All About Weeds- And Cover Crops- Geoff Lawton

New Geoff Lawton vids.  The weed video is especially good.  

Its nice to see vids coming regularly from him. Thanks for posting

wayne fajkus wrote:Its nice to see vids coming regularly from him. Thanks for posting

I agree.  I find his desert vids very inspiring.  It's like watching someone do Permaculture on Mars.

Scott Foster wrote:

wayne fajkus wrote:Its nice to see vids coming regularly from him. Thanks for posting

I agree.  I find his desert vids very inspiring.  It's like watching someone do Permaculture on Mars.

I don't understand; he grows a bunch of stuff on driplines...

Nathanael Szobody wrote:

Scott Foster wrote:

wayne fajkus wrote:Its nice to see vids coming regularly from him. Thanks for posting

I agree.  I find his desert vids very inspiring.  It's like watching someone do Permaculture on Mars.

I don't understand; he grows a bunch of stuff on driplines...

He does use swales, captures rainwater and uses it to water when necessary.  Not sure what you are getting at.  

Nathaniel,

After reading your post I think I understand.  You are working with few resources in Chad.  If I were you I'd contact Jeff and see if he'd be interested in helping you get this started.

Geoff’s videos are always so nicely done.

Scott,

True, he uses swales and catches rainwater. He also does companion planting. However, none of this will grow date palms in the desert. Date palms need lots of water. That's why they're an oasis tree; in oasis you can have a one to three meter deep water table. As the Arabs say, they like their feet in the water and their head in the fire.

I keep thinking maybe I'm not perceptive enough to catch the subtle genius of the Greening the Desert project. It looks to me like he sets up a good biodynamic system on artificial irrigation.

I love his videos. That's how I first learned Permaculture, I just don't get the hype about Greening the Desert. It strikes me as another episode of "Westerner Pops in and Drops a Cool Project Over Night." I like what he's doing as far as it goes, but I certainly wouldn't pay thousands for the PDC there.

I'm still thinking about using drip lines on my project. But two concerns have kept me from it so far:
1, It's a bunch of plastic that I will be importing from half way around the world and which will have to be burned up at some point;
2, If my system depends on drip lines, then what happens when my water pump goes down and it takes weeks to get the right part or expertise to fix it out here 250 kilometers from any paved road?

I'd rather heed Molleson's advice that sustainable change is slow.

I think his goal is irrigation up front, then minimize or delete it. Once established it self provides shade, humidity, organic matter, etc. Its better next year than this year and keeps repeating .

wayne fajkus wrote:I think his goal is irrigation up front, then minimize or delete it. Once established itself provides shade, humidity, organic matter, etc. Its better next year than this year and keeps repeating.

The land of milk and honey was destroyed by man and goat.  It makes sense you may have to cut some corners to get the biomass back.  Not to mention dealing with desalination.  Flushing with water makes it worse, not better.

The mushrooms that sprout in the chop and drop are the only thing that neutralizes (wrong word) salt in the soil.  Water dumping makes it worse.  I may be wrong but I thought all of Geoff's irrigation is from gravity-fed water coming off of roofs.  I also noticed that not everyone follows Geoff's suggestions to a T.

Anyway, I think the guy is the poster child for Permaculture.