Aurelie Noyer

Abraham Palma wrote:What do you recommend instead??

Drip irrigation or deep irrigation. Drip for things like letuces that need humid surface, deep irrigation for everything else. The sprinkler is a waste of water, since it irrigates just the soil surface which is most affected by evaporation. It's good for grass, but little else.

ok, drip irrigation is clear to me on some ways to achieve that.. could you clarify what you refer to when you say deep irrigation? Swales and such? does this makes sense on a land that is flat and mostly sandy??

Thank you so much!!!

Thank you both for your feedbacks and advise!!!

 I suggest that you include a deep rooting species in your cover crop to start to work up the earth beneath.

I will definitely research on deep rooted options to join the cover crop mix we have in mind... any suggestion from your end Eric on the top of your mind??

Abraham, we definitely plan on also setting up a rain collection system down the road from our roofs!! Although for the moment since we live on top of a big water plateau and already have access to it through three wells, we plan to use this as our water supply. Also down the road we will have it set up to be working on solar power, which will make it an automatized system that use our available resourses, water underground and the plenty of sun.

Will definitely read more about dryland farming too, we want to have a good percentage of our property with native plants, but also want to have some plants that require a little tweak to the normal climate as they need more water than available, especially in the summer months, which is where our use of the well water is coming handy.

Sprinkling water is a big no in my book.

What do you recommend instead??

And yes, already ordered water and soil test, and we are planning for warm farming and using warm casting tea as well

Happy to hear any further advise or suggestions! and thanks you all in the meantime!

Hello everyone! I am new to this forum and website and my husband and I just purchased a 3.5 acres property in the mountains of Toledo, Spain.

We did a permaculture course some years back in Thailand and are finally (after a few changes of plans and countries) starting our dream but feeling a little overwhelmed at the moments with possibilities and what to do as our initial few steps, so I would love to hear a few feedbacks /advise from this community and more expert permies!

The land we own had been cultivated and certified organic for years by the previous owner, although he did not cultivate anything at all in the last 3-4 years. Sheep maneur have been spread 2 years ago (and they were also free roaming in the same property, and nothing has been planted since. The land is mostly bare and cooked under our hot summer sun

There are a decent number of producing trees already on some areas of the farm, mostly almonds, walnuts, yellow plums and figs, with a few pears, apples, peaches and other trees that we are in thr process of identifying.

Our plan is to cover most of the property, over time with a perennials food forest, a medium sized raised beds vegetable garden that will host our annuals and some perennials, create an area for our chickens to free range between trees (they are currently free ranging the entire property, but want to dedicate a specific section for them to do so), and create a natural swimming pool

This is what we were thinking of doing as our first step:

1- Cover with some sheep maneur again (we will have access to a couple trailers for free from our neightboor.. won't be enought to cover everything, but at least the part that will have the pool, which we will dig out soil to go in raised beds, and as much as possible of the area where we will start our food forest)

2- Plant a cover crop this automn on the entire bare ground - thinking of a mix of Clovers, Hairy Vetch, black medic, white mustard, Lacy phacelia and oat, and possibly common sainfoin or sunflowers.

3- Come spring we will chop and drop the covre crop and start planting our trees and desired plants in our food forest, while cover with mulch the parts that we won't be working on right away. We are thinking of mulching with wood bark the parts that are closer to our initial food forest (we will get to work on these earlier) and try covering the areas further away from our main zone with sheep wool (again getting what could cover about 500m2 worth of wool from our neighboor for free), since it is a mulch that will take much longer to break down, buying us more time to work on other areas first, while starting to build that soil too.

We have three water wells on the property so were thinking of spray watering the biggest areas through this entire process.

We are zone 9 and in a cold semi-arid climate / right on edge of hot-summer mediterranean area of Spain.

Would love to hear what your thoughs are

Thank you so much for any help!!!

Aurelie