Sherifa El Alfy

When I lived near the Red Sea many years ago, we had the following plants in the garden (among others):

Frangipani (how I love the fragrance!)
Neem tree which attracted parrots
Guava
Cherimoya (custard apple?)
Lantana
Jasmine and other climbers like butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea) which can be used to make an infusion (blue!)
Edited to add: We also had a huge Sea Almond tree (Terminalia catappa). It might be a little too big for your garden but seems very appropiate for your climate.

Getting some food, flowers and shade, in addition beauty and perfumes, would be my goal

Thank you for this, this sounds like a simple and wonderful objective. I already have a frangipani from our balcony that I've saved for my little patch. I love custard apples and will have to make that happen. Thank you for all the recommendations.

Steve Thorn wrote:I bet figs and pomegranates would do really well for you. Probably mulberries, pineapple guava, and jujubes too.

I forgot about pineapple guavas, I've only seen them here once but not too far away!

Also, can you tell me a Latin name for jujubes? I'm getting a lot of different results in my search.


Thank you!

I've added a couple more photos of the area that will be planted. I'll try to add another shot of the grass area that it's now connected to.

Hi Abraham,

Thank you for your thorough response! There is so much to think about. I've tried to respond to most of your points.

a few questions. Your earth looks very sandy, have you made a test to see what is its composition? Best method is mixing it in a jar of water and letting it decant for 24 hours. You will see layers of your earth composition.

This is actually just construction sand.

I am unfamiliar with El Cairo climate, but being a coastal city I don't think your temperatures will be too extreme, will they? Is there a chance of frost? How long is your dry season? How hot is your hot season?

We're 170 kms (100 miles) away from the Mediterranean. We're about 180m above sea level. There is no frost, the coldest most extreme weather might be around 6 Celsius (43 F) on a cold winter night. The heat can peak well into the 40s (Celsius) in the summer. Our dry season lasts almost all year, with chances of rain sporadically between November and January.

I guess the measures you provided are all in meters?

Yes

in a sandy area I would only plant cactus and succulents, but if you manage to add lots of organic matter, that would open new possibilities.

Yes I will definitely be adding lots of organic matter.

+what do you expect to achieve there?
+how much effort are you willing to pay?

A little updated is that we have now planted grass in most of the yard and we left a 43m2 area untouched in the front yard for me to focus my attention and efforts.

I mean, I get you want some privacy and added security from a living fence, but are you looking for beauty, freshness, food security, any other things?

What I am primarily looking for with this empty lot is to practice some skills, so it's mostly educational. I would like to experiment with different permaculture practices that suit my climate, and build some vegetable gardening know-how. I would love for it to be a tiny food forest, but a little worried and obsessive about the movement of the sun and how much shade I'll end up creating with trees in this area. As you said, fruit trees want sun and do belong in the front yard.

For instance, try not to block the sight from the windows, so no trees directly in sight (maybe flowers or low shrubs). Give something else to watch at the fence, let it not be just a wall of green. Or if you must have trees, then cut the cup high so the leaves don't block the sighting.

Yes this is so important to the design, to not block the view front the window with trees, but also not putting them too far ahead and creating too much shade for vegetables or blocking the sunlight in the winter (maybe I should look at some deciduous options in that case).

A bonus if you can do it with worms or bokashi.

Have a small bokashi system for my garden, which will be contributing slowly but surely to the garden. Also been thinking about adding worm system directly into the garden but I think it'll be best to wait until it's a little more established so they can make it through the summer heat.

I live in Cairo, Egypt. I’m moving into a suburban residential area. This is a desert region but the landscape is far from sustainable and the status quo is grass lawns and ornamental hedges.

I’m looking for help, mostly with species selection for my hedges as I’d love a diversity of fruit and nitrogen fixing trees. The backyard (overlooked by kitchen and two bedrooms) faces North West and also looks out to a construction site so will need windbreak as well as privacy/security.

The front yard (living space and master bedroom) should also provide privacy as it’s directly on a residential street. It faces South East.

There’s also a corridor along the side of the house (East) but it will not need a hedge because my neighbor has one on his side of the fence so it seems redundant. I could plant vegetables there but it doesn’t get much sun. Sun is mostly in the front yard!

I have a toddler and planning on having dogs so some grass areas will be necessary. Aesthetic is very important to my partner but a vegetable patch for me would be great to incorporate. I’d also love a good habitat for birds and beneficial insects, although flies and mosquitoes are a big problem here (probably due to overwatering). Water is readily available but I would obviously like to use it conservatively.

A friend in landscaping made these suggestions so far, primarily aesthetic:
Back yard
- a mostly citrus hedge, thorns providing security and trees also serving as windbreak/privacy
Front yard
- Tacoma stans
- Areca palms
- frangipanis
- french hibiscus
- pink trumpet vine

I would love to hear your ideas!

Saline groundwater in drip system, only neighbors who've moved in have filters and some have dug their own wells.

Is it sustainable for Geoff to have flood his swales in those conditions?

Hi Nathanael and John,

Thank your for your answers! It's encouraging to hear some to questions I've been asking myself for over a year now. I've been observing the land for a couple of years but will remain "new" to it as long as I don't have a place to stay there and spend time. This week was the first time I catch a sunset there for instance.

The salt cedar sprouts near the olive trees on an old drip irrigation system, so it will compete with anything I try to grow here. The drippers are getting a little blocked and the lab told me this could be due to the high manganese levels. I'm putting together a list of native/salt tolerant/drought tolerant species to form the layers of my permaculture design. I also have about 6 palm trees and lot a of bougainvillea which I think all just sprouted. The land was bordered with ficus nitida. I was surprised to see sapodilla fruiting here (not on my acre, but two of my neighbors!) I do sense that as much as this is an arid climate, there are also subtropical characteristics here.

I'm interested in making this more of a homestead than a commercial plot, but I have do have access to the two acres right above mine for expansion.

What's the minimum amount of rainfall that would justify installing a reservoir? Or would this just be in the case that I move in and store my water in one anyway?

In terms of capturing water from the air, I guess I do need to do my research and see how much water is out there.

John, when you say a place to store water now, but not a reservoir, do you have anything in mind other than swales?

My neighbors do things very differently here. To put in some large trees, blocks of 2 x 2 m of saline soil were removed and replaced with cleaner sand and mix and then irrigated with filtered water. The amount of energy spent on that makes me feel like I'm being too frugal counting energy expenditure on my swales

My one acre land is 70m above sea level, on the desert edges before the drop into the Nile valley. We rely on groundwater which is highly saline, as is the soil. The most common weed on my land is salt cedar.

The few surrounding lots who have moved in all rely heavily on water filtration systems for irrigation, most have their own wells, and plant mostly grass and ornamentals, so I worry about the water levels over time as the quality is already bad and I'm considering building a house here.

I wanted to begin with a swale system to harvest rainwater but the gardeners and neighbors all insist it doesn't rain here. My question is: am I supposed to design for a rain that might never come? My theoretical permaculture background says yes, but those who have been in the area long before me insist that this would be a huge waste of energy. I was told the most rain seen here in the last 5 years was a 20-minute shower once. My land is 60m2, so I estimated that two swales across would store up to 75,000 liters each if they did happen to fill, otherwise I don't know how else to flush the salt out of my land without a filtration system such as my neighbors'.

How can I heal my land and create a home for myself here in a sustainable, ethical way?