by Connie Oswald Stofko
When I think of permaculture, I picture an apple tree in a backyard. If you move away, the apple tree still produces fruit, even though you’re not there.
“Permaculture” is permanent agriculture.
Learn how permaculture can provide you with food—and help the environment—with talks on “Introduction to Permaculture and Native Plant Communities.”
The talks will be presented by Kathy Contrino, a Master Garden in Orleans County and owner of CW Native Plant Farm. She is also a member of Wild Ones Western New York Chapter (formerly the Western New York Native Plants Collaborative; see the Facebook page here).
Currently scheduled talks are:
- 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 4 at Orleans County Cornell Cooperative Extension in their Buzz Hill Education Center. See details here.
- 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept.18 at the Newstead Library. See details here.
- 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25 at the Lancaster Library. See details here.
- 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, also at the Lancaster Library. See details here.
Basics of permaculture
For permaculture, choose trees, shrubs and perennials that provide food.
An example of a perennial food plant is garlic, Contrino said.
You can harvest and eat the garlic scapes (the flowers of the garlic plants) in early spring. Later on you can harvest the garlic heads that are in the ground and eat those, too.
But if you don’t harvest all the scapes, they will produce bulblets, which are like seeds. The bulblets will fall to the ground and produce new plants. The new plants will produce scapes every year and you can harvest them every year. (When grown from bulblets, it will take several years for the garlic head to grow large enough to harvest. Planting garlic cloves rather than bulblets will give you larger garlic heads.)
While you can use non-native, hybrid food plants, “Permaculture lends itself to native plants,” Contrino said. “Native plants are resilient, they don’t need fertilizer and and are stabilized to our climate.”
If we choose food plants that are native, we can share some of our food with pollinators and other native animal species.
“If there’s no spicebush, there’s no spicebush swallowtail butterfly,” Contrino said. (You may not think of the spicebush as a food plant, but, as you might guess from its name, the fruit of the spicebush can be used as a spice, she noted.)
“Permaculture can create a system that is kinder to the environment,” Contrino said. “We all can plant 25 percent native plants in our gardens. Plant whatever native plants you want, and we’ll begin to achieve biodiversity.”
See this short list from the Cornell Garden-Based Learning Program. It includes some native plants that are used by humans for food as well as for medicine and other uses.
The bigger picture
“If we had more community gardens, we could share food, and children could learn where food comes from,” Contrino said.
Then there’s the even bigger idea: food forests.
Food forests mimic natural forests, with tall trees and understory plants. This allows food forests to efficiently produce food in small, underutilized places, according to this video from Cornell School of Integrated Plant Science. (If you don’t want to watch the entire video, start at the 3:00 mark and go through to the 7:30 mark.)
These food forests are often located near food deserts—areas where people have limited access to healthy and affordable food. About 23.5 million people live in food deserts in the United States.
Benefits of food forests include:
- Reconnecting people with nature
- Educating people on how food is grown
- Providing access to a variety of nutritious food
- Providing habitats to birds, butterflies and other pollinating insects
- Offering a place where people can connect with others and build a community
“If we plant in this way in cities,” Contrino said, “it would improve air quality, cut down on heat domes and help with climate stabilization. “If every city could have a food forest, or multiple food forests, that would be amazing!”
See more information on food forests on this short video called What is a Community Forest? It was created by the authors of The Community Food Forest Handbook.