Permaculture Principle #3 - Obtain a Yield

Hi and welcome to the Blog!

This weeks topic is another on of the Permaculture Principles, Obtain a Yield

I often look at this principle almost as a directive, to make sure my system is providing something. Rather than just having a garden, I want to have a garden that is useful to me in terms of providing food, being beautiful to look at, etc.

Bill Mollison, the Permaculture originator, explains the principle like this: "The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited, or only limited by the information and imagination of the designer.” As with everything in Permaculture, Obtaining a Yield is not something we do once and then forgetting about it, it is a continuous task and we work towards creating abundance.

Here’s a couple of ways you can Obtain a Yield in a suburban setting:

• Harvesting from the veggie garden. This is of course the obvious one, but nonetheless, this one cannot be neglected!

• Creating habitat for all the hungry animals and insects so that they too can Obtain a Yield. This can be done through planting lots of flowers in the garden for the bees and predatory insects, putting out small bird baths for the birds to clean their feathers in, or creating a rock and log habitat for the lizards.

• Catching rainwater from the roof of buildings to be utilised to water the garden.

• Volunteer in your local community garden and expand your social network, learn valuable gardening lessons, and make new friends!

I hope this encourages you to have a think about what in your surroundings fit in with this principle, and maybe more importantly, what can you implement in your life that is Obtaining a Yield?

See you next week!

Hampus The Organic Gardener