Cameron Dalton

Steve Farmer wrote:Here are my 5 main desert support species:

Gliricidia Sepium
Moringa Oliefera
Leucaena Leucocephala
Mesquite
Acacia

The above are nitrogen fixers.

I am also putting in delonix regia and hybrid poplars as wind breaks
prickly pear and aloe vera are going in to provide fencing & more ground cover without needing irrigation
I'm just starting to try blackberries out as a ground cover/mulch. Not sure if they will get eaten, the lizards and rabbits here are pretty tough and desperate for anything green

Not a support species, but am putting in figs. As well as providing fruit, they hold the world record for having the deepest roots, so I'm expecting them to be beneficial, so maybe should be classed under "support"?

Moringa does not fix nitrogen but is a good choice for other reasons.

Just a quick update, The seasonal rains have come through in the past month which did wonders for the seeds we planted on our swale. Our berm looks nice and stabilized. Also, I forgot to post pics of our greywater system. The bananas are loving it and the papayas are growing nicely too.

I would do the design yourself. My PDC cost around USD 1500 with Warren Brush. It was great but honestly if you just go full bore on your on research on permaculture and have the land to test out the things you learn. You will learn a lot more then you would at a PDC. A PDC just skims the surface and is pretty limited on details for individual systems. Honestly if you read Gaias garden by Toby Hemmingway and watch geoff lawton videos you will have a good foundation to start doing small projects for you to start learning from. I was disappointed by how quickly my PDC went and how varied the topics were in the same day. In one day they will pack in all the info you will learn about swales, food forest, composting and bee keeping. It was kinda funny actually. There was a good size food forest at the site but because we talked so little about them, only about 2 hours, almost the entire class didn't know that the massive group of closely packed trees and shrubs was a food forest.... Also we talked soon much about how important compost and composting is but we never learned how to make compost....

I would personally not pay for a PDC after my experience. What i would recommend is trying to volunteer at a permaculture learning site and live there for a few months. That way you get the hands on experience that you will not get at a PDC. Hands on experience is the best way to learn. I guess my answer to is is I would not take a PDC, I would read books/info online and I would slowly do the design myself while learning along the way.

Cheers

I have been doing experiments with different shapes of compost piles. In geoff lawton's online PDC he suggests a gravity fall pile that ends up in a pyramid shape. Some long time biodynamic gardeners always do the trapezoid shape. I would love to hear opinions on this.

Sweet pea will fix nitrogen but make sure you inoculate it with nitrogen fixing bacteria.

You are right my bad!

Has anybody tried these and documented their results? I have tried using it but not with a control to compare against.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10978548

It would add some. It will increase the decomposition rate of the wood and keep the wood from absorbing nitrogen that your other plants will need. Or plant some legumes to help.

I wouldn't plant a tree in a hugelkulture because it will eventually collapse and breakdown. I would plant some perennial/annual legumes like pigeon pea or cow peas. Or any other legume.

To help with the nitrogen absorption by the high carbon wood you can layer in some manure for supplemental nitrogen.

It is always exciting having a blank slate property congrats! Water harvesting is a great place to start but I would not jump straight to Swales. They can be costly to build and are also fairly permanent and a lot of work to maintain and fix. I would really recommend on contour platings of leguminous fodder trees. There have been studies that show that on contour plantings can be just as effective as swells with the added benefit of fixing nitrogen and providing biomass for fodder, compost and mulch.