Intro

Last weekend we spent in Twello, The Netherlands, with our new friends Taco, Ishi and Sarah. Hof van Twello is a wonderful place, I mean, the permaculture garden itself. They only started 1,5 years ago and already they grow more on an acre than commercial industrial gardeners there is a superfluous garden which yields more than they can sell in the shop. Go and see for yourself.

Taco and Ishi know all about Permaculture gardening. They make their living working in these gardens. They run the permacultuur.eu website and a permaculture gardening school. We went to school for a weekend, to prepare for the garden of our next home. This page is to memorise and publish what counts most.

The course barn	Working together is not so hard	Permaculture is not done in straight lines	Nice!

Pictures

All Pictures taken this weekend are on this page.

Ethics of Permaculture: why you do it!

• Care for the planet
• Care for the people
• Give, re-invest and fair-share

These 3 ethic rules reinforce one another. If you care for the planet, you give, re-invest and take a fair share. You don’t take everything for yourself. It’s not caring for the planet and the people either.

The Circle of Life

In the handout booklet is a nice picture: Producers (trees, plants), Consumers (human, animals, insects) and Decomposers (funghi, microorganisms and worms). In the Circle of Life, the 3 co-operate!

In every case, you must take care that for everuthing that you bring in, all 3 functions are fulfilled. Otherwise you’ll get stocks and stocks attract diseases.

Start from the Soil

Permaculture is built from the ground: the soil. There are 2 ways to make the soil ready:

Covering with straw

The most common method of soil preparation is to cover it with straw. Take a piece of land and put paperboard on it. Cover everything. Use EM now to clean up the paperboard. Take some bundles of straw and spread it out in a 10-15 cm thick layer over the paperboard. Done in a minute!

This method will bring you the following:

• Keep the moist where you need it
• Slow issuing of nutritiens.
• Low light, low growth of ‘voluntary plants’
• binds nitrogen

Taco recommends to use this method…

• only once, maximum twice
• to get rid of ’seven booklet’ (zevenblad) and nattles

There are gardens where this method has been used several years in a row. There is a thick layer of straw. So thick, the birds of prey can’t see the mice any more: a mice plague is on it’s way.

To keep a plant, put the paperboard around them	Use EM to remove toxins and get a micor-life	Spread out the paperboardsto cover everything	Spread the straw to cover it all 10-15 cm thick. Done!

Use Greenmanure to fertilise the soil

A better way to improve the soil is to use greenmanure plants - thanx Max for the translation -. Lupins, Mustard, Spinach and others [dutch list: lupine, luzerne, mosterd, facelia, tuinkers, radijs, spinazie] can work for you. First, dig up the soil and take out grass roots and other plant roots such as [melde] - the one with the thick, long, white root. Then, use EM to improve micro-life. Now, sow the seeds of your favourite fertilising plants.

Depending on the soil type, you may go for different types. On lighter sands, use lupins or luzern (?). On heavy clay, go with one of the many others such as spinach, facelia, tuinkers (?) or radijs (?).

If you grow Lupins, don’t pull it out once grown. Nitrogen is in the root-balls and you will remove those too.

Dig up the soil and get out grass roots	Don’t take the grass away but make a mini compost box. Be lazy, let the organisms do it!	Sow the seeds	Mixing seeds is speeding up a natural process	Right: 4 weeks ago. Below: 2 weeks ago. Top: just done.

Principles of Permaculture design

What to do on that impoved soil? You should have made a design first, but which design is permaculture and which design isn’t?

1. Take care of the correct placing of elements
   • Closer to home (the center) or further away
   • On the sunny side, the windy side or the cold side. On the borders of in the middle
   • Close to other members of it’s guild
2. In a permaculture garden, we are placing elements (plants, animals,humans, water, whatever) to perform several functions.
3. Also, you should use several elements to cover the same function. This brings redundancy in your system: if something fails, you have a backup plan.
4. Make an efficient energy planning. You can use borders and zones for this.
5. Use biological and sustainable resources
6. Recycle your energy: keep it in the place. Don’t let it go away.
7. Use energy 3-D: a lot of plants, changing in height and over time on the same piece of land.
8. Speed up the process of evolution and succession
9. Diversity. Plants and animals live in guilds: collectives who close a life cycle together
10. The effect of edges and passages: more diversity. This implies: use circles and spirals instead of lines and blocks. Keyhole-shaped plant beds are often used. Generally, put berries and smaller trees on the edges of circles. In the next ring, put pioneer-plants that live for 1 year. In the centre of the circle, put staying plants or trees.

Keyhole-shaped plant bed	Rows of trees are used as border.	This plant is a popular, fast-growing border (aardpeer)	Chickens are willing workers	A Herb Sipral

Rules of thumb

Now all of this is far to complicated to use at once. It’s much more convenient to stick to this:

• Everything works both ways. To speak with Johan Cruyff: every advantage has it’s disadvantage.
• Premaculture is information-rich and has a strong imagination. Edges of possibility can only be in your head.

Vegetables,Plants

Taco has a favour for only those plants that survive even when he’s not there. Plants that propagate by seed. Or stay through winter. If a plant has to be re-planted year, Taco is not using it. I’m lazy too and will take this advice. He’s come up with this plant list. We’re still working on english translations.

Multi-year plants

English Name	Dutch Name	Description	Pic
	Splijtkool - Eeuwige moes
	Broccoli	Nine Star is the usable one
	Sint-Jans ui
	Eeuwige Prei	Leave 1 plant for 8 plants next year
	Kardoen	Looks like artichoke
	Aard Amandel
	Aardpeer	Topinamboer. Grows a huge plant quickly, up to 3 meters
	Rabarber	Likes the shade is fine unlike what others say.
	Tuinzuring

Single-year plants, from seed

As you can see, these tables are still under construction.

English Name	Dutch Name	Description	Pic
	Tuinmelde
	Wilde Rucola
	Radijs	Anti-”kweek’
	Rode bieten
	Rood-witte bieten
	Gele bieten
	Schorseneren
	Wortelen
	Snijbiet
	Pompoen	Grow under the berries
	Snij sla
	Rode sla
	Eikenbladsla
	Suikermais	Not F1
	Amaranth
	Spelt
	Winter-rogge

Generally, when going for new plants:

• you don’t want the modern types.
• you really really don’t want types with the F1 sign. These don’t live really yet. Fresh from the lab. They are Hybrids.
• Taco says: Best Dutch seed store: De Bolster. Alternative: De Nieuwe Tuin in Belgium. Get your fruit trees at De Batterijen in Ochten (Betuwe). Final escape: Vreeken in Dordrecht. Avoid the F1’s and Vreeken may sometimes give you something else…

‘Forbidden’ Plants

Even more fun is to grow plants hat the EU has banned. These may be the plants we love most. Remember the Spanish banned Quinoa way back in South-America. Thank (their) God the Inca’s did not listen and kept the plant alive at higher altitude.

Note: we are not talking protected plants. Finally governments are doing a bit to protect plants and we respect that.

English	Dutch	Remarks	Pic
Stevia Rebaudiana	Stevia Rebaudiana	Not allowed in EU for food (yet)
	Smeerwortel	More research needed on this one.

Energy

Save Energy

Usually the topic Energy comes down to

• isolation of windows, maybe roofs
• build a solar panel

We try to look further than that. Look at a house with 100% energy income. Where is the energy spent? These figures I found in the hand-out:

• r oof: 30%
• windows: 25%
• walls: 20%
• floor: 15%

Conclusion: don’t just replace the window panes to save 50% on that 25%. Maybe you should look at the roof and the floor.

Make Energy

Solar panels are getting more and more popular. The panel system gives electric energy at 12V. Usually, this is transformed to 220V/240V for home usage. But have you seen how many electrical devices are already running at 12V? A look around my desk.

12V/230V with transformer	230V only
Cell Phone charger	Desktop Computer, Monitor, Printer
External Hard-Drive	Audio set
Network switch	Lights
ADSL Modem
Notebook Computer
Camera Chargers

All this equipment could easily run at a 12V system. I believe many new parts will be 12V and include a transformer. The left column is growing. Taco says: transforming energy from 12V to 220V costs 50%. And back: another 50%. Leaves: 25%. And the transfomrer is the most expensive part in the system. So, I might just build a nice 12V solar system in our next house… I found this link as a start.

Designing A Permaculture Garden

In the course we followed in Twello, we hours on our own designs. Susan and I brought maps and pictures of our future garden and house. We’ll take it as an example case here. Copythis design for your own good will not bring you a permaculture garden at all!

1. Observe

We did bring maps and pictures. Here are some. Note the following

:

• The garden is 150 m2
• It has 3 terraces, of which one is under the huge vine
• Orientation is south-east. The surrounding buildings are low on the garden’s side. The sun will hardly be blocked, but the western wind is.
• May naighbours surround the house and they have a great view on our activities in the garden. The window panes suck energy, I believe.
• The back garden has a gate on the side, not on the map
• In the outer left corner is a 2 x 2.50m garden house for bikes etc

Left corner of te garden	Garden over the left-right axis	Garden from the right corner	Map of the garden	Garden and house layout

Vision

After the oberservation, you should imagine the future garden. Stick to ecological principles. What can the place give us? What does it need? What are it’s resources and shortcomings? - maybe we should improve this analysis to the usual ’strengths-weakness’ analysis?

• This place is 150 m2 on a south-east orientation. Sunlight all day.
• It is located in a quiet neighbourhood. Closed fences dominate the gardens. How can animals live here when they are not birds?
• In Maassluis Steendijkpolder has been a large waste affair. In the 1980ies, the area was cleared and sealed with a 120cm deep plastic sheet. We can’t go deeper than that. Underneath is toxic waste.

Planning

A. Functional List

A list of wants, personal aspects, ecological aspects and estethic aspects. What needs to be corrected?

• We want a quiet place to sit and relax. Enjoy. For this purpose the garden is already appropriate.
• We want to eat from the garden to become self-sustainable as far as possible.
• We need parking place for the bikes, in the garden house and in front of it. Need the tiles there.
• There is a large pond we want to get rid of.
• We want to keep the vine
• We want a nice view when sitting indoors.
• How about those windows of the neighbours? Can I run around naked?
• How many ani,als can the garden house? Hedgehogs! Butterflies! Birds! Let the garden be a feats for all!
• The many tiles available can be re-arranged vertically to make something nicer than a floor-filler.

B. Element List

Here we put down all elements we want to see in the future garden to fulfill the Functional List.

— I’ll write down this section some other day –

C. Lay-Out

Make a new map with everything in it. Here it is! Note that is has been drawn upside-down when looking at it from the house.