Orange is the new green: How orange peels revived a Costa Rican forest

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170822111033.htm

Orange is the new green: How orange peels revived a Costa Rican forest

In the mid-1990s, 1,000 truckloads of orange peels and orange pulp were purposefully unloaded onto a barren pasture in a Costa Rican national park. Today, that area is covered in lush, vine-laden forest

and the potential cider press part:

"Plenty of environmental problems are produced by companies, which, to be fair, are simply producing the things people need or want," said study co-author David Wilcove, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and public affairs and the Princeton Environmental Institute. "But an awful lot of those problems can be alleviated if the private sector and the environmental community work together. I'm confident we'll find many more opportunities to use the 'leftovers' from industrial food production to bring back tropical forests. That's recycling at its best."

Its always funny how people are surprised by the simply formula of adding a significant amount of carbon to the soil surface and then leaving it alone.   Mulch is the answer to degraded soil.  Period.  Carbon feeds the soil food web and stimulates the fertility of all that grows.  Mulch solves decompaction.  Mulch solves infertility.  Mulch stops solar irradiation of soil biota.  Mulch holds water.  Mulch provides a habitat for all the living things you want in your soil.  Mulch jump-starts biological succession and speeds revegitation of denuded landscapes exponentially.  

Orange peels, wood chips . . . whatever you can find.  Carbon is carbon --- pile it up.