As someone who is constantly juggling various personal, professional, and homestead tasks, there’s one permaculture principle that’s proven to be incredibly important in my day-to-day life.
It’s the principle of ‘the least effort for the most effect.’
Essentially it’s this idea that you want to work in a way where you get great results for a minimum investment of your resources (time, labor, money).
I mean, who wouldn’t love that?
Now, the problem with this is figuring out how exactly to do things in this ‘least effort for the most effect’ way.
So today, I want to showcase the principle in action on my farm and give you at least one idea of what you could do, and as a byproduct, you’ll get an endless supply of free liquid fertilizer.
In one of my earlier videos, I showed you my small permaculture nursery setup where I’m propagating, amongst other things, comfrey. And now I’ll show you how that nursery (comfrey propagation pot) is connected to my biofertilizer production (plastic drum) and the workflow/protocol behind it.
Click the video below to learn more:
As you can see from the video, I really do put minimum effort into this.
I cut the comfrey foliage two or more times a year, put it in a plastic drum that’s 1m (3 ft) away, and let it ferment while I do other things. In about two months, I get this liquid fertilizer filled with nutrients for my garden crops.
Total effort required = less than 5 min and some light labor to harvest and put comfrey into the plastic drum,
Effect = free nutrient-rich locally sourced fertilizer that would cost real $$ to buy. It’s like making money out of thin air.
Here’s a practical action oriented workflow with a timeline you can follow to make the comfrey biofertilizer (click on the image to enlarge):
The workflow goes like this: first you’ll need to establish your comfrey propagation setup – 1. build herbaceous perennials propagation bed or pot – 2. then you’ll have to acquire comfrey plants (get the nursery stock – comfrey mother plants) and 3. pot and grow them through the season.
During the season you’ll be able to 4. harvest comfrey foliage two to three times, and then 5. use that material to make your biofertilizer.
See the timeline for an overview of the timing of each project.
Note that you can get nursery stock material (comfrey plant) at any time of the year. Also, once you have the plant material growing, making the biofertilizer is a year-round project – you just fill it up, let it sit, and use as needed in the garden. If I were to put all the tasks in year, the above timeline is how I’d execute this.
From the permaculture perspective notice that there are two permaculture design connections happening here that are making this work effortlessly.
First, I found a way to supply the needs of one element – the biofertilizer production (plastic drum) – with the yields of another element – nursery (comfrey propagation pot) – and by doing so created a closed loop. So instead of importing the resource (nutrient-rich plant material) that my biofertilizer production needs, I supplied it with something I already have going.
Second, I’ve put those two elements next to each other, given that one feeds the other, so I can do less work.
All right, I hope this was insightful and that you’ll start your own biofertilizer production. If you’d like more tactical tips like this, I suggest you sign up for my newsletter, the form is linked below.
Talk soon,
– William
