Sustainable Backyard Polyculture: Designing for ecological resiliency

Sustainable Backyard Polyculture: Designing for ecological resiliency

Copyright © 2014 by Melvin K. Hendrix.

Book design by Melvin K. Hendrix.

Typesetting and layout by Mercè Aicart Martinez.

Cover art by Lisbel Gavara.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without permission.

Smashwords Edition.

Published in the United States of America.

The information in this book has been carefully researched, and all efforts have been made to ensure accuracy. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein. When using any commercial product, always read and carefully follow label directions provided by the manufacturer. Where trade names are used, no discrimination is intended and no endorsement by the author is implied.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sustainable Backyard Polyculture: Designing for ecological resiliency. eBook Edition. / Melvin K. Hendrix.

Includes glossary and bibliographic references.

ISBN 9781310285547 (ebook).

1. Polyculture gardening. 2. Horticulture. 3. Landscape design. 4. Sustainability. 5. Home.

I. Title

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of Silviana Reynolds Mays (1910-2003), whose dedication to work, service, and grace were a lasting example to her family. And, to the farmers in the Reynolds, Collins, and Means families on whose legacy she became not only their first college graduate, but an agricultural extension agent in the State of Arkansas.

Sustainable

Backyard Polyculture

Designing for ecological resiliency

Melvin K. Hendrix

Illustrated

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. Towards a Model of Sustainable Polyculture

Chapter 2. Polyculture Design Principles

Chapter 3. Polyculture Production Principles

Chapter 4. Polyculture Site Planning

Chapter 5. DIY Organic Garden Media

Chapter 6. Regenerative Composting Practices

Chapter 7. Integrated Organic Pest Management

Chapter 8. Planting for Sustainability

Chapter 9. Recent Innovations in Sustainable Gardening

Appendix I

Appendix II

References

From the Author

About the Author

Connect with me

Bonus Content

Preface

I think the kind of landscape that you [grow] up in lives in you. — Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, 1997.

Gardening, I believe, is one of the most satisfying endeavors in which humans can be engaged. Doing it brings together a richness of emotions unlike most things we experience in our daily lives. All senses are engaged: touch, smell, taste, mind, body, and spirit. Every garden is an invention of its caretakers, of course, no matter whether a grand estate or an alignment of containers on a balcony, pathway or driveway. Polyculture gardening, then, it seems to me, is an act of peace, a declaration of partnership with all creatures on the planet, and a love-shout to the planet itself. Indeed, every garden is a universe unto itself, and one that, if we permit it, can connect us intimately to universal truths.

Even when its productivity is not essential to a gardener's caloric intake, a garden can be all-consuming. Gardeners are indefatigable, undeterred by seasonal challenges or failures and, in the beginning at least, exhilarated by even modest success. When gardeners are not in the garden, they are thinking about the garden, planning or shopping for the garden, or sharing stories about the garden. Perhaps, that is why we like our gardens so much. It is not the size or scale of the garden; it's about the journey itself, an humbling journey that begins each season on the wings of hope and joy; a journey along a path with which we are very familiar, but one for which the final outcome is yet unknown, only the knowledge that there will be a final outcome every season as long as there are gardeners.

The methods and designs detailed in this publication resulted from multicultural paths taken in my life's journey. This path began as a prodigy of two farming families, one based in market gardening, the other in subsistence farming. Each family was very capable in its own right, but with very different cropping and production agendas, or at least so they thought. Yet, each practiced polycultural methods in their production enterprises, the market gardeners more so. Polyculture refers to the cultivation of multiple crops within the same spaces in order to promote biological diversity and ecological resiliency within a landscape. The purpose for this is to sustain the producers in case crops fail, but the environment also creates opportunities for plants and beneficial insects that live there.

In the end, as I phased into my own earthly consciousness, drawn by the smells from the soil and the wonders found in the natural world, a journey that occurred over four continents working with some of the most amazing food producers in some of the most beautiful, desolate, needful, bountiful, longing, primordial places on the planet, I was able to have a point-of-view, but my families were no longer farming.

Like so many of their compatriots in North America and on other continents, they were starved, the greatest irony of all. They were starved by monocropping, by chemical bombardment from crop dusting aircraft, by militarism and, worst, by the vagaries of the capitalist invention-the laissez-faire marketplace that robbed them of the fruits of their labor according to the Golden Rule-they who have the gold, rules.

Nonetheless, farmers with their hands in the earth represent the best hope for the future widespread adoption of sustainability practices in the production of food to feed people and other creatures, not cars or other machinery. To reverse course will not be easy, but you can see the resistance forming.

Melvin Hendrix

Indianapolis, IN

August, 2014

Chapter 1. Towards a Model of Sustainable Polyculture

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), ecologist, A Sand County Almanac, 1949.

Photo: Example of backyard polyculture

Food and its availability or food security is one of the most important global issues facing humans over the next several decades and beyond. Globally, it will be directly affected by rising energy and fuel costs, inadequate public policy, predatory politics and economics, social inequality and predatory social behavior, combined with a continuing lack of discretionary income and mounting debt among the masses. And then, there is climate change, corporate control of seed and seed banks, and unregulated genetic modification of foods despite public push back.

This book follows an ecological approach to backyard gardening organized around a core set of growing principles accented by a permaculture philosophy. These principles have their roots-both traditional and modern-in biointensive agriculture and, more recently, in permaculture. Methods of biointensive agriculture have been tested and vetted over thousands of years, of course. Yet, this knowledge was more fully elaborated only in the research and published works of several key pioneers primarily between the years 1850-1950, when farming worldwide was largely organic.

Practitioners of sustainable organic agriculture today, by whatever name we choose to call it–biointensive, regenerative, permaculture, biodynamics, natural farming, or polyculture–owe the retention of these natural methods of food production within their societies to the great genius of simple people. As we age, we learn that the best way to live healthy is to live simply. Living simply does not mean the lack of complexity, more like the absence of chaos. Certainly, anyone intimate with Nature understands how the elegance of simplicity masks the architecture of complexity.

Sustainability & Resiliency in Backyard Gardening

The concept of sustainability in agriculture has long been understood by horticulturists, if not fully implemented, since ancient times. Just how long ago remains a developing story among scholars of the ancient world. But the search is not about our ancestors, it’s about us. How do we modern humans practice sustainability in gardening, in our life’s work, in our political economy? The practical aspects of sustainability should mean the same thing that it means in any activity that consumes resources, which is true of everything we do. Though sustainability as a concept is used widely, it remains for many mired in ambiguity and speculation. To know this is only to source the Internet, where the question of What is Sustainability? is raised by all segments of society.

Yet the answers in response to the question echo inconclusive generalities that cannot be measured. The most common response is that sustainability is something that endures over time. This is hardly scientific. One example of this is the attempt by Hansen and Jones to suggest a framework for quantification in which they define sustainability as the ability of a system to continue into the future although that future is unknown. They assume that since sustainability deals with the future, it cannot be readily observed by farmers in practice.[1] This is, of course, false.

In an agricultural environment, sustainability occurs in a hierarchical way. Firstly, the future of a farm and its enterprises are measured in seasonal terms and, of course, seasonal changes can indeed be observed, measured and projected into the future. Yes, farmers develop five or ten year plans like many other entrepreneurs, but the reality is that the most important season for farmers is the current one.

Beyond a season, the physical and ecological assets of a farm can be inventoried and mapped, and then associated baseline data can be measured over time. Annual soil tests provide the baseline data for this resource, which includes fertility, pH, moisture, organic matter, trace minerals, heavy metals, and more.

The next level of the agricultural hierarchy important to the farmer is ecological. Here, farm sustainability can be measured seasonally, medium and long-term and projected over time. Forest and water resources generally are readily identifiable and can be measured annually. Coppiced woods are managed on a scheduled basis and the results clearly can be observed visually and economically. Water testing on a regular basis can reveal any anomalies for this resource and, if necessary, corrective actions taken.

Some visualize a dichotomy between sustainable and self-sustainable systems, but this is a false dichotomy. Self-sustainability in the modern world is difficult to achieve, if at all, unless you belong to the top 1%. Moreover, when it comes to food production units, gardens and farms are purpose-made environments that do not exist without human caretakers, nor do they stand in isolation from events going on around them. Globally, bad governance by selfish leaders is making sure of that. Few people get by in life acting alone. Everyone needs the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker, but may not be willing to pay the price.

In this book, sustainability is defined as a quest to develop closed systems that can indefinitely maintain processes of productivity engineered by humans by replacing resources used with resources of equal or greater value without degrading or endangering natural biotic systems. The concept is simple enough. Let's repeat it again within the context of this book:

Sustainable backyard polyculture (SBP) refers to the use of methods and practices that do not degrade or endanger natural biotic systems where we live and work, and which maximize production to allow us to grow an abundant and diverse array of healthy organic plants, primarily edible, in small spaces. In return for this largess, the resources that are used for our purposes are replaced with resources of equal or greater value.

Sustainability vs. Resiliency

Resiliency in ecology is defined as the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic structure and viability, whether the result of a thunderstorm, drought, or volcanic eruption.[2] The return of an ecosystem to viability from an external disturbance is a multi-stage process of adaptation that begins with the disturbance event, followed by absorption, utilization or deflection of the energy or energies that external forces create.

The concept of resilience-thinking evolved from the need to manage interactions between human-constructed systems and ecosystems in a sustainable way despite the fact that to policymakers a definition remains elusive. Nonetheless, recent research shows that resiliency of an ecosystem can be reasonably measured at junctures or events where the combination of naturally occurring regenerative forces (solar energy, water, soil, atmosphere, vegetation, and biomass) interact with the energy released into the ecosystem from disturbances.[3]

In a purpose-made ecosystem, such as a polyculture garden, one way to look at the relationship between sustainability and resiliency is to view the former with a long-term vision and resiliency as the capacity of a garden and gardener to respond to immediate environmental events. In general, this capacity can be measured in three ways:

By redundancy: defined as the carrying capacity of a gardener to establish excess resources and back-up systems to enable maintenance of core garden functions in the event of disturbances;

By robustness: defined as a garden's capacity to absorb and withstand disturbances without caretaker intervention; and

By resourcefulness: defined as a gardener's capacity to adapt, respond knowingly, and, when possible, to transform a negative impact into a positive one.

The methods and practices discussed in this book can assist gardeners to plan, prepare, implement and monitor all aspects of the polyculture garden, especially its inputs and outputs, with the goal of establishing a resilient and sustainable garden ecosystem. The common ground, however, is biodiversity. Another goal of polyculture gardening is to encourage backyard gardeners to grow enough food to generate a healthy surplus of nutritious foods that can be sold or shared with neighbors, family and friends, in order to contribute to the resilience of a local or regional foodshed.

Therefore, rather than the notion of self-sustainability, it is collaborative sustainability that is promoted in this book. By collaborative is meant a world in which individuals live and work within a community (family, friends, neighborhood, and village) to achieve a balanced, healthy approach to sustaining and strengthening the resiliency of the locale in which they reside.

Chapters 1 explores both the meaning and relationships between sustainability and resilience, defining sustainability in a way that it can be scientifically measured. Chapters 2 and 3 detail the design and production principles at the heart of the polyculture approach. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on garden implementation strategies, such as garden planning and, for many of us, garden dreaming; site planning and bed preparation; soil-building and rehabilitation techniques; DIY manufacture and use of homemade growing media, mulches, aggregates, and fertilizer mixes. Chapter 6 details the benefits of implementing intensive composting and waste repurposing strategies.

Chapter 7 introduces a framework for integrated organic pest management, the adoption of which is extremely important for overcoming a preference for synthetic pesticides. The discussion offers a comprehensive overview of the various components that make up an integrated organic pest management approach and what this means for creating a sustainable healthy food-producing environment. Also explored are naturopathic treatments for plant diseases and insects, with DIY methods for making plant and insect derived pest controls. In addition, Chapter 7 reviews the development of biological controls, some of which are new to the market and to our consciousness. These new controls were invented to combat heretofore highly resistant soil pathogens and other pests. A few of these can be made safely by gardeners for use in home gardens following necessary precautions commensurate with their personal sensibilities.

Chapter 8, Planting for Sustainability, expands on the discussion that plants are allies in building sustainable polyculture gardens. Earlier chapters identified plants able to fix nutrients and provide biomass for composting. Soil-building is an essential cycle of interactivity that is key to backyard garden sustainability: giving back equal or greater value than what we use. In this chapter, the examples focus on plants that provide both food for human or livestock nutrition, as well as biomass to make it easier and less expensive to manufacture value-added compost, mulch, and other products annually from labor and materials that previously invested.

Chapter 9 offers a summary of the exciting development of new gardening technologies, like hydroponics, aquaponics, garden towers, and aeroponics. Many of the innovations and spin-offs from these technologies are creations of backyard gardeners themselves. Although hydroponics has been a mainstay of the vegetable industry for decades, its recent rapid expansion is primarily due to its easy scalability and the demand of people who just want to grow food for themselves and their families, but have no land and limited space. Of course, the increasing legality of cannabis production cannot be dismissed as a contributing factor.

Finally, two appendices highlight the key facets of polyculture gardening. The first is a glossary of agronomic and farmscape concepts and practices to aid the reader in better understanding the ever-expanding vocabulary of concepts and approaches developed by practitioners of polyculture gardening over the last decade. The second appendix offers a summary of important reference numbers and arithmetic calculations that polyculture gardeners need in their toolbox to aid in garden planning and task management.

ENDNOTES

1. James W. Hansen and J.W. Jones, A systems framework for characterizing farm sustainability. Agricultural Systems, 51:2, 1996. p. 186.

2. Brian Walker and David Salt, Resilience Thinking: Sustaining ecosystems and people in a changing world. Island Press, 2006. p. xiii; Crawford S. Holling, Adaptive environmental assessment and management. Wiley, 1978. p. 11.

3. Ben Falk, The resilient farm and homestead. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013, p. 3.

Chapter 2. Polyculture Design Principles

Not for nothing is a thriving blend of bacteria called a 'culture.' Culture isn't just community, but memories, instructions and rituals passed on to our offspring. Our most fundamental culture is how to grow, harvest, cook, and share food. Agriculture isn't merely technology and technique, but the ceremonies and philosophy to live within the bounds and bounty of nature. — David Yarrow, Humanist

In this chapter, we explore the logic of sustainable polyculture as a production system. Stated simply: In a polyculture garden, the greater the biological diversity, the more resilient the capacity of the garden ecosystem.

A baseline for determining biological diversity in a polyculture garden means that at least six categories of plant and animal life are present. This includes: (1) edible trees, shrubs, and other trees; (2) livestock (poultry, ruminants, earthworms, cattle, etc.); (3) main or high value vegetable crops; (4) perennial flowering plants; (5) green manure and cover crops; and (6) insectary or annual plantings.

Each culture ranks these components according to their own requirements. Supplementing them, of course, could be wild game and forest foods. How do we know these components are, in fact, a system at all and not just a figment of modern imaginations? We know this because some of the most successful agrarian systems in history included these components. Let's look at one of them.

Learning by example: A case study

The creation of microclimates by food producers is an ancient craft. In fact, the model of a gated garden surrounded and sheltered by a living fence of trees and shrubs historically may have been the norm rather than the exception among sedentary horticulturalists from ancient times to the present. Throughout my work with farmers in other countries, invariably, the most successful food production systems were kitchen gardens managed by women and surrounded by vegetation such as the structure found in the example below.

The tapades of Fouta Djallon, Guinea

The type of sustainable intensive polyculture gardening and landscape architecture found in the formidable Fouta Djallon region in the West African nation of Guinea is an example of what we know today to be a permaculture design. Figure 1.1 is a schematic of the internal zones and sectors that define the tapade environment.

Figure 1.1 • Tapade Mindmap, Fouta Jallon

The interior of the tapade Zones 1-3 (internal gate, entryway, privacy screen, and residence) are reserved primarily for family members. It is in Zones 4 and 5 (the hoggo and suntuure living fence) where most activities of daily life occur. Here, visitors are greeted at a secondary shelter or pavilion, work on gardens (hoggos) is organized, children spend the day in play and work if of age, and afternoon prayers, naps, and meals occur until dark. Zone 6 is the outside world, but also where animals are grazed and crops are grown on external farms.

Situated in the highlands 3000 ft above sea level, the soils of Fouta Djallon have been described as highly ferruginous, making them nutritionally poor and acidic and a nightmare for sustainable plant production. Worst, these soils are extremely gravely and below the surface exists a hardpan that can be up to 30 feet thick. When combined with high heat in the dry season and the high precipitation during the rainy season in the region, soils can be quickly depleted of nutrients. The result is an almost treeless landscape of wild grasses atop thick sandstone formations sitting on top of granitic basement rock.[4] Yet, the people of the region have grown kitchen gardens (locally called hoggos) for hundreds of years inside a gated enclosure of living fencing known as a tapade, but also referred to locally as suntuure.[5] In the permaculture world, the suntuure acts as a vegetative berm.

The tapade gardens have a higher soil nutrient level than any other soil in the region. Almost all labor in tapade microfarms, except for the initial preparation, is performed by women within each family group who manage the gardens both for food and cash for their families. Each hoggo is about 1-hectare (2.5 acres), so referring to them as gardens is not accurate, neither for their size nor complexity. I choose to call them microfarms. A microfarm is a systems approach to organic food production, and is distinguished by the way it uses and maximizes a limited amount of land, The hoggos of Fouta Djallon represent such a definition. [6]

The soils of the hoggos permit the cultivation of a wide range of vegetables and herbs, as well as some cash crops, primarily fonio millet and peanuts, called groundnuts throughout Africa. Domestic crop production is dominated by corn (maize) in the wet season and by root crops (manioc, taro, and sweet potatoes) in the dry season. A diverse variety of fruit tree crops are maintained that include avocado, mango, oranges, mandarins, grapefruit, and bananas. Several other trees are grown for medicinal purposes or to provide fibers and meet other household needs, like the live fences.

Significance of the tapade microclimate

The instructional significance of the Fouta Djallon microfarms for food producers elsewhere is how these highly hospitable microclimates were constructed within a vast inhospitable geological landscape. Three factors were incorporated into the socioeconomic fabric of Fouta Djallon society to create the soil-building strategies that have transformed the harsh, nutrient deficient landscape from infertile to fertile. It was not easy, since even with careful management soil scientists have estimated that from 10 to 20 years of intense labor is required before the soil of a tapade matures into a sustainable production system.

The first factor was cultural, forged from military clashes between sedentary horticulturalists and conquering pastoral livestock herders. Over time, as peace was attained a system of vassalage (slavery) was instituted, the relationships between conqueror and farmer created a homestead modeled based half on horticultural needs and half on the needs of livestock. Today, the result is a production system in which animals and people live within the same enclosed space, with the tapade hedges maintaining a barrier to intrusion by livestock, wildlife, and other dangers.

During the day, the animals are taken to the exterior fields to forage, returning in the evening to the tapade, the entry to which crosses over stiles or through widely spaced gates. Immediately inside a gate is likely to be a small corral to which cattle are housed each night. Other livestock, such as goats, who are self-managed, enter through narrow fenced pathways that lead to smaller pens within the tapades. These animals provide the manure that forms the basis for continuous improvement in sustainable soil nutrition.

The second factor was valued knowledge about the merits of managed in situ composting or sheet composting, a system that the women used to deposit and incorporate domestic and animal wastes, directly onto the surface of the land, which then weathered naturally. In the heat of Fouta Djallon, this process would not have taken long.

The third factor was intensive applications of crop and tree waste to cover the manures. Thus, soils in the hoggo were covered year round, supplemented by the nutrient recycling of the trees within and around each settlement. The manures provided nutrients and energy to the mulch, which, in turn, created nutrition required by the plants. Labor and intellect for this ecological transformation came largely from women, who over many generations, some of them as slaves, managed the various organic inputs of livestock manure, household waste, leaf mulch, tree and shrub prunings that created a soil rich in organic matter and a dense vegetation of multiple crops and trees above ground.