Eileen Seton

Hi John!

Wow such an awesome response. Your advice is so helpful thank you thank you!

Our yard is directly facing north east, more north than east, and a pretty huge mountain just behind us. We're pretty exposed to the sun and right now our yard definitely doesn't have much shade-providing trees to protect the intense heat we get during the day. Trees are a huge part of our plan.

We've set up the design plan and started digging about 4 raised beds to start. I figured that each of the beds would be pretty high and start about a foot under ground, layered with compost, cardboard, the massive tumbleweed/organic material from the yard we've collected, and more compost. Should we make separate hugels and swales other than these massive beds or will they capture lots of water already? In your post you said, "piling biomass behind the berms of the catchment." I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but it seems like very valuable information!

We are definitely going to propagate our trees from cuttings. Any personal experience with this? Should these be started in a greenhouse or will under a shade cloth be ok? The link you sent was very helpful.

And as for preparing for long dry summers.. Any advice on how to do this as best as possible?

Thanks so much for the help!
It's so much fun already!

Eileen

I live in the Southern California high desert, a small town called Acton. My husband and I are starting a food forest and are really beginning from scratch with only some research under our belt.

We are in a zone 8-9 area and have a lot of dry land to play with. There are two apple trees and one oleander growing abundantly in our backyard already. There are lots of native weeds and junipers growing in patches across the 1/2 acre property. So far we've started to collect all the dead tumbleweeds and piles of organic material to layer on top of the land. We have access to horse manure for our compost and are going to start a worm compost area with the manure and our vegetable scraps. But we want to lay out the area and get the decomposition process started so the land will be ready to go.

Do we need to dig our swales first along the slope of where our land is or just build raised beds with decomposing material along the pathways? Will that be enough? And once we figure that out, do we start planting from seed or transplant everything? And not to mention is this the right time to do all of this?

I'm looking for a good clear set of how-to beginner instructions. So far I have found a lot of information, but not a clear set of helpful directions on how to start this up from nothing. Any help is valuable and much appreciated.

Thanks so much!

Light,
Eileen