Photo by Unsplash/Cherry Laithang
The first step in the permaculture design process is observation on site. In the northern hemisphere, creating thermal mass to the garden’s north provides a warming effect.
The northern edge of the garden also has the opportunity to house a vertical strutter that can bolster harvests for small spaces. We erected a vertical wall where we grow herbs on the vertical in pockets, and artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes atop the wooden structure. Our garden receives approximately 150 pounds of herbs and produce on this added urban garden vertical system.
Photo by Joshua Burman Thayer
Increase Edges and Margins
The next place we found increased capacity was in the gardens edges. On all 68 raised beds in our gardens, we plant the fringes of the beds in beans and peas continually in succession. In addition, we grow peas or runner beans on trellis on all northern edges. These north edge walls give added vertical growing space while also serving as wind blocks without shading other plants.
A pea trellis may not seem like much of a wind break, but 70 of them begins to make a difference in urban lots.
Cucumbers Growing Up and Out
We also grow cucumbers on the raised bed edges. They will then root in the bed, while snaking down into the mulch or concrete outside of the bed to set fruit in unused real estate. We also use tomato cages or chain-link fencing to trellis cucumbers up vertically like the vines that they are.
On a native plant research trip in 2010 to the mountains of Baja Sur, Mexico, I came upon a wild cucurbit vine, a relative of squash and melons and cucumbers. It was traipsed upon a large shrub and had grown up above the surrounding foliage. By mimicking this in the vegetable garden, this seems to create less powdery mildew than specimens grown on the soil.
Photo by Joshua Burman Thayer
Leave Some Areas Bare for Native Bees
On our vertical garden we installed a mason bee house. This keeps pollinators close by in our urban gardens. We also leave some ground areas free of sheet mulching. Because sheet mulch will drastically reduce seed sprouting, I recommend raking out one meter circles that are left bare. Into these circles, I seed wildflower mixes, such as California Poppy eschscholzia californica, Lupine lupinus albifrons, and Yarrow achillea millefolium. These bare zones can foster native insectaries, in the form of pollen as well as leaving some ground bare for ground-nesting native bees.
Want to rethink your relationship to weeds? Check out the new book written by a fellow permaculture designer, writer and friend, Tao Orion, entitled Beyond the War on Invasives, published this year by Chelsea Green.
Joshua Burman Thayer is a landscape designer and permaculture consultant with Native Sun Gardens. He is the Urban Agriculture Supervisor for Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation in San Francisco, Calif. Find him at Native Sun Gardens and read his other MOTHER EARTH NEWS posts here.
All MOTHER EARTH NEWS community bloggers have agreed to follow our Blogging Best Practices, and they are responsible for the accuracy of their posts. To learn more about the author of this post, click on the byline link at the top of the page.
