>> Perhaps the best that some of us, city dwellers, can do is:
>> Try to become more responsible gardeners.
>> We can learn about Permaculture,

Sounds right to me. Garden responsibly, shop responsibly and vote responsibly. Think about the boundary that encloses all consumers and all industry: I might not be able to control the elements outside my own yard, but maybe I can influence neighborhood, state and country ... somewhat.

Maybe I'm a "fellow traveller" if not much of a practicioner.

Rick:

'Fellow traveler' is good. If everyone would recognize that we all are personally responsible for stewardship of this planet, our environment would not be in the shape it's in.

I'm very much enjoying the conversation on urban permaculture.

I like to think I'm at least 1 on the permaculture scale, but I have a lot of the same issues that Rick mentions. I try to incorporate some of the ideas (minimizing inputs, using plants that help each other, tons of organic matter rather than fertilizer), but I'll never be able to have a true permaculture system here. I compost all of my food waste and most of my garden waste, but I still can't produce enough compost on 1/8 acre (that's the whole lot, not just the garden) to keep my garden going without any outside sources of nutrients. I prefer to get around the problem by collecting and composting my neighbors' garden waste rather than buying high-NPK fertilizer - a step toward sustainability for myself, but obviously not sustainable if everyone tried to do it.

I think there's an interesting difference in definitions of sustainability, not just how the permaculture system is defined, going on here. Many urban farmers, even those who are proponents of permaculture, encourage composting of materials from the surrounding housing, not just the one lot where the food is grown. There is nothing sustainable at all about putting tons upon tons of food waste in trash trucks heading to landfills, so keeping it out of that cycle is more sustainable on a global scale, even if it means that an outside input is going into my garden.

I like to think (before reading any books, maybe I should say "speculate") that one goal of permaculture is "doing" susteainble things, but isn;t another goal "learning" and "discovering" ways to be more sustainable?

Maybe also or instead:
"experimenting"
"prototyping"
"exploring"
setting an example"


>> If everyone would recognize that we all are personally responsible for stewardship of this planet

That's one reason I wish we would (as a planet or as a country) try to create, as soon as economically possible, space stations and eventually larger space habitats that would be, necessarily, 99% closed ecosystems. Then the boundary is clear and there are no "dumps" or ribvers to flush waste into. Every input and every output is right "in everyone's faces".

It seems that anyone on a space habitat would know right away that everyone HAS to be a good steward (or live in garbage briefly and then suffocate).

Years ago, I thought we would "learn how" to live sustainably once space habitats pioneered a truly closed system. Now I pin my hopes to the belief that space habitats will "teach us that we MUST LEARN HOW, and MUST live" sustainably. The Earth is also a mostly-closed system, it's just big enough that we can pile up a huge mess before we have to admit that the mess is not sustainable.

Rick, I think we have a long way to go before we can have habitable space environments that are also self-sufficient. Remember Biosphere 2? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... Human nature seems to foil our best laid plans every time.

We are making progress on sustainability issues, slow though it may be. With the internet keeping us so connected, more and more people can see the impact our consumer lifestyle has on the people half a world away who make it possible even though they could never afford it themselves.

Back to the topic of permaculture... I've been thinking about it, and I think the most permaculture-like beds I have are my "ornamental" beds. I never use chemical fertilizer on them, only a heavy mulching of pine straw and gum leaves from my trees (within the system if it's defined as my property, though not within the plant bed), and occasionally a dressing of compost (homemade, though with some outside material) for the fruiting plants. The roses are interplanted with blueberry and cherry bushes, with kiwi vines growing up trellises at either end. The only non-perennial plants are garlic and onions for pest deterrence, which I plant and harvest with a tiny spade to avoid disrupting the wonderfully soft and rich soil. Even though it's a fairly sustainable and productive system, those giant rose bushes in the middle of it always make me feel otherwise. My veggie beds, despite being managed with an eye for sustainability (dressing with compost, saving seed, companion planting), can never fit a permaculture ideal as long as I'm digging them up twice a year to rotate in a new crop.

I haven't read as much on permaculture as some of you, so I apologize if this is a silly question, but how is labor handled as an input? There are a lot of things I prefer to do by hand (e.g. loosening the soil with a pitchfork rather than a rototiller) because I think it's a lot gentler on the garden/soil system, but I don't know how a permaculture viewpoint would differentiate those methods - after all, neither the rototiller nor the fork are made from materials mined, forged, and constructed in my little urban yard. To my mind, the fork is a smaller input primarily because it uses my back rather than electricity or fossil fuel, but I'm curious how a permaculture purist would compare them. And would that comparison change if, for example, I had a physical disability that made hand-tools impossible to use, but powered tools OK? That is to say, can extenuating circumstances be factored in, or is permaculture just off-limits to folks who can't do it all the way for one reason or another?

Rick:

Here's one definition of permaculture: 'Work with nature not against." Graham Burnett.

All natural systems are open systems. It takes a human mind to close a system.

I used to teach a class (in another lifetime) to show students the difference between a closed an open system. [This was a class in primatology--I am an anthropologist.] This was in San Diego and we had the cooperation of the San Diego zoo. The assignment was that each student would choose for a semester project one primate at the zoo, that also had an in-the-wild study. The project was to compare the two 'systems' and write a report.

The animal in a cage is a closed system. The community of animals in its wild habitat is an open system.
The student had to report on inter-family, inter-group interactions as well as the relationship of each of those units to their environment. The result was a complete study of the interactions between all individuals, the groups formed, the environmental variables, as well as the 'edge' or boundary phenomena affecting the primate community in its natural habitat.

To me the point of permaculture is to teach people how to view themselves as components in an open system. What we do in our daily lives, the choices that we make -- does affect the ozone. We may think our lives stop at the property line, but that is not really the case.

Just a side note:
The city of Calgary has started a trial effort on collecting compostables at the curb.
These will then be composted and offered to gardeners and used in parks and city gardens.

>> Rick, I think we have a long way to go before we can have habitable space environments that are also self-sufficient. Remember Biosphere 2?

I don't know much about it, but it seems to me that if there had been funding and time, the Biosphere project might have benefited from a more gradual scaling-up. I think they had one very small, brief "pilot plant" mission. Then they went directly to the large, multiple-biome dome. That seems very ambitious to me. Of course, as in any activity on that scale, funding probably controlled many decisions.

I was impressed that they got as close to stability as they did in just two missions: I would have guessed it would have taken a dozen attempts to find a mix of species and microclimates that was self-sufficent with such near-total closure.

Interesting that the "air-tight" closure revealed something as subtle as concrete absorbing CO2!

It surprised me that oxidation of soil carbon came as a surprise to them! I thought that was known for many decades to be a huge part of the carbon cycle. Maybe it was just overlooked in the huge volume of details.

>> Rick, I think we have a long way to go before we can have habitable space environments that are also self-sufficient.

Since I discoverd the O'Neil / L5 Society, I've thought that will only come about when there is a commerically profitable driver, and the path will be incremental. First a station that pays for itself with some zero-G products. Every pound of input or output they can spare bringing up from earth, reduces cost by about one pound of silver (that number is a few decades out of date). The immediate motivation to save money is likely to drive research into "tin can closure".

Gradually scaling up their recycling methods for larger habitats and making them more efficient will probably eventually force them to find biological solutions. The research they are forced to do will, I hope, then be applicable to cities and suburbs.

I may be cynical, but I think that more private funding will be found when there is money to be made and quarterly savings to demonstrate ... whereas not much funding or support is coming forth "merely" becuase we're making the planet uninhabitable in a few centuries or decades.

Until then, I think the Permaculture movement is like a grass-roots, unfunded, private research program that combines learning with living, as I imagine some day space habitats will combine learning with some industry so productive that it pays for the research.

hazelnut said:
I am reading now some papers by an M.D. who claims to be a proponent of "systems biology". He says my patients bring to me their whole list of complaints and I look at them all and try to find out how they are interconnected. Of course for most ailments, you have to go a specialist rather than this holistic m.d.. You don't go to a psychiatrist for a pain in your foot. Perhaps in the new world, you will go to one doctor and he will treat both your foot, and what ever is wrong with your head at the same time. That is the potential of systems thinking. Its a way to understand complexities -- instead of just viewing only the more simplistic aspects.

I should wait and read the rest of this thread, but a medical intuitive might tell you that you *need* to see a psychiatrist for that pain in your foot. The body is a totally integrated system, and we ignore that at our peril. (in my opinion, as a non-medical, non-medical-intuitive kind of gal)

I am practicing permaculture on some level. In my view the work of Masanobu Fukuoka is as important as that of Bill Mollison. AND I would also toss in this guy's ideas too: http://earlyretirementextreme.... -- even though his focus isn't on gardening at all, but on Optimizing your stuff and your activities.

But I have a long way to go to really understand Food Forests and Hugelkultur techniques.

I think I am only just getting my toe wet with applying its ideas to my little plot of land.

I'd put myself as a 3 on a scale from 1-10 -- with a big growth spurt happening right now!

Thanks for your recommendations, Denise. We all begin somewhere, don't we. And I hope you have great success with it.

Denise: I think Bill Mollison's work is more theoretical, while Fukuoka's work is more practical. Both were scientists though, Mollison was an forestry ecologist, and Fukuoka was a microbiologist. I think that covers the BIG and LITTLE of every living thing.