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Permaculture Guilds in Houston
One important aspect of permaculture design is the effort to place things so they benefit each other.
Like this:
Use Nature and Permaculture Stacking to Increase Yields
In the classes I teach, home owners who have become aware of the thousands of possible vegetables, fruits and herbs they could grow, often lament “I just don’t have any more space for that.”
As a possible solution, they usually ask me what will grow in shade, and I usually tell them that many herbs, vegetables where you eat the leaves, and blackberries are the best possibilities. But that brief answer is simplistic.
What I would say if I had time to explain is that, “Permaculturists have a technique called stacking that may help you.” Stacking is useful in situations where you think there isn’t enough land for your goals, and you want to get more out of less.
Permaculture is a design philosophy and methodology. It integrates ancient and modern technologies with an understanding of nature and detailed observation, to guide effective plans for sustainable living. It is taught in 72-hour classes in periods from ten days to a year.
In aged natural forests, there is a tall tree canopy layer fifty feet or more above the earth, with shorter, more shade tolerant trees below them, and even more shade tolerant low-growing bushes, shrubs, herbaceous plants, ferns, and fungus living close to a heavy mulch layer and the earth itself. On the trees, there are often vines such as wild grapes, Virginia creeper, or cross vine.
These forests contain many times the biomass of a similar acre of less layered vegetation such as prairie, most gardens, lawn, or edged walkways. So per square foot they produce much more soil-building plant liter. That in turn, prevents runoff and holds much more moisture for much longer.
The shade canopy acts like a 50 ft. insulation, keeping temperatures cooler, so there is much less evaporation from the surface. The mulch layer also keeps the surface damp even in summer, so the roots, mainly near the surface have a continual supply of moisture to support growth.
The tree layer provides millions of square feet of leaves whose water content keeps them from cooling or heating as fast as the surrounding air. So dew condenses on them, producing more precipitation. The plants then use a high portion of the water collected, and eventually transpire it back into the air.
Worldwide, 60% of all rainfall is from plant transpiration. Inland the percentages are higher and near the ocean lower. Thus Galveston rain is mainly from the ocean, but Houston tap water, coming as it does from the Trinity, is mainly of botanical origin. So natural forests and woody landscapes are not just the lungs of the planet, but also its blood supply! Native understory plants like ferns, beautyberry, scarlet buckeye, and parsley hawthorn do a lot of good for us.
Another natural design found in forests is the guild. This is an assemblage of plants, animals and other items that provide benefits for each other, thus making it possible for more to live in a smaller space. For example, a blackberry thicket might protect a young tree from deer, and later, the older tree might provide mulch and bird droppings to help the blackberry grow.
A third natural design we can use in our gardens is ecological succession. If a forest is partially cleared by an avalanche, disease, or fire, new sun-loving plants occupy the cleared ground quickly. These provide shade and organic matter to nurse small shrubs and trees, and these in turn help even taller trees to emerge.
Thus without any human help, nature has sustained itself here for millions of years because it has a very efficient system for growing plants close together. But we too can use natural and other designs to stack our yards.
Stacking is related to understory, guild and succession, but embellishes these designs for the purposes of gardening. Vertical stacking is an effort to plant several useful plants of different heights in the same space.
In horizontal stacking, by contrast, several useful plants are planted adjacent to each other in order to benefit each other This is done using the guild concept—beneficial assemblages promote higher production.
Temporal stacking places plants near each other that will enjoy most of their growth during different seasons, or years.
In my own garden, I use stacking to squeeze more and more production out of my house-lot. I grow several sweet varieties of hybrid muscadine grapes on a wire between ten-foot U-stakes. Vertically stacked below these are domestic blackberries tied to the stakes. And below them on the ground suppressing weeds is our favorite summer green– sweet potato spinach. These three plants all do well in sun, but two are still productive in partial shade, so we can make use of this to vertically stack.
Horizontal stacking uses mutually beneficial qualities of plants such as the different micro-climates created by different plant heights. In winter, the warmest part of my yard is on the southwest side of my house in a sunny space between two tall grapefruit trees. That’s where I have my tropical plants—papayas, guavas, pentas, tropical passionfruit and two coffee plants. There is no room for more grapefruit but plenty for these heat loving smaller plants.
The typical temporal stacking is to understory a preferred tree that when it gets big enough, can replace what was above it. I am growing a very hardy experimental avocado under a poor quality citrus. But a less obvious example is the strawberry patch. Strawberries need winter sun to produce and summer shade to be perennial. The solution is to leave two-foot wide spaces in the strawberry patch so that summer vegetable plants such as basil, peppers and okra can be planted where they will shade the strawberries all summer.
Stacking is just one of more than two-dozen sustainable land design concepts to be taught in permaculture classes through Urban Harvest at www.urbanharvest.org
Shifting to Local Food
In September 2008, Gary Edmondson and I presented the above to a Houston Tomorrow HGAC Conference on improving the Houston Food Supply.
Climate, Weather, and Landscaping in the Years Ahead
Climate, Weather and Landscaping in the Years Ahead
I gave a short talk on the drought and the increasingly chaotic climate in the Houston and Southeast Texas area. The talk was in mid-November 2011 at the Organic Horticulture Business Alliance (OHBA) Drought Symposium. www.obhaonline.org
Weblinks for Monitoring Weather and Climate in the Houston Area
As best I can tell, all or most predictions come from the same 10 or so models. Radio/TV/newspapers typically just use government predictions. Commercial media often though exaggerate threats and possibilities possibly for commercial reasons.
General Weather information: Go to www.weather.gov ; then click on the map of the Texas Gulf Coast, then click on area map of Houston or wherever. You can enter a zip code there and bookmark it. If it matters a lot whether the prediction is correct, read the detailed discussions at the bottom right of that website. There are hourly forecasts for your zip code for the next 3 days and radar maps that show you how rain is moving through the area.
- http://www.srh.noaa.gov/hgx/?n=briefing has a three day weather briefing for those “who need to know.”
- http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/77025 will give you a 10-day prediction for zip 77025 or whatever zip code you enter.
Longer-term info: A summary of what is expected for the months ahead is updated monthly. Typically, they run 10 computer models and pick the middle one.
- See www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions//multi_season/13_seasonal_outlooks/color/churchill.php
What weather happened:
- See www.weather.gov above.
- You can find detailed weather and history for southeast Texas neighborhoods at www.wunderground.com/wundermap .
For summary information about historical weather averages and extremes:
- www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/local_data.php?wfo=hgx
For info relevant to landscaping and gardening, go to
- www.urbanharvest.org/advice/basics/weather_data.html
For drought:
- www.drought.gov/portal/server.pt/community/drought_indicators/us_drought_monitor ; http://agrilife.tamu.edu/drought/ ;
- http://dtn.txfb.org/index.cfm?show=1&mapID=33&showMenu=0
The Vegetable Planting Schedule and Climate Change
Lately, I have been reading my gardening books and combing the internet trying to get information on how different vegetables do at different temperatures. For example, given that all sites in Southeast Texas just busted all time hottest month data, should we really be planting tomato plants, carrots, beets, snap beans as the schedule says?
Briefly the answer would seem to be “yes.” Mostly they all sprout in high temperature soil (mine was 83˚F 1 inch down the other morning before the sun got on it) in what is now the carrot bed. They don’t sprout as well or as quickly though so will need plenty of scarce water.
Another question though is will they grow in that temperature of soil, and in the air temperatures after they come up? After a lot of searching I have developed a huge table of vegetables and temperatures that I will put in the next edition along with planting by temperature guidelines as the months increasingly become hard to predict.
What is shocking though is that the data I have assembled seems to not be systematically available anywhere on the web, and virtually all the agricultural extensions just tell people to follow the local planting calendar “based on years of study” the Missouri guidelines say. This is another way of saying that no one is ready for the directions that climate change is headed.
Bob Randall’s Speaking Engagements and Articles 2012
Dr. Bob Randall’s Articles & Public Engagements 2012
January 2012
Sunday Jan 8
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
Saturday Jan 14
Urban Harvest Annual Fruit Tree Sale at University of Houston Robertson Stadium West Pavilions 9am-1pm. Come to what each year is the largest one-day fruit tree sale on the planet. I will be there if you have questions you would like answered.
Friday Jan 20
Hands on demo Pruning Apples, Pears, Blueberries, and Strawberries. 4-6 pm. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
Saturday Jan 21
Care of Fruit Trees—the theory of training, pruning, and keeping them alive. Very important for all pruning classes. 930am-12. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
Sunday Jan 22
Sustainable Living Through Permaculture 1consists of 9 short demo classes in 4 hours at a permaculturally designed home. This is a prerequisite basic for all other permaculture classes. 2-6 pm. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
Thursday Jan 26
Growing Organic Vegetables. 630-9pm. This class meets on 10 Thursday evenings through May for a total of 25 hours. It is the only long course on growing organic vegetables taught anywhere in Metro Houston. I teach classes 1, #3 Feb 9, #7, and #10. Gary Edmondson co-teaches it with me. Diana Liga and John Ferguson of Nature’s Way Resources do guest classes. You must sign up for all 10 classes. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
Friday Jan 27
Hands on demo Pruning Peaches, Nectarines, Plums, Cherries, and Blackberries. 4-6 pm. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
Sunday Jan 29
Sustainable Living Through Permaculture 2 completes the basic pc module. This is a prerequisite basic for all other permaculture classes except the above. 1-5 pm. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
February 2012
Friday Feb 3
Hands on demo Grapes, Muscadines, Jujubes, Persimmons, Mulberries. 4-6 pm. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
Saturday Feb 4
Greening Our Homes and Communities. I teach Bioregional Organizing for Communities in this on-going module. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org.
Thursday Feb 9
Growing Organic Vegetables. 630-9pm. See Jan 26.
Friday Feb 10
Hands on demo Citrus, Pomegranates, Avocados, Figs and Tropicals. 4-6 pm. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
Sunday Feb 12
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
Saturday Feb 18
Class Berries, Figs and Grapes. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
Sunday Feb 19
Greening Our Homes and Communities through Permaculture. I teach Alternative Economics, Household Pest Management, and Design for Disaster in this on-going module.
Saturday Feb 25
Hands on spring and summer gardening in the Westbury Garden. 230-6 pm. I am the fourth instructor if the class has a large enrollment. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
March 2012
Sunday Mar 11
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
Saturday Mar 24
Hands on spring and summer gardening in the Westbury Garden. 230-6 pm. I am the fourth instructor if the class has a large enrollment. Urban Harvest Class www.urbanharvest.org
April 2012
Thursday Apr 5
Growing Organic Vegetables. 630-9pm. See Jan 26
Sunday Apr 8
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
May 2012
Sunday May 13
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
Thursday May 17
Growing Organic Vegetables. 630-9pm. See Jan 26
June 2012
Sunday June 10
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
Thursday June 21
Figs for the Houston Area. Talk at Gulf Coast Fruit Study Group. Harris County Agricultural Extension in Bear Creek, 7pm.
July 2012
Sunday July 8
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
August 2012
Sunday Aug 12
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
September 2012
Sunday Sept 9
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
October 2012
Sunday Oct 14
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
Thursday Oct 18
Food Gardening and Native Plants. Native Plant Society Talk, Houston Arboretum. 7pm.
November 2012
Sunday Nov 11
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
December 2012
Sunday Dec 9
Monthly Houston Chronicle column in Sunday Real Estate Section. www.chron.com/houstongardening
