Rebecca Norman wrote:aminopyralid class of herbicides.
Hi Rebecca, thanks for the heads up regarding herbicides! What would you suggest should I ask to find that out? I am afraid people won't have an idea ...
I am planning to age the chips, or sort of pre-compost them for a couple of months together with horse manure. But according to the impressive mulch thread, not even that is necessary right?
I can get two types of chopped up wood comercially and use it for mulch: pine (wood only, no bark, no needles), and a local chilean oak (wood and bark).
Which one should I choose?
Target: plant a food forest in a mediterranean climate (chile) whith less than 100mm of rain in recent years. Poor soil, mainly a weathering granite, when lucky I have 5cms of topsoil.
Thinking about my unfertile patch of land in a mediterranean climate (which by the way within decades will be desert due to climate change forecasts), I was wondering about the following combination of methods:
Dig some pits, around 1x1m, 1m deep
Put watered tree logs in the bottom
Fill the pits with organic matter, compost, horse manure etc
Put a mulch layer on top
Put drip irrigation into the pit
Plant fruit trees around the pit, and repeat the above process yearly as the material decays and loses volume.
Am I right that this would greatly reduce the amount of irrigation water used, and it would give my trees a good source of nutrients?
Am I right that the trees in need of nutrients, would get them from the pits, and the ones happy with poor soil, would stay with their roots on the poor soil?
At what distance would I plant the trees?
How many trees can one such pit feed?
Devin Lavign wrote:Please do not get land next to a gold operation.
Yes they use cyanide and other very toxic chemicals in the processing of it. It never stays contained and always gets into the ground water. Longer they have been at the site worse off the contamination will be. With those water basins, please find another option.
With all due respect, there is no way to get to a conclusion like this from the scarce information of the original post. Yes some mines are using cyanide and sulphuric acid for gold recovery, others are using harmless gravity circuits that don't use any chemicals at all. Since the operation is close to a river bed, I would suggest the latter (placer mining). If it even is a mine - there is no information on this, and sure there is no way to tell from a low resolution satellite image.
Some mining operations are environmentally safe, others are not. Some mines grow eatable fish in their wastewater ponds.
@Aery Rivers: I would suggest you get a local geologist to look at your plot of land. A geologist can tell you about the soil quality, presence of surface water and ground water, and probably explain many environmental concerns.
Hi Kai
I am afraid I don't understand what Ollas are. (The original meaning in spanish is clear, but I guess you don't advise to bury a fry pan in my garden)
cheers
I am looking at planting trees (seedlings, 20 to 30cm tall) on my land, in a mediterranean climate, with only weekend access and no infrastructure close by.
Looking at water management, I reckon the best method is to bury watered logs in buried beds, put mulch in there and then plant the trees. The watered logs should provide water to the young trees for far more than one week.
Now the question: If I water tree trunks, for how long do I have to water them in order to saturate them? Days, weeks, months?
And what's the best method, in an old bath tub, in a creek, other ideas?
Hi Permies
I am planning a house in a mediterranean climate and want to use the grey water for irrigation.
So say I use "biodegradable" dishwasher, shampoo, soap, detergent etc - can I put the grey water directly onto plants?
What means "biodegradable" anyways, what timeframe does it imply? And does it mean it's harmless, or will it be harmless only when degraded?
Cheers in advance!
Hi James
I am pretending to do something similar in a similar climate in Chile ...
How were your experiences in the past months?
Did you water the wood in the beds before burying it?
Did you put any manure in?
Have you tried planting trees in These beds?
Say you want to start a permaculture project, and you want to do it right from the beginning - where would you find specific advice, as to:
How large need your swales to be?
How much horse manure do your plants need / tolerate?
Is your readily available wood ok for hugel beds?
Where and how to plant trees?
What plant associations make sense in your climate zone?
Alder Burns wrote: Beware that moving plants from one of these zones to another may result in their becoming "invasives"....
... Observe what's growing around you in the region and what other folks are planting....
.... For trees things like olive, fig, pomegranate come first to mind. Unless you have excellent irrigation, plan to grow most of your gardens in the rainy cool season. Mulch and manure of all sorts is the solution to hard clay soil....better incorporated or buried than left on the surface, in my experience....in part this is motivated by fire danger....which is also common in these climates.
Hi Alder, great reply! Introducing plants to Chile is not only questionable, but under local law downright illegal. I would get picked out at the x-ray machine at the airport and heavily fined for anything brought into the country
Watching locals might help, but considering the extreme escepticism locals have to anything ancient, I reconed it would be better to start from scratch.
I was thinking about planting trees in winter, and doing mulch, plant them in ditches etc- looks like it makes sense cheers!
We have bought 5000 m2 in central Chile, in an eco condo close to a national park. Condo regulations allow a maximum impact of 20% of my land, and they give me 50 tree seedlings to plant on the resting 4000 m2.
The land is full of Espinos (vacchellia caven). Rainfall would be around 200 to 400 mm/y and only from may to october. Winter temp around 5, summer temp around 35 degC. 300 days of sunshine a year. The soil is bone dry and stone hard. We have access to horse poo and maybe dead plant material from the neighbours.
I am looking to put a weekend home on my land and will be there every 7 to 15 days. Any advice would be appreciated as to:
Which local tree or shrub species to grow
How to grow them (mulch?)
Where and how to plant fruit trees
How to increase biodiversity, attract reptiles, birds, insects...
right?