Will Permaculture Work For Your Climate?

Will it help you create a healthier garden, will it help your homestead be more resilient, more sustainable, save you time or save you money?

Video Transcript:

The answer to this question is yes permaculture will work for you. 

Permaculture works in any region any climate, any region!

But and here’s the important thing, because of course, you know the devil is always in the details –  not every technique not every tool, not every strategy that permaculture outlines will work for you.

That is a critical defining piece right there.

So what is the key what is the secret ingredient that allows you to know if permaculture is going to work for you?

It’s simple. 

It’s matching your climate to the strategy.

Now for the sake of answering this quickly and easily, there’s essentially three parent, or primary climates, that we can look at that almost everybody in the world lives in. 

That would be arid temperate and tropical. 

Some can be on the border of a couple of different climates and there’s a lot of sub climates.

If you look at the köppen climate classification system – that’s a really great way to determine what climate you’re in and so once you know your climate you then align your strategies to your climate. 

For example, if you know you live in the tropics dryland farming is probably not for you. 

Or maybe you live in the drylands then you know the strategy of water harvesting is going to be appropriate for you. 

Does that make sense?

It’s simple – figure out your climate and align it to the strategy.

That’s how you make permaculture work for you. 

I will say though there is more to it than just that of course –  that was just a broad generalization. 

There’s another component that I want to tell you about – permaculture will work for you if it is right for your site.

You determine that is through site observation and through ecological literacy.

That’s what a lot of what permaculture teaches and when I teach permaculture it is a big core fundamental component -ecological literacy.

It is like the saying if you give a man or woman a fish, you feed him for a day.

If you give a man or woman a fishing pole you feed him for life. 

It’s that same kind of thing because if you can teach somebody to be able to read nature to understand ecology then you give them the ability to determine if something is gonna work on their site in their garden.

So top recap – the second critical piece of this is ecological literacy which is understanding what’s

going on in the landscape, understanding what’s going on in your garden to be able to determine if permaculture is going to work for you.

So will permaculture work for you?

YES if you align the right strategies, tools, and techniques with your climate. 

And then you use your understanding of ecology to ensure that the strategies, tools, and techniques work on your land.