Principles and Practices of Permaculture–II

Permaculturists employ techniques from a broad range of disciplines. These tools are selected and applied according to how well they allow permaculture’s principles to be applied. While there are numerous practices and concepts, these are some of the main ones:

NOTE: At GreenMyLife, we can help you set up a permaculture driven green space if you are in Bangalore – get in touch for our landscape design services.

• Agro-forestry: Combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy, and sustainable land-use systems.  Trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland.
• Rainwater Harvesting: A technique used for collecting, storing, and using rainwater for landscape irrigation and other uses. The rainwater is collected from various hard surfaces such as roof tops and/or other types of manmade above ground hard surfaces.

• Herb Spiral: Herb spiral is a spiral of rocks encloses soil in which many species of herbs are planted. The rock warms and dehumidifies the soil. The extended edge, wrapped in on itself provides a wide diversity of conditions, creating high productivity in a small space, but is easy to water and harvest.

• Polyculture: Large diversity of plant species in one garden or farm
• Keyhole Bed: Keyhole gardens are horseshoe shaped or circular (like a keyhole) so they can be easily reached from all sides. These are productive gardens that are ideal for small spaces and can accommodate a variety of plants like vegetables, herbs, flowers etc.

• Sheet Mulching: Mimics the leaf cover that is found on forest floors. Any material or combination can be used as mulch, stones, leaves, cardboard, wood chips, gravel etc. can be used
• Natural Buidling: Involves a range of building systems and materials that place major emphasis on sustainability. Natural building uses primarily abundantly available, renewable, reused or recycled materials.

• Intercropping:  Practice involving growing two or more crops in proximity for their mutual benefit. Ex. planting a tall crop with a shorter crop that requires partial shade.
• Hugelkultur: Volumes of wood are buried under the soil to increase soil fertility and water retention. The decomposing wood acts as a wick/sponge when underground, absorbing water during rainy seasons to support the crops planted on the raised bed throughout the dry season

• Edge Effect: Permaculturists argue that, where vastly differing systems meet, there is an intense area of productivity and useful connections. Ex. Where the land and the sea meet there is a particularly rich area that meets a disproportionate percentage of human and animal needs. In permacultural designs, using spirals in the herb garden or creating ponds that have wavy undulating shorelines rather than a simple circle or oval will increase the amount of edge for a given area.
• Guilds: Group of plants where each provides a unique set of diverse functions that work in conjunction. Some plants may be grown for food production, some have tap roots that draw nutrients up from deep in the soil, some are nitrogen-fixing legumes, some attract beneficial insects, and others repel harmful insects.

  NOTE: At GreenMyLife, we can help you set up a permaculture driven green space if you are in Bangalore – get in touch for our landscape design services.