Experiments in Permaculture

One of the brilliant things about having a sister who pursued a degree in environmental science is that she pulls out words like "permaculture". To the best of my understanding, permaculture is a system of agriculture, gardening, or interacting with nature, that develops an interrelated bond between the elements to eventually create a self-sustaining unit. Something like that. Anyway, our first gardening experiment for 2012 was to build up our soil in a healthy and sustainable way, with no negative environmental impact. That is a fancy was of saying that we are trying to build up our soil with trash.

The basic process is to layer the garden with cardboard, leaves, newspapers, and compost, and to then top it all off with mulch. So here is what we did.

We had plenty of cardboard lying around because of Christmas. We were out of town over the recycling pick-up after Christmas and then we missed the next one because we forgot. So I didn't have to look far to find some cardboard. I simply went to our garbage storage area, and pulled out all of the boxes that were waiting to be recycled.

This is what I collected.

While I was at it, I pulled old newspapers out of our recycling (again, thank goodness we missed two recycling days!) -- seven to be exact.

Ready to collect leaves!

Next Johanna and I loaded up the kids and headed to Balls Bluff (a Cival War battlefield (from the Battle of Leesburg) and a regional park located about a mile from our house). We had some reusable bags with us. Out we went into the woods (a full 100 yard from where I parked the car) to collect oak leaves. According to Johanna, our resident expert, oak leaves provide the most balanced nutrients to soil, so they make excellent mulch or compost. We collected our bags of leaves. That took us all of about ten minutes and then we had some time to climb around on the fallen logs and to hunt for Winnie-the-Pooh. While the kids were occupied I stole a little moss because moss is amazingly beautiful and I want me garden to be overrun with moss.

Hard at work collecting

Oak leaves

Our bounty

With the kiddos

After some frolicking in the woods, we headed home to get to work. And by "we" I really mean, Johanna, since my primary job is to keep the children from rampant destruction. First Johanna and Isaiah prepared the cardboard. This involved stripping off any tape and as much of the ink-covered cardboard as possible and then cutting it into manageable sizes. Isaiah was charged with the task of keeping the pieces from blowing away, which he did with incredible dedication and more than a little anxiety.

Taking his responsibility seriously

Once all the pieces were ready the three of us (by this point Lianna was tucked safely inside the house, munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while Charles did the dishes) set to work laying cardboard on any exposed area of the garden. When we were done, our yard looked trashy, pun intended.

First layer -- cardboard

Minor side note to add that we had to prepare the garden for the laying of all of this cardboard. That meant removing any extraneous "pretties" and rocks and such from the area where we wanted to build soil.

Pretties and such

The next step was to lay the leaves. This was more or less a failure since it was windy and also, we needed probably three times as many leaves as we had collected. After that, it was time to lay the newspaper. Johanna did this as quickly as she could to try to keep the newspaper in place because of said wind.

Second layer -- not nearly enough leaves

Third layer -- newspapers

At some point in the process, Johanna quickly turned our compost pile to deposite the fresh compost to the bottom of the heap and to expose the soil beneath. It was teeming with worms, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing!

So, after the newspaper Johanna deposited compost on the newspapers. We were quite a bit short on compost because we had spread our compost back in October, when we got the the garden ready for winter. So our compost was sparse and not fully decomposed. Alas.

Fourth layer -- compost

At this point our gaden looked extremely ugly. It really did look like we had just spread trash all over our garden, which, I guess, is what we had done. But then Johanna spread the mulch. Mulch is truly beautiful! Suddenly our garden looked respectable and even beautiful again.

Fifth (and final) layer -- mulch

Beauty restored!

 Johanna placed my moss under my japanese maple, watered everything down and pulled the last of the dead morning glory vines off of our trellis. Now our garden is ready for the rest of winter! I hope our experiment works. If it does, I encourage you to try it in your own garden.