Kay Gee

I am not using wood to suppress weeds, i am using it to fill trenches and line beds. overtime it will compost nicely. i also put some under beds when i dig them.

Right now i have completely covered the raised areas with banana leaves, which will probably only last a month, and from there i think i am going to use straw/grass. a test spot of sawdust has just shown serious rot, fungal and bacterial, after 2 days...so i think not good for vegetables?

here is a picture before i did the wood. this the idea of our beds. the trenches will fill with stuff for composting and they also go deep to allow more water to soak in and retain. this was result from our first farm after trying many different ways. with flooding and dry, this worked well with constant mulching. but weeds were still huge problem

we have 3-6 months of no rain followed by very torrential rains for summer. we dont freeze.

As it looks like we cannot dig a well/have electricity we are looking to store water, mostly for the veggies and shallow root crops which will likely take up approximately 1/2 acre, no more than that.

I have been thinking about different ways like having big barrels in between trees hooked up to pipes and run a small generator/pump when its time to irrigate. but not sure.

also thought about cisterns underground, but with constant earthquakes 3-6 i think the cost would be far too much for steel to reinforce it strong enough.

Water tanks seem to be a bad idea buried, and septic tanks so far that i have found are fairly small.

Looking for any suggestions. The farm is basically a tropical fruit farm with a doughnut hole in the middle carved out for annual crops and more tender stuff.

interesting how science is catching up to traditional thoughts of plants communicating and being far more lively than we tend to think. It's amazing jsut how much everything interacts, be it understood or not.

Very cool. Where in China? I am not in China, but pretty nearby with very similar culture. Here i find permaculture is everywhere, but almost always with the older and aboriginal groups, talk to them. finding printed text can be hard, I know, but verbal dialog from people with untold history of the land is priceless. In Taiwan I find people generally confused/against permaculture type ideas, and yet they often practice the very same ideas at home on their gardens.

OK, thank you that makes sense. the hugel method is how i have been farming for a while. this farm i have been using banana trees and the odd woody thing. Banana isnt very woody so it breaks down faster than i would prefer, but it' whats available.

Next step will be chainsaw, i decided to use larger logs along bed rows and grow mushrooms.

You may want to look into Macrobrachium rosenbergii and similar things.

Dale, do you see alligator lizards making a big decline there? See many of the wall lizards in your garden?

Lots of useful reptiles, but highly dependent on where you live. I have thought about keep a savannah monitor in my greenhouse for snails, but they would likely rip the screen. here we have all kinds of snakes and lizards that do very much good in eating up stuff we dont want. They also provide a lot of pleasure watching.

amphibians are also pretty useful too if they are around.

I think if I were to experiment with grafting nightshades, I would want to be very very sure that some of the nasty chemicals in either the root stock or scion didnt trans locate to the other. I am not sure how common it is for it to happen, but have heard enough hearsay about it to wonder.

Sorry one thing i didn't understand was what is a "hugel".

Sounds like some have similar weather as were, seasonal wet/dry season with incredibly bad storms and also a big bag exotic weed problem. Mikea I am especially at odds with.

I havent thought of biochar before, I like it and will add it for soil, but i dont think it would work better than raw sticks because same problem arise with labor and making it small.

I have had good result laying branches and sticks in my pathways that I walk on in the gardens. Sticks and limbs laid out flat, in contact with the soil, will begin to compost quickly in a humid climate. By the time a year or two goes by, they are broken up and half composted and I rake them up into the planting beds to either side

I have also start this, works good. but like mention above i think wood sticks are not enough because weeds grow through the spaces easily. on our farm we can have it flat plowed and brown and in 1 month the entire thing, including up to 15' trees, will be literally covered in weeds. mostly vines, grasses and a few night shades and legumes. Sometimes i wonder if our soil is a good percentage seed by volume.

right now in very important spots we use a good quality black plastic weave sheeting that holds up in the sun for years (8 and counting). but even that some plants grow right through it. plants are amazing.


i am hesitant about using things like cardboard because this country has very poor record for pollution and contamination. thats the entire reason i am farming now, to eat clean. but slash is what i normally do. i practice the "slash and mulch" system religiously and my other farm went from anaerobic clay farm that would dry and could not even get the shovel depth in. now there is 1-2 feet of quality soil you can dig with your hands and also a good 3-12 inch layer of composting organic stuff. very lovely dirt now and it smells so good. but that was accomplish by letting weeds grow and i mow them down, for 5 years. this farm is veggie farm too and cant let weeds do that here.

but i do notice even a solid compacted 1 meter layer of dead grasses and weeds, leafy wastes, they are rotted and growing weeds in about 3-4 months, very rapid. This why i think wood may be my answer, at least take a few years.



i just found another option, and looking for opinions. here when storms come (this season now) there are lots of trees down, landslides etcs. people here take big trucks and collect them and often make sawdust for industry. I am wondering, these trees mostly being park, street, mountain or farm trees, would that sawdust be appropriate for my purpose? or should it really be chips with bigger air pockets? I was also wondering if you think there would be high levels of pollution in the trees, lots of heavy metals float around here in sprays. If you guys think this would be good, i can at least get this. not cheap but hopefully well suited?

Our farm is on very small road and no wood chippers in this area (not common in this country).

I usually take large branches, diameter 3-20cm, and remove smaller branches and break it all up. then the bigger wood, if not suitable for mushroom growing, i often just bury or place in the deep trenches i dig for irrigation (not enough to block it).

I mulch heavily but problem with tropical regions is non wood type stuff decomposes so fast that it isnt suitable for weed protection, but still good for plant/soil health.

i think if i can find way to use actual thicker wood pieces i can more effectively mulch for weeds. anyone have ideas? right now i am using plastic weave fabric which is nice but i prefer not using plastics and having lots of non renewables on the farm.