Presentation of Dignity Orchard for the Garden Master Course

Hi, there,
you may already know of my project in the community garden, you can find the details and some pics in my signature link. Here I am just going to focus on the changes that could be made in accord to Helen Atthowe's Garden Master Course.

THE BASICS

The terrain is in the city of Malaga, Spain, it's a municipal property about 2 hectareas (2000 sq m) that we are allowed (for now) to manage as a community shared garden.
Climate is semi-arid mediterranean, zone 9-10, with an average of 550mm precipitation per year. However, we are in the midst of a draught spell, so last year it was just 350mm of rainfall. Temperatures are moderated by the proximity to the coast, but not so close to be considered coastal. Never had a frost. However, there are northern winds very dry and hot we call 'terral' that may kill any non adapted plant, especially in the hot dry summer.
I don't know if it is the climate change or the draugh spell, but right now it is only raining in Spring.

A third of the terrain is sloped, the rest is almost flat. The earth is red clay, hard as a brick. There's no irrigation system, but there's some water in containers both delivered by the town hall and collected rainfall. There's a small tool shed, and we've installed planks on top for collecting rainfall water.


ESTABLISHED VEGETATION

Grown trees: A big carob tree (ceratonia siliqua), then fig trees (ficus carica), olive trees (olea europaea) and wild olive trees (olea oleaster), and a brachychiton. I'ts a mix of orchard and urban trees from the nearby park.
Growing trees: Moringa oleifera, quince (cydonia oblonga, intended as rootstocks for stone trees), granate (punica granatum), plums (prunus domestica, green and black), almonds (prunus dulcis), orange (citrus x sinensis), mulberry (morus nigra), laurel (laurus nobilis), loquat (eriobotrya japonica), pines (pinus pinea), and many carobs, since the earth around the big carob tree was used for inocculation, and there are carob seeds everywhere.
Struggling trees: lemon (citrus x limon), jujube (ziziphus jujuba), a sick almond tree, holm oak (querqus ilex), palmetto (chamaerops humilis)
Tall shrubs: Brooms (retama sphaerocarpa), reed (arundo donax, planted for trellises), aladier (rhamnus alaternus).
Small shrubs/weeds: Fennel (foeniculum vulgare), lavender (lavandula dentata), flycatcher (ononix natrix), cruet (rumex acetosa), vinegar (oxalis pes-caprae), plantain (plantago lanceolata), tagarnina thistle (scolymus hispanicus), cerrillo (hyparrhenia hirta), wild carrots (daucus carota), lathyrus sativus, gramma/bermuda grass (cynodon dactylon, invades garden beds), wild oats (avena fatua), sow thistle (sonchus oleraceus), purslane (portulaca oleracea), small bugloss (anchusa arvensis), ...
Vines: We got some grapes and blackberries (for fence protection), but the fruit is small and dry. Also, field bindweed (convolvulus arvensis) over the fence in some spots.


SITE PARTICULAR LIMITATIONS

Well, it's a public space, and it's very often vandalized. Since we are never sure when the municipality will be sending us out, we are not investing any money there. For 'reasons', I cannot work more than 4 hours per week. There is only one other gardener who expends so much time as I do, the others only appear occasionally.
In practice, it's like a guerrilla gardening place, or a garden learning place.


GOALS

Here's the big thing. With all the above, what can really be done? My goal is to create a semi-wild ecosystem where beauty and resources can be found effortlessly. I want that any visitor can go there and find something to eat, some culinaryt/medicinal herb or some flowers at any time, without having to do anything but harvest, and a nice cool place for relaxing. I do not care about yields, since it will be more a demonstration site than a production one.

WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE BEFORE THE COURSE

First analysis.
The weeds told us that our soil was massively compacted and slightly alcaline. Since we cannot use machinery, decompaction in the garden beds with the addition of some horse manure that was already bought seemed the best idea. At that stage, we weeded for 'cleanliness', as it is expected for market gardens to not be ruled by weeds. Also as a wildfire prevention strategy.

Structures.

We've been creating microclimates with slightly more water retention, in the form of sunken garden beds. In these beds, we've been trying to grow a few crops. Some have buried logs, as in a hugelkulture, but below ground level. (This one took me a few months to build with my hands). Some have only organic matter added. Some others only got some chop and drop mulch. The mulch is very thin, since the terrain does not produce vegetation in large quantities. Hyperrhenia hirta has been our major mulch source, along with carob leaves.
My last iteration of a garden bed is a sunken row of 30 cm surrounded by two sloped water catchment areas about 1m each, and a small berm surrounding everything with hyparrhenia planted as a a hedge for wind protection.
We also terraced one of the hill slopes, but the soil compacted afterwards and we haven't been able to work it yet.


Introduced vegetation.

We've been trying to add a few more edibles/benefitials to the seed bank. With our limited budget we purchased a prairy seed mix, but of all of the alleged species that the bag contained, only white mustard (sinapis alba) has taken a spot. We tried more oak seedlings from a forestal nursery, with no luck.
We got to grow some nasturtiums in last spring, along with some radishes, but the other crops failed. Broad beens died not long after sprout, tomatoes and peppers dried out very fast, cucurbits burnt under the sun, lettuces in winter were anihilated by slugs after some heavy rains, garlics had their sprout but didn't really produce heads, clover from a nearby garden wasn't able to root, and so forth.

Our small successes were with sage (salvia officinalis), boldo brasileiro (coleus barbatus), and wild chard (beta vulgaris). These three species are growing well whenever we have time for propagating them.

Also a small success, but not aligned with the goals, is that I finally grew some tomatoes. I used a self-irrigating container under a big broom bush on its northern side (for most shading). The tomatoes were a cherry variety from a good provider. The substrate was mostly compost with a little bit of clay from the terrain. It was not fantastic but we have been tasting them until december.


Observed fauna.

Yes, there are bugs. Aphids protected by ants are almost always present. Ocassionally ladybugs and stink bugs. A few spiders. When we dig, we find mostly mealybugs (armadillium vulgare), millipedes (anadenobolus monilicornis), mediterranean banded centipede (scolopendra spp). When it rains we see round and long nails, and slugs under the mulch. Wasps (vespula vulgaris) have sometimes made their nest here. Bees can be seen in the mornings of the spring. Carabid beatles I've found drowned in water buckets.
One particular hairy beetle showed when we had our radishes blooming. They fed only on their flowers for a couple of weeks and mate, then went away and were never seen again.
I have one bumblebee (bombus terrestris) that loves to handle nearby the blooming moringas and greets me in the afternoons. He loves these flowers.
Last week I saw some syrphid flies. Fruit flies are common around our compost drum bucket. And now there are many mosquitoes in the pool that we've built for storing rainwater.

Also birds. The best one is a common blakcbird (turdus merula), this one is intelligent and answers back when I tweet it. Curiously, I don't see many city-dweller birds in this place, such as pigeons and sparrows. Sometimes I can see magpies (pica pica). And the common kestrel (falco tinnunculus). However, there are no small birds, probably because there are not many flies arounds either.
I never saw a bat in the place, but I know there are a few in nearby gardens.

We had a small family of rats that fed on our figs, but they went away when we removed their nest, or maybe they were scared by a snake that passed by. Sometimes we are visited by a local chamaleon (chamaeleo chamaeleon) or a pray mantis (mantis religiosa) or a solitary grasshoper (once I saw a pyrgomorpha conica, such a funny head).


Other observations.

-Thyme and rosemary are common in the nearby hills, but they don't seem to grow by themselves in the terrain. They can be planted and do ok, though.
-Genista umbellata (a small broom) is very common in the hills. Not a single sprout inside the terrain.
-Mallow and lamb's quarter are very common in the nearby park, but they are only volonteering inside the best garden beds.
-Fennel was very abundant three years ago, then it was attacked by aphids, next year they were all covered by a spider web, and they almost dissapeared this year. Right now they are sprouting again from old roots.
-Bermuda grass is an annoyance in the garden beds, but it is not dominant in the other parts of the terrain, where taprooted plants have the advantage.
-I suspect the sunken hugelkulture bed is excessively ventilated, as it dries faster than I expected.
-Hyparrhenia hirta is the only weed I see green and growing in the worst of the summer, other than cacti and succulents.
-Boldo brasileiro is the only one with a vivid green color that survives without watering. The others are mediterranean species with a grayish green color.
-Nettles do not seem to hold, as expected with a low nitrogen environment.
-I cannot grow any beans, no chickpeas, no fava beans, no lentils, .... nothing. They sprout happily, but before they get to flower they wilt and die. First they lose their leaves then their stems have something like a constriction, as if a ring dried on one point and cut the rest of the stem. Finally the lonely stem without leaves dies.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED IN THE GMC (that may change the way I do things)

- How to create year-round habitat both in the soil and above.
- How to find relationships among the elements of the system: ID species, find out their preferences and associated elements.
- Treat pests and deseases by identifying them and addressing the cause of the imbalance: habitat for predators, balancing pH, aeration, ...
- How to start a soil food web with compost, tillage, and plants.
- Tips for improving our compost. Or actually make it an active aerobic compost.
- How to enhance or supress (but not eliminate) certain species and managing the seed bank.
- The importance of not using external inputs if there is risk of contamination with persistent -cides. Hence, having the system create its own fertility.
- Balancing the system needs with our goals, and how to make up for the disturbances to the natural system. Selective tillage and mowing.
- Learning to think of the system as a balance in motion, like a peg-top. How planting in succession looks like.
- The importance of C:N ratio, and (soluble) mineral balance.
- The proper distances for insectaries to be useful.
- Techniques for reducing disturbance: minimum or no tillage, subsoiler tools, slow feeding, minimal local interventions.

THINGS I AM GOING TO CHANGE IN MY PROJECT


Fruit trees.

I am realizing that the current prunning, with all of the branches in a fruit producing position, is optimized for a regular fertilization with manure. If I am not fertilizing, then the tree has to provide more sugars to the soil food web in order to extract more nutrients for the fruit. This means that I must let the fruit trees have more vertical branches, those that do not produce fruit, and only prune them for breathing. Also, a little lesson, dryland orchards with so much heat do not like open treetops.


Composting.

Oh my! So many things done wrong. Our compost is just our food waste management system. Food that is bought from the grocery or the supermarket, and is likely to contain some nastiness. Hopefully not persistant ones, since European rules are usually more strict. And we do not have enough material for a hot compost either.
So, first thing we will mix the ingredients as they are introduced in the compost bin. And also to make sure that it keeps its aeration. I will include some chopped sticks to provide some coarse material. I will check regularly for foul smells, in case I smell of putrefaction, it will go baking under the sun for a while.
The finished compost will be used only for the potting mix, using the two weeks pre-germination technique. That way, the compost will not be added to the soil until it proves that it can grow plants in pots.


Year-round habitat.

Our place is pretty wild, and our limited growing capabilities means that only a small part of the orchard is dedicated to growing crops. As it goes, there's a fairly doing well mediterranean prairy with flowers year-round, Oxalis and almonds in winter, lavandula most of the time, many many plants in spring. Except, you know, summer....
We realized last year that if we wanted to increase organic matter in the soil then we needed shade for summer and we went for trees, mostly fruit trees. But they are growing very slowly, so we need some fast growing shrubs that provide that shade that we need NOW. I already seeded brooms, but they didn't success. Maybe we can succeed at propagating the aladiern, the other big shrub that is already present. I also have to look for other bushes in the hills around us for a little bit more of diversity. They will be planted in patches, three to four plants of the same species in the same island, as they'd do in nature.


Testing.

We have no spare money for tests (remember, it's guerrilla-like gardening), but we can test for soil structure, and checking regularly the kind of weeds that volonteer (their size, root structure, ecological function and preferences). We will also mark every other week the flowers that are blooming, to make sure our pollinators are happy.
We already enjoy watching bugs, now we will also see what they are up to, if they are eating something or fighting someone.


Seed bank.

This is a tough one. As it happens, we would like to eat some plants that are suited for continental climate, and that could do in mediterranean climate if they were irrigated, but they are not. So we've been creating these microclimated beds, where we add organic matter regularly, and it is intended to be cooler and moister than the rest, and may even get a little bit of irrigation with the watering can. The area around the garden beds is drier, since they are broad pathways intended as rainwater catchment areas. And then there's the untouched terrain.
So we have three types of soil: garden bed, pathways, and native. I don't expect anything to grow in the pathways, but maybe thistles want to decompact the soil that we walk over. That would be a good place where throwing all the sticks that are too big to be used as mulch. It will prevent too much vegetation to grow in the rainwater catchment area / pathways and also prevent us from walking over mud when it is raining hard. No seed bank management here.
The wild area currently does not need a seed bank management, except if we wanted to replace one species for another. For example, our wild asparaguses are pityful, too thin and sour, maybe we could replace them with some better tasting asparaguses (if we can find a local variety that tastes good).

Most of the work will go into the garden beds. I will let at least one crop plant per bed go to seed, and spread some of their seeds in the bed, keep the rest in bags for sowing another year. Next year, I will plant something other, following the succession, but will allow the old crop to grow again if it wants. Hopefully, old crops will regrow in a different spot and the system will be in constant evolution. If a crop does not suit me (for the taste or if I know it will not survive for lack of care), I will chop and drop it before it goes to seed.


Interspersing.

My last garden beds have a berm with a weed hedge. This hedge was intented for only one species, the hyparrhenia hirta, as a wind breaker and mulch provider but now I am thinking that I should allow this hedge to be more diverse, as it could become an insectary closer to the crops.

This is neat. Your climate is so very different from my own, that I don't really know how to evaluate what you're doing. One thing though, I helped my grandmother's yard in southern California, which is also 'Mediterranean', by adding a lot of wood chips to her beds around the perimeter of the yard -- of course finding wood chips where everything grows so slowly is extra work. The thing you wrote that resonates the most to me is trying to get more shade established.

Is the lack of compost inputs desired? It sounds like a shortage, but since you're being careful with it, maybe I'm reading that wrong. If you want more, is there any chance that you could get the people who live close to the lot to save and donate their kitchen scraps as a community effort? It seems like the kind of thing they might be willing to do even if they don't want to join the gardening effort.

Christopher Weeks wrote:This is neat. Your climate is so very different from my own, that I don't really know how to evaluate what you're doing. One thing though, I helped my grandmother's yard in southern California, which is also 'Mediterranean', by adding a lot of wood chips to her beds around the perimeter of the yard -- of course finding wood chips where everything grows so slowly is extra work. The thing you wrote that resonates the most to me is trying to get more shade established.

Yes, thank you.
I gather fallen branches from time to time, but I have no way to chop them, other than using an axe, which I do not have. So I am burying them. Better than nothing.
Your comment makes me think if a manual wood scrapper would be a good idea for us. I've seen them sold brand new for 400€.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Is the lack of compost inputs desired? It sounds like a shortage, but since you're being careful with it, maybe I'm reading that wrong. If you want more, is there any chance that you could get the people who live close to the lot to save and donate their kitchen scraps as a community effort? It seems like the kind of thing they might be willing to do even if they don't want to join the gardening effort.

The lack of compost inputs is not a decision. We are just four people contributing to the compost bin, and the compost bath tub. I asked the others to use the compost bin first, since it makes it easier to control humidity, then finish it in the bath tub since it is easier to turn. We could be more people, but then we would need to add more infrastructure since compost piles are too hard for us, we cannot get the humiidity right.

I think of our compost system as a food waste management because that's what we are actually doing, taking a waste and turning it into something useful. But it is not the ideal active aerobic compost that was taught in the course that does magic in the soil. Knowing now what it actually is, I have to figure it out how to use it safely, because I still want to deal with my waste. I was adding cardboard from deliveries into the mix, glues and stickers removed, washing them beforehand hoping that any toxic stuff goes to the sewer. As Paul said, more carbon, less bad smells, but too much carbon makes it slow to compost. I also add some earth from our big carob tree grounds. Now, I will try to add a few sticks for more coarse material too see if it prevents compaction. Another thing I need to change is that I was adding the ingredients in layers; now I know that it is better if I am mixing and aerating them as they are added, to prevent compaction and waterlogging.
Then I need to treat this recycled waste carefully because it could contain toxic stuff. I don't think I would be happy with more kitchen scraps of unknown toxicity.

Abraham Palma wrote:too much carbon makes it slow to compost.

I wonder if at the scale you're working, you could supply most of the needed nitrogen with your urine.

Are there 'weeds' that grow strongly in the hard clay? I wonder if you could make use of some biomass as chop and drop to help with your garden beds as both food and mulch.

Great writeup, it sounds like you have a challenge but one that you can make progress in!

How long have you been involved in gardening there?

Timothy Norton wrote:Are there 'weeds' that grow strongly in the hard clay? I wonder if you could make use of some biomass as chop and drop to help with your garden beds as both food and mulch.

Great writeup, it sounds like you have a challenge but one that you can make progress in!

Thank you.
The first weeds to show on the compacted-as-a-brick soil are the thistles and the anchusa which is a kind of borage. Chop and drop from the 'wild' to the beds is being done even before I started helping in the garden. Hyparrhenia is a favourite for mulch. However, the mulch was never taller than one inch. If I want a thick mulch, I guess I need to dedicate six to eight times more for growing cover crops than crops.
I need to say that I am not so fond on mulching in these conditions. The mulch dries up and then dessicates, and it ends up becoming dust, not humus. The soil underneath keeps the humidity for longer, so it is not useless, but I think that most of the carbon and nitrogen are lost. That's why I am in desperate need of shade.

Timothy Norton wrote:
How long have you been involved in gardening there?

I started in 2020, just after the lockdowns. The first year I did observe, the other three years I have been experimenting. Being a kind of guerrilla gardening, I haven't eaten much of what I planted, but it has been fun and instructional. And now I am going to try my hand as a professional organic gardener.

EDIT. Oh, I guess you are suggesting to use the weeds in the compacted area for mulch. Yes, we are already doing that, but I have instructed the others to not mow below 30 cm, because when we have mowed low, the soil has turned harder. We used to 'clean' the place both for aesthetics and fire safety, but I leaning towards more water retention.

To illustrate things a little better, here's our food waste management system.
First, the compost bin where we pre-compost fresh stuff. Here it preserves moisture.




Next, when the compost is half way, we move it to the compost bath tub, where we can turn it more easily. It needs some extra water ocassionally. This one is not ready yet, but it is close.




This one is the lattest version of the sunken bed. It does not have buried logs, only mulch and plants. Notice that the water catchment area is six times larger than the bed. The herbs in the berm have not hold, sadly.






And these plants are two of our best performers: boldo brasileiro and wild chard.



It has been rainning for the past two weeks, so everything is greener than usual. Temperatures are very high for the season, though.