Jadie May

Thanks for your thoughts. The land is indeed dry desert. Many patches of summer monsoon lush grasses, forbs, and shrubs dot the place amidst barren areas eroded due to a lack of water capture grading (until I get my hands on those spots).
I have a small collection of native grass seeds from the road and will make seed bombs to place in the swales I plan to dig out in those areas.

Couldn't find a group for way out here in west Texas, likely because it's sparsely populated and by many who don't understand permaculture or believe it works here.

So if anyone else here is on this forum and wishes to talk and troubleshoot, brainstorm, plan, etc., well then I reckon we could start a group for this area.

My issue is trees dying. Half the fruit and nut saplings I put in have perished, likely due to exposure to this hott sun. But now I'm losing the Loblolly Pines. So sad. I was watering 2 gallons everyday then every other day then every couple weeks. Read to water twice a week 1 gallon and just started that but they are going yellow/brown so it looks to be all wrong or too late. No idea what is happening, as they were green and put out new growth for many months.

I'm starting again from scratch but this time with seedlings grown in my greenhouse. I have a few Acacia finally coming up plus a group of Mesquites and two other local/natives given to me but whose names I forgot. I also have a number of Eucalyptus, which I know do well here because they dot the landscape in a few places, obviously cultivated but unirrigated. The ones that have reached 8" to 2' will go in the ground this Fall.

All batches of hybrid willow have died before getting planted or after going in the ground. Not sure why. The in ground ones were given buried clay pots, amended soil, mychorrizae, and mulch. The greenhouse pots were kept watered.

All Lombardi and hybrid Poplars died in ground or greenhouse. No clue why. One even got its own Waterboxx. The Waterboxxes haven't worked for locally-procured Sycamore, Silver and Red Maple, Walnut, and Pecan. No idea what's going wrong there either. Followed instructions downloaded from a group using them, as the Waterboxx people don't seem to provide instructions on their site. I will keep trying with them, this time setting them down at ground level inside a swale and heavily mulched around the outside. The instructions said to have them on the flat surface at grade and mound bare soil up around the edges.

I saved a Pear, two Peaches, and an Apple in the Waterboxxes by wrapping the saplings in burlap for shade, but none of the saplings look to be growing new leaves or showing other signs of being happy. My three baby Walnuts are either dead or alive but lost all leaves, which I couldn't tell because the tree protectors made it too difficult to do a scratch test and I got them covered in burlap a few weeks ago.

Sourcing hardy desert nitrogen fixing trees seems near impossible, but I am finding some sparse seed online. So it looks like a long haul to reach Geoff Lawton's first phase of establishing shadeband wind breaks ahead for edible trees.

What species, techniques, and timing have worked for you here in west Texas?

Kim Goodwin wrote:Your land sounds very degraded.  Do you have any pictures you can share?  I know we'd all love to see what plants are there and your work thus far. Sharing pics here is done via the "attachments" tab just below the reply window when you write a reply. Also, are there any buildings on your land? Do you have water, or is this all being done with rainwater?

One thing my husband and I've been doing  after listening to more Geoff Lawton talks - he says that in desert restoration, start with succulents and groundcovers immediately. They hold moisture. In our cultivated gardens we use both native and non-native succulent plants, and in the open landscape we are focusing on native ones or ones that are already here. Out in the open we are encouraging and protecting all the prickly pear and cholla we can.  We have to protect them from javelina here or they will be dug up and eaten before they get big.

Do any cactus grow by the side of the road in your area?  Any pads or branches you can harvest?  All you have to do is cut off a pad near the attachment, let it dry one day, and then stick it in the ground at least 2-3 inches.  In truth, they can root from just laying on the ground. As for other groundcovers - you will likely see many sprout and grow on their own with the added moisture you are collecting.  The variety in the SW is amazing.

You may also want to help those grasses growing with a mixture such as this one Plants of the Southwest - Dryland grasses mix

Grasses are key to grasslands, funny as that sounds.  Their roots exude compounds that feed and build the soil biome and tilth.  This is like secret sauce for the soil.  haha

The acacias and such you mentioned are a great start, too.  I'm in zone 8a NM, and we have lots of whitethorn acacia here.  It smells like the most amazing perfume when it blooms, which is during and after the warm monsoons.  We encourage it around our garden as a windbreak.

Of course, mesquites will pay you back in many dividends.  I've read they produce more nitrogen than the acacia, and they also shift the soil pH underneath them as they grow and shed their leaves.  Mesquites seem more effective nurse plants than acacia and they produce a lot of food for animals.

In the meantime, as rains fall and water soaks in, you will see all sorts of wildflowers begin to grow.  You could seed with wildflower mixes, but in my experience also in zone 8a aridlands, the ground is full of seed just waiting for enough moisture to fall and collect.  Different ones will germinate at different times of year, as some like cool soil, others only germinate in hot soil. It's magical.

Our plant succession plant for our location is a little different than yours, as your land sounds more degraded.  We have many acacias and mesquites here, Mormon tea, native wolfberry, some cacti, and even a lovely ocotillo.  Also in the ground are many native grass seeds and so many wildflowers that sprout in the areas water collects. We also have lots of chamissa (rabbitbrush, Ericameria spp) and isocama spp. short-lived perennial, shrubby wildflowers.  These are very drought resistant and provide food for animals here, and loads of compostable material for us.

So our list starts maybe a little higher than yours on the succession strategy?  Not sure without pictures.

What we are doing that might apply to your situation:

Cactus - still included, because our land here was denuded of cacti, possibly through overgrazing

Mesquites In our case they are already here, just need encouragement, water catchment.  Some are tiny stumps in the ground from years of desperate rabbits.

Palo verdes These are native here, but you might be getting to the range where they would freeze out? I think they are barely zone 8, in my opinion.  Maybe someone else in Texas can share about them?  They are very, very low water use and make beautiful filtered shade. The pods are edible like peas or beans.  And the variety known as Jerusalem Thorn is supposedly the tastiest; I haven't tried them yet.  Jerusalem thorn also requires the least water according to plant list I've looked at.  And like many tough, landscape restoring plants, these are loathed by many people.  The thorns.  The desert is prickly, may as well embrace that I say.  :-D

Native nut trees and plantsThis may be early in the succession, but these plants take so many years to grow and fruit that if the water is there we feel it's good to get them in earlier rather than later.  This may not work for your site.  For our sites we are planning pinyon pines and AZ walnut.  We only have the AZ walnut in so far - the previous owner put them in and sadly, they require a lot of water to get started. I don't recommend that one.  I haven't found a source for the pinyon just yet, so those are being bumped to later.  For medicine instead of nuts, Arizona cypress also falls into this spot for us. Those are very drought tolerant.

Black Locust - Even with the mesquites, I believe we still need some faster growing legumes to help speed the succession.  Some people use honey locust, but I've read it requires more water. Black locust can live with a minimum of 12-13 inches according to Extension reports. Black locust has the benefit of having toxic bark, so I think this makes it a little easier to protect from rabbits in the very vulnerable early years.  We still cage or use tree tubes.

Leuceana retusa - These are wonderful forage tree, so they have to be protected from rabbits and such initially.  They will freeze to the ground in very cold years and sprout back up. Also called Golden Leadball Tree. Native to some parts of Texas and NM.

Native oaks To re-establish the savanna that once was present here. (you can see in old pictures of cows or people resting under oaks scattered among the grasslands)

Then we go into Jujubes, mulberries, Mexican Elderberry and other drought tolerant, lower water use, fruiting plants.

In the pictures below, you can see that some of our trees get irrigation.  Those in the picture are part of the food garden  - they are trees surrounding the food garden to add nitrogen, windbreaks, and make shade.

The palo verdes are in a drainage ditch created by the past owner to keep this house from having water pool around it.  

The drainage ditch was totally bare until we replanted grass (dug from next to the house where we were starting garden#1) in vegetative lines to slow water in that ditch. It worked and a bunch of native plants filled the ditch the next year (including an acacia that sprouted on it's own, it's the taller shrub on the side, with reddish bark and no leaves) .  

We added rock lines to the grass lines in year 2, to slow things further.

This year (year 3) we put in the palo verdes.  They've needed watering about once a week to get started, but now that the monsoons have begun I think they may be fine.

Yes my project is transforming desertified land. TY for the plant suggestions..