In this series we highlight useful plants that fit into permaculture systems. These systems work with the patterns in nature and provide a holistic and interconnected context.

For this profile we are showcasing stinging nettle, Urtica dioica is the native to San Diego County and Urtica urens is the naturalized species. Often called a nasty weed, this plant serves a specific beneficial purpose and provides super healthy and tasty food for hardly any work! What could be better!

The big downside of this plant is of course it stings like hell when it comes into contact with skin. The stinging normally does not last long, but reactions vary from person to person. Luckily, the stinging is pretty easily avoided by utilizing good gloves during harvesting.

The plants contain long, thin, hollow hairs that cover the majority of the stem and the underside of the leaves. Nettle stings contain acid (formic acid) but they also contain histamine and other chemicals. Luckily again, these chemicals become completely benign once the nettle is cooked.

Harvesting it pretty easy - just use scissors to cut near the base of the plant. Nettle is best harvested when young, before flowers and seed pods are formed. As a general rule I like harvest plants shorter than 1 foot tall. As the plant ages it gets more fibrous. It can get so fibrous that nettle is known for making fibers like yarn and fabric. And they don't sting!

Now that you have a nice big bag of fresh nettles it's time to cook or dry them. It can also be nice to harvest just a little bit to make fresh tea. For drying, is best to separate the leaves and dry in the sun or a dehydrator. For cooking, you can just throw them in the pan with little water, oil or butter - they can also be steamed. Cook and enjoy as you would spinach. They can be used in an infinite number of dishes - one of my favorites is pesto - just blend up the lightly cooked plant with garlic, pine nuts, lemon juice and sea salt, then toss with your favorite noodle.

Stinging nettle is not only an abundant free growing plant around the globe but it is also rich in vitamins A and C, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium. (Gregory L. Tilford, Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West). Fresh leaves contain approximately 82.4% water, 17.6% dry matter, 5.5% protein, 0.7 to 3.3% fat, and 7.1% carbohydrates [Lutomski, Jerzy; Speichert, Henryk (1983). "Die Brennessel in Heilkunde und Ernährung". Pharmazie in unserer Zeit (in German)].

The plant spreads quickly by seed and also by rhizomes, and is often able to survive and re-establish quickly after fire or other disturbances. They are the exclusive larval food plant for several species of butterflies.

While this plant often gets a bad rap it proves itself to be highly tasty, nutritious, and functional - it is highly overlooked and underrated. When people talk about the "problem" of having to much nettle, the solution is simple, make pesto and share! 

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A food forest is pretty much what it sounds like, a forest of food. Sounds pretty great right. Who wouldn't want a forest of food??

A food forest consists of big trees, medium and small trees, shrubs, vines, herbaceous and ground covering plants. All the different sizes are planted in a way to produce food on multiple vertical levels, all within a single regenerative system whose goal is to take care of itself, with minimal work and outside inputs. The idea is to mimic a healthy old growth forest like we find in nature.

The image above gives you an idea of what the plants look like in a food forest system. One of the big goals is high diversity. This means planting as many species as possible in each size category. Each species has multiple functions. One tree species might provide shade, mulch, fruit and nitrogen for other plants. The more functions a species has, the more it is doing to be regenerative, and the less work you are doing! Regenerative means taking care of itself, like being self sustaining.

If we look at an old growth forest we can see a healthy regenerative system with plants of all different sizes. Mother nature is taking care of the system.  Nobody is watering, pruning, weeding, fertilizing or planting, yet it keeps growning and growing! 

Now lets imagine a traditional orchard or vegetable garden like we see below.

This vegetable garden is growing food on mostly one vertical layer, from just above the soil to about 2 feet above. Most of these plants are the same size. As vegetables are harvested from the garden we need to replace the nutrients that were carried away in the food, like nitrogen. Many people add synthetic fertilizers to accomplish this which can hurt the plants and soil in the long run. However, the easiest and healthiest way is to use high-quality compost. This garden also has bare soil so we are loosing water to evaporation and killing the healthy biology in the soil. Plus you have to replant everything each year! Now I'm not saying annual vegetables gardens like this are bad, but with a food forest you can grow more food with way less work.

Most of the plants we find in a food forest are perennial, meaning they keep growing year after year. This is great because unlike most vegetables you don't have to plant them year after year. Perennial plants, which include some vegetables, also grow much deeper roots enabling them to find far more water and nutrients deeper in the soil. This, in turn, means you don't have to provide them with as much water or nutrients.

In these pictures you can see there is so much growing on so many levels it is difficult to tell what's what! This is a very efficient use of space compared to the traditional orchard or garden bed we described earlier. 

By selecting just the right species for the right location you can mimic the old growth forest. For example, planting trees that produce dappled shade, a mix of shade and sun, allow other plants to grow underneath the tree's canopy. The light shading helps to reduce evaporation which can provide a lot of extra water for the system.

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In this series we highlight various plants we find to regeneratively suit dryland ecosystems. Our experience is based on plantings at our permaculture education and demonstration site in Ramona, CA. We are a Mediterranean climate, Zone 9, with approximate annual rainfall of 16 inches. Soil at the site is variable. Habitat is primarily chaparral with some grassland and oak woodland. 

The pomegranate is native from Iran to the Himalayas in northern India and was grown in the Mediterranean region since ancient times. It is widely cultivated in India and the drier parts of southeast Asia, Malaya, the East Indies and tropical Africa. The plant was introduced into California by Spanish settlers in 1769. In this country it is grown for its fruits mostly in the drier parts of California and Arizona.

The pomegranate is a neat, rounded shrub or small tree that can grow 20 or 30 ft., but more often 12 to 16 ft. tall. There are also dwarf varieties. It is usually deciduous, but in certain areas the leaves will stay on the tree. Pomegranates are long-lived with specimens in Europe that are known to be over 200 years of age! They can be pruned into trees but will try to grow more like bushes by sending out lots of suckers from the base.

There are over 500 named pomegranate cultivars!

Pomegranates provide healthy doses of vitamin C, vitamin K and folate. The seeds are a rich source of dietary fiber and micronutrients. They can eaten or used in dishes fresh and raw, straight out of the peel and white pulp membrane, or turned into juice, wine, liqueur, sauce, marinade, jam, spices, cooked into an infinite variety of dishes or dried.

This easy to grow plant is relatively fast growing, extremely hardy and drought tolerant needing no supplemental water after establishment at our site. We have planted them in a range of soils and found them to grow well even in extremely hard and heavy clay soil that does not drain well.

To date we have planted the wonderful, parfiaka, kashmir bland, ambrosia, eversweet and evergreen cultivars. They all seem to be doing well. Most are less than 2 years old and have not produced much fruit so it is too soon to say which are producing best. We will give you an update in a year. Some are planted in the food forest and some just out on their own. The ones in the food forest are growing faster but I think that is because of the healthier soil in the food forest.

When thoughtfully placed using permaculture (click to learn more about permaculture and ecological design), pomegranates make a wonderful addition to any food forest or ecosystem. They are so easy to grow, beautiful, provide versatile, tasty and healthy food, shade, organic matter from falling leaves and roots and are easy to chop and drop to build healthy soil. They are also super easy to propagate or can be purchased for pretty cheap in small sizes. A simple to use fruit press can easily get the juice out of pomegranates in case you are not a fan of removing the seeds!

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Prickly pear cactus and it's fruit have been an important food for indigenous people of the Americas for eons. The cactus pads can be eaten, and used as medicine, while the fruit, often called an apple, is a sweet and juicy treat.

Prickly pear cactus (Genus Opuntia) has literally an infinite number of species as this Genus easily and often hybridizes. Originally native to the Americas, like most true cactus species, prickly pear is now found all over the globe. In Mexico, prickly pears are often used to make appetizers, soups, and salads through entrees, vegetable dishes, and breads to desserts, beverages, candy, jelly, or drinks.

What's so cool about the prickly pear cactus is that it can provide a ton of food with zero supplemental water in a dryland ecosystem. Take a look at the photo above, this prickly pear cactus (unknown species) has been growing at our permaculture education and demonstration site in Ramona, CA for decades. It never gets a drop of supplemental water and we only get an approximate average of 15 inches of rain a year - yet every year it has tons of fruit! Check out how much fruit there is on a single pad below!

Picking the fruit from the plant should not be taken lightly. It is not hard but each pad and fruit has tons of little spines called glochids. They are small hairlike prickles that easily penetrate the skin and detach from the plant. That means good gloves and protective clothing are in order. Keep in mind that no matter how much protection you don, spines somehow always get stuck in you so have a good pair of tweezers or a  pain tolerance ready. The spines don't hurt much but are so small and numerous that they can be difficult to get out of your skin and clothing.

You know the fruit is ripe when it easily detaches from the pad with a push or pull. Pick as many apples as you can, leaving some on the plant for other animals. Set your bounty in a bucket or something sturdy as they get heavy.

To process the fruit find a nice flat cutting surface that you don't mind getting stained from the beautiful juices of the apple. Some people burn off the spines or brush them off, but I find it far faster to just fillet off the skin, vastly reducing the chance of getting any spines in your food. The skin is great for composting.

Start by setting the fruit on the flat rim of one side so it stands on end and the part that separated from the pad is pointing up. Then fillet downward in sections around the apple as thinly as possible while still getting all the spines. Slice down until you are almost at the bottom, just before you hit the skin, then stop (like the photo below). Then you can either slice across the bottom horizontally or grab the slippery flesh and twist off of the skin. The best method kinda depends on the species.

Now you get to choose what to do with your yummy bounty. If this is your first time eating prickly pear apples just take a big bite as is and enjoy! The flavors can vary a lot between plants and species but hopefully they are juicy and super sweet. There are seeds in the fruit but I just try to chew them some and swallow.

As we said before, this fruit can be used for so many things but one of my favorite is just plain or in smoothies. You can make juice, wine, sorbet, syrup, or add them to just about any dish. Be creative and enjoy this amazing permaculture fruit!

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See our permaculture education and demonstration site where we are building a regenerative homestead in a Mediterranean climate in eastern San Diego County. Here is an update on some amazing new plants we put in the food forest and also look at how plants from last year are doing.

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For years I have occasionally drove past an area in Poway, CA on Ted Williams Parkway and noticed an orchard-like planting of about 100 citrus trees that sits within the road's right-of-way. I often think about how our local government could be planting drought-tolerant fruit bearing trees instead of the non-fruit-bearing trees they almost always plant. We could be getting food for free!

Seeing this public orchard makes me very excited every time I go by, but it's placed in a location where there is nowhere to pull over - how are you supposed to get to the fruit? Finally this past month I visited the site by parking in a nearby street and walking over.

As I neared the trees I noticed the first fruits were grapefruit - a fruit I tend to avoid. I walked further to find other varieties but to my surprise I found that every single tree was a grapefruit! They only planted one kind of citrus - and the worst kind in my opinion!

Not only that but the hill was so steep we could barely walk on it. How were they expecting people to harvest this fruit?

Many of the trees were dying, especially the ones on the south facing hill and trees that were high on the slope were there is less plant-available soil moisture (all the water moves down the hill). You can see in the above picture that they installed culverts to specifically move water away from the orchard area!

In San Diego County's Mediterranean climate these water intensive plants need supplemental irrigation. Building healthy soil and harvesting rainwater in the soil reduces the amount of supplemental irrigation significantly, but citrus likes a lot of water.

Check out our blog about plants appropriate for Mediterranean climates which we planted at our permaculture education and demonstration site in Ramona, CA (San Diego County).

Next to the orchard we found a variety of edible and useful plants including:
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)
CA Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum)
White Sage (Salvia apiana)
Artichoke (unknown spp.)
Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)

Growing edible and useful plants in public spaces is a no-brainer! Why have plants that you can't use when you can have pants that you can??? What's important is to plant the right plants in the right places. Plants that use a lot of water should not be in places that don't have a lot of water. Plants that require harvesting should not be on extremely steep slopes, etc.

These simple design parameters found in permaculture and ecological design allow us to build regenerative systems that take care of themselves, saving you time and money while also getting yummy and healthy food AND creating healthy ecosystems for a healthy planet!

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