Roberto Barioso

I still don't understand what is there that the moderator feels it is "offensive??" to someone?
Please help

Hello all, γεια χαρά Κώστα,

I am fairly new to the forum, not the material/subject matter discussed.  It seems as this thread alone would take me weeks to go through in detail, but the object is very interesting.

The soil that Kostas is dealing with seems something between dead clay and dead sand, with the usual for Greece high content of Calcium, which seem to block the absorption of many nutrients that plants need.  So even when you have a good water supply it is hard to kick start something in such an environment.  You need to create soil from scratch, you need to find out what weeds and grass possibly grows nearby and help it grow.  Anything helps.  I would get in touch with gardening services in the area especially in the fall, and offer to pick up the bags of leaves and trimmings from the yards they work on.  Make 1cu.m stacks like Geoff Lawton has described and attempt this 18day composting method.  Before you know it you may have gained a few cm. of soil,

My project and speculation at this point, my main reason of trying aquaponics/hydroponics, is to see whether small or large trees, bushes, can be first grown in grow beds with amplified nutrients, then replanted on the ground once they are of significant size.  Also making cultures of mycorrhizal from nearby wild woods using the rice bags in stocking technique and buckets of molasses sweetened water on the roots once the trees get planted.  It seems as the chances of getting seedlings to grow in such soil and maintain adequate moisture of the roots to grow are dismal.  If you don't water them they dry out, if you do you are forming a clay barrier they can not break through.

I have heard of ZAD in Nantes zad.nadir.org/?lang=en

But my French is not very good and their English is very limited ... and I believe it is a community of communities who interact with small farmers of the area and most live in the forest.  I don't know if they allow campers as in vehicle form.

About this acacia I found this in English, https://fairdinkumseeds.com/products-page/ethnobotanical-or-medicinal-plants/acacia-farnesiana-vachellia-perfume-wattle-seeds It lists some of the most common 50 names of it, but I've found a translation from Greek into musk-tree.  

In Greece they call it Ghaz'ia (Γαζία) and they consider it very different from other acacia.  They seem to all have been transplanted species from Australia where long ago built their defense on surviving great fires.  I curse these trees every time I try to do something close or under it.  They make a rose bush feel like french lettuce

The bean (seed) sacks eventually dry on the tree and fall while they are hard.  When it rains they stain everything around them in black purple (natural die for all your clothing needs)..  If you throw them into compost eventually new little ones will come out and become long skiny and indestructible very fast.  Because its wood is fairly hard, even skinny branches provide other crawling plants and birds a solid base to climb on.  Even cats walk on its skinny branches with security.    [You can make fine drum sticks of long straight branches].  So melons, pumpkins, etc will do great underneath and even if you don't eat them or get significant produce, the dried up plants in the fall create a grade shade/cover for the living soil underneath.  Just rip them off the acacia and drop them below.  Cheap soil cover.

With a low peak and high altitude I doubt there is any significant underground water, but if you see any old Eucalyptus in the area that is where it is at.  I believe acacia is also a good indicator of underground running water.  I am not suggesting you dig a well but what sometimes looks like a dry arid dead land may be the surface of a big creek.  I would concentrate all early efforts in building soil at the highest spots of the land.  Learn olive-tree trimming by selecting the oldest branches to cut and leaving the newest each year.  The best olives come from branches that are 1-2years old, while the old branches don't produce well.  This makes the tree healthier and more resistant to pests.  Instead traditional practice is to let it grow big for a few years and then cut it all above 1,5m and leave a pole for 1-2 years without any production.  The other way has good production every year.  Keep all the fine trimmings on the ground below and around the tree.  Don't listen to those old fools as they have been generationally fooled by the expert fools of industrial agriculture.  The same people that sold them pesticides to spray ON EVERY SINGLE OLIVE 3 times a year, every year taught them how to care and trim olive-trees.  I use sunflower seed oil for stir-frying.
Make things grow underneath them with mulching the finest pieces.  Olive tree wood is the world's greatest wood stove fuel, it make the whole valley smell nice.  The clay soil and dry sunny conditions you describe for the summer make it an excellent source of building (example outdoor wood stove) things.
You can also use those branches in making water traps higher up.  Because it is so oily it doesn't rot very easy, so if you stack them well in line and slow down water and keep adding mulch you may get a green explosion.

Plant wild flowers from the are and anything that would attract bees.  Learn some basic bee keeping and get a few boxes.  Get some shaded piles of mulch and broken branches, keep it moist, fungi will grow, bees will come and eat from there when there is no flower honey, so they will stay.  If you get them to stay year around then it is your Green Light, the forest creation is on.  You can just sit and watch it grow.

What's the distance from the closest ocean/med body of water.  If there steady air currents from that direction and you have peaks on the ground in places that are well venter think of making some kind of geothermic moisture trap.  Basically you need to stick the longest heaviest metal pole in the ground in a sady cool place (pipes used from old water drilling work well) insulate the part near the surface and above to the place where you'd weld some high surface metal that would also drip condensation into a tank.  You then either allow overflow to run into a channel or let it just run into mulched covered soil.  Solar-heated Amonia refrigeration cycles may be an expensive solution, or wind-powered air compressors made into refrigeration cycles.  Even compressing air may work in high wind areas in condensing ocean/atmospheric moisture.

If you have so many available working hands why not offer them with a truck in cleaning other peoples olive groves and gardens, as the fools think the soil needs to be seen by sunlight and be free from "weeds" to produce oil.  Bring all this organic material into your landfill
Later do a seminar of the gold they paid you to take away from their land into yours when you will be producing double the oil than they are producing while the pest (dakus) that destroys olives will be staying away.  

Keep olive trees low and use the shade to grow taller trees between them.  Learn everything you can about any small weed or bush or flower you see on or around the area.  Take hikes higher up and collect samples and seeds.  Nearly every wild specie you find in such climatic conditions contains exponentially more nutrients and therapeutic substances compared to what you find in wet climates.  If you see any dense vegetation and trees out in the wild, close to the peaks of the hills around you, use the method of dipping little sacks of sweetened wet rice about 15-20cm below the surface and near the root of each healthy tree.  come back 40 days later and take it out with some of the surrounding soil, take it back, put it in big buckets of chlorine/fluoride free water (rain water is best) with some molasses, stir up, keep in a cool shade for an other 40 days.  Take out and mix 10:1 with more rain/well water and put it in the roots of any small tree you are growing.  The best forest acceleration method I have discovered.  If you spent a fortune buying the best mycorryzal culture from the other side of the planet not only it may never work, it may even be hurting things.  You want to spread native old growth and species, plant and living matter, and displace the newcomers (humans acacia palm trees etc.).  


Peace, by any means necessary

Hello, even though this is an old topic I don't think the resolution is final or can't the issue be enriched by points and counterpoints.

1  Many have attacked the idea of urban soil but in some cases, in urban non-industrial areas, soil may be way better than what you may find in rural areas where industrial farming has been a constant practice for the majority of the 20th century.  The reason is pesticides and artificial fertilizers, lack of biodiversity .. etc.  In some patches of land inside old cities, (no lawns) some really clean and lively soil can be found.  Places with an abundance of weeds and wildlife growing seem to me very healthy.  There is air and rain polution but so it is hundreds of miles away from urban centers.

2  What is soil?  I am no expert, but the majority of soil is a "mechanical" medium for roots to be based on to hold the plant/tree up.  Whether sand, loamy clay, pebbles, rock, or perlite, what's the difference?  The difference comes with live nutrient cultures between the pieces of the medium.  Bacteria, fungi, mold, worms, and organic material.  Can this large lively system be contained in a 200gal system or a 20acre system?  No way.  

3  Can we approach/simulate the contents of lively healthy soil in an a closed AP system?  I believe we can give it one hell of a try, if we are trapped in concrete hell with a flat roof, and some sunlight.  It is about the only thing we can do.  

4  The feed for my fish is basically dried vegetable flakes and dried grass shrimp.  I also feed them minced pieces of vegies and fruit.  I try different stuff, stay away from what I am told that is bad for them, and except for the inconvenience of having to prepare supper for them, I use what I know is not artificial or toxic.  At some point I may use some of the vegetables I grow to feed them.  I haven't had much luck yet.  They seem as they have been trainned for generations to eat crappy dried food and don't know what to do with leafy fresh vegies.

5  My trick and experiment, as I do not expect to earn money from it or reduce costs of vegetables (it is an expensive hobby as someone says but 10 years seem a bit of an extreme), has been to try to introduce composting processes into the system.  One simple way is compost tea into the overflow/mineralizing tank.  One other is a compost in a cotton bag (a live culture with attempted inoculation of edible mushroom mycelium) half submerged in a shaded overflow tank.  I don't actually hope to get mushrooms growing from it, but it is not negatively affecting anything yet.  I rotate the contents between the garden pile and the bag.  I add fish poop solids back into the pile and try to filter any solids from going into the beds.  I have yet to find a single worm inside the beds.  You may say this is not an actual closed system, but nothing really is.  Air is full of spores and bacteria, so unless you are inside a bottle it is not really closed.  

6  Double up!  Well, maybe I am not doing aquaponics, but aquatics and hydroponics that borrow from each other.  I may merge the systems at some point, but not yet.  I take water from the fish tanks and overflow, and add fresh water, but not give the fish the water from the hydroponic system.  Although my tests seem to make it close to limits for the fish I'd rather keep both happy and violate the closed system principle.  Although I have added some lettuce cups with their roots hanging straight into the fish tank with mediocre growth.  If in need to move the fish as an emergency somewhere, I believe they will survive a few days into the catch/overflow/mineralization tanks.  Instead of a weekly water change, I take that much/7 everyday.

7  My herbs and teas seem to be all alive and reasonable healthy.  Actually the hardest time I've had was with lettuce and some garlic chives as they seem they had grown too much in the pot I got them from and their roots being all tangled up seem to have been injured by separating and transfering them to the AP bed.  The individual plants all have done great.

8  I think a growth system without fungi somewhere in the circle will be a deficient system, whether AP or land.