SALT (Sloping Agriculture Land Technology ) video

admittedly i got bored with that video pretty quick but it quickly reminded me of Sepp Holzer's system, minus the A-frames

if you arent sure who Sepp is, you may be interested in googling Sepp Holzer - Farming with Nature, and Aquaculture
the farming with nature in particular uses terracing like that video and is a pretty interesting video in and of itself

I was pretty exited when I saw the thread topic and it came with a youtube link. Even the titling of the video made me thing this was it, terracing in the tropics first hand footage. But then I saw how short the video was and how it was an illustrative guideline, then I got pretty sad.
There terracing in the temperate on smooth grazed treeless hills and that's great, then there terracing in the tropics where things are allot more jungly and unstable on slopes. Allot of south east asia has mastered working with karst limestone, super sharp, super brittle, super sinkholes. I'been searching years for just a glance at how they do it.

Maybe someday itle turn up on youtube but todays not the day. I tried googling the dr's name to see if there where real pictures anywhere, but the name is too common and i'm getting nothing. Do you have any additional links?

I was simply posting it as food for thought, and maybe that someone would get something out of it, even if its what not to do. I actually came across the video after watching some Sepp videos for the dozenth time. An intern I had here from France turned me on to Sepp in 2010. He was so passionate about Sepp that he bought his Permakultur book before there was an english translation, because at the time he bought it we had a german intern staying here too, who agreed to translate the book for us.

Even still, I'm mystified at some aspects of Sepp's pond/lake techniques. Eg. How it translates to relatively flat land (which is what I have), how he determines the placement of the ponds on the highest point of the land, how to determine how far apart the ponds should be, how the pumps culverts and 'the monks' are placed, and how the streams are constructed.

Of course there are a lot of variables that play into these factors but I found that his permakultur book didn't give enough detailed information to empower the reader to say "With this type of situation, this is how to set up your ponds and terraces." From what I can determine by all that I've seen and read about Sepps' methods:

I think that with flat land, it means you need less ponds in a given area that are spaced out farther than if the land was sloped, because the water is slower to move through the landscape. I think that the pond at the highest point should be very close to the most wind-protected edge of a forest/tree line to keep the wind from moving the water away (both in the air and in the pond), with enough space between the pond and treeline for an access road and terrace so that your pond doesn't fill up with eroded soil from uphill. I think that between the forest treeline there should be no more than a few lines of production trees in order that the pond be close enough to the windbreak for it to be effective (eg. within 150 feet of the treeline). I think that the streams connecting the ponds would follow the lowest points of the land.... But I'm not really sure of any of this.

His seed mixture is a bit mystifying as well. I've got a list of the seeds he uses but not how he determines the ratios of this seed to that seed (eg. 5% this seed, 2% that seed, 20% t'other seed)

I think that the shorter lived plants and plants with closer spacing make up higher percentage of the mixture, with wild flowers coming in next, and the smaller percentage would be made up of the longer lived plants and those that need wider spacing. But I'm not sure.

Maybe our translation was off, or maybe my notes were lacking but I recall that his book lacked essential details like these.

Travis Philp wrote:I was simply posting it as food for thought, and maybe that someone would get something out of it, even if its what not to do. I actually came across the video after watching some Sepp videos for the dozenth time. An intern I had here from France turned me on to Sepp in 2010. He was so passionate about Sepp that he bought his Permakultur book before there was an english translation, because at the time he bought it we had a german intern staying here too, who agreed to translate the book for us.

Even still, I'm mystified at some aspects of Sepp's pond/lake techniques. Eg. How it translates to relatively flat land (which is what I have), how he determines the placement of the ponds on the highest point of the land, how to determine how far apart the ponds should be, how the pumps culverts and 'the monks' are placed, and how the streams are constructed.

Of course there are a lot of variables that play into these factors but I found that his permakultur book didn't give enough detailed information to empower the reader to say "With this type of situation, this is how to set up your ponds and terraces." From what I can determine by all that I've seen and read about Sepps' methods:

I think that with flat land, it means you need less ponds in a given area that are spaced out farther than if the land was sloped, because the water is slower to move through the landscape. I think that the pond at the highest point should be very close to the most wind-protected edge of a forest/tree line to keep the wind from moving the water away (both in the air and in the pond), with enough space between the pond and treeline for an access road and terrace so that your pond doesn't fill up with eroded soil from uphill. I think that between the forest treeline there should be no more than a few lines of production trees in order that the pond be close enough to the windbreak for it to be effective (eg. within 150 feet of the treeline). I think that the streams connecting the ponds would follow the lowest points of the land.... But I'm not really sure of any of this.

His seed mixture is a bit mystifying as well. I've got a list of the seeds he uses but not how he determines the ratios of this seed to that seed (eg. 5% this seed, 2% that seed, 20% t'other seed)

I think that the shorter lived plants and plants with closer spacing make up higher percentage of the mixture, with wild flowers coming in next, and the smaller percentage would be made up of the longer lived plants and those that need wider spacing. But I'm not sure.

Maybe our translation was off, or maybe my notes were lacking but I recall that his book lacked essential details like these.

thats some great to know information man, i am really looking forward to ordering that book soon
i am also on flat praries so the pond thing was quite different to me as well, you believe its best to have less ponds in the same area when on flat land because of the speed the water will move?
i am going to plant a large windbreak for the 40 acres as one of my first things this summer but i didn't quite think that one should plant a windbreak for EVERY pond, though i may have by the time i got to putting said ponds in
and the seed mixture always interested me, i was always curious what the actual seeds were?
and the ratio is something else i hadn't thought too deeply about, perhaps i oughta be played with?

if i were on more sloped land i would probably look more in depth to the terracing but my land is pretty flat, however i may just terrace some of the small valleys/draws and plant along them for this first season, so that video could very well be pretty useful for me, thanks:)

Travis, have you looked at "Water for Every Farm" by PA Yeomans? It gives a lot of details on pond placement, construction of dams, etc on slightly sloping land (much less steep than Sepp's place, as far as I can tell). http://www.keyline.com.au/

Devon Olsen wrote:
thats some great to know information man, i am really looking forward to ordering that book soon
i am also on flat praries so the pond thing was quite different to me as well, you believe its best to have less ponds in the same area when on flat land because of the speed the water will move?

Thats my guess but I don't really know. I also think this because there's less surface area on a flat footprint of land, compared to a hilly area of land with the same sized footprint.

Devon Olsen wrote:
i am going to plant a large windbreak for the 40 acres as one of my first things this summer but i didn't quite think that one should plant a windbreak for EVERY pond, though i may have by the time i got to putting said ponds in
and the seed mixture always interested me, i was always curious what the actual seeds were?
and the ratio is something else i hadn't thought too deeply about, perhaps i oughta be played with?

Not sure if you know this already but even the tallest windbreaks are only effective at breaking wind for about 150-200 feet of land downwind. With this in mind, I'm hoping to split the fields on my farm that I'm going to put into vegetable/fruit production into suntraps that are about 209 feet wide and long. The field I'm starting with is about 420 feet east-west and about 1000 feet north south. And until those windbreaks are tall enough I'm planning on planting smaller suntraps within the larger ones.


Tyler, I haven't looked at that yet but it's on my reading list. Thanks for the link