But Nature Can Heal Our Planet

Yesterday we posted the article Technology Cannot Save Civilization. Today we follow up with a fresh and clarifying look at that one alternative to bringing our earth back in balance that is all around us and still goes unnoticed too much: Nature! Let’s compare how humans use energy with how nature cycles it. Big insights hidden in plain view: Energy In Nature.

Powers Of Observation

Observation is of great importance for any Permaculture project. At the end of the 2015/16 El Niño we could reflect on how nature responded to the greatest drought in our area in decades. Read about it here.

Weeds

How people use the word ‘weeds’ as a negative descriptor of a huge and very varied group of plants already indicates we’re falling prey to over simplistic thinking once again. To consider many plants as totally unwanted shows a denial of how nature functions. Weeds are nature’s answer to disturbed or destroyed ecosystems. Nature does not recognize unwanted plants, she only sees function.

An unused field, next to our dams, full of a diverse collection of weeds.

Every disturbance of vegetation is met with a reaction, be it fire, compaction of the ground, plowing, erosion or anything else and weeds are the first emergency responders.

Trees, Water and Climate

Did humans contribute to climate change? Yes, but it’s not only CO2 that affects our climate, our land use might be a much bigger cause. We’ve studied a scientific paper and published a review in our articles section. You can read it here.

Utter Neglect

We’re all a bit lazy sometimes and to be honest our choice to apply Permaculture was also slightly based on a wish for (future) laziness. If nature functions so well on earth, we can all setup our lives for nature to do most work leaving only a bit of maintenance and harvesting for us to do.

Small Moringa tree, 8 months old, got watered for 3 months, then only rain, is now established, no further help needed. Starting to flower for the first time.

The Wild Garden

I think most people would have difficulty recognizing our garden. There are no neatly kept beds filled with straight rows of vegetables. Instead our garden follows the contour lines of the landscape and all plants are mixed with other vegetables and weeds. This morning our garden looked like this:

The work on the garden started last year in October.

The tree that’s not a tree

The banana plant is the biggest perennial herbaceous plant growing on earth, so it’s not a type of palm tree. The plant consists of two parts, the root clump and the green shoots. One root clump can produce several dozens of shoots over its lifetime, which flower, fruit and then die back, followed by the next shoot fruiting, etc. The biggest banana plant on our land can easily reach 5 meters in height.

The biggest banana plant on earth can grow to up to 12 meters,

Chocolates don’t make you fat!

Well, maybe they do, but who really cares considering how great it tastes? This post is about the cacao tree. In the future we’ll show you how chocolate is made. Below a picture of one of our existing cacao trees bearing fruit.

Chocolate is made from the seeds of the cacao tree.