Suzie Park

Thanks for your comments and links - I had missed that permies thread in my searches. Doesn't look like most permies stress about pigweed too much and believe, as I do, that they are there for a reason and to help the soil. I'll try the young leaves soon - I do have a few seedlings popping up again after our heavy recent rains. The gift that keeps on giving indeed!

I got an offer by someone in my GSD - Get stuff done - group to rent her pigs to me and I know she's very health conscious and doesn't do yuck stuff. Of course, before I entertain her pigs I need to figure out how to take care of them, transport, and set up systems for them - haha. At least this is a really nice option that I may or may not exercise.

I have large bags of buckwheat seeds plus the warm season cover crop mix contains Sorghum. I will definitely be seeding in the fall another soil building cover crop blend. And in the spring seeding again. Anybody know if I have to do compost again? That was a huge expense.

A local tree service can provide me with more wood chips. If we have a typical dry summer (after our tremendous amounts of July 4-8 rains - we got about 16"), I could wait till the amaranth on the remaining berms just die down. Do the silage tarp on an area or two as an experiment.

We also have access to free spent mushroom blocks which will be great once the weather is cooler.

I am thankful that the overgrazed pasture between berms is still pretty static, so I don't have to plant there for now. Though I'm interested in the basalt dust that is recommended by the Symbiosis TX permaculture aficionados.

Anyway, thank you for the info, Anne! I am feeling better already!

Mid June 2024 professionally installed swales and berms in Burnet, TX - approx 1100 linear feet, on previously overgrazed dead pasture. Berm soil was calcium-rich (from limestone) in quickly-draining clay/rock/dirt. The rest of that pasture is crusted over. The berm portion measured along the curve is 15 feet deep.

Summer soil builder cover crop from greencover.com sown under dairy cow compost on 2/3 of the berms - I'll call those A berms. We ran out of compost. B berms (those without compost) were seeded but nothing grew.

Cover crop on A berms took off for about 1.5 months as did corn from the seed bank, then we had 7 months of only 3" total of rain - atypical. I let the plants just keel over in the lack of rain and I don't think anything reseeded.

Late spring 2025 when rains started coming back, I put out the same cover crop on B berms - with compost on top. Sprinkled a small amount on the other berms which had lots of dead plants shielding the soil.

Cover crops on B berms started taking off. On A berms, new plants that I had not planted started coming up. When they got bigger, turns out they were mostly Palmer amaranth/pigweed and some other types of pigweed, and they quickly took over almost everything except a welcome smattering of sunflowers which were part of the cover crop mix but came up for the first time this year, and local weeds and wildflowers which I don't mind.

On one set of A berms, the pigweed is on its way out, so super seeding time. Not great.

One small set of B berms still had flowering and maturing pigweed, and I decided to pull the small to medium-sized plants with roots attached and cut the large ones at the base on 100 linear feet. The roots looked great, and the soil looked much browner than it had been. So I thanked the pigweed for its service.

I just ordered a farmers friend silage tarp which will cover 200-feet worth of berm at a time. I was planning on laying it out black side up to have the pigweed germinate, then get smothered, without killing the soil. Of course, I can't really do the weed torch method by only leaving them covered for 1-2 weeks, like a YouTube comment said Curtis Stone did, because I dropped pigweed in place to feed the soil. I don't have enough summer left to get 6 weeks for each 200 feet, though I have no problem leaving a tarp on during winter for the last run. Also, I don't mind focusing on a section each season and nipping those seedlings in the bud in the spring manually.

Since we are not at this property more than once or twice a week for a few days total, we can't really figure out a way to get pigs on, which would be a nice, multi-purpose solution.

Anybody have any ideas on managing these berms? I want them primarily for trees (fruit, timber, shade) and shrubs in the coming years. I am patient and will wait till succession happens and all of that.

Thank you!

Strict amateur in the growing arena, but I'd stick damp (pre-soaked) logs and sticks with filler for the biggest gaps - leaves, etc. preferably still green - in the bottom under your lovely soil mix. Your plants will  get to benefit from the breakdown of that stuff within about a year, depending on weather/temp. Note your soil level will go down eventually, but I imagine you're mostly growing annuals so you add more compost on top to re-raise the level next time and replant.

Very cool build btw!

I can finally chime in.

Last weekend, hubs took our 2400-pound mini-excavator with an 8" toothed bucket to see what he could do with the little mesquites resurfacing on our 10 acres in Burnet, TX. I was pretty sure this place had been bush-hogged before, and I'm more sure now. These "little" mesquites 2-4 feet tall up to 3/4" in diameter shoots/trunks all had a big knot a few inches below the soil's surface (fist-sized) and a long root 1-2" thick that stretched horizontally -  very interesting finding that. So these were not saplings at all. Luckily, we have only a couple hundred of them I think, and they seem to grow back from roots slowly. Hubs had us cut the knot off and cut that horizontal root and he thinks that will do the trick. We'll see.

We have many small trees that have just a few trunks so we'll keep those to turn into decent mature trees - maybe 5-10 of those.

There are maybe 30 medium sized super bushy, wispy 5-8-foot tall mesquites. which means in the past they've been knocked to the ground - they have 20-30 trunks  - am not quite sure what we'll do with those but here's an option that is interesting :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2uQpPgFj9U  - November burn experiment, near Fredericksburg, TX
Spring update - none regrew by spring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F2GNLm1Ix8

With a HUGE number of mesquites to get rid of, I think I would bush hog them just to get a handle on them, then either over time burn the stumps, or dig deeper and cut the roots.

For sure, the next greenhouse I build will feature a cliff as the north wall.   I'm planning to build it to spec for Badge Bit credit.  In central Texas, I  believe such a design will ensure passive effects to keep my stuff above freezing.   I also plan to install some sort of wood heating, because when you go to the trouble of building a greenhouse, it also pays to build something that is nice to work in all winter ...multi-use building is the way to go.

Nice. Hubs and I looked at that big pile of rocks again and were like - hmm. That's a pretty big pile of rocks. And many rocks may be difficult to move with the mini-ex. We'll see. Pacing myself, still want to get the mulch we have in the swales to help prevent evaporation. We also got good rain in the last month, so my berms and swales are doing pretty great, although nature's individual species are establishing their own monocultures in different places around. I have volunteer wild amaranth which the bees love but I will want to prevent from going to seed. The volunteer poppies were a welcome addition I haven't seen here before.

Thanks for the additional photos - so neato! Haha re: pecan. Maybe you can crest that driveway in the future, or just dig short ditches on the sides with little brush/rock dams. Or at the upslope, dig some diversion swales filled with rocks where you drive over it.

Anne Miller wrote:You are not the first person to ask this question:
https://permies.com/t/164081/Honeybee-biochar

Excellent thread. Beekeepers here. Our pond is almost dry and we set out a trough in shade for the bees with long branches sticking out of the water and sliced corks for them to drink from. Haven't noticed them going there yet - I hope they're not drinking from neighbors' livestock water. We put some dirt and leaves in there. We had been told about salt but didn't know how much. I will add some Celtic sea salt today, maybe a touch of Himalayan, and see if they like it then. Thanks, everyone for the education/entertainment today

We are used to amazing wildflowers here in Central Texas even without much rain, but this year it's been a very late start and many plants did not flower at all, which means some of our beehives are not thriving as they usually do by this time. Our best hives still have plenty left from fall.

Our pond that we have seen get up to 1/4 acre in size will be dry within a week. We are taking this time to get it dredged, re-compacted, and if possible made deeper and narrower to reduce evaporation (the heavy equipment guys will see how deep the bedrock is there which is the limiting factor). The lush growth that surrounds the dryness growing on years-worth of silt - some will remain and some we will use to enrich our gardens higher up. Also, there are is one very interesting plant growing there in the drained but still moist area called Lady's Thumb - it is edible and produces great flowers - so another positive about this experience.

The great thing about permaculture is having redundancy so that sometimes your favorite plants that need more "fill in the blank" won't do well or won't make it, but other things will.

Another thing for us is the dry times sometimes balance out the plants that grow a bit out of control and give us time to reassess and decide what to plant, enhance, or redo.

That thread "How to get water..." is wonderful, thanks for posting that!

Abraham, wonderful list you provided!

Hang in there! The rain will come and you'll be better prepared to hold onto it!

Thanks for the photo journal!

Nice work! I didn't know that covering plants in a greenhouse was helpful. Good to know.

I've wondered about earth-sheltered greenhouses in our climate - I can't find anyone who grows successfully like that. Or maybe they don't think it's worth the expense/hassle since we have so many growing months.

I'm also wondering about using rocks as a thermal battery for winter protection without a greenhouse - there's a development nearby that has HUGE excavated rocks I wonder if I can get. We have a mini-ex to move them around. I'm trying to see how much Sepp Holzer-style microclimate stuff I can do just to bump little parts of my zone 8a place to 9. I think perhaps I could do a slightly curved south-facing rock wall with passion vines on trellises covering it during our hot summers so my citrus and banana, etc. won't get scorched, then in winter, cut the vines down. Hmm. Timing would be interesting. Would the vines grow tall/thick enough before the sun gets too hot? I'm very excited to try this experiment. Even without those huge rocks, I could get enough rocks from our own place for an experiment, esp. if I dig to make some Holzer-style crater gardens.

Gorgeous piece of land, reminds me of Sepp Holzer's, a lot of things going for it. Congrats on getting started! So much stuff will grow there. Re: fire mitigation - I think that's just going to take time, and there's a trade-off. But your initial plan (garden, pond) sounds good. A pond above your home site could also be useful, maybe with the spillway meandering and eventually feeding your lower pond. For me, I am trying to keep my earth covered, so that means during dry spells my cover is dry and tallish and not great if a fire happens. So some praying is involved Enjoy your amazing journey.

Thanks for the update!

That water flowing over the rocks is so beautiful! The addition of little ponds along the way sounds also beautiful! My permaculture earthworks guy said it wasn't worth doing more ponds on our property except maybe a little one for fun near the house. I would love ponds feeding into each other but I will be content with my rather large run-off pond and the berms/swales he put in.