Permaculture Principles: Recycling Nutrients

From sectors in permaculture to permaculture zoning to relative location, our ongoing exploration of the principles of permaculture design has covered some important topics.

But given that permaculture prides itself on mimicking natural ecosystems - this next principle is one of the most important of all, namely nutrient recycling. Nature just doesn't throw anything away - so we shouldn't either. Waste from one process should, wherever possible, become food for another.

There are plenty of obvious examples of this principle that'll be familiar to any organic gardener - waste from the kitchen or garden feeds the compost heap, waste food gets fed to chickens or other domesticated animals etc. But permaculture design often seeks to go further - designing our whole gardens to keep nutrients flowing within a system as much as possible.

In his excellent tour of his permaculture allotment that I posted over at TreeHugger, Mike Feingold explains how deep rooted plants like evening primrose suck up nutrients that have leached from the topsoil - and by cutting the vegetation and composting it, we get to reuse those same nutrients for our own purposes. I've done something very similar with comfrey - planting it around my compost heap to absorb nutrients that might otherwise wash from my heap and into nearby streams. Comfrey (a rather deer eaten specimen from my yard is pictured above) is a wonder plant in this regard, often referred to as a "dynamic accumulator". Its roots go deep, and suck up nutrients from the subsoil - its leaves contain 2 to 3 times the potassium of farmyard manure, and they rot down fast!

Similarly, I have friends who have diverted the outlet from their washing machine to feed their fruit trees - every week they move the outlet hose to a new tree - giving the plant a much needed watering of nutrient rich graywater, and avoiding the hygiene and regulatory issues of storing waste water for future use. I've also heard of farms that place burlap sacks filled with mushroom mycelium in gulleys - soaking up runoff and using the mushrooms to purify that water.

Most permaculturists don't just think in terms of the narrow confines of their garden either. If there are 'nutrient flows' within your community that are currently going to waste, as a permaculturist it behooves us to be a productive member of the wider ecosystem - taking up those nutrient flows and doing something useful with them before they become landfill. Prime examples might include collecting coffee grounds for compost, or even dumpster diving for cardboard mulch or timber for raised beds.

It's a common permaculture truism that yield is only limited by imagination. If we can start to identify all the waste nutrients and resources that are currently going to waste, we might just be surprised at the abundance we find,

Salivating over sustainable eats? Learn how to make your own with help from Emeril Lagasse in Planet Green TV's organic cooking show, Emeril Green.