This year I have started a new project. The new plot. It is very barren, probably tilled for so many years. For now I have no way to water the plants.
This initiative is going to be for growing a couple of generations of trees if possible.
I think the best way to approach it is to make various syntropic lines of trees, and have some rows of vegetables on the middle of them. I did not see that many topics here talking about syntropic farming.
The only trees present are 18 almond trees, 6 of them show no signs of life. The other 12 are very dry. Just a couple of weeks ago they were starting to show new leaves and flowers. With this configuration I can make the rows to have tree of those almond trees.
So for starters, I have started to broadcast seeds.
For vegetables some Fava beans, lentils, luffa, corn. Also a smidge of sunflower, watermelon, cereal and peas. Moreover I sowed some brassica seedlings.
For trees I sow some acorn, avocado, carob and manderine seeds. Besides the seeds I planted some figs and hibiscus cuttings.
Furthermore I planted clivia miniata and cactus to have some plants on the land.
The plants that I think that will go well are the dry farming fava beans, lentils and brassicas. Similarly to the zero input tomatoes.
Hi Richard. I’ve planted a hedge of trees this winter. Mostly peaches, but also apple trees rootstock and plum green gauge shoots. It’s interplanted with Robinia Pseudoacacia trees, which is like a supertree over here. It originates from Ozarks i believe, it inhabits rocky places on slopes here and just builds soils from there on. It colonizes whole places.
I’ve taken cuttings from roots last year and grown these out. From 5 cm length of roots, 1 cm thick you can get a tree in one year which is half a meter high.
So i’ve planted one of these after every fruit tree every 50 cm one tree.
Hopefully it’s going to be another wet summer, then i’m sure most trees will survive and i can start pruning the Robinia Pseudoacacia . If not many fruittrees might give up and it will become a Robinia hedge. Americans call it Black Locust.
I’ve just come across this mini series in a weird language. Sounds really strange to me, i think you might understand.
Comes from this topic where they speak of a bean as well which is from India which can survive 1 and a half inch of rain per year… Velvet bean https://permies.com/t/215051/Dryland-covercrop#2268620
@Hugo the video was created by CEPEAS, a Brazilian organisation researching syntropic agroforestry advised by Ernst Götsch. Sadly, I don’t speak Portuguese so I don’t understand any of it. Wish I did! @Richard are the annuals you’ve sown being used as biomass to feed the trees?
@Hugo , Robinia is not a good thing for Richard because it requires too much water for his area, and especially it is an invasive plant that should not be spread in Europe. It creates a big imbalance in the ecosystems here by eliminating the local understory flora with root exudates (like a chemical weed killer). I would be you I will quickly remove the cuttings you put at risk of not being able to grow anything under in a few years.
Sorry Ray, it was early morning when i posted, it didn’t occur to me it was this other Latin language two hundred million people speak.Sorry Richard, hope i didn’t ruin your day.
Super high density planting and chop-and-drop pruning to build up biomass seem to be really key concepts. My friends skimped out just a little bit on the density, and as a result they didn’t want to prune too much. And so invasive grasses moved into the empty spaces, which they then wanted to remove. Maintaining empty space pretty much defeats the point. Or at least that puts you back into the purview of regular agroforestry moreso than syntropic.
So my advice is: don’t be afraid to plant so much stuff that you have to cut most of it down.
People up north try to do it as well, it’s just that it’s ridiculously more efficient down south. But yeah, like you say, plant closely and keep chopping and dropping. I’ve seen a guy in Germany and some lady in France. But Ireland and Uk as welly. But there it hardly freezes.
It worked a charm in my hedge, such rich soil after couple of years only, lovely texture and smell. At first the creeping comfrey was everywhere but it didn’t like the pruning and got shaded out by the raspberries on one side and the lawnmower took care on the other. It’s hardly there anymore.
People are afraid to put some elbowgrease in it. But what is 15 minutes of pruning every month? Keep those tools sharp and chop and drop.
@Richard
I’ll be able to direct you because trees are my primary specialty.
I studied a lot and experienced as a landscaper designer the concepts of forest garden, micro forest, syntropic garden…etc all these currents that emerge regularly.
The return that I can make and that all these techniques work in their country of origin, but when you start experimenting with them in other climates, water (rain, watering, groundwater, sool retention capacity…) always becomes the limiting factor.
Plant formations at the planetary scale are always correlated to climate zones so that their distribution maps are identical :
There is no mystery or technique that allows to implant a tropical forest in a desert.
On the other hand, all these techniques are good to gradually improve the water regime of your land.The lies of these techniques is that it allows you to move from desert to plant abundance without long and slow transition.
Very often people fail in these techniques by wanting to skip the steps or set goals impossible to achieve on a small scale. Establish an exuberant tropical forest in Spain why not but it will be necessary to work over several centuries on thousands of hectares. Little by little the water cycles will recover, increase, it will rain more and more… etc and the vegetation will change
The Mediterranean climate migrates about 30km/ year to the north and vegetation cannot keep up with this speed since its limited movement capacity (seeds) is only 2/3 km per year. So there is a catastropic stall, such rapid upheaval has never existed and nature cannot cope with it. The only possibility currently being explored by scientists and to help the vegetation to migrate faster by performing assisted migration is to take seeds of species growing 400/800 km further south and plant them in a small pioneer land. We conduct this experiment in the projects I lead in the center of France and it works really well ! We plant here species naturally from climatic zones like yours, and it is a real pleasure to see more perennial vegetation growing while our local plants slowly wither with heatwaves and droughts.
If I were you I would fix myself to reconstitute this type of plant community namely spaced trees that partially shade a ground where you can realize under other vegetable crops or small livestock.
The dead almond trees speak volumes about the climate change that is taking place in your area. These trees die because they do not have enough water in the year (need about 800mm/ year).It may be the rainfall of my area and I imagine that you have much less…so they can no longer live at home unless you complete the water that is lacking in irrigation but it is not sustainable. You have to plant things that grow with less rainfall than your current rainfall to anticipate because without wanting to scare you you are on the front line of the Sahara ascent.
In your case without hesitation, I would therefore look to the plant formations naturally present in the mountainous areas of northern Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), but especially on the area of Sicily, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey. You will find in these areas trees and shrubs to plant on your land to form a high layer of shade that will limit evaporation and too much sun on crops below.
look at this site of French nursery specialist in the Mediterranean flora this will give you ideas: https://jardin-sec.com/
After in your case or further south is the desert that looms, I would almost be tempted to advise you to study the vegetation of California, New Mexico, North Mexico. I have some plants in test and it grows very well here if we drain for periods of winter rains but you must not have been a problem with your draining soil.
look at this site of California nursery specialist in the local flora this will give you ideas:
For your high tree stratum, I advise you : Quercus rotundifolia, Quercus coccifera, Quercus trojana, Quercus libani, Quercus afares, Quercus alnifolia, Quercus mirbeckii, Quercus faginea, Ceratonia siliqua, Paliurus spina christi, Pistacia lentiscus, Pistacia terebinthus, Pistacia vera, Pistacea atlantica, Phillyrea latifolia, Arbutus andrachne, Genista aetnensis, Olea europeae, Retama monosperma, Retama raetam, Retama sphaerocarpa, Rhamnus ludovici-salvatoris, Ephedra fragilis,…
If you plant this type of vegetation with practices that promote the retention of rainwater (excavation of ditches, increase of organic matter in the soil…etc) no doubt that over time you will arrive at something more lush than the surrounding landscape.
I am on the early stages in this plot. That is the plan. As much biomass as possible. I do not have that many young trees yet. For the established trees I put some carob tree branches. But barely make a dent. The annuals have grown little. Not so much to chop.
I planted some decorative cactus. Wanted to plant some dragon fruit but a friend told me that they are tropical and need water. So now are on the pods for now.
I think opuntia ficus indica perform very well in the area. I am not a fan of spikes, but I think is a replacement for banana in more arid agroforest systems. I think there are some spikeless varieties, but I have not gotten them yet. For now I got some orange and purple bearing fruit.
Do you have any photo? Some recommendations for the species to plant?
Oh, totally. Probably my limiting factor is time, since the garden also takes me time.
Ceratonia siliqua, carob tree. I did no have that many luck growing from seed last year in pots. I have planted several buckets full of seeds all over the land.
Olea europeae, I got access to several varieties of trees, next year I will collect them and plant more. It is a tree that I like very much.
Acorn, they take decades to mature. Got some seedlings on pots, they are the same size as last year. I planted a bucket full of seeds all over the land.
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