food forests Archives - Permaculture Visions

June 4, 2021June 4, 2021

Succession Secrets Boost Production

Fuelling an Upward Spiral

Food forests often get old and woody as they mature. The fruit sits high, out of reach of mere humans and the permaculture garden looses it’s edge. Bunya Halasz, with support from Flávia Assuncao and their community, pioneer forest management strategies to increase production and diversify harvest on commercial farms. Through targeted disruption of natural forest succession, a richer production begins.

Part of our student moodle video on how creating glades boosts plantings

Magically, the forest grows with a wealth of diversity and resilience. In this short video Bunya is harvesting a pineapple with slips for replanting. Cassava lays in background. The soil is rich and diverse plants surround him.

Strategic disruption triggers succession. With skill, an upward spiral of successions evolve. Disruption naturally results from the collapse of old trees, wildfires or storms. Sometimes, the existing diversity and resilience of the mature soil system fuels an increase in production.

Bunya and Flavia’s team carefully execute a disruption to boost production. Their technique is developed on traditional farming in the tropics with their deep knowledge of the species, soil ecology and climate.

Bunya-explaining-the-diversity-to-production-spiral – enhance this image. Photo: Flávia Assuncao

Beyond a boost in production, the yield expands. Their yield now includes pioneering knowledge, skills sharing, empowerment of others and supporting diversity in the community.

Flávia is heartened by the community who value their diverse produce

What is Succession?

There are two types of succession. Primary succession builds on rock, creates soil and supports grassy plants. Whereas Secondary succession builds up layers of plants, deeper soil and a web of life.

Finally, the canopy of a mature forest closes. And a few trees become the dominant species. In a food forest, this limits our diversity of crops. At this point, the fruits of the forest ripen in the sun at the top, far from reach for mere humans. Very few annuals, herbs, shrubs or smaller trees can survive. And the area below becomes empty and becomes dark. Sometimes, a closed canopy is useful. For instance, a closed canopy can help combat weeds or to create shaded paths and work areas. But production is limited to one layer only – the canopy.

worms eye view of forest during day time — Bamboo forest showing growth at the top. Photo by kazuend on Unsplash

Disruption Opens Opportunity

One way to overcome the loss of easy pickings is to disrupt the system. Disruption enables a new wave of primary succession that immediately benefits from the deeper soil. In addition, the leafy harvest reinvigorates the soil system.

Red cedar stump regrowing at our permaculture demonstration site in Mt Kembla NSW Australia — Red cedar stump resprouting at our permaculture demonstration site in Mt Kembla NSW

Suddenly, production intensifies when the canopy opens. Lower layers once common in a primary succession, thrive again. And they grow better due to the rich soil conditions.

Spiral succession is fuelled by three factors:
increased light, released root sugars and organic cover.

Careful planning is instrumental in maintaining the wealth of organic resources. Of course, the planning depends on knowledge of species needs and careful timing. After all, chaotic large scale disruption can damage diversity and resilience.

Coppiced Logan tree interplanted with Emergent tree, banana, pawpaw, yam and much more

Mimic Nature: Slash, Sequester, Succeed

Overgrown food forests and young alley crops both benefit from this new style of succession planning.

Part of our student moodle video showing how coppicing works

Reinvigoration of Woody Forests

At ConsciousGround in the rolling hills behind Bryon, the old food forest was coppiced and interplanted. Then, the new plants were protected with mulch made from the slashings. Furthermore, the coppiced trees regrew. This provided lots of fruit within easy reach. Now the site supports an understorey of pineapples, taro, bananas, herbs and a wide diversity of trees. In addition, flocks of turkeys and chickens browse fallen fruit.

Like the surrounding rainforest, the layers vary with vines and herbs. This reinvigorated food forest is bursting with banana, papaya, berry, native fruits, yams, cranberry hibiscus, taro, tamarillo, sugarcane, cassava, arrowroot, ginger, pineapple, sweet potato and culinary herbs.

wonderful culinary creations by chef Nic Barrett and his wife Kath Austen at Consciousground NSW — Wholesome and delicious culinary creations by chef Nic Barrett and team at Consciousground in NSW

Power of Emergent Trees

Emergent trees act like solar panels, gathering light from above and protecting smaller plants below. Bunya’s team, keeps 10-20% of the compatible emergent tree cover to protect the site from harsh summer sun in Australia. At first, they trim the side branches to force the emergent trees to grow tall and strong. In a few years, the emergent trees become strong enough to support a ladder. Then the team cut and harvest them as poles. Consequently their root systems either die or retreat. This unlocks nutrients for the next plants. As a result, another succession begins. And a resilient production spiral arises.

Part of our student moodle video on use of emergent species in agroforestry at GrowingRootsPermaculture

Enriched Commerical Mono-cropping

Hosted by the innovative The Farm at Byron, a rare agricultural beacon is demonstrated. Here you can see the power of intensive diverse cropping taught by GrowingRootsPermaculture in conjunction with Living Agroecology and Hungry Earth Agroecology. This plots using spiral succession and permaculture are brimming with produce.

Layers of production at The Farm in Byron. https://thefarm.com.au/ — Layers of production at The Farm in Byron.

The progression from monocropping through to alley cropping and then low canopy agroforestry is clear. Diverse intensive production replaces standard commercial mono-cropping. The plantings start with annual crops such as corn and beans. As the annual crops are mature, perennial plants are introduced. Spent stems and leaves shelter young plants from sunburn or frost. Next plantings are fast-growing emergent species. Emergent species shoot up to capture light. As a result, they also serve as mist collectors and wind or frost protection.

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July 24, 2020July 13, 2020

One Tree Singing

What Does a Tree Do All Day?

Every day a tree goes to work. It flexes and grows, repairs and renews. It draws nutrients to the top, distributes water to the leaves, and when the season is right, it flowers and fruits. Lucky for humanity, the fruit is just the cherry on top. Let’s celebrate how forests serve to keep humanity happy.

Undercover, the roots help collect nutrients, keep a grip on soil and rocks, search for new territory, negotiate pathways, and often exchange benefits with other roots and fungi. The roots even whisper to other like-minded tree roots.

Up above, the treetops are busy attracting pollinators and friendly fertilisers (birds and mammals), deflecting damaging wind, keeping warm, and sheltering their young saplings. Impressively, a tree can regulate the temperature around itself by regulating the moisture content in its trunk. This is an additional feat on top of the great thermal mass quality of wood.

photo taken at australian tropical foods nursery QLD https://www.capetribfarm.com.au/ — Tropical fruits capetribfarm

A tree is a busy organism but it is never alone. Every tree belongs to a community of forest organisms. Even in death, the tree decomposes and recomposes itself through its relationship with forest organisms.

Oblivious of their importance to humanity, the tree absorbs CO2 and releases life-giving Oxygen. But surprisingly, recent research shows that many trees, worldwide have hit their limit and are now shouting a warning.

Specialist Trees

There are some highly specialised. ‘Super-trees‘ powers ranged from diesel nuts, leaves that can burn whilst wet, abundant fruit, or communities of creatures. Occasionally a tree can be big enough to shelter a family, provide timber that never rots, live for thousands of years, support kilometers of fungi underground, or hold steep slopes of mighty mountains. Many trees communicate for miles underground.

There are at least 10 types of trees that humanity depends upon. The yield is potentially limitless due to the capacity for the exponential growth of a forest. They provide fuel, food, oils, forage, structural, conservation, carbon sequestration, soil management, animal barriers, and fungal & microbial habitat.

Energy from trees

a Chinese kang uses small twigs to cook food and heat the bed. — Chinese Kang uses small windfall twigs to cook food and heat the bed

Fuel from trees comes in many forms. You can choose from solid fuel (wood) and flammable leaves, bark, oil and ‘diesel’ nuts. Solid fuel comes from windfalls (cones from nut pines, fallen wood) or harvest cuts (thinning, or felling). David Holmgren writes that solid fuels are the most useful energy resource globally because: we can plan for their harvest, they are easy to cut, require little training to use, convert easily to energy, hard to steal or vandalise, and renew themselves. Some timber ie. Eucalyptus leaves will even burn wet. Diesel and Petroleum treesburn like candles.

The Brazilian tropical rainforest tree Copaifera langsdorffii commonly known as Capaiba (Tupi Indian word cupa-yba), a legume, is called the diesel tree. The tree is tapped sustainably like maple syrup. More powerful n-Heptane is distilled from the oil of Pittosporum resiniferum.
Another form of fuel is BioGas from coppiced tree material via composting for methane collection.

Food and Alcohol on Tap

More than 80% of the world’s food species came from the rainforest. The permaculture food forest diversifies the yeild. It usually mixes fruit and nut trees. Because, unlike the commercial orchard, the permaculture fruits do not all have to ripen at once to go to market. In fact, it is handy to have a longer period of harvest. This extend the season and avoid gluts. In addition, the food forest trees have a variety of roles. Strong food trees support vine crops. Whereas short-lived trees act as nurse young canopy trees. Tall evergreens huddle as wind-breaks. While a deciduous pear gently shades the balcony.

Oils from Forests

There is a myriad of herbal, medicinal, culinary, and cosmetic oils from trees. Most famously Frankincense and Myrrh. Common oils today include Pine, Eucalyptus, Olive, Teatree, and Neem.

Out on the Forest Farm

Forests for animal forage and fodder are all but forgotten by modern farming. Many varieties excellent, nutritious fodder for animals. Forming living fences, hedges, they shelter as well as feed farm animals. In return, the cattle and sheep fertilise the fodder trees. In addition, forest shrubbery and leaf litter filter any excess nitrogen. Forage Examples include: Oak, Poplar, Acacia aneura (Mulga), Albizia Julibrissa (Leguminous, deciduous, fast growing, regenerates) and Dodnaea viscosa (Hop bush),

Living Fences

Animal barrier systems such as hedges are stronger, longer-lasting, and more durable than fences. Hedges might look chaotic, but the borders can be trimmed. The chaos can have boundaries. Hedges permit small creatures to pass underneath and larger animals/people and cars to stay out.

Thinking Bigger

Structural Products

Many trees were big enough to shelter a traveller. Even Plato wrote about trees too big to put his arms around. Good old fashioned lumber (wood for building) is still in business. Valued attributes include flexibility, lightweight, thermal mass and pliability. Traditional buildings in Japan use wood to build earthquake-safe housing. Wood has more to offer. Recently, an 18 storey Skyscraper was built out of engineered wood in Norway.

Big Network, Big Potential

There are kilometers of fungi in just a cup of soil. These Fungi & Microbe powerhouses can convert sugars into energy sources more readily than machines. Paul Stamets shows how mushrooms can save the world.

Indirect Benefits To Humanity

Conservation/Wildlife Habitat The preservation of habitat makes good economic sense as much as an ethical sense. If nothing more, we can keep healthy forests as a bank of diverse genetic material because most of it we have not yet recognised it’s full value to us. Machines might be able to create clean air, water, soil, and find nutrients but our prosperity still depends upon nature’s bank of genetic diversity.

Carbon Sequestration is the long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to either mitigate or defer global warming and avoid dangerous climate change. Long living trees are excellent guardians of carbon. Many trees live thousands of years (including olives) however, clonal colonies of trees have the potential to be immortal. Pando, an 80,000-year-old colony of Quaking Aspen, is the oldest known clonal tree.

Forests Build Their Own World

Forests create and protect soil. Trees will halt erosion by holding banks of steep slopes and trapping centuries of organic matter. They even create their own rain by trapping moisture with the leaves seed the clouds by releasing fungi and other particles. Best of all, forests can create a beneficial micro-climate.

Energise Your Future

Growing Transition

Last century, humans used wood to make steam, to turn pistons that turned wheels on tracks to move people from station to station. Before that, we would grow grain to feed to horses that pulled the wagons of cut trees we used to heat our homes and cook food. These technologies still work, that in the future the technologies will be cleaner and more efficient.

Today, we use a lot of electricity. one of the biggest challenges for the conversion to natural energy use is finding a form that is compatible with the system we already have. Nicole Foss talks about our limitations due to the current dependence on particular forms of energy. At the moment, mankind is dependent on either electricity from an aging grid network and on liquid fuel or gas for transport. Biogas and other energy transition technologies allow us to convert existing equipment such as gas cookers and tractors.

Looking ahead, transition technologies will connect us more easily with the type of energy that nature offers.

Plant Now. Enjoy in 2050.

Forests are facing three big threats. The first threat comes land clearing, the second from global warming and thirdly, increasing public fear of fire.

Making space for nature begins with making space for trees. Understanding the different products and services that forests offer and using trees to fit well with the urban space will create healthier cities. “Traditionally human settlement has set about to conquer nature and exclude other species. It is time to realise that part of our ecological happiness comes from other species.” Evolutionary biologist Prof Menno Schilthuizen

What Can One Do?

People have the power to increase urban forests because ownership of most of the open spaces is actually in private hands. We learn from nature by reconnecting, getting involved in citizen nature projects, and building the ability to observe. Ultimately, we begin to partner with nature.

Do we need a reason to reforest the earth? Perhaps we should do it simply because we can.

"It is the range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars" David Attenborough

Permaculture mimics nature. By observing how nature faces challenges, we design for smarter and efficient uses of her resources.

February 13, 2016February 8, 2016

Biomimicry & Permaculture Today

Janine Benysus, in her ground-breaking book Biomimicry, acknowledged Permaculture as a way to create food forests by mimicking the workings of the natural forest. The insights are still relevant. She had predicted Nature would be a powerful educational model. There are now an abundance of designs based on nature. One of these thriving design sciences is evident in the number of good mature permaculture sites worldwide.

And as we develop more observation skills, Nature becomes our patient mentor.

Revisiting Biomimicry’s Principles

Janine Benyus¹: “9 Basic Principles of Biomimicry and how they work:

Nature runs on sunlight. This is true of nearly every living creature, but not all. The very rare exceptions include tubeworms in the depths of the ocean that eat chemicals released from volcanos. There are recent discoveries showing a few rare organisms do not need full sunlight. And sadly, with climate change we are witnessing the struggle of some plants to survive in full sunlight. The permaculture strategy to stack plants in a food forest is valuable here. We can fit a lot of plants into an intensive space and out-compete weeds.
Nature uses only the energy it needs. If a creature harvests more than it needs, the harvest is not wasted. Squirrels often forget where they buried their nuts, these nuts either sprout into new trees or are eaten by other creatures. The trees benefit from this forgetful relationship.
Most predators will kill only the weak animals in a herd. Most kill only as needed. There are always puzzling exceptions. Foxes will bury their kill and dig it up to eat later, they believe in banking. But it is difficult to see the wisdom of a predator that kills all the flock of hens without leaving some animals to reproduce. Perhaps cunning doesn’t imply planning skills as seen in Ants farming fungus or aphids.
Nature fits form to function.
When a function is needed, a form evolves: The camel evolved great nostrils to minimise water-loss. The termite uses insulation to prevent the nest from overheating. Bears and skunks burrow for comfortable hibernation. Functional design today learns from nature.

Nature recycles everything.
Energy, chemicals, and matter are used and reused by nature. Where there is desolation, very little matter is moved or transformed but where there is life there is constant change.
Nature rewards cooperation.
This is essential in the web-of-life. Many plants rely on close relationship with their pollinators. Flowers reward the bees by providing them with nectar. There are often competitors and cheats in a natural system (eg. robber bees who by-pass the stamens and raid the nectar by drilling holes in the base of the lower) but the bulk of the work is done through happy, productive relationships.
Nature banks on diversity.
Through diversity, there are many different types of creatures, with a variety of habits and needs. There is an intricate co-habitation in a rich tapestry of living organisms.
Nature demands local expertise. In some species, we find local expertise, size and functional diversity in the one colony. Ants are a good example of diversity and are one of the most successful and diverse species on the planet (15–25% of the terrestrial animal biomass.[8)
Nature curbs excesses from within. When there is a limit of resources, many natural processes will curb population growth. Some species are less fertile without adequate nutrients. Some species of animals can delay the implantation of a fertile embryo, enabling them to delay pregnancy until the season is more favourable.
Nature taps the power of limits.
This principle was more controversial at time of writing and is has mixed metaphores (a limit is not a power source) so it is difficult to qualify.
Janine wrote:“real survivors are the Earth inhabitants that have lived millions of years without consuming their ecological capital, the base from which all abundance flows.” Our ecological capital includes energy, nutrients and genetic material. Fortunately, for humanity, there a constant and free energy input from the sun, a strong life force and a rich bank of genetic material. With careful management we can maintain a clean supply of nutrients.

Limits create responses. Innovation such as variation and diversity is stimulated by limits. Because farming exports nutrients, there are real limits.

Some farming ideas can help reduce nutrient loss ie. with the use of good water management to help minimise erosion. We can build soil organically by supporting micro-fauna and flora.

An integrated system like Permaculture uses less ecological capital. It recognises our limits helps us focus for resilience.
1Benyus, Janine (1997). Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. New York, USA: William Morrow & Company. ISBN 978-0-688-16099-9.

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