David MacKenzie

Fantastic looking cover! I will have to go back through Fukuoka-san's book, kind of slipped my mind...

Great to hear, Emilie!
Did you use any particular technique to seat the seeds in the mulch?
David

Hi Scott,
What do you think the cause of it not working was?
David

Aloha,
Like Su Ba, I am on the Big Island, near Hilo at 1400'. Mulberries are growing here for us and I am planning to try some of the blueberries here as well. We also have the native raspberry, which is kind of bland in taste but does well, and the ever-to-be-feared Himalayan raspberry, which has some of the wickedest thorns of any plant I have seen.
David,
Hilo

Looking at ways to keep a constant cover of mulch or cover crop on permanent no-till raised beds in the tropics (Hilo, HI). We get 180+ inches of rain a year, pretty evenly distributed (2 rainy seasons each year, both are 6 months long...), 1400' elevation, average daily temperature is 72 degrees.

Have 68 beds of 125 sf each, that will be run through a rotation cycle, at the end of which they will go to cover crop. All beds are mulched heavily. Because of nutrient leaching, I want to keep a mulch or cover crop on the beds at all times. Being the tropics, nutrient cycling is pretty dang fast and mulch disappears in a hurry, so it requires more that just a chop and drop of a cover crop to keep things covered. I am moving towards supplementing the cover crop mulch (flail mowed) with transported mulch of white clover grown in dedicated areas in my pasture, see if that helps. Right now, am buying in green waste mulch from the city recycling center, costs $ and never really know what I am getting...

Enough intro, The Question:
Wondered if anyone has any experience with broadcasting cover crop directly over mulch, then "settling" it in with a roller or fluffing it up with a rake to get it to work deeper into the mulch, thereby eliminating raking back mulch to broadcast the CC seed. Since we get so much rain, moisture is probably not a problem in germination. When I have applied straw mulch, there has been a real bloom of the grain that bursts out of the straw, so I'm figuring to let that work for me and avoid the hassle of clearing the mulch, or using some sort of tilling.


Any thoughts/observations/guffaws appreciated...
David in Hilo

Aloha Elizabeth,
Depending on how long you will be here, I could help you get to know the scene here on BI. I am on the Mainland from 2/14-3/2. If you're not going to be here that long, and want to visit the farm, let me know and my wife can show you around.
Aloha, David

P.S. Would like to know where are you are working on Maui, always trying to find folks doing the work here in Paradise...

Aloha Ava,
Yes the Farm Center is a very intriguing place. They are up on the windiest point on the Big Island (constant 30-40 mph winds are the norm...) and Neil and Sophia have made a windswept grassy hillside into a paradise. Well worth visiting and learning, many very useful adaptations of permaculture concepts to windy environments, plus very good use of "found" species in soil building, forage, etc. I visited them as part of an agroforestry workshop a few months ago. Beautiful view of the ʻAlenuihāhā Channel between Hawai'i and Maui (of the windiest passage in the islands). I recommend it highly. If you get down Hilo way, give me a shout out and come by the farm. We are no where near as far along as they are, but its getting there...
David

I also wanted to share with you a reforestation project called Farm Center (http://farmcenter.org/) on the mainland-- I met the co-founder's brother the other day and it seems like a place worth visiting.

Hey Paul,
If you folks are coming to the Big Island, let me know. We have a 20-acre site that is being nursed into a permaculture farm. Old sugar can land being morphed into tree-ness. Would love to have folks come by, and participate in whatever strange and wonderful activities you folks think up.
David in Hilo

Thanks for the quick response Deborah. A further thought, since I am planning on a mob-grazing approach using polymer enclosures on small plots, with daily moves, is there value in "bonding" the goats to the cows, to cut down on wandering, if that works? That way the goats and cows would then be mixed. And to clarify, we have basically grass over that parcel. I will be dividing it with treed swales, and plan to add some forage species to supplement the paddocks, but the goats would be primarily on grass.

Hi Deborah,
I am considering working goats into a rotation with cattle and chickens on the Big Island of Hawaii. We are very small scale, with about 3.5 acres to rotate through, but the recovery time is pretty dang quick here. Only looking to work 3-4 dairy cows and laying chickens...question is how many goats would with that type of rotation (cow/goat/chicken)?

Also, would like to know best sources for dealing with health issues in the humid tropics.

Thanks for sharing your expertise here.
David