Guilds

 

My brand new baby guild.

Guilds are my focus right now.  This is a baby guild, it will look vastly different in a year or so.  A guild is a group of plants that all work together to create a healthy, natural environment.  Remember that with permaculture we are trying to mimic nature and create an environment that is as self sustaining as possible.

Ok, so if we are mimicking nature there are some things we need to keep in mind.   The forest doesn't have a single tree, then 20 feet away another tree with nothing in between.  We need a ground cover on the bottom.  Just like wood chips, a ground cover helps to protect and enhance the soil, providing shade and keeping it cool so the soil stays moist longer.  Some ground covers pull double duty by protecting the soil, but also helping deter pests (creeping thyme) or by adding nitrogen (micro clover).  These suppressor plants also discourage weeds from growing. In a guild, and in permaculture really you want to pick plants that fill more than one function, at least 2, but hopefully 3 or more.  At the end I'll list some of my favorite plants to use.

More mature guild.

So, the first function is the ground cover, the second function is nitrogen fixing plants, these can be trees, bushes, small plants, flowers, or ground cover.  The purpose, of course, it to help your plants and soil be healthy, they act like living fertilizer.  Here's a pro tip, if you plant pretty scarlet clover, don't mow it down to the ground to get another crop of flowers, you will just kill it.  Ask me how I know.  Just dead head the flowers to encourage more blooms, drop it at the base of the plant and it will add nitrogen as it decomposes.  Whatever you choose to plant, it will only add to the healthy of your soil and plants if you cot off bit and drop them, that way the dropped bits are decomposing and adding nitrogen, but the roots underneath that die off also add nitrogen.

Now for one of my favorite functions, attractors.  These are flowering plants that attracts pollinators like bees and butterflies.  They add to the beauty of your garden and many also deter unwanted pests, or add nitrogen to the soil. More bees visiting flowers means more bees pollinating your fruit blossoms and that means more fruit.  Make sure to plant a few different kinds so there is always something in bloom.  You don't need something in bloom all the time around ALL of your trees but a smattering all over the yard will make sure there is always a food source and the bees will love it.

Now that we have talked about attracting friends, how do we deter...not friends?  That's where deterrent plants come in.  They smell strong and confuse or bother pesty bugs.  Think marigold in the garden, but all over.  Herbs are great for this because the strong smell can cover up the smell of your yummy fruit tree and confuse icky pests like coddle moths and aphids.

Mulchers are next.  These are plants that grow profusely and you can chop off parts to use as mulch without killing the plant.  Comfrey is probably my favorite because of it's cell regenerative properties.  The kind I have grows quickly and large, it's tripled in size in the last month, but isn't spreading.  It gets big without taking over.  Mulchers, because they often have large leaves also help shade the soil and add another drip line.

Last but not least, accumulators.  I call them miners because they pull nutrients up from deep in the soil and when they die or leaves fall off those nutrients go back into the top layer for all of the other plants.  The big deep roots also help to aerate the soil, break up compacted soil, and make title tunnels for water to travel down.  

Here is a chart I found immensely helpful, along with a link to the site I found it on.  I love the easy to read chart.  I have used this chart as a reference in the four guilds I have already made and in planning the next ones.

Real quick, here is a list of my favorite guild plants and why I love them:

• Creeping thyme-I love the smell and the flowers are so pretty.  It also spreads fast so it covers up that soil in no time.  I also would like to add creeping mint, but I haven't tested it.  I want to put it near my house where the smell will chase away hornets since I'm afraid of hornets.  Jerks!
• Hairy vetch- it grows crazy fast which is great because I just want to cut it down to add nitrogen to the soil.  It grows fast and i love the little purple flowers.
• Comfrey-as I said, it grows fast so you can chop and drop the leaves, but the cell regeneration is UNREAL.  We used it twice, once for stitches and once when my husband sliced the tip of his finger off with a mandolin slicer. ><  I feel like they both healed twice as fast using a comfrey leaf poultice.  I'll never be without it again!
• Black Eyed Susan's-this pretty flower has DEEP roots.  I love them because my berms have steep sides, I'm not entirely sure I made them right and I need something to help prevent erosion. These are the flowers for that.

I could go on, really.  Ask anyone in my family, I am pretty obsessed with plants.  What's not to love!?

Wood chips

 

        I wanted to talk about woodchips.  You might have noticed that we have a lot of woodchips going down in our yard.  My neighbor pointed out that it won't stop the weeds, how right he was, but that wasn't our intent.  Woodchips help discourage weed seeds from germinating, but they definitely don't stop weeds, for that you need a layer of cardboard underneath.  So why the woodchips?  Wood chips help to protect the soil.  Soil that is exposed to the sun dies, all the tiny microbes that help soil to be healthy get killed off by the radiation from the sun, that's one reason plants are so eager to grow and cover the soil, they want to protect it.  Wood chips shade the soil and protect it from the sun and also help stop erosion from water because they force the water to move more slowly across the surface of the ground.  Wood chips also help to moderate the temperature of the soil, cooling it in summer and warming it in winter.  As the wood chips break down they add nutrients to the soil and help it hold water better.  As you can see, wood chips have a lot of benefits, but I wanted to talk about my favorite one, water conservation!

        I live in a desert, not only that, but my yard has basically no shade.  I do have a few small trees in the back, but they aren't big enough to really shade anything.  My front yard faces full west and in the summer it get HOT!  It gets so hot, I thought growing anything in the front would be nearly impossible.  It turns out I was right.  It's so hot that plants wilt and die very quickly.  If I want them to stay alive I have to water pretty much every day, not ideal for a desert state in the middle of pretty severe drought.  When I noticed that my beds with a thick wood chip mulching only needed to be watered once a week I added wood chips to the top of my front garden beds.  I was skeptical that it would help that much in the front, but I figured it would help at least a little.  Monday I watered nice and deep, did a quick weeding job with my kids and we piled on the wood chips.  Here we are at Friday and I pulled back the wood chips to see...the top of the soil was still wet.  I was pleasantly surprised.  To illustrate the difference, this is the bed that I had to water every day and it was still dry an inch down!

        So what are the draw backs to wood chips?  First of all, as they break down they pull nitrogen from the soil, that's not good for plants.  However, there's an easy fix.  If you look at this picture just above us there are potatoes and clover side by side in that bed.  The clover helps to add nitrogen back into the soil as it grows, it's one of the nitrogen fixing plants.  A few other options are peas, beans, vetch, soy beans, or lupine.  I know there are more, those are just the ones I am using right now.  One way to add nitrogen is to plant a fall cover crop of soy beans, they can help protect the soil as they add nitrogen.  I like soy beans because if I plant them in the fall they don't have a chance to grow all the way before they are killed off by frost and then I use a pitch fork to turn over the soil and the plant decomposes all winter long.

        The only other draw back to wood chips that I can see is that they might make it harder for plants to self seed.  I am testing that right now and will add a post when it figure it out.  They also require you to water more deeply to reach the soil, but that is helped by leaving a little gap around each plant and, honestly, considering that I water just once a week instead of every day I'm still saving time, water, and money. SO worth it!