Dry, arid, clay, tropical, deforested, goat-infested permaculture attempt . . .

I live in Haiti in a rain shadow with a lot of wind and few trees. I live at the university where I work, which has about 200 acres, but is using only about 5 currently.

Over the years the university has been in existence, some of our small spiny trees have grown into nice shade trees, but they're hard to use for biomass because of the thorns. I'm experimenting with ways of burying them and using pits and such.

We don't have a wall around the property yet, though that's in the works. And our very rural community comes and helps themselves to trees, brush, fenceposts, and whatever else that's of use when the students are on break. Recently I've been staying on campus which seems to help, since I can keep an eye on things. They also let/encourage their goats to come graze our land since we actually have grass and forage for them because of the trees.

It's very hot and dry in the dry season, and when it rains, it's torrential. I'm a lifelong gardener from Wisconsin/Minnesota, learning all over again.

Started with a small pallet fence and started planting with the Hairians guidance. Realized quickly that their deep irrigation canals with narrow, bare mounds are a horrible model for this climate because there's no way they can hold water. Started adding anything I could find as biomass . . . Paper, cardboard, weeds (there aren't that many), sugarcane scraps my husband brings by the sack from the city once a week or so . . . It's gradually building up. I gave up on my compost pile which went down as quickly as I filled it, and moved to mulch-in-place. Also trench composting to prepare beds for planting.

Recently had 20 or so nice trees donated and I'm planting them over coconut hulls to help hold some water at the roots. I'm staying and fencing them all and cutting plastic shopping bags open and tying them on the west side of the fence for a sun shade for the afternoon sun. I'm also working to dig trenches a few inches out from the base and about a half meter from there, all the way around. I'm planting the trees mounded up a few inches to avoid rot when it DOES flood. I'll put some goat manure in the trench and then toss in 8-10 inches of organic material, but I'm waiting for the rainy season which is supposed to be now, but it's been slow.

I would LOVE some advice! I'm sorry for the long message. Wanted to give a good idea of the project. I am also making a couple of swale/canals to direct the floods and soak the ground. Digging it by hand, so it's a slow process. It's basically an experiment garden to show our agronomy students so they can go large-scale. The goal is basically to turn campus into a food forest!

Priscilla Stilwell wrote:
Started with a small pallet fence and started planting with the Hairians guidance.

How to protect a forest from the predations of man and animal....Will pineapples deter goats, a wide perimeter of closely planted pineapples?

Burl Smith wrote:

Priscilla Stilwell wrote:
Started with a small pallet fence and started planting with the Hairians guidance.

How to protect a forest from the predations of man and animal....Will pineapples deter goats, a wide perimeter of closely planted pineapples?

Interesting thought. I don't actually know. I only have 4 pineapple starts right now, quite young, but that is definitely something to investigate. I did think about them being goat resistant, but ended up sticking them inside the garden fence because the soil outside is non-existent.

my suggestion would be if you can get someone to do you a favor and lend you a truck is to get as much of that sugarcane bagasse as you can. I imagine it`s similar there to here in Brazil- people sell cane juice on the street and those leftover pressed stalks are everywhere at the end of the day in the city. I go around and score them from local vendors, you can throw them in a corner on the property and let them dry out (I run them through the chipper for mulch after they dry) or just put them in a ground immediately. They are a great resource that just ends up getting put in the trash truck.
There may be some nice spiny local plants, we hvae this thing called crown of thorns that is used along walls to discourage burglars, it grows pretty fast. Maybe go see what is planted outside the fancier residences!!!

Pineapples in my experience don`t really get dense enough to keep out goats, which are pretty much Spiderman anyway.

Tereza Okava wrote:my suggestion would be if you can get someone to do you a favor and lend you a truck is to get as much of that sugarcane bagasse as you can. I imagine it`s similar there to here in Brazil- people sell cane juice on the street and those leftover pressed stalks are everywhere at the end of the day in the city. I go around and score them from local vendors, you can throw them in a corner on the property and let them dry out (I run them through the chipper for mulch after they dry) or just put them in a ground immediately. They are a great resource that just ends up getting put in the trash truck.
There may be some nice spiny local plants, we hvae this thing called crown of thorns that is used along walls to discourage burglars, it grows pretty fast. Maybe go see what is planted outside the fancier residences!!!

Pineapples in my experience don`t really get dense enough to keep out goats, which are pretty much Spiderman anyway.

Yes, we're looking into a truck for bagas from the mill. That stuff is crushed and most of the moisture has been extracted. Makes excellent mulch. The stuff I've been getting up to this point is the cuttings you're talking about (the outer shell of the cane). Hubs has a guy he calls and he gets a good amount. The problem is there are a lot of guys selling it, and some have just a handful of scraps when we come by, because they toss it into trash heaps right away. Going through the trash is out of the question for hubs. He's Haitian and he has his dignity. I have no shame (typical American), but he would not be caught dead "letting" his white wife take things out of the garbage pile! That would certainly draw some attention. Ha

The other thing I'm trying to get is coconut husks. The green outer shell. I have a local kid bringing me a few sacks of them here and there along with some goat manure and charcoal powder. Buy he's kinda a little guy (for his age), on foot, hauling the stuff a half mile or more, so I get a sack (flour or rice sack) full a few times a week. That doesn't go very far! If I can get a wheelbarrow to let him use, that might be faster.

We are also 15 minute hike to a large brackish lake and can harvest lake weed, which is a fantastic mulch and biomass, but again, it's heavy cause it's wet. So I have to coordinate. I don't have the car during the week cause hubs uses it for work, so it has to be on the weekends.

lol. I am also the crazy white american wife (luckily my japanese brazilian mother in law does the same kind of thing for her own crazy garden, so my husband has no legs to stand on.....).
Coconut is a great idea too! sounds like you have some good community. Something that might help the kid- I recently saw people here pulling things in an old plastic barrel cut right down the middle (probably used for agrochemicals, better not to think about it) just like a sled. Need is the mother of invention, in case you find any old barrels hanging around.

Tereza Okava wrote:lol. I am also the crazy white american wife (luckily my japanese brazilian mother in law does the same kind of thing for her own crazy garden, so my husband has no legs to stand on.....).
Coconut is a great idea too! sounds like you have some good community. Something that might help the kid- I recently saw people here pulling things in an old plastic barrel cut right down the middle (probably used for agrochemicals, better not to think about it) just like a sled. Need is the mother of invention, in case you find any old barrels hanging around.

Any old barrels around here are going to be used for catching rain! Ha. But I saw some of the metal working shops with some broken wheelbarrows lined up. I think I might be able to get a broken one and get it fixed. Other people put enormous woven baskets on wheelbarrow bases. They are like 8 feet across. That can carry a lot of lightweight stuff! Unfortunately much of what I need is on the heavy side . . .

I'm actually looking for a source of peanut hulls or coffee bean hulls from a processor in the area, but haven't found anything yet. I do have a source for sawdust and wood shavings from my friend who's business makes caskets and other wooden items. That's a good source of carbon, and certainly makes the hard clay soil better texture. I'm working with some partial compost options, or mixing with high-nitrogen content like goat manure (later it will be chicken manure when we get the chicks). I've also found my composting worms love it! They ignore mango to eat the sawdust! But they don't poop fast enough! Haha

I'm not familiar with your climate, other than the obvious tropical title. You may want to look into China's Loess Plateau region's reforestation success. That region get 4-28 inches of rain per year. At 49 inches of rain (info form here https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/haiti) I would think you would have success too.



As I live in a temperate climate and many tropical plants will perish here, I spent way too much time trying to locate the specific vegetation that was used in this project. Finding this information may be helpful to you. In my rummaging through the internet, I did find Vegetation Restoration and Its Environmental Effects on the Loess Plateau, it seems to have the most useful information. however, I did not find the plants used in there. It was published 20018.

EDIT: I think it was something like 80% trees, and the rest in shorter perineals, on land greater than 25% slope. Maybe. I read a lot of numbers this morning. Biomass! Of course, getting those livestock excluded is paramount to getting plants established.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:I'm not familiar with your climate, other than the obvious tropical title. You may want to look into China's Loess Plateau region's reforestation success. That region get 4-28 inches of rain per year. At 49 inches of rain (info form here https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/haiti) I would think you would have success too.

As I live in a temperate climate and many tropical plants will perish here, I spent way too much time trying to locate the specific vegetation that was used in this project. Finding this information may be helpful to you. In my rummaging through the internet, I did find Vegetation Restoration and Its Environmental Effects on the Loess Plateau, it seems to have the most useful information. however, I did not find the plants used in there. It was published 20018.

Thanks. We get considerably less rain than Port au Prince, since we're in a rain shadow from the mountain range on the Dominican side that shoots the rain up and over us far too often. But I'll take a look at what you posted. Another issue is that we just don't have access to much. If it doesn't grow native or isn't propagated widely (almost exclusively sale crops), we are going to have a hard time accessing it. And mail service doesn't exist. I do have a mail and package delivery service, but it takes an extra week or two to get to me from my Florida address. So that eliminates any live plants, bulbs, or tubers. I can ship seeds in easily if I can. Find them. And sometimes people can bring stuff in their luggage, but that's extremely inconsistent.

Look at all the things they're trying at Greening the Desert Jordan:  

Also Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration for regrowing native trees:  https://fmnrhub.com.au/ .  FMNR has done some work in Haiti.

Brad Lancaster has done some excellent work in dry Tucson, Arizona . https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

Tyler Ludens wrote:Look at all the things they're trying at Greening the Desert Jordan:  

Also Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration for regrowing native trees:  https://fmnrhub.com.au/ .  FMNR has done some work in Haiti.

Brad Lancaster has done some excellent work in dry Tucson, Arizona . https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

Thank you! I'll check it these resources!

Your young friend who can't haul much might benefit from a travois, and it sounds like he could make one out of sticks from the property and some string or cord or wire to hold it together.  Dragging a travois wouldn't be quite as easy as a wheeled vehicle, but he should be able to manage larger loads than just carrying stuff in his arms.

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:Your young friend who can't haul much might benefit from a travois, and it sounds like he could make one out of sticks from the property and some string or cord or wire to hold it together.  Dragging a travois wouldn't be quite as easy as a wheeled vehicle, but he should be able to manage larger loads than just carrying stuff in his arms.

Good thought. I wonder how it will do with our terrain?

Priscilla Stilwell wrote:

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:Your young friend who can't haul much might benefit from a travois, and it sounds like he could make one out of sticks from the property and some string or cord or wire to hold it together.  Dragging a travois wouldn't be quite as easy as a wheeled vehicle, but he should be able to manage larger loads than just carrying stuff in his arms.

Good thought. I wonder how it will do with our terrain?

Can only try one and see how well it works.  The American Indians used them in a lot of rugged terrain, first pulled by people or dogs, then later by horses.  They are certainly cheap enough to make.

Priscilla, would tree tubes work to keep goats away from tender young saplings and help conserve moisture in the dry season? That's the way they're used around here, where we get about 13 in. rain/yr. mostly in a monsoonal pattern, just keeping them on until they fall off. I don't know if, when you do have rain or if in some seasons you have high humidity, it would potentially cause moisture-related problems to leave them on like that.

Beth Wilder wrote:Priscilla, would tree tubes work to keep goats away from tender young saplings and help conserve moisture in the dry season? That's the way they're used around here, where we get about 13 in. rain/yr. mostly in a monsoonal pattern, just keeping them on until they fall off. I don't know if, when you do have rain or if in some seasons you have high humidity, it would potentially cause moisture-related problems to leave them on like that.

Possibly they would work with larger trees, but ours are only a couple of feet tall. The goats can access the leaves easily. Once they get bigger, that could work, but we're working on a super tight budget. I'm using an inexpensive but effective wire with posts cut from the shrubby local trees for now. That's for the fruit trees.

BBQ should work with goats.

Dennis Mitchell wrote:BBQ should work with goats.

Yeah. I've threatened that. And I've been sternly reprimanded by hubs and informed that it doesn't work that way here (hubs is Haitian. I am not). They can poison my dog for eating their goat, but I cannot eat their goat for eating MY food. They can also trap and eat my cat and claim they found it, but I cannot claim I "found" one or more of the scores of goats who meander through my yard each day and knock down my newly planted tree. That happened today. They didn't figure out how to unwrap it from the fence, so it's still in tact. I replanted.

Hence why I have a fancy new slingshot on order from Amazon.

I think the base plant they use for regreening the desert is licorice, which grows in Haiti, if you can find some maybe it would be a good plant to grow along your swales for chop and drop and to distract hungry goats from your trees.

Hi Pricsilla
You have my sympathies - I live in a hot, arid, subtropical, clay, deforested, horse-infested place, though perhaps with not as many challenges as Haiti. And the neighbours' animals are generally kept out by our fences!

I was struck by your remark about prickly local trees, because I remember watching a documentary with Bill Mollison where he was working in a hot, dry, deforested African country, basically almost desert. The local people cut down tress to make fences around their compounds, to keep domestic animals in, and wild animals out.

His suggestion was to use the thorny local trees as living fences. Animals could go through them, as they were too thorny, so he said just grow them where animal pens needed to go, and the goat manure would fertilise them.

I don't know how long you will be living where you are, but if it is going to be a number of years, can you sprout the seeds of those spiky trees, or take cuttings and get them to sprout? If the ground is moist enough, and the plant suitable, you might even be able to take cuttings and stick them right where you need them to grow, in a row.

I have found that composting doesn't work where I live, as it is too dry, but in-ground mulch pits make a big difference in plant growth and survival. Yo seem to have hit on this idea already. Just like you, I use whatever I can get my hands on. I work in the IT dept of a large high school, so I bring home cardboard boxes, which I lay as mulch around young tress, and weigh down with rocks. It cools the soil and keeps some moisture in. I also bring home the inner cardboard moulding, that serves to hold the computers firmly inside the boxes. Each computer also comes with a paper booklet. All the paper and cardboard packaging goes in the  pits, and the pits get filled in again and planted on. Seedling trees grow at about 4 times the rate compared to just being planted into undisturbed soil (though it is still slow compared to somewhere with good rainfall). If you are at a university, there may be big streams of waste paper that you can use to chuck into pits. I put our bills, flyers and other waste paper at the bottom of my fruit and veggie peelings bucket, to mop up moisture, and also make it easier when it comes to tipping out the contents.

I also buy old towels for my dogs to sleep on, and when they get too old and stinky, in they go to the pits (the towels, not the dogs!). I collect coffee grounds at work, pick up fallen sticks, gather manure when I can. If it is vaguely organic, in it goes.

I have only hit on this method in the last few years. I am hoping it is something that will continue paying dividends as the underground organic material continues to break down.

Nicola, I'd much prefer horses! Actually, I love goats, just not HUNDREDS coming to eat everything in sight! Once I get my slingshot, that should help a bit.

I like the idea of using the thorny trees for a living fence. I'm going to try that. These trees propagate EXTREMELY easily. Take a shovel full of soil from under a mature tree, stick it in a pot, put some water . . . You'll have fifty seedlings (no exaggeration) in a week or two. I'm definitely going to try. Since they naturally grow in clumps and the trunks are rather flexible when young, I'm pretty sure we can weave them together to make the fence. They grow very quickly. And once established, we can top them so they don't shade the gardens too much . . . If necessary. Or later cut them down for charcoal.

That's great, easy trees! Now maybe you can learn how to lay a hedge in two or three years.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:That's great, easy trees! Now maybe you can learn how to lay a hedge in two or three years.

Ooh! Looks like work! I'd rather weave them into a hatch pattern living fence! :)

I really like this living thorny fence idea, too! Not only could it keep goats out, but it could also help slow floodwater and accumulate rich topsoil and nutrients from those floodwaters. The latter is how live staked living fences of willow and cottonwood are used around farm fields in Sonora, Mexico. This is an older article (1977), but there may be a new article coming out soon, as Gary Paul Nabhan (one of that article's authors) mentions in his 2018 book Food from the Radical Center that he returned to a similar riparian agricultural site in Sonora in May 2017 with a group of scientists/researchers and others. Anyway, farmers there collectively plant the live stakes and then weave leafy branches between them. I was thinking a living fence of thorny live stakes or seedlings, perhaps mixed with thorny fruit-bearing cacti and some other more bushy, dense-growing tree or shrub that also live stakes or propagates easily (willow, cottonwood, jujube, soapberry tree?), might do a good job fencing out (or in) livestock as well as slowing runoff, providing fruit or other useful products, and eventually forming shallow terraces of improved soil on the upslope side. You might even get insect-eating birds nesting in the fence...

Such living fences are also mentioned in this old issue of Overstory.

I absolutely agree! I used some local soil from under our thorny trees to try to start an avocado seed. The avocado didn't start, but dozens of the tree seeds sprouted almost instantly. While they are a fairly hard wood, by weaving them together when they are very young, we should be able to train them into a solid fence, assuming our neighbors don't cut them down.

On the other hand, if we're successful, we might have luck teaching the technique to the locals as well. They grow fast enough that there should be a useable fence within a year. Definitely within two. The goats don't eat these trees (one of the very few things they don't). I also like the idea of planting fruit bearing cactus under. There is a native fruit bearing cactus (though the fruit is somewhat bland and full of gritty seeds) that grows naturally under these thorny trees, which would be logical to use. It pops up under young shade trees, so it would be fairly easy to transplant there, I think.

We're working on getting our engineering students to start a rock and bottle wall around the campus, but that's only a few acres of the 200 acres we have. If we can use the woven living fence around the larger property, that could make a significant difference in our reforesting efforts, keeping out goats and people with machetes!

And these trees serve as fantastic homes for colonies of noisy, hungry, lovely, pooping birds that more than earn their keep! The insect population has gone from me needing a fan blowing on me constantly just to keep bugs from flying in my mouth every time I opened to teach my night classes, to the point that we haven't used our mosquito net for a year. I used to have to go to bed at dusk because the bugs we're vicious, and light when I'd try to read under the net, would bring the smaller ones that just came right through the mesh! Good birds! Haha

I'll talk this over with the students and see what we can do. I think we can probably start a couple hundred seedlings this month (it's break at the University for the month of September), and have them ready to plant when the students get back next month. If we plant them every 6 inches or so around the perimeter, even if some die, it should be dense enough to keep out uninvited guests. Then we can go back in January when they get some size on them, and start tying them together in a woven pattern. The trees are clumping, so we will probably have to do some pruning to train them.

I'll try to post photos of our progress! :)

That sounds like a good start!  If you are going to surround 200 acres you'll need many thousands of seedlings -- do you have someplace you can set aside for a small nursery area to get them started?  I don't know what to tell you about the problems with neighbors just cutting and taking whatever they want off the university property -- so thankful we still have (more or less) rule of law here in the US.  

Kathleen

I don't know. I still prefer it here. In the US, if I tried this, the neighbors would complain and the county would fine me. Over regulation is no solution.

We can start these trees just about anywhere. They'll sprout and grow happily in full sun, and goats don't touch them, so no problem. I'll probably start them in tin cans. We have some plastic grow sacks too, but not sure if I'll need them. We'll see.

I assume we'll take it in sections. And my guess is, we'll need something more like 20,000 to fence the whole property. Maybe more. But if we start on the side where the goats come through most often, it should start to help pretty fast.

Also, with tying them into a grid, that helps in 2 ways . . . It's hard to swing a machete at that when there's no space between. And one of the defenses here is ignorance. They will steal a cat (a delicacy here) and say they thought it was a wild cat, but if you put a collar on it, most people have the decency to admit it has an owner. And if not, their family and friends will chide them.

Gotta work within the local psychology! Haha

I hear you about the over-regulation, though there are still many places where nobody would be bothered, either by permaculture or by fencing the property with a thorny hedge.  

Do the trees you want to work with put down a long tap-root?  If not, you may be able to start them in beds, rather than individual containers, and separate them at planting time.  That would save some effort in finding containers, and let you start more seedlings quickly.

Yeah, they have a pretty good taproot. Even at a couple of inches they become hard to pull up. But they grow rapidly and I think they can be planted out at between 6-12 inches with no problem. Certainly worth a try. Once they are established, you can cut off the tops to whatever height you need and they won't die. They'll just keep putting up new little branches.

The benefit of cans is we can use them over and over.

Good approach in using vetiver, it is an excellent water runoff holder if planted on contour and pretty effective in controlling erosion on steep hills. The roots can be processed for use in perfume and essential oils and the leaves dried and weaved for baskets. A couple of suggestions,please remember that cassava takes about 9 months to harvest, for quick food production, plant sweet potatoes, in 3 to 4 months they are ready for harvesting. The leaves are edible, make great fodder and once you harvest, re-plant the slips and you are good to go. Pigeon peas (Cajans cajans), produce quickly, fix nitrogen, provide wind screen and make good forage.  Also consider chayote squash.  Longer term, consider planting a few breadfruit trees, they take a few years to produce but they average 400 lbs. of fruit per tree.

Pigs. If you were to allow someone to use the land to raise pigs, you might be able to make improvements with purchased input. Low-grade sugar cane can be the primary energy source. Protein could come from azolla if you have a means of impounding water. Beyond that, the pigs could be allowed to graze on tether or inside a movable fence.

You get mountains of pig manure and a huge amount of  bagasse as a byproduct of juicing your cane.

The pigs wouldn't have to stay forever. Smell and noise would be the major down sides, but there are ways to address both.

Vetiver works great in Haiti.  I was there a year ago and the organization I was with propagates it and gives it to farmers to create terraces.

Two organizations that I know who are working very effectively in Haiti are Plant With Purpose and Harvest Craft.

https://plantwithpurpose.org/


https://www.harvestcraft.org/


Harvest Craft is pretty much only in the Jacmel area, but PWP is all over.  They might be a source for free or very inexpensive trees for your campus.  If you have that many acres to work with, they might be willing to do some sort of cooperative project with your University.

Thanks everyone, for the responses.

We have considered pigs since I'm friends with a guy who owns a growing western-style buchery and meat market and he buys at premium prices. He's also always looking for cows, but there's a challenge with cows because people steal them, so we'll have to get our fence/wall up first and improve our overall security.

I've got one dwarf breadfruit in the ground now and hope to add twenty or more. Also we'll plant a bunch of Chaya which give great shade, grow fast, and provide food and fodder.

I'm looking into sweet potatoes, but sometimes you don't get what you ask for. I'll have to see what I can see. I think I'll plant much of my new (not yet made) garden with sweet potatoes and pigeon peas as well as bunny food like black oil sunflowers and such. Our kitchen garden will be primarily the original little pallet garden in front of the house since I've been working on the soil longer, so that should work better for yields.

Thanks for the resources. I'll look into them. We've had trees donated and planted before, and of the hundreds we got in, two have survived. Seriously. There is a very big problem with organizations giving stuff for free in Haiti (or other similar places). When you give things for free, you scream paternalism whether you want to or not. You also flood local markets, destroying what are often long time livelihoods for locals. And you destroy dignity.

There's a guy I know who understands this well. He gives vetiver on loan, but the recipients have to return the same to him a year or so later. This simple method alleviates the aforementioned problems. The other problem with vetiver in places like Jeremie, they dig it all up for the roots to sell to the oil refineries at a laughable rate. The oil refineries then re-sell at much higher prices in Western markets. So it's almost impossible to establish vetiver as an erosion solution in the south. In our area, the refineries are much further away, so they don't bother the vetiver . . . Yet.