Glacial Lakes Permaculture

Karl Schmidt has recently begun writing as a regular contributor to Sustainable Dakota Digest.  Check out his short articles on Permaculture,  Peak Oil, and a review of Ken Norwood and Kathleen Smith’s Rebuilding Community in America: Housing for Ecological Living, Personal Empowerment, and the New Extended Family.

Permaculture.

Many people have heard of it, but few are able to define it easily.  It’s not just a type of organic gardening or farming (although organic gardening and farming are indeed part of permaculture), nor is it simply a farming technique (but many farming techniques are also aspects of permaculture).  Part of the reason permaculture defies an easy definition is because it isn’t just one thing—it’s a sustainable design system.  At its core, permaculture is about....more...

Designing for Colder Climates: Adapting Permaculture to the Northern Plains of North America

By Karl J. Schmidt

Applying permaculture in a cold climate presents certain challenges.  Many of the perennial plant species recommended in permaculture books, especially the ones written in Australia, won’t survive here.  For me, however, that’s also part of the excitement of working in this environment—doing research to determine which native and non-native plants, tolerant of conditions on the northern plains, might fit into a cold climate permaculture design.  Constructing a permaculture design in USDA growing zones 3, 4 and 5 is indeed a challenge, but perhaps not necessarily or primarily because of climatic conditions.  Shifting from relying almost exclusively on annuals to perennials takes some adjustment in thinking about plants, yields, and about sustainability.

In permaculture, plants are selected partly on the basis of how many functions they can serve.  Trees, for example, can serve an obvious function of providing shade, but they can also provide animal fodder and, if they are nitrogen-fixing, improve the fertility of the soil.  An example of this kind of tree that grows readily in the northern plains is the much-maligned Russian Olive (Eleagnus angustifolia).  Russian Olives not only provide shade to livestock, but recent Chinese research studies have shown that, properly managed, they can also be pruned to provide a high-protein leaf fodder—equivalent to alfalfa—to grazing animals.  Pruning also releases nitrogen into the soil through the tree’s root system.  Managed pruning can keep the tree at the size of a pollard, a technique used for centuries to encourage trees to resprout.  Volga Russian immigrants brought the Russian Olive to the plains because it was a fast-growing tree, drought-tolerant, and reminded them of home.  Today, the tree can serve many other purposes, including being a renewable source of high-BTU firewood, comparable in heat value to Green Ash.  So, from one tree come four functions: shade, fodder, nitrogen-fixation, and sustainable firewood. 

Selecting species suitable for the northern plains is, however, only a small part of adapting permaculture to a colder climate.  After all, permaculture is about design and the integration of design elements.  Chickens, fruiting perennials, woody perennials that can be coppiced, and fodder trees are all examples of elements that can be integrated into permaculture systems.  Imagine, then, a design for a mixed fruit woodland garden or ‘food forest’ (which can be the size of an urban backyard or a half acre or more), incorporating a variety of cold-hardy apples, pears, sour cherries, and plums, interspersed with bush cherries, currants, elderberries, gooseberries, and other soft fruits.  Species like Siberian Pea Shrub (Caragana arborescens) are interplanted with the fruit trees to act as a fast-growing nurse matrix, helping to protect the trees from wind, and fixing nitrogen which can be released into the soil by selective pruning.  While caragana can grow to 15 feet tall, they can be kept smaller through pruning, making it a nice fit for a woodland garden.  In addition, the pods of the peashrub contain small peas that are up to 36% protein.  The pods mature in August and break open on their own, scattering the high-protein pods on the ground, where they make an excellent food supplement for chickens.  Properly managed, chickens can easily be integrated into a woodland garden, eating weeds and insects, scratching the soil surface and, perhaps most importantly, fertilizing.  Spaces between the main fruit trees can be planted to chicken forage cover crops—a wide variety of greens will do.

Another possible permaculture design element for the northern plains can involve intensive planting and use of woody coppice tree and shrub species to provide a variety of renewable resources, including firewood, polewood, tool handles, fence posts, and craft materials.   A coppice woodland is different from a typical shelterbelt, a common feature in the northern plains, in that its purpose is not primarily to block wind.   Trees in a coppice woodland do not need to be replanted once they are cut; the stools left behind will resprout the following spring and, in a few years, will produce wood of sufficient size to be used as firewood.  Trees or shrubs can be coppiced many times during their lifespan, allowing for a sustainable source of wood products.  A permaculture-based coppice woodland relies on a diversity of tree species.  For the northern plains, this diversity could include such trees as Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), Boxelder (Acer negundo), Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa), Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), and various Willows (Salix spp.), including Peach Leaf Willow (Salix amygdaloides).

These are just some basic examples of how permaculture design can be adapted to the northern plains.  More research and experimentation remains to be done.  The time to start is now.