Bill Mollison Permaculture Lecture Series These videos are documents from two design courses taught by Bill Mollison at the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose Texas in 1994 and 1995.
01 The Function Of Design
02 Fundamentals Of Pattern
03 Pattern Application Sequence
04 Home Gardening Sequence
05 Trees (part 1)
06 Trees (part 2)
07 Farmer's Trees
08 Forests and Woodlands
09 Pasture and Range
10 Soil Conditioning
13 Planting in Drylands
14 Drylands (part 1)
15 Drylands (part 2)
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01 The Function Of Design
Looking after people, looking after life system
Returning surplus, material/information to the system
No hierarchy, no admin, no paid officers, (some find it annoying), no contact point,
No cost to run, bigger than FOA, UN, WHO combined
If what you do turns out OK, you don't have to do anything -Bill Mollison
Design is not classified, no set definition,
Incremental design = keep playing with it over time,
Overtop waterwheel, most efficient mechanical device, 93%, diesel engine 76%,
Ways to heat a house: 8-10 ways, solar, collect heat on roof and fan to floor, radiant heat, stoves, compost against rear wall, flat root heaped w/ hay (Turks), lift it up and put hay under (Yugoslavia),
Home heating/cooling and water heating is 85% of energy use, 35% of cost
Energy inefficient houses cost in energy a second time in 5 years what the initial costs were, a 3% expense increase initially to an energy efficient house will put you at a gain in 5 years versus a typical house
Every element you place in a design should serve many functions
None should be intrinsic (shade from a tree)
Perform functions because of its placement
Good designer can place an element to do 5 things at once, at least 3
aesthetic design/functional design, no conflict
15:00 sustainability story
A sustainable system produces in its lifetime more energy than it takes to establish and maintain it.
Washing machine, dryer, deep freeze are most energy users.
-Ustore like place with freezer, go once a week to get your food.
negawatts, energy you don't have to use
no point in self-sufficiency, community interdependence,
functional design should have a surplus yield,
3 million hectares in USA, more fertilizer than agriculture, most of the biocides, larger than all agriculture even India
2 undesirables, work and pollution.
Pollution is a result of work. Pollution is unused resource.
You incur work when you have not design a way the components of the system can tend their own needs.
Design for function relationships in whole systems, failing in this task incurs work. Design well produces no work or pollution and nature ramps it up.
-3 olive trees = all a family's lighting, cooking oil, shampoo, soap (for 1000+ years)
plant lettuce for 3 years to pay for trees, stop planting lettuce as trees mature
Vietnam = sustainable/permaculture practice is the national way
One 400m farm can duplicate every year, spreading its solutions
Resource = energy stored in a useful form. Rainfall, sunlight, how to store? Catchment and thermal mass.
Set up as many stores as possible
Waste is a resource
Diversity and stability are related. Relationship still undefined. Richness is diversity. Poor is monoculture.
Stability comes from the number of beneficial connections of the components of a system.
Leave the deserts alone now and they will degrade down to sandy deserts. Once they start leaking soil (erosion) it is all over. 57:xx
All media is positioned relative to other media within another media. A cloud in the sky.
Where 2 media meet is a surface where events can take place. Ocean and air, water evaporates across the surface of the water into the air. A tree grows from the air/earth surface.
Every event is a release of energy to reduce difference, but also any event leads to all other events.
Temperatures always move from warm to cold like salinity moves to freshwater.
Kids ask profound questions ~14:00
We can only measure things we made with a measuring device we made. A ruler and a room. Everything else is in flux and can not be measured.
1 teaspoon activated carbon = 5 acres surface area, average tree at least 40 acres surface on leaves
Close-systems can be measured. This doesn't exist in nature.
Tribal breeding, for longevity, limit age when you can father children. Prove you can live long. Totems limited in who can breed with whom.
Growth is a summation series, like Fibonacci (sunflower, pinecone, etc). Spirals.
Tree exchanges light/sugar to the earth from the sky. Transfers minerals/water from the earth to the sky. A tree is an interface point between 2 media. Gather in 1 media, disperse to another.
Inside/outside//floem/xylum of tree switch at point of germination.
Orders of size (5-6). Largest "branch" is trunk, each next "level" is ½ the size of the previous. Rivers, bones, glaciers, kidneys, lungs, trees, clouds, galaxy, brain, vertebrae,
Where is existence? Where is now?
The universe is nothing but a series of events.
An event is a release between two differences within a media or between media. (singularity)
Every event will continue to generate more and constant iterations of that event.
Everything that can happen will happen.
All events are possible after the first event; no other outside agency is needed.
We our perfectly capable of generating all the events that can come from being human.
Derald Langham, built efficient 4' circle gardens,
3m banana circles, placed very close, 12 bananas/circle, normal bananas are planted 3m apart in rows. The circle uses 1/6th the space and generates 50% the yield, minimum, Bill claims 48x more yield.
Mulch the center of the circles,
can put a coconut circle around the bananas, Typically "very" far apart, longest frond + 2 feet.
Circle placed very close, different growth pattern, follows tree pattern.
Very strong in winds, springy, same nut count, 60-80/tree
testing mango circles now, looking good, even tomato circles on a trellis, test stuff, who knows, lots of this discovered by accidents and observing, all just manipulating geometry
Tagasaste, great sheep forage with grass and turnips, great windbreak, low stress to system, can chop and drop the trees at 1 m and give it to sheep, it will coppice up fast,
Fukuoka, sow all at once, wheat/clover/rice in autumn, 20+ years no cultivation, very soft organic rich soil, One Straw Revolution, very well worth the read, only manipulated time sequence changes not spacial, approaching highest theoretical yield, improving over time,
sow a whole season's crop on the same plot at once. Harvest successively, 8 plants to full succession in Massachusetts,
barley into cowpea, let cowpea die/seed itself, never have to sow again,
monsoon grass to rye to grass again, texas, no cultivation, improves soil,
as nitrate use has increased farming grains, protein levels dropped, 4%-6% (on highly fertilized) to 16% protein (in Bill's systems), lower zinc levels, higher cadmium in phosphorous fertilized crops,
1888 farmer's almanac, how to harvest wheat, harvest when leaves are still green, soak/heat/ferment it for 12 days, creates essential amino acids,
rice under straw, wet down, wait for green mold, high thiamin, pick it up and dry it, essential ferments for your nutrition
patterning for water conservation gives you patterning for tree growing
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04 Home Gardening
adding super phosphate ANNUALLY leads to cadmium and uranium buildup, and reduces (the essential) zinc, also elevated copper levels over time
all the nitrate put onto farms ends up in the rivers, [anoxic plum in gulf of Mexico/mouth or Mississippi]
bury unglazed pots in garden in place of a sprinkler,
edge high wind area garden with 4 tall tire of walls,
plant radish and carrots in same place at same time, radish sequence out first
herb spiral, 2x1 m, aromatics in sun, leaves on shaded side,
wild rice in pots, in water, harvest over 3 weeks as grain matures, 1 pound per pot
large evergreen has ~40 acres of leaf surface area, intercepts rainfall, ~15% of all rain is intercepted by trees,
rain that falls out of the tree, called "throughfall", 20-30x phosphates more than rain, minerals, etc, it is the tree's bathwater, much richer than rain, (not much known as of 1995)
90% of roots near surface, 10% go deep
75 mm of humus can absorb 25 mm of rain.
A forest is a lake that follow hill profiles, generally ignored
40% of the tree is below the surface
the roots continuously grow depending on the season, can grow deeper or shallower as needed
soil is conglomerate of small particles, water and gas penetrate between/around these particles, aquatic organisms live here, 4-15 atmosphere hold the water on the particles, very viscous,
large tree can pump 500-800 gallons a day into the atmosphere,
Oxygen16 comes from the sea, the first rain from the sea shows 100% O16.
O18 from tree evapotranspiration is 40% of the rain of the second rain. By the 4th rain it is 100%.
Indians (S. America) understand that the logging takes their water. They ask "why do they say they want the trees when they are taking the water?"
water travels very slowly through soil, most spring water is 1000 (thousand) years old,
the way this society lives is not only stealing from the future, but also from the ancestors (the water they put into the system)
40% of wind goes over (compresses streamline to a height of 40x the tree), 60% goes in/under the forest, in 100 m = barely measurable, 1000 m = no effect/still
where does it go? 1-2 degrees temp increase, some becomes into wood (if you tether a tree, it will not grow where it does not wave in the wind) (not sure why)
wind drops anything it was carrying, silt/dust, beetles, frozen insects, nutrients
wind comes out of the forest warmed and cleaned of particles, air exhausts out of the forest up, rise at same spacing as desert whirlwinds, the humidified air reenters atmosphere,
most raindrops nuclei is organic, most are bacteria, most are from the trees blowing in the wind
this was modified and is sprayed in CA to stop frost from forming on strawberry leaves
mentions unsourced that 2-300 planes are seeding silver nitrate and more are trying to clean it up [geoengineering/chemtrails circa 1995]
5km of trees will re-humidify air to the max,
Tree slightly cooler than the air at night, condensation at 5 liters per sq meter.
Condensation forms on cool surfaces, rain comes from clouds,
40% of the rain comes from the wind stream compression, 15 degrees off the tree band (constant for turbulence, whirlpools, etc), Netherlands, Sweden, Tasmania studies, trees will cause wind downstream,
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<P>06 Trees (part 2)
Albedo - amount of reflection, very variable in trees, species and condition difference, when aspens (and other) blow in the wind the albedo changes often more reflective, 7-40%,
snow 60-70% return albedo
dark trees radiate heat, on a cold night walk uphill to a dark patch of trees the cold air pouring down the hill will push out the warm air downhill,
reflective light from shiny trees (+5 weeks on your garden from the reflection), insects hatch here first, yellow bamboo
red vines over house to keep cool
forests are buffered a few degrees warmer or cooler than the surrounding area,
some plants, like palms, spread light from the canopy onto the forest floor,
dense temperate forests are dark on the ground during the day,
perofilous, feropholous, fire loving trees?, who knows, spent 10 minutes googling and got nothing, used to be on mountain tops that get lightning strikes, supposed to burn, has spread too far, now fires burn far and wide
fire would not have raged like they do today pre-man, they are species that have been created by us burning
~26:00-33:00 good talk about fire, deserts, change, loss of megafauna, leaking nutrients from landscape,
Sonora, dense cottonwood up to 1930s, Sonora = the sonorous sound of the many rivers rushing through the land, Pima Indians main food = fish, beaver pelts and last giant beaver = Tuscon, suaro cactus have moved in, south Sonora desert in Mexico can still see some (1995)
people defend the desert, "you can't plant trees here".
"We like to keep the things in the degraded state we grew up" -bill
use reflective trees and dark trees to direct the energy transaction
tree makes sugar to feed/trade the fungi for the minerals the tree needs, fungi can breakdown cellulose,
large tree has 5 acres of roots, 15 acres of fungus
6 miles of fungal hyphea per square yard of surface area
tree fungi must be processed, activated, and spread by mammals,
squirrels and woodpeckers hide nuts and forget some or are killed to let seeds spread,
animals are the messengers of the forest, trees put in less effort to spread, much cleverer than animals, how did the rose get all over the world? Nice scent and color, then let the animals spread it.
"we work for the chicken" look how much work we need to do to get the feed for it (in a monoculture, just in time delivery system)
trees strangle nematodes, they will eat everything, even you, in the end
humans are very similar to mushrooms,
boundary of a tree is blurry, with its interaction with animals, insects, bacteria, fungus, etc
plants, like alders, can sometimes produce "bad" chemicals that can sterilize the eater, collapse of snow rabbits occasionally b/c of this
guilds, interaction between plants, positive and negative, dead zones around certain plants, especially in the desert,
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<P>07 Farmer's Trees
alfalfa roots to 10 m
mesquite roots go down to 42 m
80-100% yield increase in africa under "farmer's tree"
20-30/ac, layout however you like, rows, clumps,
all have nutritious pods, sugar, drought tolerant, heavier bearing of pods in drought, all honey plants, all legumes, all fix nitrogen (except carob), most easily germinated, all cultivation proof (can plow right up to them),
feed a horse the pods and plant the manure, pour boiling water over pods to soften, expand and soak up water, up to 5 times with boiling water, swollen ones are ready to plant,
carobs, dehiscence/non, drop pods or hold pods, good for cattle, sheep, pigs, geese, 3 pods per day per milking goat, can gather nondehiscence anytime over the few years, chocolate, pods in warm water, feeds them to goats, reduce the water (1.5 days) to the "honey", carrat measuring comes from carob b/c the pods are so uniform, plant in long cardboard tube b/c the taproot will be 1m before 3rd leaf, plant on site, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceratonia_siliqua
honey locust, main plains tree of SW USA, cattle eventually ate them, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_locust , podless street version made with GMO (taking useful plants and make them useless!)
acacia albida / Faidherbia_albida, 40 m diameter rootpan,
africa has lots of sugary pods, non in australia despite 1100 acacia,
acacia garrafae, Acacia erioloba , grows very wide crown,
kiawe, Prosopis_pallida , dehiscence,
leucina, green forage?,
Tagasaste , strickly forage, no pods, lots of legume forage, amino acids grass lack, like clover or lucen, more complete fodder, last about 40 years,
increase production of biomass 60-100% in wheat, sorgum, grass,
most dioecious, builds high nutrient topsoil, bring up deep minerals,
large diameter rootpan full of mychrozzia,
pakia, africa, legume,
very few african trees have been moved out of africa, ferments have not been studied even though they number as plentiful as SE Asia
Innoculants, broad group,
casurina fixes nitrogen and phosphate, root associate called frankia, also windbreaks,
put rought branch "mulch" around the trees to prevent stock from getting to it before it matures, needs 4-6 years to mature,
political talk ~50:00, funny
never sell anything off a farm that can't walk off, lose too much minerals, animals carry very little off, their poo stays,
"you're living in a world that is so bad, you can not do worse" -bill
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<P>08 Forests and Woodlands
Animals concentrate and distribute rare minerals in the system,
1 sq meter has 1 million species of nematode, 6 km of hyphae,
worms bring dead OM and bring it into the soil, want worms that deposit their casting on top of the lawn, nitrate fertilizer kills worms, Lumbricus,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumbricus_terrestris ,
Worms produce 25 toms / ac of casting, castings add to the upper 6" 5x more nitrogen/7x more phosphorous/11x more potassium,
produce 3" of topsoil / 15 years, poor soil 0.25 million / ac, fertile soils 1.75 million per acre, no animal manures 13k / ac, manure 1 mill / ac, worms love to eat manure,
compost over 125 F kills worm,
lime/manure/other fertilizers v. chop and drop legume/grass with worms, growing barley bluegrass, plot with worms had 5x the vegetation
worms breed better with a bit of dolomite,
chisel plow, basically keyline plowing, use drift to bring water out of valley, 1 foot / mile drop,
pasture sow = dandelion, chicory, turkey love thistle (cattle and goat do not), alfalfa, white clover (red for swampy), turnip (mainly sheep/goat, cattle choke on whole turnip),
enrichment comes from = white oak, honey locust group, legumes, nut bearing pines, (pinus maximilianus rare/large pincone from mexico, pinus monophylla, afghan pine, pinus sabianus, 30+ nut pines, come take very cold, can be valuable, bury unripe/developed but not open pinecones last for 12 months, roast and shake out nuts from cones, shishone, mexico, there is a flower that blooms and alerts you to when to harvest pines (),
nuts for turkey, squirrel, pine nuts are good crop,
plant corn when leave of oak is the size of a squirrel's ear, phenomenological time,
lupinus alba, good dry crop, nitrogen fixer
move cattle onto 9-10" pasture,
keep a field journal,
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Most of the rain stays in the first 15" of soil, 3" of humus holds 1" of rain,
a forest is a lake, tree is 96% water,
water adheres to the soil particles, up to 15 psi,
field capacity = wet but won't "leak" water,
only 1.6% is what infiltrates into aquifer,
Oyxgen-18 comes from the ocean, O-16 comes from evapotranspiration,
clouds is a reflection of the shape and quantity of the trees below,
hang gliding books, talk about clouds, compression, streams,
flourine is often high in desert wells,
trees probably responsible for 80% of rainfall, airflow lift, produce most nuclei, re humidification of air,
fish bring phosphate up river, Canada studied and thinks they are losing out with hydro-elec dams,
once nitrates get below root level, nothing breaks it down, it pollutes aquifer, Israel, as we pollute on the land it will work down to aquifers eventually, in Russia the rivers are high in nitrates,
water polluted by agriculture, agriculture makes mining look OK,
invest in regenerative systems (trees, ) leaves you with more, investing in destructive stuff (buildings, roads) will leave you with less
35:00 "who owns the water, owns America" and a good story
"seize the head-water!" clean it up and put it out clean
can we afford to put roof water on the ground?
tank making industry, large in Australia, not in USA, construct on-site in 3 days,
black water can be put in a 25' x 25' pit, 18" of 3/4" gravel, mulch over with straw, grow trees around,
septic tank double chamber (aerobic/anaerobic) to ~60' seepage bed
1/2 round pipe in trench, large diameter, with a barrier every 4', plant trees along barriers,
primary treatment, dropping through tanks of pebbles, takes out a lot of stuff, good enough if not very polluted,
bring water up through crushed limestone/shells?, takes out carbonate and a lot of metals?,
lastly pump into bed of typha etc, then to water-chestnuts,
oyster shell bag in tank, tank coated with algae that will fix out organic pollutants within 30 minutes,
Watercress, Kang Kong (imopea aquatica), taro (calacasia)[poi like yogurt], elephant ear (alacasia conjac),
Chinampas, trellis (vine), water, (fish/shellfish) land (banana in tropics),
vines belong along the land/water interface,
still ponds, anaerobic in tropics, needs specific assemblage, australian lung fish,
more fish with slight flow, canal cages to grow fish in cages,
water plants can help cleans water, water organism are very fast at stabilizing nutrients, 10-15 minutes and the organism take up all the phosphate, stayed in same barren cairn for 30+ years in the same exact place, a tall column of reef,
tractor pond, ~16:00, 1-2m, starter aquarium fish, water salad plants,
grass carp, tilapia, can eat weeds around taro,
pu uu, water snail, macrobachrium rosenburgi, giant prawn, ducks,
1/8-1/4 acre pond is good enough to feed a small community, sweet spot size,
1 m deep is sweet depth, kettle should be this deep in smaller ponds/taro terraces,
when pH starts to decline, expect the oxygen to fall shortly, paddle or pump air in,
elephant fish can be an alarm when its electrostatic pulse changes, alarms on many things, patented, used in Europe,
series or parallel flows in several ponds, series can transfer disease but uses less water,
1/3-1/2 of pond can be dense vegetation supporting many invertebrates/tiny fish, these smaller things can be used as food for the fish, terrace a slope that the larger fish can't get in,
fruit flies/pillbugs on a raft of hay,
compost box of hay, underwater goes anaerobic, spawns zoeplankton, sulphur fixing bacteria, smells like swamp gas,
ducks, shrimp, fish, chain feeds itself,
bacteria > phytoplankton/algae > zoeplankton > shrimp/crustacean > fish
large mesh to shelter small fish from birds, escapement
120-150 ducks per acre, geese graze and poo in water for phytoplankton,
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<P>13 Planting in Drylands
Wait for a solid rain, plant within 30 cm of each side of swales,
comfry, sweet potato, geranium, living mulch around your tree
subsurface water on ultra high value trees, unglazed pot, drip under mulch,
50% shade over top of garden, fronds/brush/cloth,
can shade west side also,
sunken walls to prevent moisture loss,
can't have too much desert, good vines, grapes, passion fruit, oyster nut, chaepte, kiwi, whole range of cucurbit,
large scale tree deployment, use a few rip lines on contour and plant into them, 50 trees a day by hand, 1000+ with ripper,
Precipitation is about equal is semi-arid land, precipitation exceeds rainfall is a desert
subject to salting
water harvesting is key point,
mostly mesa and scarpe, areas of shattered rock are intake areas (where water infiltrates), near scarpe,
usualy some rainfall each year, some places can be many years between rains,
drought cycles, ~20 year cycles, 4 phases, wet/drying/drought/recovery,
crop and cull depending on the cycle, carry capacity of the cycle can fluctuate between 1 and 1/16th.
Use large long term storage, grains, jerky, salt/dry meat,
African words for deserts used all over, charqui = jerky, kraal = corral, erg, sandforms, arabic words, geological terms, alkali = alkaline, potassium in latin = K,
alkoloids, cyanogens, and 1 other poison in drought, other poisons in wet phase,
don't feed/let out the cattle right when drought breaks b/c the poisons (6-8 weeks slowly move them back)
ph normally 8-11, minerals will be in deficit, lockout as carbonites/unavailable,
desert people have high copper blood tests, means lack of iron and zinc, lack of zinc = slow healing, no overy/testi, reduced sexual function, can't digest other food, 16 women to 1 man, coenzyme for breaking down other stuff,
testicles are high in zinc, desert oysters
seeds of cucerbit high in zinc, all developed in desert
maroxea melon, huge, hardy, lots of water, cross with watermelon, grown purely for water, cook food in melon flesh, porridge, doesn't taste good, but not bad, more no-taste, abundant seeds, half melons full of drying seeds
kiwano/jely melon, sweet cucumber, important desert plant, perennial, self seeding, cook by standing in ashes, steam, take top off like boiled egg and spoon them out,
excess salt/copper removes zinc, phytates in bran and beans, whole meal flour, removes zinc, wheat bran the worst, use a handful every 2 weeks to clean out cancerous intestine something,
if you don't eat meat in desert, you die.
Liver is good source of iron, just char it real quick not too much cooking,
use ash from selected bushes/(ear bones have zinc)bones in cooking as a source of minerals,
smokeless stoves will not give you access to ash, roll meat in ash, ashes in eggs, ashes on everything,
lots of fermenting of food, alwayss pound cucubrit seeds in porridge,
el nino coincides with moon cycles, anasazi,
recruitment period of trees every ~9 years, after 4 cycles tree seeds sterile and the system starts leaking away,
recessional planting, when the drying is beginning, as the water goes down, follow along and plant seeds in the silt, produce more and then store it through the drought,
powdered neem (melia az...) leaf in grain to keep out bugs, in wicker baskets, line with cow dung, mud, neem leaf, outside with mud, mud over the lid, keep it hanging off ground,
optunia, cactus, many cultivated in Mexico for thousands of years, pitahiya?,
ensete, Ethiopian tree, their banana (no fruits), grate, pick out fiber, ferment pulp, 3 months it is high protein, lasts 30 years in the ferment pit, make pancake bread (mix thin batter),
fermentation is important in deserts, long storage, vit B, (book: ferment and human nutrition),
Ethiopian have good spice tradition,
carob honey = rain barrel full of pods, pour off the water weekly for 3-4 weeks, evaporate the water, left with "honey",
from 25-30:00 good, grains b/c of economy, salting land, can only save those who wish to be saved
rock fig, great fodders, high protein, much higher yields than desert wheat,
ficus sycamorous, feeds ducks/chicks,
set up right you have a drought proof system that is maybe the highest yielding of any system,
2-3 strategies for deserts
conservative - increase stores
design an assemblage that is drought-proof and productive (yet to be tried as of 1995)
Never cultivate and never irrigate the desert
can't scale well in deserts, better off with many small systems,
"Engineering the Destruction of Mexico", (salting)
Solomon 7k ax-men working for 14 years in Lebanon cedar forest to build his house, one many probably destroyed Lebanon
destroy forest to build temple, something to worship our own creation while destroying THE creation
irrigation salting of land - run exotic water (outside of desert) to desert, no case where irrigation did not destroy it, shallow crops in irrigation, water gets past roots and rises the water table (full of salt),