What's up everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening podcast. We are back again with

Dr. Mark Merriweather Vorderbruegan. He's the creator of Forging Texas. He's the author

of Idiot's Guide Foraging, and then he is also a formulation chemist for consumer products like workman's friend

So today we're talking about building a permaculture garden of wild edibles which I'm very much a fan of I'm all about

working more in tune with the natural systems of the ecosystem that's around you and

also I'm a fan of edibles and also I'm a fan of less work, all of which I understand to be some features of the

permaculture garden of wild edibles.

So Dr Mark, how would someone who maybe is very much used to... How would they think about

someone who maybe is very much used to intensive raised bed gardening?

How would they think about starting a permaculture garden?

Great question. Let's talk about what it means to be permaculture. This is basically a portmandu of the word permanent and agriculture.

So if you think agriculture that's

sustains itself. It's based on the principle of looking out your window and you see wild areas.

No one is weeding them, no one is watering them, no one is gardening there.

They're just doing their own thing and they look healthy and great.

And so people started noticing this and say, well, what happens?

Can we create an intact self-sustaining ecosystem using just edible plants.

So they kind of picked apart ecosystems and realize there are seven different layers that you need to incorporate into an ecosystem to take care of, think of each layer as a different organ in a body and you need these different things to to keep the body healthy

So starting you need the tall trees like we talked yesterday about oak trees and pine trees as good

sources of food or vitamin C so you need tall trees then below them you need shorter

trees different understory type things below them you have the short to medium bushes

So bushes that don't get over like two feet tall. You have

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