Béla Baji: Permaculture and self-sufficient organic farming book Volume I

Preface and table of contents of Volume I (unchanged reprint):

Foreword:

We had an orchard at our family home in Göd. As a university student, I took over the care of the orchard from my parents, and I sprayed, pruned and fertilized the trees according to the order and method we had learned at the Horticultural University. They grew well, but if I missed even one of the bi-weekly sprays, the trees were infested with pests and pathogens. This was exam season, and the pear trees were full of pear leaf blight, sticky from the honeydew released by the caterpillars.

A few years later, in 1981, Alwin Seifert's book "Gardening without poisons" was published in Hungary. What I read in this book seemed incredible to a horticultural engineer. Won't fruit trees be ruined if we don't spray them with fungicides and insecticides? This contradicted everything I had studied and experienced so far. Yet I decided to try.

For the first two years I switched to Alwin Seifert's composting method and abandoned fertilizer. I reduced the chemical spraying to 4-5 per year. Surprisingly, pear leafrollers did not proliferate and several other pests (peach moth, pear wilt, fruit flies) were not a serious problem.

In the second year, I abandoned chemical spraying and used instead the herbal juices and teas recommended in "organic" recipes as sprays. The above listed diseases and pests generally did not continue to cause serious problems, but some did appear. Thus aphids, Blumeriella on peach trees, Blumeriella on cherries. I had to leave the garden because of a job change.

In 1986 I read a book on permaculture by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Its main message is that if man continues to exploit the Earth's reserves at this rate, he will destroy the living world and himself. The solution is to make the ecological processes in nature as fully understood as possible.as fully as possible in the places where humans live and produce their needs. It stresses the importance of drastically reducing consumption and of obtaining energy from nature 'at home'.

Some of his suggestions seemed as unfeasible as gardening without poisons, but the methods he recommends areI was so taken by the naturalness, wit and beauty of the suggestions that I thought if half of it was feasible, it was worth a try.

After twenty-four years I say: Not just half, but more.
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Table of contents:

Recommended reading - How to read this book
Foreword
Foreword to the expanded and revised second edition
I. What is permaculture?
II. microclimatic influences
III. permaculture what-how?
IV. permaculture practices
V. permaculture and organic gardening