Many gardeners in the Falcon area become frustrated with the soil, which is decomposed granite. They often wonder if there was ever any top soil.ìMost of Colorado was probably grassland and savannah a long time ago,î said Sandy Cruz, who lives in Salida, Colo. Cruz has been teaching people about permaculture, a philosophy of understanding and mimicking nature to create environments.Land in Colorado was clear-cut, plowed and worked over and is now recovering from the practices that degraded it, Cruz said.Permaculture ties leading-edge technologies and practices to a system, including the community of human ecosystems.For gardeners in areas that have little or no top soil, such as eastern El Paso County, rebuilding top soil is a top priority. To do so, a permaculturist looks at forests to see how top soil is created, Cruz said.In the forest, soil is built from the top down. Leaves fall to the ground, animals defecate and urinate, rocks dissolve and plants turn to straw and lie down, she said.ìAfter about a hundred years, on average, you get an inch of topsoil,î Cruz said.Permaculturists speed up that process by layering mulch, cured manure from various animals, rotten hay or straw and composted vegetable matter over soil that has not been dug up.ìWe generally don’t dig unless there is some really good reason,î Cruz said. ìWe just keep adding to the top, which turns into duff and protects the soil underneath from drying out and eroding.îThe permaculturist’s goal is to turn the soil into a sponge so water will be held in place instead of running off. When water remains, it nourishes the creatures like earthworms that burrow between layers. It also nourishes fungi, which help plant roots connect and move water and nutrients around in the layer, Cruz said.In the first year, vegetables like potatoes, cabbage and broccoli can be planted, as well as herbs and flowers. ìIt’s like an instant garden bed with no digging,î Cruz said.Not all mulches are the same. Trees benefit from tree-based mulch, such as the mulch produced by Black Forest Slash and Mulch, because the mulch is acidic and helps balance alkaline soils. Straw mulches are better for vegetable gardens, she said.More than just gardeningìPermaculture is a designing system, first and foremost, based on nature and how nature works,î said Becky Elder, a permaculture designer from Manitou Springs, Colo.More than a do-it-yourself project for growing food, permaculture is a pathway for creating food forests that grow like cultivated ecosystems, based on how nature accomplishes things, Elder said.On the plains, such as in the Falcon area, native plants grow close to the ground with deep roots. They live in the wind. If the wind isn’t buffered, the top soil will blow away, so the wind must be mitigated by using buildings as windbreaks or planting trees to break the wind, Elder said.Cruz planted a hedge around her garden that will eventually protect the garden from deer as well as wind. ìIt will take a few years, but then we’ll have a living fence that deer won’t be able to see through, and they can browse on their side,î she said.ìPeople are kind of immediate these days, kind of short-sighted. It’s hard to think about what a tree will look like in 50 years. We have a windbreak that’s 60 to 80 years old, and every day I thank those people who planted it.îPermaculture extends beyond the garden to designing local, human-scale communities in which people create businesses and live within ethical means, said Elder.She quoted Australian Bill Mollison, who first coined the term in the 1970s:ìPermaculture is the harmonious integration of the land with the people who live on that land, providing food, energy, shelter and providing other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.îMollison also described permaculture as ìa philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than premature and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single project system.îìThere’s an explosion of permaculture right now,î Cruz said. ìI’ve been teaching this for 20 years and it’s really exciting to see it finally taking off. Just about anywhere you are you can find people who are knowledgeable or learning about permaculture.îCruz and Elder teach classes in permaculture design. Visit http://hialtpc.org and http://pikespeakpermaculture.org for more information.
