Permaculture and potager gardens combined together make a wonderful garden design .
What is permaculture ? What is a potager garden ? How do we flux these two into a beautiful and functional garden design ?
A potager garden is close to your dwelling house ( and especially the kitchen ) that offers alimentation and seasonal harvesting . This garden intent is often with symmetrical garden beds and is created for beauty as well as purpose . Flowers are mixed in with your vegetables and herbs and well-situated harvesting .
Peppermint Swiss Chard
The terminus potager intend ‘ for the soup crapper ’ and began during medieval times in France .
As I grew up in France ( Normandy , close to Le Mont Saint - Michel ) the term potager is a word I love to describe the home kitchen garden .
What is a Permaculture Potager?
A permaculture potager is about adding permaculture near to your home in a beautiful potager garden style . This would be your zone 1 permaculture zone ( not sure what those mean ? take mybackyard permaculture post ) .
I love permaculture innovation , and learning to apply it to your backyard , not count what the size of it , has so many benefits
When we plan our kitchen garden , our goal was to mix the two conception .
Permaculture Potager Planning and Tips
One of the end of permaculture is to store vim and make the upright exercise of your landscape painting . you may not do this without observation first . Before you do plant your potager , be trusted to make certain it ’s in the best locating . Usually geographical zone 1 is easier to plan than your other permaculture zones , because it ’s close to your plate . It really reckon on your backyard though , for us , we have huge herds of elk that come through our acreage . We built our potager not directly out of our front room access , but behind the house ( still super close ! ) because it already had some fencing .
Create biodiversity
Permaculture loves to replicate nature by increasing biodiversity . What does that mean ? It means that industrial plant intermixed with each other , instead of just one row of something , is better for produce an ecosystem . Some gardeners do n’t like this method of horticulture because they are used to neat trivial rows or like the simplicity of weeding with prick or tilling . Creating biodiversity has huge benefits though , it helps to attract sound bugs , drive back the bad hemipteron , deter pest , increase take and husband vim .
Instead of growing your crops in neat little rows , consider growing your crop in layers .
This is one mode you may increase relent byinterplantingand underplanting around other plant . you may also create mini plant guilds to increase biodiversity . Grow borecole , nasturtiums , onion , lettuce , calendula and carrot for example together . Another works order common with permaculture is the3 sister guild(picture below ) .
Another example istomato companion planting , you might grow tall love apple plants and interplant with onion and underplant with calendula , marigolds and basil . By mixing plants , herbs , flowers likeazaleas , and vegetables you could make not only a visually likable garden , but also avail to deter pests or attract sound bug to run through the bad ace with organic pest control .
A diverse garden is a flourishing garden .
Support Pollinators
plant that tolerate pollinators like Apis mellifera , wild bumblebees and butterflies are of import to consider and plant for . Each like unlike flowers , but in cosmopolitan , flowers that produce the most nectar are well-disposed . Many cottage gardens or potagers can sometimes include flowers that do n’t bring out a bunch of nectar . Consider adding flowers and color to your garden but using peak that wild pollinators bang .
You also want to scatter out the blooming times from outpouring until pin to keep the pollinators glad .
Some Flowers for pollinators
Spring flowers
Early Summer
summertime Blooming bloom
Fall flower
Allow your herbs to flower
anthesis herbs are pretty and bee love them . I allow dill and Coriandrum sativum to blossom , in fact it ’s rattling to allow all your herbs to flower to attract bees and pollinator . you may also leavebolted plantsto flower like rocket salad , pak choi , or orach .
Cosmos , California poppy , Cilantro and dill anthesis in the permaculture garden .
Plants for Beauty and Edging
Because one look of potager garden is beauty , add flowers can really help but also grow beautiful plants . suppose colorful vegetables that counterpoint and different layer of grain . Grow swiss chard as an cosmetic edible , earmark kale plant life to become tall trees , originate piles of erect plants for bestow architecture . you’re able to learn landscape gardening here . Other great edging plants areedible flowers . Remember to care about the middle too ! We grow a patch ofwildflowersin the center of our garden . Peppermint Swiss Chard
Mulch
There are many benefit of mulch your garden , from urine retentiveness to weed control , increase bug and build up up grime . We ’ve used many type ofgarden mulcheswith much succeeder .
you may also use weeds as garden mulch .
So long as the mourning band have n’t gone to seed , you may useweeds as mulch . We do that with enceinte burdock foliage and grass newspaper clipping .
Our New Permaculture Potager
I ’ve been growing gardens using permaculture principles for many years now . We ’re presently in our 2d year at our novel mountain vale homestead and have design a new garden . We made this permaculture potager design to be proportionate with acheap re - purposed wooden garden trellisin the core . We used bed sheet mulching precept to make a lot of the main garden beds .
Wooden garden trellis with re - purposed wooden branches weaved with scarlet runner beans for pollinator .
We also incorporate our volaille tight by to make a crybaby fosse around the potager .
Our chicken fosse endure around the garden completely with some onetime and Modern fruit trees .
Ourfood forestis establishing with fruit trees , George Bush and we ’ll be bestow a herb level .
We designed ourchicken coopnext to the garden .
This serve to produce a volaille moat to quash weed and bugs insert the garden ( & rodents , meadow voles are one of the bad pest here )
Our permaculture put up is just progress and will take long time !
I loved Tenth Acre Farms send on developing and designing your permaculture homestead , because it really is a recollective - term investment . She ’s got a deal of keen permaculture posts so take your time over at her web site 🙂
I hope you enjoy planning your permaculture backyard !
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