I've never seen anything like that!
Why you should take the advice of someone who's never had your problems
When hard thinking yielded no writing topic this week, I used my foolproof method for inspiration: trawling Facebook groups for questions from frustrated beginners. Many posts deal with issues such as devastating insect and animal pest attacks, washouts from heavy rains, and apparent nutrient deficiencies. Reading about these problems always provokes me to go into gardening guru mode, but the question arises: why should anyone take my advice concerning problems I've never had? The proof is in the pudding, so I ask skeptical readers to consider my advice precisely because I have no experience with these issues.
I believe that it has been avoiding the simple and immediate solution that has led to my success. So when dispensing advice, it's never as simple as “if you have problem x, take actions y and z to solve it.” Such linear solutions are a dime a dozen in online gardening groups. Got insect pests? Use neem oil, Sevin dust, diatomaceous earth, or fill in the blank with your go-to insecticide. Got weeds? Till ‘em up and remember to throw down Preen next year. When it seems that Mother Nature is wreaking wholesale destruction in the garden, the natural instinct of the desperate gardener is turn to the instant and effective fix. I'm not arguing that such solutions don't work in the short term, but rather that alternative methods lead to more success in the long run. It's like dealing with toddlers: you can have immediate consequences for unwanted behaviors or you can engineer conditions so that bad behaviors don't occur. (Guess which method works better!)
Typical gardening solutions deal only with the problem at hand. Since permaculture is based on working within the big picture (design from patterns to details), atomizing elements of your garden and their associated problems is antithetical. While not all gardens resemble that of my parents’—a finely tilled rectangle of soil lined with straight rows of veggie plants evenly spaced—the image this brings to mind is a good representation of a typical gardening mindset: each plant, bug, nutrient, etc, considered separately. The word atomize is appropriate here because it not only means to split into small, discrete pieces, but also to deprive of meaningful ties to others. Conventional gardening separates plants literally and figuratively from other plants and from microbial and invertebrate life in the soil, depriving them of beneficial relationships that serve to mitigate problems or prevent them from developing.
Permaculture works by building as many beneficial relationships as possible so all elements work together to encourage positive results. Plants might literally support each other as when beans climb corn stalks. Nasturtiums growing under my tomatoes intercept pathogens that are splashed upwards from the soil, preventing infection. Peas, potatoes and strawberries growing in close proximity shade each other’s roots and prevent undesirables from moving in. Microbes, fungi, and arthropods living in the soil constantly eat, poop, reproduce, and die, creating a continuous supply of available nutrients.
Not only do components within the garden support each other, the garden is also supported by elements in the surrounding area. Visiting birds help keep insect pests in check. Trees in neighbors’ yards provide shade and wind protection, as well as shelter for those visiting birds. A nearby body of water helps moderate temperature extremes and support wildlife. It's cliche to state that everything is connected, but sometimes the banal bears repeating. Thinking of the garden (and the entire neighborhood) as an ecosystem is a good step toward eliminating problems. The natural world functions as a complex and interrelated whole all the time whether we're aware of it or not. We might take action based on our observations of one or two parts of the whole. But when dealing with the small part that is bugging us, we can have an enormous but often invisible effect on the entire system. Filling in a pond so you can plant a food crop or using diatomaceous earth to kill aphids might seem like no-brainers if you aren't considering the knock-on effects of these actions. Without a water source, birds won't stick around to eat caterpillars off your cabbages, and the DE kills beneficial predatory insects as well as the aphids, setting up conditions for worse problems down the road.
I try to engineer conditions so that problems never arise by promoting mutual cooperation among plants and other living things in the garden. Practically speaking this means never using insecticides or synthetic fertilizers, and not tilling soil in order to not disrupt the myriad relationships that create balance. I rarely remove bugs even by hand, soils are enriched by animal manure compost and wood chips, and plants are grown in permanent beds. The soil wash-outs and nutrient deficiencies that are the subject of so many questions do not occur in my garden. I don't have squirrels, chipmunks, or birds digging up my plants or eating seeds before they sprout. I see lots of insects in the garden, but I'm still able to get decent harvests. Occasionally a plant languishes or dies; I remove it and accept that not all plants will make it.
I hope I've made a good case for why you should take my advice. In case my readers are still skeptical, I asked the Magic 8 Ball —which is known to be as reliable as online gardening advice—for answers. “Can I prove my methods have led directly to success?” “Don't count on it.” “Does it seem likely though?” “Signs point to yes.” “Should you take the advice of someone of someone who's never had these problems? “It is decidedly so.” There you go, folks.