Proposal for Open Source Permaculture Software

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(Transwikified from Open Ecology)

I would like to see a piece of open-source software that helps with permaculture design. It would be an expert system doing the work of a permaculture designer, for free.

Maybe something like this already exists and I don't know about it. If you know of such software, please add a link to this page.

A fairly simple, but very helpful, algorithm would go something like this:

  1. You input things you want to grow. This could be specific plants (e.g. 'Little Gem lettuce'), or broad categories (e.g. hard timber, grains)
  2. You input climate information. Or better yet, you input your location and the software finds climate information online.
  3. The software accesses a database of organisms (possibly derived from Plants For A Future). It knows the inputs and outputs of each organism and matches them up; where one element can work in synergy with another, it points that out to the user and suggests they be planted near each other. (e.g. Fruit trees need rotting matter, strawberries produce that when they die, so plant your strawberries near your fruit trees.) Where none of the elements you listed cover the needs (e.g. you want fish, but have no food source for them), it suggests an element that could fill the need and is appropriate to your climate.
  4. It should also be able to access a database of pests and weeds and suggest ways of dealing with them. (e.g. If you grow cabbages, it would suggest chickens to eat the slugs. If you grow vegetables, it would suggest spearmint to repel insects.) There are databases online that could be mined for this information, like Biorationals.