How to store the Sun's Energy in Your Garden

Did you know that it is possible to capture and store excess energy within your backyard permaculture system? Did you realize that you can sink carbon into the soil in significant amounts to provide optimal growth conditions for your plants and to have a hugely positive environmental impact? Before learning the principles of permaculture, I had not considered that it was possible to do more than maintain an equilibrium. When we think about sustainable living, we are typically referring to offsetting the negative effects that our lives have on the environment. When we practice sustainable gardening, we are usually attempting to produce as much as we consume without adding inputs to the system. This misconception is where the term "regenerative" comes into play. We can start by rejecting the idea that our lives are inherently detrimental to the planet and become empowered with the knowledge that we can set up wildly productive ecosystems within our own yards that provide for us, as well as provide for the local wildlife, and that improve the environment in a measurable way. With regenerative gardening, we can not only offset our consumption, but we can also produce more than we need to build a store of energy right on our property. Read on to learn how to harness this ability and begin to witness abundance at your back doorstep!

Our Open System

In physics, we learn about energy from the perspective of a closed system. If you start with a defined amount of energy and attempt to use it for as long as possible, the system will ultimately fall into a state of entropy where all of the useful energy becomes dissipated into heat. This concept can mislead people into believing that our planet is functioning in the same way. We can get the idea that the Earth is progressing from an organized system with stores of energy, into a chaotic system where all of the energy becomes lost to unusable forms. This is false information as it is based on the closed system principles. Earth is actually an open system with an outside source of energy that is constantly entering it. Day after day, the sun shines down and provides an energy supply for the life that exists here. Over billions of years, the life on Earth is progressing from simple to complex as more and more niches are filled with perfectly evolved species.

An open system is a huge advantage to us and is truly the only reason for life as we know it. The Earth has been capturing the sun's energy since its formation and has been storing this energy in the form of biomass. Think of all the leaves that fall off of the trees each fall and collect on the forest floor. These leaves break down into compost which feeds the life growing in the forest, but in reality, there is more biomass being stored than the forest can even use. Carbon is the main ingredient in this biomass, and it piles up over millions of years. The fossil fuels that we now rely on to burn, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, are the result of this process of storing energy from the sun in the soil of the forest floor. The actual amount of energy that had been stored on this planet is astounding when you think about how much energy has been used in the form of fossil fuels since their discovery. Life on Earth is so effective at not only recycling the available energy but at storing the excess for later use, that we should be very aware of this as we design our gardens and food forests.

Storing Energy in the Soil

When you look at some of the most ultimate examples of ecosystems that have evolved to maximize energy absorption, it becomes obvious how we should attempt to build our own backyard gardens. In the rainforest, layers upon layers of vegetation take advantage of almost every ray of sunlight until it reaches the forest floor where it is shady and cool. This system has developed to maximize efficiency and gain the most energy from the sun as possible. On the contrary, a mono-cropped cornfield with one layer of plant life is just about the most inefficient ecosystem possible. Oftentimes, the soil beneath commercial corn becomes caked and dry as the sun beats down on it with excess energy that gets converted to heat and is otherwise wasted. The cornfield requires additional nutrients to be applied regularly because there are less nutrients available in the soil than the corn requires to grow. This is in stark contrast to the rainforest, which is producing nutrients in excess of what the system requires.

In our own gardens, we can design systems that produce not only their own nutritional requirements, but actually extra that can be used in less efficient garden setups on our properties. We can even grow trees for firewood to heat our homes and to use as lumber for building projects. All of this while simultaneously sinking carbon and saving energy for use at a later time. Follow the steps below to catch and hold as much energy as possible and be amazed as your yield increases and work decreases.

1. Grow perennial plants

In our cornfield example above, there is yet another major issue. Monocrops grow all together only for one season. The seeds germinate at the same time, the plants bloom at the same time, the crop is harvested all at once, and the field goes bare. For half of the year, the fields have little to no vegetation and are therefore producing no measurable biomass. This is hugely wasteful and goes completely against anything nature has designed. Perennial plants play a role in soil health year-round by aiding in soil stability, assisting in water filtration, and by capturing and storing large amounts of the sun's energy. Grow perennials wherever possible and try to mix annuals with perennials for consistent leaf cover.

2. Design gardens with layers

When we mimic nature, we will maximize yield, and this is the goal of most gardeners! We can design food forests with layers of perennial and annual plants that capture sunlight from the top canopy all the way down to ground cover. Plant tall trees such as oak and sugar maple with lower trees beneath such as apples, pears and peaches. Add a layer of shrubs such as currants, goumi berries and blackberries, intersperse vines such as grapes and kiwi berry, and on the ground, plant strawberries, squash and clovers. When we stack layers of plants in this way, we can use all of the sun's energy that hits our property to produce yields of food for us and the wildlife, as well as creating a beautiful habitat for people and animals alike.

3. Mulch using chop and drop

Chop and drop is a technique where you can cut back plants and then use them as mulch around the base of others. Certain plants such as comfrey are very useful for chop and drop because they produce large amounts of biomass and can replenish themselves very quickly. By using the leaves and sticks from your garden as mulch within garden, not only do you allow for a healthy and diverse soil ecosystem, but you are also sinking carbon and storing energy in your soil. Growing dynamic accumulators such as comfrey and horseradish is a great way to boost your production of mulch materials and accelerate this process.

A Gardening Revolution

The time has come for us to ditch the neat clumps of flowers spaced apart with nothing between them, and cover the Earth with lush, abundant, energy capturing ecosystems. Our lawns and traditional flowerbeds have nothing on gardens modeled in the likeness of nature. These regenerative systems ensure an excess of energy that can be tapped into in numerous ways. We can feed ourselves, feed the wildlife, improve the soil for our garden itself, and provide fuel for cooking and heating, just by strategically designing our properties to be living solar arrays. I have heard people tell me how their garden has been used for so long that the soil is no longer good, and they need to either add new soil or move the garden's location. This is never the case with a permaculture landscape! The longer your garden grows, the better the soil will become. Life isn't about using up what resources are available, it is about providing enough resources for yourself, for some of those around you, and for your ancestors. Nature has been doing this all along and we have just forgotten how to learn from her! Don't be afraid to jump right in and get started! There is more than enough energy entering this planet to feed everyone on it. All it is going to take is a gardening revolution!