to growing in pots, tubs, planters and other containers to squeeze a bit more in. Container gardening is a great way to grow vegetables and herbs when there is no access to garden beds, such as on a balcony or paved courtyard. When growing in a pot or any other type of container, the three main requirements are: • The container is of sufficient size for the plants growing in it. • The container has adequate drainage. • A suitable growing medium is used to fill the container. Choosing the right growing medium for pots The growing medium used in pots and containers is referred to as a potting mix. Good quality potting mixes are carefully blended to…

As organic gardeners, we aspire to garden in ways that are sustainable and ecologically sound, with minimal environmental impact. We seek to work with nature rather than against her, and to treat all life with reverence and respect. These goals and values have been shared by ethical communities worldwide; by people who have lived in harmony with the planet, all the way through human history. What if we could gather their wisdom and make it accessible to the modern world by systematising it and explaining it scientifically? Imagine if we combined what they knew with our current knowledge of ecology, the scientific study of the relationships of living organisms to one another and to their environment. This would be something very innovative and exciting. Here’s a little secret: it has…

Agarden that’s easy to look after is more likely to be maintained over the long term. But such a garden doesn’t happen by chance — it’s the result of careful planning. No gardener enjoys unnecessary hard work, so in permaculture we aim to design gardens that are as energy-efficient as possible. One such approach to energy efficiency is the permaculture design principle of zone planning. Planned efficiency Zone planning is a system in which the location of an element in a design is determined by: • How often we need to use the element • How often we need to service the element It’s logical from a design perspective to locate those things that are used most often or require the most attention closest to the house, the centre of…

Traditional produce gardens borrow heavily from commercial agriculture practices: they use monocultures with lines of the same plants arranged in widely spaced rows. Whether we’re talking about rows of vegetables, berry plants or fruit trees, it’s pretty much the same. We need to ask the question: does a broadacre agricultural model really scale down that effectively to a backyard? Commercial farms plant this way for convenience, not sustainability. Wide spacing allows for the use of agricultural machinery and mass plantings are employed to produce enormous quantities of the same crop all at once. This may be sound rational in an industrial setting but it definitely doesn’t make sense when considered from an ecological perspective. Permaculture takes a very different approach when designing small-scale intensive food production systems, emulating natural ecosystems…

Summer is the season when nature’s energies reach their peak. As the days get longer and the nights warm up, plants respond with prolific growth and amazing displays of flowers and fruit. But these ideal conditions can sometimes take a turn for the worse, as warmer weather can also bring unpredictable temperature extremes, relentless hot winds and persistent drought. To cope with such adversity, plants have evolved various survival strategies over the last 460 million years that enable them to become more adaptable and resilient. But in order to survive unforgiving hot weather, they have to make some major sacrifices. Plants and stress When plants encounter stressful environmental conditions, such as water shortages, their roots release the plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA), which stops general growth to conserve resources so…

When commencing a new venture, the first step can be the most difficult — often because we’re not always sure where to begin. For anyone looking to garden more sustainably, with less effort, for greater yields, the ecological design system of permaculture may sound rather promising and it’s definitely worth exploring. But where do we start? In this article, we’ll explore a range of easy and practical ways in which gardeners can integrate permaculture’s design principles into their gardens and take their first steps into the world of ecological gardening. First, what is a permaculture garden? A permaculture garden is one designed using permaculture’s ecological design principles. These are a set of guidelines for emulating the systems and patterns found in nature for our benefit. When nature can do most…

Growing your own food can be a very rewarding experience, there’s nothing quite like picking fresh, flavoursome, home-grown produce straight from the garden. Anyone with a sunny yard, courtyard, deck, balcony, rooftop or footpath verge can grow food. It’s quite easy once you know how. All it takes is some basic gardening skills, which you can learn right here! Whether you’re growing vegetables and herbs for the first time, have some gardening experience, or are a seasoned ‘green thumb’, there’s something here for you. We’ll show you the easiest ways to produce brilliant, bountiful harvests, with less effort and cost, by working cleverly with nature. Is food growing really that easy? To be able to successfully grow your own vegetables and herbs from seeds and seedlings, all you need is…

Growing your own herbs is great way to get started in food gardening. Most herbs are tough, forgiving plants that don’t require too much attention. They’re ideal for new gardeners, as they’re really easy to grow, much easier than vegetables! Herbs are a very useful addition to any food garden. These plants can be used as culinary herbs in the kitchen, for making refreshing teas, or as natural remedies to make us feel better. By broader definition, herbs are plants which are of use to humans, that aren’t regular food crops. In fact, herbs can be used for many other purposes, such as making dyes, cosmetics, perfumes, incenses, and pest repellents. Some herbs even have multiple uses. For example, the flowers of chamomile, which are used as a soothing herbal…

In last edition’s article on permaculture’s energy-efficient planning, we looked at the concept of zone planning, which was concerned with managing energies within our systems. This article will explore the second aspect of energy-efficient planning, termed sector planning, which is concerned with elements and forces of nature that come from outside our systems and pass through them. Nature’s forces can be a mix of good and bad and in permaculture sector planning we seek to harness the positive while minimising the negative through careful planning and clever ecological design, rather than expending valuable resources or energy to manage them. Taming wild nature In permaculture sector planning the first thing we need to do is identify which forces of nature interact with our sites, the directions they come from and how…

It’s said that we don’t grow as people when things are easy; we grow when we face challenges. If that’s the case, gardening is full of opportunities for personal growth. Very few garden projects start with the proverbial blank canvas of bare ground that has good soil, sun and placement. Whether modifying existing gardens or building new ones, what we have to work with is often less than ideal. There may be buildings, trees and even pre-existing garden beds to contend with. The land may be steeply sloped or facing in an unfavourable direction. Areas may be windswept, prone to waterlogging or heavily shaded. The soil may be depleted, non-existent or infested with weeds. It’s not uncommon to encounter various challenges when gardening, but that shouldn’t be a hindrance. To…

The success of any gardening endeavour begins and ends with the quality of the soil. Most plants require a soil that drains well but retains sufficient moisture and nutrients for plants to grow. Sandy soils tend to dry out more easily but all soil types — composed of various proportions of sand, silt and clay — can dry out completely under severe drought conditions. When soils don’t retain moisture they don’t keep nutrients, either. Water-soluble nutrients can leach straight though the soil, out of the reach of plant roots, potentially contaminating groundwater sources. By using soil amendments to improve moisture retention, we can also improve nutrient retention, too, thereby reducing garden water and fertiliser requirements, while at the same time improving plant growth — a true win-win outcome. Soil-amendment products…

The underlying foundation of sustainable gardening is the natural harmony that exists between species in the wild. Many plants have evolved to grow better alongside certain others and we emulate this phenomenon in the practice of companion planting. Plants have also evolved to form beneficial ecological relationships with mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates. Nature’s recycling processes, such as the carbon and nitrogen cycles, are dependent on the innumerable interactions and associations between living organisms. We can more closely mimic nature’s processes in the garden by employing a wider range of species to assist with nutrient cycling, pest and weed control and the production of outputs that can be utilised by humans and other beneficial organisms. Invertebrate companions The invertebrate world includes insects, spiders, worms and other similar critters.…

Plants have three primary requirements for growth, these are light, soil and water. The first step in creating a new garden is to select a location that receives adequate levels of light for the plants we wish to grow. The availability of sunlight will determine where we build our garden beds, or place pots and containers. As a general rule, most vegetables and herbs need full, direct sun for most of the day, so it’s best to select the sunniest areas available. Keep in mind that a garden that’s in full sun during summer may be in shade in winter, as the position of the sun in the sky changes from season to season. The sun rises in the east, reaches its highest point in the sky at midday in…

Now that we’ve covered the basic techniques of organic gardening - how to select a site for a garden bed, prepare the soil, grow from seeds and seedlings, rotate crops and grow herbs and vegetables in containers, we can now take the next step! In this section, we’ll look at the system of ecological gardening known as permaculture, its design principles, and how we can use these to work with nature to produce brilliant, bountiful harvests, with less effort!…

The notion of something for nothing may be very appealing in a world where people expect so much for so little effort, but everything comes at a price. In physics, the law of conservation of energy reminds us that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed from one form to another. Essentially, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Despite today’s technological advances, we’re still required to labour and toil to produce food, but we can work smarter by working with nature. To put this working relationship into perspective, though, we need to recognise that we depend on nature for our survival — but nature doesn’t need us. Plants have been growing on the planet for more than 460 million years — since well before any humans…

Growing annual vegetables can be laborious. At the end of every summer and winter, after harvest, vegetables have to be pulled out and put into the compost and the soil prepared for the next season’s crops. That entails digging in finished compost from previous seasons to repair the soil structure along with some manure to restore fertility. In late spring, a layer of mulch is usually applied to conserve soil moisture during the coming summer. The cycle is repeated year after year. If we looked at this as if it were an industrial process, with the intention of optimising it, we would quickly discover that a lot of effort is expended removing plants from a garden bed, moving them to another location for composting then returning the compost to replace…

What’s the best way to design a food garden? In the natural world, form follows function, so the way things appear reflects what they’re intended to do. Likewise, the optimal design of a garden should mirror its purpose and function — assuming there is one to begin with. Productive gardens all perform the same activity, which is the provision of food, but their design can be radically different, depending on their function — how they’re used and the reason for growing food. The purpose of food gardens The cultivation of food crops can be an end in itself but this activity can also be performed for various other outcomes. Home gardens usually produce food for personal use, often to support a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle and provide increased self-reliance. Urban…