The Barley Project- Using Premaculture Principles to make decisions about growing food

I have been observing and analyzing the space beside the barn for several years now to determine what will be the best use of it to produce a good yield. Underlying the space is the drain field for our septic system. The previous owner used mowing as their maintenance strategy for the space. The lower edge is the property line. Beyond that on the neighbor's property are fairly mature canopy trees. Along the edge are some understory trees and shrubs which are good habitat for birds, small mammals, snakes and insects. Some of the chickens hid there to escape the marauding dogs that killed one of them a couple of weeks ago.
The soil is a clay loam. It is near the bottom of a slope. It is shady in winter but sunny enough for crops in the summer. The soil stays wet in the winter and is moist in the summer even in periods of little rain. The first summer we prepared beds and grew sunflowers, zinnias and other annual flowers. They did well. The following fall we planted a cover crop of annual rye and red clover with the intention of experimenting with growing organic no-till sweet corn. This worked fairly but I do not think it is the best approach for this area. Around the edges we are planting bramble fruits and small fruiting understory trees but we can't grow woody plants in the middle because their roots could clog up the drain field. Eventually we will be building a grey water system and a composting toilet which will eliminate that constraint.
I re-read Masanobu Fukuoka's book The One Straw Revolution this fall. In it he described growing barley as a winter crop followed by another summer crop. He said this was easy. Easy is good I thought so I decided to try it on a small portion of the space to test it out. I got organic barley seed from Howe Seeds, Inc. Yesterday raked away the weed stubble and scattered the barley seed. I spread a light covering of leaves we got from our neighbor's roadside leaf bagging service to hide them from the birds and provide a little shade and moisture retention while they germinate. It is going to rain in a couple of days so the seeds should get cranking soon. The literature says they should germinate in 2 days.
Why barley?
1. We like to eat barley.
2. chickens like to eat barley
3. Barley straw makes a good mulch
4. Barley straw is used in ponds to control the growth of algae. This could become a source of income for us selling mini-barley straw bales to local garden centers.
One technique used in permaculture is to divide a property into zones that radiate out from the house which in zone zero. Zone 1 is adjacent to the house where the most intensively managed activities occur such as a kitchen garden. Zone 2 would be perennial crops. Zone 3 orchard. We have all the space we need in zone 1 activities so Whatever we do in this space will be zone 2 and 3 uses. This growing season I plan to grow an interplanting of corn, winter squash, sweet potatoes and black eyed peas. The black eyed peas, being legumes, will provide nitrogen to the other crops. We will let them grow to maturity and harvest the dry beans. The squash and sweet potatoes will be harvested at the end of their respective seasons for storage. The corn will be harvested as roasting ears and the stalks chopped at the end of the season for mulch. This combination will provide a heavy canopy over the ground to shade out weeds and retain moisture reducing the meed for intensive maintenance.
If the barley experiment works we will plant the whole space with barley next winter and follow it with the interplanting described above. I am confident it will!

What permaculture principles came into plan in arriving at this plan of action for this space?
These are defined and defined by David Holmgren, co-originator with Bill Mollison of the permaculture concept, in his book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability

1. Observe and Interact
2. Catch and store energy - sunlight, water, sustenance, human activity
3. Obtain a yield - food, mulch, straw, income
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback - experiment, observe results, try again
5. Use and value renewable resources
6. Produce no waste- everything in this micro-system is used to support it
7. Design from patterns to details- We used the patterns of plant succession to design the uses of the space. Forest to understory to edge to open field
8. Integrate rather than segregate- multiple species grown together to produce a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts
9. Use small and slow solutions - small experiments will lead to a productive use for the space
10. Value diversity - we mixed different plants that will attract a diversity of other organisms and produce diverse yields
11. Use edges and value the marginal
12. Creatively use and respond to change

Musings about weeds- Holmgren's Permaculture Principle #8 - Integrate Rather than Segregate

I have been thinking a lot about weeds over the past several years. The dictionary defines "weed" as the following:

weed |wēd|
noun
a wild plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants.

This is the classic agricultural and horticultural definition. The goal then is to remove all "weeds" because their presence will reduce yield as the weeds compete for nutrients. Crops are planted in rows to make it easier to use cultivation techniques to eliminate the weeds. On a large farm this was done with a tractor. On smaller farms and in gardens it is done by a person using a hoe and or by pulling them by hand.
In the natural world, Mother Nature wants there to be a multitude of different plants, animals and other organisms growing together. As gardeners and farmers we are constantly disturbing her plan to suit our need for food and fiber, beauty, dominion over Nature and many other reasons. She never gives up. The force of plant succession is powerful and never-ending. Therefore we are always fighting weeds.

As we open our hearts and minds to the complexities of the natural system we learn how we can harness that power for our benefit. Advancements in science and technology have allowed us to begin to understand the interrelationships among plants and the microorganisms in the soil that we call the soil food web. We now know that there is communication among these organisms. In the forest it has been shown that mature trees nurse their offspring by sharing water and nutrients through the vast network of the fungal mycelia. We know that the presence of bacteria and fungi in different ratios support the growth of one type of plant over another, herbaceous perennial plants versus shrubs or trees for example. Dr. Elaine Ingham is doing work to determine how we can use that knowledge to manipulate the soil food web to control weeds in the garden or on a farm.

In the the old days herbalists, shaman, medicine men knew how to use specific plants to promote health and healing. We turned our collective backs on that for a long time but interest is being revived. I gave a talk at a local Evolver spore recently. One of the other speakers was Rob Oliver who talked about foraging for wild edible plants. He would hold up a plant and say how highly nutritious and health-giving it was and I would say oh I have that weed in my garden. After it happened about 10 times I began to think about those plants in a different way. Some I already knew were edible and some were surprising to me. The next day I went out to the garden and starting sampling some of them. Chickweed -good, violet leaves - not bad, henbit -ok, dandelion -really really bitter. I don't plan on making salads out of these every day but now I make it a point of eating some most days. Yesterday as I was pulling chickweed out of a young leek bed ( yes it does compete with the leeks) i ate some and gave the rest to the hens who love it more than I do. A friend of mine has a brain tumor which she is controlling through her diet. She can feel the tumor grow or shrink, depending on what food she eats. She says dandelion greens are particularly good at making it shrink so I harvest them for her.

We have a plant growing in the garden called creeping charlie, Gelchoma hederacea. It spreads all over the place and up until recently I have considered it a frustrating pest. It is an "invasive exotic" having been brought here from Europe because of its curative properties and because it was used to enhance the flavor and clarity of beer ( probably the main reason). Many gallons of Roundup are used every year by people (not me) trying it get rid of it. It is actually an attractive ground cover with nice purple flowers in the spring. During it's bloom time I happened to go to Dr. Richard McDonald's beneficial insect web site to see what new information was on there. He lists plants that bloom at different times of year that attract beneficial insects. He updates the list regularly and this time I saw creeping charlie on the list. I (figuratively) jumped for joy when I saw that. Whoohoo, creeping charlie has moved from my pest column to my beneficial plant column. What a relief because that stuff is everywhere. And anyway, if i keep pulling it up Ma Nature is just going to replace it with something else that might be harder to deal with. So now I keep it out of the garden beds and let it do it's thing everywhere else. It grows in abundance at the bottom of the concrete drive. With all of the flooding rains we have had recently, erosion has been on the increase. I found that where the creeping charlie has grown over the concrete it acts as a trap for the soil which I can collect and put back in the garden. The chickens like it too.

During the summer it was hot and dry. I was out hoeing weeds in the path one morning and I noticed that even though it had not rained for a couple of weeks the soil under the spreading weeds was moist. I thought to myself that maybe I was making a mistake by removing them, exposing the soil to be dried out by the sun. From then on I only removed the really nasty weeds like bermuda grass from the paths. I have always allowed dandelions to grow because they have deep tap roots that reach deeply into the soil to acquire nutrients that more shallow-rooted plants cannot. My supposition is that through the workings of the soil food web these nutrients will become available to my crops. I also leave the violets because I like the flowers and they stay in nice neat clumps, attract bees and (as i just recently learned) are edible.

This experience has taught me to be more thoughtful about the role a plant might be playing in the complex system of the garden. My musings have encouraged me to do more integrating and less segregating which has resulted in increased biodiversity in the garden benefiting my crops and making less work for myself.
One of my twitter friends tweeted this definition of a weed by Ralph Waldo Emerson which I now totally embrace:

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."