An Evolving Polyculture

"Burn this ghastly pile of thorny plants". We repeatedly heard this from the local people and farm workers when we had uprooted a lot of thorny shrubs and trees. The pile was about 7' tall and 20' wide. We didn't have the heart to waste that much biomass, much less to produce so much heat and smoke.

"The problem IS the solution" says Bill Mollison, co-founder of Permaculture. With this thought in mind I searched through Mollison's Design Manual. I found the south east Asian design of Palm circles useful and appropriate. Here is how we customized it:

We dug a shallow, circular trench around the thorny pile and mounded the soil (from the trench) on the outer side. We planted 8 coconut saplings around this trench. This formed a circle of 27' diameter. The coconuts were about 10' apart. These were interspersed with banana and papaya. We once grew a small crop of peanuts on the berm. We are now growing pumpkins there.

After three years, this circle and the area around it has become home to all these volunteers:

wild passion flower (creeper covering the thorny pile),

Crotalaria juncea (Indian hemp or sunn hemp),

Clitoria ternatea (creeper with beautiful blue or white flowers),

Crotalaria striata (leguminous shrub with lot of yellow flowers) ,

Calotropis gigantea,

Dodonaea viscosa (shrub),

Holy Basil (Indian Tulsi),

Thai Basil,

Wild Tulsi,

Medicinal herbs,

Rosella (gongura),

Tridax procumbens (ground cover),

lemon grass.

These plants together with the ones we planted (i.e. coconut, banana and papaya) have created a small paradise that attracts a lot of butterflies, birds and bees. The vines keep the thorny pile under a perennial green cover, thus helping with moisture retention and decomposition. Thanks to mainly the indefatigable termites, the colossal thorny pile has shrunk to a mere 2'  mound. A scoop of the soil from underneath the pile now features a beautiful biomass-rich crumb. And all this newly created fertility is slowly oozed out to the plant circle.

A portion of the circle showing Coconut, Bananas and Papaya

The decomposing thorny pile with passion flower smothering it

Aerial view of the circle

According to Bill Mollison, as the coconuts grow the fallen coconut fronds are piled up in the center. This reduces labor when compared to conventional grid-style coconut groves. The pile in the center thus becomes the reservoir of nutrition and moisture. 

The circle is always under mulch with the banana suckers we remove periodically. We once used wasted cardboard to mulch the berm. This brought in a lot of termite activity that enriched the soil.

Initially we flood irrigated the circular trench once in a few days. Now we have laid a drip line. The perennial mulch and drip irrigation put together brings down watering significantly. This circle has gone without water for weeks in a row. The bananas and papayas from this circle are healthy and tasty. We are waiting to see how the coconuts do.