gustavo alcantar

OK, last series of fotos, stone mulch under trees

continued from 2 posts above. stone mulch around trees

I wish we could post more attachemnts per rply,,, but this is a continuation of my previous reply above...

technique #2 - cardboard n stone mulch around existing fruit trees

In highland desert of Mexico (1700m) which is dry about 8 months with heavy rains in the summer, on 1/2 acre site with lots of barren poorly fertilized sandy silt, we used various techniques:

1) Swales!! Lots of them weaving arond the entire site, hand dug... They filled up and held water so nicely! We planted over 20 new fruit trees along both sides of the main swale.

2) Hugelkultur mound. we buried a bunch of old untreated wood from torn down structures and filled up with branches, soil, straw, and seeded it with a variety of things to see what would grow without any irrigation.

3) We built rock mounds around older fruit trees (see pics). I observed over the course of a few weeks that this kept water from evaporated so quickly. Instead of watering every 2-3 days we were able to keep the soil moist for more than a week. After a few weeks we saw mycelium network growing and - mushrooms popping out!! None of the locala had ever seen that happening.

4) Roofwater catchment. We connected 5 plastic storage tanks to a big roof, each one 1100 liters. They filled up in the first 10 minutes of rain. We built another cement tank which held another 10,000 liters. We also had an existing underground cistern which held another 12-15,000 liters which we fed from our well as needed.

Morgan, thanks for verifying that scorpions like the standard permie rock/mulch conditions i am setting up... a little re-design necessary. Our rabbits are in large fenced in areas outside near rock walls, stacked blocks, so we didnt actually see them get stung or dying, just found them dead in the morning, two days in a row.

I had a conversation this weekend with a native mexican permie about it and he suggested a solution - very dense BioIntensive planting instead of mulch to keep soil pretty well shaded - without attracting scorpions to that particular area. This sounds like a good solution for certain garden bed areas but the yard is pretty big and it would take thousands of plants to cover all the areas, some of which have very poor soil which prob not support all that plant life right away. So, i will try and read up on particular bio-intensive companion planting combos and prob try the mulch in faroff areas just to see what happens... And we're also trying to build up good soil with Bokashi methods.

Hola, I'm working on a project in a remote region in Jalisco, Mexico, (arid/semi-arid high altitude drylands) that is known to have a fair amount of scorpions (deadly Centruroides & Vaejovis). We suspect one killed two of our rabbits last week (not sure but we did see one scurry away as we were unstacking their rock den).

We're prepping this large garden site with cardboard, mulch and rock piles for the existing fruit trees, sheet mulching neglected areas, and planting some annual beds with mulch. The site also houses a small preschool and after-school youth program for about 25 indigenous (Huichol) kids. We're getting them involved by planting seeds to grow their own tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and melon. I've just been researching scorpions after the rabbit incident and have come across information that says they like to hang out under/around moist rock piles and mulch. And that most of their lethal victims are children. Its giving me the willies thinking that if we mulch the kids garden as we're "supposed to", then we're inviting scorpions and putting kids at risk!

I've also read conflicting information that Lavendar does/doesn't help repel scorpions, as well as citronella (which is available)

What is your experience with scorpions? and your opinion about the situation with kids?

thanks!!

Heres the attachment, trying to find the best filetype that the forum will accept and show nicely.

I'm a graphic designer who's moved into permaculture design over the past few years. While i dont think its necessary to have a gorgeous digital illustration for one's own backyard, i have done a few layouts in Adobe Illustrator for projects that need to be presented to city councils or foundations for grant applications, and i have found this level of professional artistic presentation really impresses folks. It can make a huge difference between landing $50k or not! The learning curve can be tricky (i have over 20 years experience) which is why one might find/hire professionals rather than DIY, if there's some budget of course (or lotss love).

The next level up for professional level, to-scale, contractor quality which can also be turned into 3D is AutoCAD or SketchUp (FREE and good - landscape designer friends use it at large corporate offices). I'm looking into learning Sketchup to help bring Permaculture into more professional environments.

Dont get me wrong, i LOVE using sketchbooks, tissue overlays and scribbling to allow organic ideation (agree with Paul & Paula), and i usually start with that for a while, BUT once basic layout elements are decided you can digitize these plus fixed elements (house, roads, neighbors, fences, contours, large trees etc) for a great basemap to experiment with. The advantage of digital vs handdrawn is that one can Copy/Paste or move things around very quickly without re-drawing the whole thing, just SAVE AS. and you can enlarge for detailed design, powerpoint, share/email, posting on forums, etc.... You can also print and then continue sketching on the printouts.

i'm attaching a recent sample - one page of a multi-page pdf presentation. mind you the plan is not yet finished (it never is) but it was to show our progress so, y'know please dont throw too many stones (i am open to constructive criticisms though)... i will post "finished" version pretty soon

Hi Dave and Paul

Newbie here but have already gotten so much awesome useful info. Thanks for keeping it together and growing strong!

I'm working on a project in mexico desert where water is scarce so we have been designing a system to store as much water in the form of swales and expanding the existing pond, as well as building compost toilets, mulching trees, etc. While i was away from the project for 5 weeks the local guys decided to construct a rooftop system (without telling me - arrgh!) that uses pvc pipes/elbows/t's/glue for the whole length of the system. I've just arrived back here and am not sure if this will last in the longterm.

It doesnt appear to have sufficient slope and the pipes already look kinda wonky, sagging a little here n there, and they havent installed any first flush. I'm wondering if anybody has experience with doing a system like this? My concern is that PVC in the full hot desert sun will deteriorate rapidly, and that if there is sediment buildup in the pipes it may clog and be harder to clean than a standard gutter. Not to mention dioxins produced by PVC.

Most houses in this town already have thin metal/alum(?) pipes built into the rooftop that then spill directly out into the sidewalk. I thought this was a perfect scenario to simply cut the existing pipes down since they extnded out about 1 foot, and have the water drop into a standard gutter. Easy. Instead they completely removed the old cemented-in pipes and simply laid the pvc in its place with gaps underneath (which tells me water will leak away), attached to an immediate elbow, 3" or so of vertical pvc, a "t", then a 6-8 ft horiz PVC joined to another elbow/vert/t set, followed by another and another. Seems like a lot of room for failure.

This is supposed to be a local permie demo site but this is not the way i would have done it so it feels less exciting to demo it. Am i being too critical? I could add fotos (sorry dont have them yet)