#permacultureguild

Mighty Hedgerow! Full video coming soon! Traditional European-style edible hedgerow!

How do you "weed" with your mind? What's the difference between a real "guild" and traditional companion planting? This Spring, this lovely young guild has been one of my very favorite places in our garden, one of the most beautiful of our plantings, though beauty was not really part of the design here. BTW, this guild is on somewhat acidic, badly eroded Ostemo sandy loam, basically S.W. Michigan's famous sand box sand. Beyond being pretty to look at, I've had to do almost nothing to it but eat from it. Which is really the point of a "guild," a little designed planting that self-maintains like a natural plant community. Which means I shouldn't have to weed it or keep grasses out of it or use grass barriers. This is different than companion planting, which may use aromatic herbs or beneficial interactions to fend off pests and disease in a garden setting, but which may require standard garden treatment of weeding, grass removal, fertilizing, etc. Sure, some thin grasses, runnering weeds, and aggressive volunteers show up here and there, but there is the relative stability and balance of a natural plant community. With the exception of one area which needs some design tweaking to account for the soils improving, you can see that there's more a risk of this guild encroaching on the lawn than there is of the lawn encroaching on the guild. And in that one area, it's especially important not to weed! If I solve the problem by weeding, I'll work "weeding" labor into my guild. Instead, this is feedback that I need to solve the problem with design! I need to do the weeding with my mind! #Permaculture #Permacultureguild #fruittreeguild #edibleforestgarden #foodforest