Guilherme Weishar

Thanks Joseph for your input. I did take a hike and I saw several other species around. But the most prevalent are the 3 species I mentioned. Among the Ice plant there are other species such as Oxalis but not much more. I think a good strategy would to replace these species with native ones that behave the same way, this is a suggestion from the book "Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystem Restoration" by Tao Orion

Thanks everyone for their contributions and sorry for the delayed reply (I turned off email notifications).

So I have talked to my local supervisor to understand the land a bit better.
When this plot of land was bought it had a house in ruins. This was then demolished and the rubble was spread across the land. Sand was imported to cover the rubble (still need to figure out how thick is the sand layer).
All in all this is terrible soil. My supervisor is talking about making a food forest, a veggie garden, a herb garden, etc..
But with this soil it seems impossible. Importing soil is out of our budget so he says we could create new soil by progressive mulching over years. To create 1 inch of soil it takes about 10 years and this is with consistent mulching through out the year. So I am not sure if this is realistic, maybe somebody has some experience in recovering very degraded soil?

In conclusion I am losing faith in this project. I am hired for one month to clear the overgrowth along a wall, because the neighbour complained and threatened to pursue legal action.
The plan would be for me to implement permaculture systems afterwards but the more I think about the situation the more I start to believe that the current state is not that bad considering the poor quality soil. I mean its a mini jungle out there. A jungle with a very low biodiversity, but at least there is something. Removing everything seems so pointless and risky because whatever native species my supervisor wants grow might not survive. Any feedback on my dilema is much appreciated

Thank you Greg.

You asked me a series of very pertinent questions that I haven't thought about before.
Understanding how the land was before and what led to the current situation is very important information.
I will meet with the supervisor of this ecological restoration project and ask him.
I do know that he has done several test with native species but unfortunely most have failed.
It could be that the current species have made the soil to acidic and now very little species can survive.

Hello David,

The soil is very sandy as the land is a dune. The removal of these plants will surely lead to erosion. But like I said the plan is to introduce native dune species after the removal.
These plants in their native habitat lead to natural succession, but in this enviorment they will overrun the whole area and I found no evidence that this will change in the next 20 years.
I leave in attachment the picture of the property.

Hello!

I love reading this forum so I am happy to create my first thead.
My question is what to do with 3 invasive species that have overrun a property near the dunes, in Sintra Portugal.

So the main invasive species are the following:

Acacia longifolia

Arundo donax

Carpobrotus edulis

The initial plan is to ring bark the Acacia trees and cut the giant reed (knowing that they will just regrow if you do not remove the roots as well).
We also talked about covering the cut giant reed with a thick sheet of black plastic to kill the roots. The ice plant (Carpobrotus ebulis) is going to be the biggest challenge because of the area coverage. The strategy for this one will be to pull the plant with the roots out of the ground.

The end goal is to then introduce native dune species instead. But at the moment these 3 species out compete everything else.
I am putting my question here because I would like to see if there is a more permaculture way of dealing with this issue other then just physical removal of the plants.
I remember reading an article about invasive species where it was stated that the best way is to understand the soil conditions that these particular species thrive in and then change it so that they cannot survive.
My issue with this is that I do not know how to change the soil to kill these species AND allow other native species to thrive .

Thanks in advance and happy holidays to all