Energy, a Permaculture Perspective
Susan Cable is a Juneau/Thane gardener who earned a two-week Permaculture Design Certificate in Tasmania in 2009 and took the AMGA Permaculture for Alaska Gardeners class in 2020. Decades earlier she completed university degrees in crop science, plant breeding, and production horticulture. She knows just enough to know that she doesn’t know much!
Permaculture is a design approach which most people associate with food production, although it can also encompass households, neighborhoods, community-wide design, and non-place-based systems. In this article we’ll try not to get buried in the “weeds” of describing Permaculture as frameworks, diagrams, zones, layers, etc., which violates Permaculture’s own principle of “integrate rather than segregate” and can leave a gardener short on tools for practical application.
A more streamlined approach is to think of everything in terms of energy - your physical and mental energy, community energy, domestic and wild animal energy, energy embedded in materials, energy entering the system as sun or rain or excrement, etc. How can these energies most efficiently support our garden and life goals, and vice versa? How can we use energies coming into our site and preserve those which are present?
Let’s first consider nutrients and our usually-abundant rainwater. These two generally flow together, with water washing nutrients downhill. An efficient juxtaposition would be to place compost bins, animal enclosures, and nutrient-scavenging plants uphill from gardens. Chip-mulched ornamentals might be placed downhill from regularly-fertilized food plots to make passive use of nutrient-rich run-off. On a property that slopes to a pond or wetland nutrients will migrate toward that area, creating a habitat to grow biomass that can be brought upslope for use in compost or, if weed-seed free, used directly as mulch/fertilizer. Venture out on a rainy day and visualize the movement of nutrients in water moving on and below the surface of your property. Could some of your elements be rearranged for more efficient natural movement of nutrients? Are there ways excess water could be channeled away from leaching areas and toward a useful purpose? If your land is flat, could gentle contours be added to aid water and nutrient movement?
Heat is another form of energy. In Juneau main heat-related considerations are trapping heat as it rises or reflects, draining cold damp air, and protecting tender plants from falling frost. Walls or masses around the less-sunny sides of plantings can serve as heat traps and wind protection. The heat-trapping effect is increased if a heat-gathering surface, such as pavement, is below the sunny side/s. A large-scale example of this would be the Jensen-Olsen arboretum, with sun and warmth entering from the beach side and being contained by sheltering woods. On a smaller scale fence, buildings, rock outcrops, intentional plantings, and even aesthetically abandoned automobiles can serve the same trapping purpose. For greenhouses earth-sheltering below bed/table level is extremely beneficial, and increases the appeal of installing a house on a slope or surrounded by a small hill. Dark-colored barrels of water also make excellent heat sinks in greenhouses, as do large rocks when scattered among plants indoors or out.
Cold damp air drains downhill, so it’s best to leave large gaps in vegetation and objects on slopes below gardens to facilitate this drainage. Wide plantings or objects above gardens can channel cold air flowing down from above to move around rather than through gardens.
Frost falls downward from the sky similar to rain. Eves and trees can be used to protect tender plants from frost. Baskets under eves will hold their flowers through the same frosts which wither similar plants in uncovered areas. Frost blanket or floating row cover fabric, such as Remay or Agribon, is another common solution for frost protection. Thicker fabrics provide better cold protection but may become too heavy when rain-saturated. They can be effective when used as a dry second layer in greenhouses in winter. Thinner fabrics can be left to “float” over growing plants as needed, and can stay on cabbage-family plants until mid-summer to deter root-eating pests.
Composting is another heat source that is commonly tapped by Permaculturists. Fresh horse manure, for example, can be composted in a bin in a greenhouse or under a cold frame to add heat. If used in a greenhouse, fly screen is strongly recommended. The small fruit-type flies often found near compost can serve as a food source for small birds; even hummingbirds eat insects!
Next let’s look at our personal energy as it relates to frequent chores. Ideally elements requiring daily observation or tending such as feeding chickens or harvesting fresh greens for dinner would be located along a route we’d be traveling anyway, like on the way to/from a vehicle or mailbox, or the path to meeting a child on a school bus. Another option would be to arrange daily chores along a pleasurable route which can feed our soul with a pleasant view, help us reach our daily stair-step goal, or support visiting a lonely neighborhood elder.
Consider a no-till system overturning beds as a personal energy saver in the busy springtime. The book “Gaia’s Garden” is a great source for information about the benefits of sheet mulching over tilling. Try mixing species of veggies in beds and include edible flowers instead of rigidly mono-cropping rows. Early in the year grow extra starts and watch for volunteers which can be moved to fill in unplanned open spaces. When possible, choose self-propagating or perennial food crops such as miner’s lettuce, sea kale, and walking onion. Instead of using fiddly plastic clips to contain sprawling greenhouse tomato plants, use a closer spacing of plants pruned to one or two main shoots and twine them around strings, annually rotating the tomatoes with other climbers such as cucumber and pole beans. Keep a trug of frequently-used tools and supplies near the door you use most when gardening, or in a rain-protected enclosure near your garden rather than farther away at a main shed. Look for “back-hauls” in which carrying or barrowing tasks are being done in each direction of foot travel.
Do you love potted ornamentals but have run out of energy for replacing annuals each year? There are many hardy perennials that are appropriate for containers, though most will be late to flower if overwintered outside. One option for earlier color is to tuck a few spring-flowering hardy perennial bulbs in each container. Another option is to nurture a fondness for including early food crops in the open spaces of our containers. Colorful salad crops like early-season turnips and radishes, red or purple orach, or pea vines are great choices for containers. New Zealand spinach would be interesting in hanging pots, though seedling benefit from being started early indoors. Another option is to overwinter containers of dahlia or begonia in a crawl space which does not freeze, then move them to a greenhouse or cloched space as spring temperatures allow. These generally flower earlier than tubers which have been dug, stored, and revived. For overwintering pots, it is important to protect from flooding, total dehydration, and repeated freeze-thaw cycles. Aside from using a crawl-space, this can usually be accomplished with a combination of positioning in a protected location, mulching, and tending. An example would be placing a pot under an eve and buried in a pile of mulch. Smaller pots may require light watering during the winter months, larger ones may not. For tubers generally err on the side of drier, especially in early winter.
For maximum stability and energy efficiency, think of ways each element in your garden and the surrounding area can serve multiple purposes. Consider structural, personal, and social benefits as well as to potential harvestable food, flowers, fiber, and other products.
Plan and strategize well while being open to change over time. For example, if trees that provide afternoon shade are removed, greenhouses may require additional ventilation on sunnier days. If land above your garden is cleared or planted the flow of air and water may be altered. Additionally, your priorities and abilities are sure to change.
These are just a few of the many types of energies and examples of them in gardens, lives, and communities. Keep your senses and mind open to possibilities, and believe, as all gardeners do, that next year will be even better!
Susan Cable is a Juneau/Thane gardener who earned a two-week Permaculture Design Certificate in Tasmania in 2009 and took the AMGA Permaculture for Alaska Gardeners class in 2020. Decades earlier she completed university degrees in crop science, plant breeding, and production horticulture. She knows just enough to know that she doesn’t know much!
Permaculture is a design approach which most people associate with food production, although it can also encompass households, neighborhoods, community-wide design, and non-place-based systems. In this article we’ll try not to get buried in the “weeds” of describing Permaculture as frameworks, diagrams, zones, layers, etc., which violates Permaculture’s own principle of “integrate rather than segregate” and can leave a gardener short on tools for practical application.
A more streamlined approach is to think of everything in terms of energy - your physical and mental energy, community energy, domestic and wild animal energy, energy embedded in materials, energy entering the system as sun or rain or excrement, etc. How can these energies most efficiently support our garden and life goals, and vice versa? How can we use energies coming into our site and preserve those which are present?
Let’s first consider nutrients and our usually-abundant rainwater. These two generally flow together, with water washing nutrients downhill. An efficient juxtaposition would be to place compost bins, animal enclosures, and nutrient-scavenging plants uphill from gardens. Chip-mulched ornamentals might be placed downhill from regularly-fertilized food plots to make passive use of nutrient-rich run-off. On a property that slopes to a pond or wetland nutrients will migrate toward that area, creating a habitat to grow biomass that can be brought upslope for use in compost or, if weed-seed free, used directly as mulch/fertilizer. Venture out on a rainy day and visualize the movement of nutrients in water moving on and below the surface of your property. Could some of your elements be rearranged for more efficient natural movement of nutrients? Are there ways excess water could be channeled away from leaching areas and toward a useful purpose? If your land is flat, could gentle contours be added to aid water and nutrient movement?
Heat is another form of energy. In Juneau main heat-related considerations are trapping heat as it rises or reflects, draining cold damp air, and protecting tender plants from falling frost. Walls or masses around the less-sunny sides of plantings can serve as heat traps and wind protection. The heat-trapping effect is increased if a heat-gathering surface, such as pavement, is below the sunny side/s. A large-scale example of this would be the Jensen-Olsen arboretum, with sun and warmth entering from the beach side and being contained by sheltering woods. On a smaller scale fence, buildings, rock outcrops, intentional plantings, and even aesthetically abandoned automobiles can serve the same trapping purpose. For greenhouses earth-sheltering below bed/table level is extremely beneficial, and increases the appeal of installing a house on a slope or surrounded by a small hill. Dark-colored barrels of water also make excellent heat sinks in greenhouses, as do large rocks when scattered among plants indoors or out.
Cold damp air drains downhill, so it’s best to leave large gaps in vegetation and objects on slopes below gardens to facilitate this drainage. Wide plantings or objects above gardens can channel cold air flowing down from above to move around rather than through gardens.
Frost falls downward from the sky similar to rain. Eves and trees can be used to protect tender plants from frost. Baskets under eves will hold their flowers through the same frosts which wither similar plants in uncovered areas. Frost blanket or floating row cover fabric, such as Remay or Agribon, is another common solution for frost protection. Thicker fabrics provide better cold protection but may become too heavy when rain-saturated. They can be effective when used as a dry second layer in greenhouses in winter. Thinner fabrics can be left to “float” over growing plants as needed, and can stay on cabbage-family plants until mid-summer to deter root-eating pests.
Composting is another heat source that is commonly tapped by Permaculturists. Fresh horse manure, for example, can be composted in a bin in a greenhouse or under a cold frame to add heat. If used in a greenhouse, fly screen is strongly recommended. The small fruit-type flies often found near compost can serve as a food source for small birds; even hummingbirds eat insects!
Next let’s look at our personal energy as it relates to frequent chores. Ideally elements requiring daily observation or tending such as feeding chickens or harvesting fresh greens for dinner would be located along a route we’d be traveling anyway, like on the way to/from a vehicle or mailbox, or the path to meeting a child on a school bus. Another option would be to arrange daily chores along a pleasurable route which can feed our soul with a pleasant view, help us reach our daily stair-step goal, or support visiting a lonely neighborhood elder.
Consider a no-till system overturning beds as a personal energy saver in the busy springtime. The book “Gaia’s Garden” is a great source for information about the benefits of sheet mulching over tilling. Try mixing species of veggies in beds and include edible flowers instead of rigidly mono-cropping rows. Early in the year grow extra starts and watch for volunteers which can be moved to fill in unplanned open spaces. When possible, choose self-propagating or perennial food crops such as miner’s lettuce, sea kale, and walking onion. Instead of using fiddly plastic clips to contain sprawling greenhouse tomato plants, use a closer spacing of plants pruned to one or two main shoots and twine them around strings, annually rotating the tomatoes with other climbers such as cucumber and pole beans. Keep a trug of frequently-used tools and supplies near the door you use most when gardening, or in a rain-protected enclosure near your garden rather than farther away at a main shed. Look for “back-hauls” in which carrying or barrowing tasks are being done in each direction of foot travel.
Do you love potted ornamentals but have run out of energy for replacing annuals each year? There are many hardy perennials that are appropriate for containers, though most will be late to flower if overwintered outside. One option for earlier color is to tuck a few spring-flowering hardy perennial bulbs in each container. Another option is to nurture a fondness for including early food crops in the open spaces of our containers. Colorful salad crops like early-season turnips and radishes, red or purple orach, or pea vines are great choices for containers. New Zealand spinach would be interesting in hanging pots, though seedling benefit from being started early indoors. Another option is to overwinter containers of dahlia or begonia in a crawl space which does not freeze, then move them to a greenhouse or cloched space as spring temperatures allow. These generally flower earlier than tubers which have been dug, stored, and revived. For overwintering pots, it is important to protect from flooding, total dehydration, and repeated freeze-thaw cycles. Aside from using a crawl-space, this can usually be accomplished with a combination of positioning in a protected location, mulching, and tending. An example would be placing a pot under an eve and buried in a pile of mulch. Smaller pots may require light watering during the winter months, larger ones may not. For tubers generally err on the side of drier, especially in early winter.
For maximum stability and energy efficiency, think of ways each element in your garden and the surrounding area can serve multiple purposes. Consider structural, personal, and social benefits as well as to potential harvestable food, flowers, fiber, and other products.
Plan and strategize well while being open to change over time. For example, if trees that provide afternoon shade are removed, greenhouses may require additional ventilation on sunnier days. If land above your garden is cleared or planted the flow of air and water may be altered. Additionally, your priorities and abilities are sure to change.
These are just a few of the many types of energies and examples of them in gardens, lives, and communities. Keep your senses and mind open to possibilities, and believe, as all gardeners do, that next year will be even better!
Photo 1-3 from Left to Right: 1.Permanent strings in a hoop house alternately support beans and cucumbers one year and tomatoes the next, 2. Roadside ornamentals serve as a gift to the street and a conversation starter to engage passers-by who share an interest in plants, 3. Aggressive Primula japonica seedlings were moved from lawn to garden edge to create a weed fence, the outer edge of which is simply mowed over.
A chip-mulched ornamental garden catches nutrients from uphill vegetable beds while also covering an area formerly infested with invasive orange hawkweed (a thick layer of newsprint was used as a physical barrier over the weeds).
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A trug of gardening tools and supplies kept conveniently by a door.
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A rock outcrop above a driveway gathers heat while overhanging shrubs
help to hold heat and block falling frost. |