Permaculture or Syntropic Agriculture?

[@peterellis4262]

The thing about Permaculture that seems to have been missed, is that it happily takes whatever works best from whatever "system" and adapts to any site and condition parameters. Design system, not some set of techniques.

[@EcoInstant]

I definitely agree, I still consider permaculture to be what I do at the 'deepest level'. Its important to tackle the jargon issue though, for while this revelation seems simple, I still find that people instinctively view everything as separated instead of connected because of the way the jargon clusters into camps.

[@Debbie-henri]

I only heard the word 'Syntropic' a couple of weeks ago, and some of those terms you listed are new to me too. Until now I only called what I'm doing: Permaculture (I think I'll stick with that for now, until all these definitions are more clearly defined and we know what we're all talking about!) I've got a 2 acre garden (plus 3/4 of an acre of established riparian woodland) - and I also use fungi as the main way of breaking down brushwood. I have brash heaps dotted about one end of the garden, and a long brash hedge along the opposite side. I have been introducing different local types of fungi to these for up to 15 years - and now it is quite hard work to keep the hedge and heaps topped up, the fungi consuming everything so quickly. Plus, the heaps/hedge have attracted very diverse communities of insects (especially beetles), nesting birds, rodents and predators, their activities also doing much to hurry up the decompostion of material. I don't think I could do better by feeding coppiced growth to herbivores. Actually, I read somewhere that fungi do a better job than farm animals in a very important way. While fungi emit carbon dioxide like animals, the CO2 emitted by fungi is colder, heavier, and more available to plants as food at their level, whereas animal-produced CO2 is much warmer, rising, to be a problem in the atmosphere and less helpful for surrounding plants (I believe Paul Stamets was the source of this information). I had very little soil in my garden when I first moved to my property. It was a fairly steep slope, ex-pasture, and sheep had eaten a third of it down to bare rock (that area was a particular problem).. For some years, I had to leave it fallow, waiting for grass to finally cover all the rock. I did try planting a few small trees, but the wind would push them over, or they would behave like bonsai, refusing to grow for many years. From the beginning, I added fungi species in pockets of deeper soil. They took a long time to get going, but there are colonies right across the entire garden now (some edible, but most are powerful soil builders). When finally I did have enough soil to work with, I began on a hedgerow first, to shield the garden from the wind and stopping it from blasting leaves far away. The hedgerow encouraged animals to use it as a highway, and they contribute organic matter of course. Then I began to plant different fruit bushes, as they wouldn't need such a great soil depth, but now I have fruit and nut trees too as the soil continues to improve. I also use lots of Spring bulbs, wild flowers, mosses, certain chop and drop weeds, and ferns. They all seem to add different characteristics to soil, whether that be nutrients, soil building, moisture retention, soil stabilisation or mulching abilities. It seems to me that we are lucky to be in the 'Discovery Era' of Permaculture. Like you, I have recently discovered the benefit of creating 'thickets' of native trees to produce thin, fast growth useful for plant stakes, firewood, coppiced brush for stacking. I've just finished planting a dense 70 Birch coppice. I'm partway through planting a thicket of willows. And have seedtrays of more Birch seedlings to fill in some sparser Birch copses. (It was seeing how much faster Birch trees grew in the densely planted hedgerow and comparing them to well spaced trees that I realised I could generate so much more fast growth for soil building if I planted them much closer together). And, of course, the more that gardeners make soil building an important part of their project, the more carbon we're pulling out of the atmosphere and putting back in the ground where it belongs.

[@EcoInstant]

Wonderful comment! I love the word 'thicket', going to definitely steal that. I agree we are lucky, there is great and wonderful work to do organizing all of this information and experience into our own mental framework, and working to express it all in such a way to more easily 'enlighten' others to how magical and wonderful and possible it is to 'regenerate'.

[@broomers3]

I agree just pick and choose, I will just cherry pick from any system that will work on my (temperate) land (grazed for 30 years). I think Syntropic works for me where I am trying most of the principles, such as Limited input / imported biomass (no cow or animal poo), fungi, Indigenous Micro Organisms and Soil Food Web info.

[@EcoInstant]

Yes, designing a system for your specific land allows each of us to pick and choose from an expanding array of strategies... along the way we may 'invent our own' and even give it a name.

[@eldarblog]

So do you have a method on how much of your land is planned vs. Native species of tree?

[@EcoInstant]

This is a great question and one that I should be inspired to make a video on. The answer to the question involves different limits one is subject to, time, personnel, investment, species availability. Our method has been more of a research and observation method, due to us both dedicating time away from the farm for 'work', and also freeing us up from the pressure of depending on the land for a living. The goal is to take what we have learned and propose polyculture systems and methods that can sustain a family income.

[@bosquebear1]

I like the term polyculture for a mix of native and introduced species. Good video.

[@EcoInstant]

@@bosquebear1 Thank you!