Caroline Kloppert

This thread is itself the most useful resource I've found on the topic today by far. I agree with many of the caveats posted here.  Mediterranean climates are not all equal. We are 34 South and ours (compared to the classic areas like the South of France) is distinguished by having a drier hotter summer, in which we can go 6 months without rain easily, and wet but milder winters with no freeze (thank God). Our soils are characterized by being some of the lowest nutrient sands in the world, washed down from ancient mountains and spending much geological time under sea water. We grow wheat and barley, olives and grapes locally with dryland farming, but notably the wheat is grown on clay soils north and east of Cape Town. I've struggled with many plants that are recommended by other Mediterranean gardeners, and also with plants I see growing in the wild that just will not take in my garden such as blackberries. I've had a good crop of fava last year, sowing in early winter. We've had a record wet winter and though the plants flourished there aren't many beans. I've failed utterly with jerusalem artichokes, artichokes, a bunch of other stuff and all cucurbits due to disease, mainly black wilting and powdery mildew. To overcome some of the climatic challenges I harnessed two artifical 'wetlands' and two raised beds to our grey water (kitchen) output that goes through a worm bin first and has the fattest worms I've ever seen, and then added a urinal or two that feeds in lower down. The raised bed irrigation system is plagued by blockages as the pipes are 8mm wide and 10 meters long and the biofilms are such a problem I don't recommend small pipes for grey water. However the 'wetlands' have been a great success. I've grown massive greens there, Malabar, Cos, green onions, beet (leaves) and chard for years and over sufficient for our consumption. At this moment in time I'm fedup and burned out, but still encouraged by how well my plastic lined grow beds have worked to create more fertility. In this place you can say that 'add water' is the answer to nearly all gardening problems.... or you have to bite the bullet and use our wet winters better. I'm deciding to 'go dry' and grow climate adapted, native if possible, dryland perennials till I've finished working out an irrigation system for the raised beds only. I saw Alik Pelman, a smallholder from the Galilee area on youtube face up rigorouly to the given conditions and succeed in becoming largely self sufficient. I only have a 100m2 so I can't get his output, but certainly his basic principles. I love many of the recommendations made here. Guilds and perennials are marvelous... most plants do love and support each other most of the time.

exactly my question ...being from cape town... check out alik pelman on youtube...i'm putting together  a list myself
Dryland crops mediterranean

nopal
wheat
ground nuts
canola
oats
barley
olives
tamarind
fava
sunflower
soybeans
almonds
vines
guava
citrus
carob
fig
thyme
fennel
rosemary
blackberries
'nuts' ...but which

only started an hour go so stay in touch and gimme time....see me at greenidiom.com

wow... now you have we pondering the great spherical compooster. A hemispherical pit in the ground lined with organic material, with a hemispherical pile on top, covered with straw bales so that it appears like a pale gold igloo ? Perhaps instead of building in horizontal layers one could build in dome like layers. I imagine the bottom part underground would be built from the outside in, and then the dome above ground from the inside out, pretty arty for a job like this. In the beginning the underground part would be well sheltered from the elements and by the time you get to the above ground part, the heap's microbiome would be hyperactive perhaps.  

So interesting to read about problems with poop and freezing temperatures !
my suggestions : food scraps and kitchen waste to worm bins. They can be located indoors and shouldn't smell if managed properly, especially as you say you don't have much. My husband was a pro, and paid off his house with vermiculture. You can ask him anything (well almost) as he's German and has done this in Germany and in South Africa. His award winning website is called worm composting help dot com.  But enough self promotion.
I'm wondering, but I've never been in your shoes, ,though its very interesting to think about, that the hot composter for the poo could be kept warm with straw bales as you suggest (forgive me if others have said the same thing) as building a wall and floor of straw bales also isolates the pathogens. Even in our warm climate in South Africa, I find the outer 30cm of my humanure pile never actually composted properly. My solution was to switch from a cube made with pallets, to a pentagon made with pallets which hugely increased the hot inner core size relative to the whole heap. We've been going about five years now. Maybe a larger size hot composter will stay warmer at its core, and maybe in freezing temperatures you need to have an even larger composter with more wall than core, also a thick floor and roof of organic material ? Maybe you could continually stoke the inner heat by keeping urine aside, and adding it to the core through an inlet pipe ? Our humanure gets stored in buckets and we only build the heap about every second month, so I'm sure in this way, the heat comes in waves, after each addition.  The only way we can keep such long intervals is by having a urinal. This is enough that the buckets fill slowly. It takes me at least two weeks to fill my bucket because we humans output a lot more liquids than solids. My liquid output from the urinal gets mixed with grey water in a very simple closed piping system with some T's and goes into my grey water beds, in which I grow meter high chard, malabar (cimbing) spinach and Italian dandelion, sometimes taro. They all LOOOOVE the combination of liquids. I write for my own website, called greenidiom dot com, so I'm always pondering on my  systems and trying to articulate and theorize. Get them right and we may be better at surviving the coming climageddon. Natural gardeners, permaculturists and restorers will be the knowledge holders that help us, so keep on experimenting everyone, and keep on sharing and documenting what you've learned.

Each gardener may accumulate a lifetime of experience. And then it rolls over and the next generation starts, quite often from scratch. Its a strange thing that gets me thinking a lot. We need to archive this knowledge. But its so unwieldly, so complex, so responsive to context. Maybe something like AI can integrate it all. There is also a need to sift information as clearly it sometimes comes from true experience garnered by an open, experimentally adventurous mind, and sometimes its just a set of rules acquired by inherited conventions. I loved these comments on spacing and water. This is where the wheels hit the road. My experience has taught me three big lessons. The first that plants love each other, to a far greater extent than we give them credit. Nearly all plants will thrive in company, but sometimes there is a brake on this mutuality, such as shading out, or being in a large vigorous plant's root zone when you're small and tentative. The second lesson was to ignore 80% of the growing instructions from the northern hemisphere and just add water. It is so dry here in summer that very little survives, even with daily watering. I grow my European vegetables in deep beds lined with plastic. Its the only way I've achieved any results, after years of heartbreak with composting, lasagna and hugelkultur, in which I believed I just needed to add enough organics and the soil would 'hold water'. This doesn't really work in a seasonal desert where it doesn't rain for 6 months. The third lesson was to plant natives and locally adapted plants, vegetables from Africa, and not from the north. If I do grow Euroveg they are in plastic lined beds and I throw nutrients at them with unfettered abandon, urine, pigeon manure, compost, humanure, bone and stone meal. When a northern gardener advises that a plant doesn't need rich soil and will thrive in poor soil, I pile on the extras. Our soils at the tip of Africa are notoriously 'low nutrient' on a global comparison, and all the microbial life in the world will not compensate for missing minerals, actually, despite what regenerative Ag enthusiasts may claim. In addition I garden on an old sand dune with 4 plus meters of pure white sand beneath my feet. Now that I've learned to line my grow beds with plastic, add water, pour on the nutrients and plant only locally adapted plants in the ground, the yield from the garden finally allows us to eat some home grown every day.  Its been a decade of struggle.