Anyone else in the Denia Alicante area?

Hey Permies,

I have been a year now in the Marina Baixa (inland from Benidorm), starting a permaculture project. Anyone in the area?

Cheers,

Sebastien

Hi Sebastien

I'm a couple of hundred kilometres north of you in Canet lo Roig a small village in Castellon (just on the border with Catalunia). woud love to know more about your project - I have a very good friend in Albir so if I visit her I would love to pop in to see your set up. Have you got a website or FB page? My partner and I have been on our property of 1.8 hectares just over a year, it hadn't been worked for over 30 years and all the almond trees had died. But there are still a number of olilve trees but they will need some serious rehabilitation. Focusing on setting up our zone 1 veg patch (I have just completed Geoff Lawton's online PDC but feeling rather overwhelmed). Progress is slow and we hit a layer of caliche about a foot down, luckily only about 5 mm but as we aren't using power tools and don't have a car it's tough going. But sometimes the delays can be a real blessing. We didn't manage to plant any trees last year, a stroke of good luck as with the terrible drought we would have lost them all!

Look forward to hearing from you
Lucy and David

Lucy Gabzdyl wrote:Hi Sebastien

I'm a couple of hundred kilometres north of you in Canet lo Roig a small village in Castellon (just on the border with Catalunia). woud love to know more about your project - I have a very good friend in Albir so if I visit her I would love to pop in to see your set up. Have you got a website or FB page? My partner and I have been on our property of 1.8 hectares just over a year, it hadn't been worked for over 30 years and all the almond trees had died. But there are still a number of olilve trees but they will need some serious rehabilitation. Focusing on setting up our zone 1 veg patch (I have just completed Geoff Lawton's online PDC but feeling rather overwhelmed). Progress is slow and we hit a layer of caliche about a foot down, luckily only about 5 mm but as we aren't using power tools and don't have a car it's tough going. But sometimes the delays can be a real blessing. We didn't manage to plant any trees last year, a stroke of good luck as with the terrible drought we would have lost them all!

Look forward to hearing from you
Lucy and David

Hi Lucy and David,

Great to hear from you. We are in a place called Polop, not far at all from Albir so you're very welcome to come over when you visit your friend. I live here with my wife and daughters (9 and 6 y.o.). For the moment I don't really have a project website. I am struggling a bit with Wordpress . Our land is also a 1 ha neglected plantation but of mostly lemons and a few other citrus and others. I have planted a few trees, killed a few and had very limited success with my veggie gardening efforts. I am also starting more in earnest this year after having spent more time on improving the house last year. I also just got access to irrigation water and completed a few rainwater capture projects. I did my PDC in 2016 but I must say that so far my design is very much ad hoc. I am starting to look more into setting up a forest garden. I have a few almond trees too that produce well and are very decorative but unfortunately the evil Xylella Fastidiosa has been detected in one of the neighbours' trees and, according to EU rules, all my almond trees will soon be made into woodchips and my land entirely fumigated with nasty stuff that will kill all insects. It´s really very sad, especially because I won't be allowed to plant almond trees again or any of the very long list of potential list of hosts to Xylella. I hope for you this plague won´t reach your area!

Anyway. Do get in touch when you plan to come to this area.

Cheers,

Sebastien

Hi Sebastien

So sorry to hear about the Xylella Fastidiosa. I had heard that it had landed in Spain from Brazil in your area and have been searching the internet for anyone who has successfully treated it using compost tea. I did find reference to a vineyard in California. I've also watched a lot of Elaine Ingham's videos and she says that with 70 to 100% coverage with compost tea you can beat most diseases, so long as the compost tea has all the biology required.

And she also gives me a lot of hope in that even if you do have to spray with the toxic chemicals, you can recover the biology very quickly if you have access to a quality compost tea. Maybe you have someone in the area that makes it.

I haven't started composting yet, that's next on my list (permaculture certainly is a steep learning curve) but I do have a small amount of worm compost.

Good luck with the food forest, I'm focusing initially on support species and found a great site http://dolcarevolucio.cat/botiga/gb/53-seeds-of-medicinal-plants?id_category=53&n=304 that has some really interesting tree seeds. Although I haven't yet found a source for tagasaste - citisus proliferus a nitrogen fixer native of the Canary Islands. I haven't had much luck raising seeds so far, so fingers crossed!

This year we want to build a rammed earth 'root cellar' food storage and preparation as a ring dam design which seems to be the cheapest and quickest way. It's just too hot or too cold to stay in the caravan (it's very old) and so we are living in the village which is not ideal.

Thank you for your kind invitation, I will let you know when I plan to be in the area. Also, if you have any questions or would like to remain in contact, my mobile number is 654 32 07 35. David has green fingers when it comes to computers and although he hasn't worked specifically with Wordpress, he has designed and set up a number of websites, so do let us know what the problem is, maybe he can help.

There is also a new FB page called living off the grid in Spain run by Sandrine from Belgium who lives just a bit to the north of me in Aragon. She has alpacas!

Good luck with all your projects.
Lucy and David

Hi Lucy,

Good idea with the compost tea. I have made some once and I am trying again now. not sure about the quality of my compost but hopefully it can only be beneficial to the plants and tree I will apply it to. I am still looking for an old bathtub to try worm composting but they are hard to come by (people use them to feed animals).

A root cellar is an exciting idea. I am thinking about making one Sepp Holzer style with tree trunks burried in the side of one of the terraces. At the moment I am making a shelter in strawbale with earth plaster for growing mushroom on logs. For the rain water capture, as my land is terraced, I can't really build a dam. I have setup some of these 1000L cubes to capture water from the roof and the driveway but they fill up way too quickly when it rains. I'd like to make a large vaulted aljibe like in the Almeria region in order to capture and store much more of these rare rainstorms. I also tried a ground raintrap the other day, where the dry stone wall had collapsed: I just shaped the ground as a shallow funnel lined it with black plastic and rocks on top. In the middle at the bottom a PVC tube collects water to a barrel. It works well but again I need a much bigger semi buried masonry storage tank to make the most of the concept. I am aslo thinking to cover it completely with large stones so that it doubles up as a condensation dew trap. Not sure it is worth it as we don't have much dew most of the year.

You can see a picture of it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3tProok3GiGcUdrNU5CZGRWdU9Fc0tvd3BONWpIVVBlRjBJ

Will you be building a house on the land at some point?

Thanks for the offer of help on WordPress. There isn't really a problem. I am just procrastinating setting it up really...

I have added your number to my phone but it doesn't seem that you use WhatsApp. I'll send you a text so that you can have my number (prefer not to leave my number on public forums).

Cheers,

Sebastien

Hi Sebastien
Have sent you an email.
Lucy

Hi all,

I'm in the Denia area also looking for people interested in creating a local Permaculture community maybe to start a community garden in and around Denia. If anyone needs an extra pair of hands let me know. Currently I've got a small urban garden on the terrace of my flat growing lots of greens and strawberries, even a little peach tree I'm relatively new to these forums.

Seif

Seif Fathi wrote:Hi all,

I'm in the Denia area also looking for people interested in creating a local Permaculture community maybe to start a community garden in and around Denia. If anyone needs an extra pair of hands let me know. Currently I've got a small urban garden on the terrace of my flat growing lots of greens and strawberries, even a little peach tree I'm relatively new to these forums.

Seif

Hi Seif,

Sorry.For some reason I never saw your reply. Are you still permaculturig in Denia? If so let+s meet one day.

Cheers,

Sebastien

Hello! If you're still in the area, I'm here, so maybe we can do something!

Hi Antonio and Sebastien,

I'm also going to be moving to the area soon. I'll be living in Orba (Marina Alta), and will be working on regenerating micro climates with tree crops (slowly, as I find contacts, land, etc). I have taught permaculture for many years, in several countries, and am also an ecologist, plant breeder and social activist. I consult on project development and communications too.

I lived previously in Catalunya for 7 years, and Ireland before that. Always working on some mix of my areas of interest. Now I am in NL for the past 2 years, but returning to Spain this autumn.

Anyplace I live seems to quickly become a botanic garden and nursery. I can't stop myself

I produce a podcast on Regenerative Agriculture and Regenerative Communities, "Designers of Paradise"
https://rasa.ag/award-winning-designers-of-paradise/

I'd love to meet you and anybody else in the area to learn more and also to explore collaboration possibilities.

Erik