Why build compost piles?

[gixxerific]

If permaculture is about no rules than why are there so many rules?

[rainbowgardener]

rainbowgardener,
to start off, terminology can be enemy to all, causing mass misunderstanding -- (Comments from RBG in red)agreed! And in comments below, I am not disagreeing or arguing, just trying to understand better. I am actually a big believer in permaculture, if not much of a practitioner yet. Hard to do on a long narrow hilly city lot with a lot of built in structure and limitations

I may be wrong, but the very first sentence is the only one I agree with("...benefits...without..pile")

The rest is pretty much the exact opposite of my perspective;

It should involve a THICK layer of alternating materials in their whole forms.
The materials SHOULD NOT be tilled in. So you are laying down a thick layer of materials including kitchen scraps in their whole forms and not tilling it in. Why do you not have rats as well as possums, raccoons, and who knows what else coming and eating it? How is it not nasty to have your ground covered in garbage? I know what the inside of my compost pile looks like while the stuff is still being worked. What about all the cockroaches and other detritovores?

(perhaps a tiller should not be owned, for permaculture rejects petro) Definitely agree with this!

The growth of a truly successful garden/farm/megaguild is not [apparently] affected by any amount of compostables it's stewart(s) can throw(literally) at it. I don't quite understand this. Why would you bother composting if it didn't affect the growth of the garden? Well I know why, because you still want to get rid of the stuff with out trucking it to landfill. But still isn't part of the point of composting that it enriches your soil, therefore affecting the growth of the garden. Maybe you meant it isn't negatively affected by having all this stuff all over it? Sorry, I just didn't quite follow.

Stuff is never kept anywhere, it is put where it's going and stays there.

Wherever I am going to plant, I place whatever is available to me in layers and let old man time do the rest. This part sounds good, except that on my small city lot, if I weren't planning ahead and piling things up sometimes there wouldn't BE anything much available to me, except the most recent bunch of kitchen scraps. I think some of this is what I would aspire to if I could live the way I want to. But permaculture is based on having a more complete plant and animal community. By zoning/ ordinance, I'm not allowed to keep chickens, ducks, or pretty much any animals except companion animals and the wild ones that are here already like the possums and raccoons.

Sometimes I think of the entire garden as one huge compost pile.

NOW... for a big twist... Is gardening itself a paradox to permaculture?
It sound like a lot of work on our part; compost piles, tilling, weeding, digging, moving dirt... Well, on my journey towards permaculture, I'm into no-work gardening, as much as I can. I do compost piles, I don't do tilling, I do year around mulching (perhaps not that different from the sheet composting, but more mono-ingredient, and not spreading garbage all over my garden until the garbage has been broken down) so I do minimal weeding....

Gardening is a verb that I am compelled to, in my life, replace with 'foraging'.... In a food forest. Of course, to build a lush food forest(especially in a timely manner) requires an immense amount of exertion only feasible if the youth are willing(just ask me, I'm building one right now.)

The Designer did not intend for humans to exist in a setting where this is not possible. That may well be true, but many of us, probably most human beings at this point in time are pretty well stuck living in ways that are pretty contrary to what the Designer probably had in mind... Eden was a long time ago. I'm doing the best I can to bring my garden and lifestyle in harmony with the Earth and her ways, but there are lots of limitations on that.

Permaculture is a lifestyle, not a garden bed! Agreed!

Sorry, I have ADD so I hope this made sense Mostly all, quite well done and I really appreciate hearing more/ learning more from the permaculture folks so I can keep figuring out what parts of it I can adapt to my situation.

If you disagree with any of this please let me know...I'm just another naive and prideful human being trying to humble myself and fit in with mother nature's perfect and beautiful pattern

[Toil]

rainbowgardener,
to start off, terminology can be enemy to all, causing mass misunderstanding

glad we are clear on this. because much of what follows in your missive is simply playing around with terminology. Not to mention, you are still stuck believing something like keeping a compost pile precludes living your lifestyle, or sheet composting. It's an a priori statement I don't accept.

The growth of a truly successful garden/farm/megaguild is not [apparently] affected by any amount of compostables it's stewart(s) can throw(literally) at it.

I believe this makes no sense. Unless you are assuming we cannot bring organic matter from the outside? Truly "healthy" (read: useful to humans) land can handle more nutrients than the same land in an "unhealthy" state. But there is no magic. Add too many cow carcasses, or manure green or brown, get the right weather, and you are poisoning wells all around you.

Stuff is never kept anywhere, it is put where it's going and stays there.

More absolutism, as if a human being is not able to divide her resources.

Wherever I am going to plant, I place whatever is available to me in layers and let old man time do the rest.

Awesome. I do this with lots of stuff. It's organisms, btw, not old man time doing the rest.

Sometimes I think of the entire garden as one huge compost pile.

well ok. Here is an etymology for the word compost from https://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=compost :

compost
late 14c., from M.Fr. composte "mixture of leaves, etc., for fertilizing land," also "condiment," from V.L. *composita, from L. compositus (see composite).

despite what the composting council likes to say in their bid to narrow the definition of this word, "composting" and "composite" have the same root. The mixing together of diverse elements into a whole, in other words, defines compost. So I don't like your idea that your garden one big compost, in any sense other than the broadest and least descriptive.

NOW... for a big twist... Is gardening itself a paradox to permaculture?
It sound like a lot of work on our part; compost piles, tilling, weeding, digging, moving dirt...

give me a definition of gardening not based on "stuff you don't do" and we can discuss this. I don't weed, till, or move dirt. I barely dig. I am a gardener though.

Gardening is a verb that I am compelled to, in my life, replace with 'foraging'.... In a food forest. Of course, to build a lush food forest(especially in a timely manner) requires an immense amount of exertion only feasible if the youth are willing(just ask me, I'm building one right now.)

to me, this is just trying to feel special through semantics. all the great stuff you are doing should be enough. and sorry to say, enough mainstream gardeners have taken enough aspects of permaculture to create their practice that you are no longer all that well segregated in terms of technology, practice, or attitude.

The Designer did not intend for humans to exist in a setting where this is not possible.

truism.

Permaculture is a lifestyle, not a garden bed!

permaculture is a technology for raising food. I'm sure not every permaculture person lives the same lifestyle. If there were enough of you, it would break into different schools and have all the problems any massive movement develops. nothing new under the sun.

Sorry, I have ADD so I hope this made sense

Not a very small club, that one.

If you disagree with any of this please let me know...I'm just another naive and prideful human being trying to humble myself and fit in with mother nature's perfect and beautiful pattern

Done and done. Actually, from what you say, you are just another human trying to alter her environment so it produces something of value to humans. it's great that you seek to do it in non-harmful-to-later-generations-of-humans-or-your-neighbors kinda way. But I don't see a major philosophical distinction between you and the ones you feel are so different.

All one has to do is watch ants to learn that storing, cultivating, clearing, digging, herding, and collecting are perfectly natural behaviors for an animal. Ants always stick to the techniques best adapted to their kind and their setting. They don't worry about whether other ants will see this as "right" for other ants. It's the ability to imagine the world as different, and by extension permaculture, that sets us apart from other animals.

I agree, permaculture appears to be the ideal way to grow food for humans in harmony with the natural order. But I have also notice that humans need to constantly modify their ideas or even start over, or there powers of reasoning and observation become debauched. We like to see things that confirm our beliefs, and avoid seeing things that don't. Unless we try really hard, in which case we can briefly see with open eyes, until the gauze forms once again.

[!potatoes!]

'(perhaps a tiller should not be owned, for permaculture rejects petro)'

the permaculture design course I took went to great lengths to explain what is meant by 'appropriate use of technology'...never was it suggested that using petroleum-derived materials (fuels included) is to be avoided at all cost, only that as it's a dwindling, energy-expensive thing, it shouldn't necessarily be the first option...

permaculture is all about stacking functions, though, so I would like to posit that one reason to make compost piles is the free heat that a good hot pile makes. incorporate pipes into it and heat water, use it to encourage sweet potatoes to slip, etc...