Permaculture In Arid Notes

• Permaculture in arid landscapes.pdf


• fence across box canyon, very efficient, 3 sides cliff


• can cut shelter into scarp, align appropriately to the sun, hot rooms ca be carved for drying food,


• water holes form up on scarps


• Out there, you would get fruiting grapes from a cutting within 15 months, and large amounts too. The sorts of things to grow out there are citrus and grapes. Apricots are typical desert plants; so are pistachios and almonds. Most of the normal veg-etable crops can grow in the desert, particularly the melon crops. All deserts have natural melons


• dates, pinion pines (good mulch, but watch PH), melon goat, coffee, spinifex, casuarinas (good mulch producer), tamarisk (bank stabilization/lots of mulch, simple soak and stick in ground propagation), prickly pears/opuntia (hedge rows, look at other cactus), acacias,


• You can't increase water where people don't believe in making drastic changes to the environment


• low hanging permanent lagoons at base of wadi


• gardening usually must take place down in the wadis, wall them to the floods, tree crops can do well here


• There is a lot of food in the desert. You never run short of food. The essential scarce ingredient is water.


• [Irrigating for (large) seasonal fluctuations in rainfall] You would then put your hardiest plants at the furthest distance, and your softest, most water-demanding plants toward the water source.


• Drip irrigation is good in the desert, simple or complex systems both work


• Mulch with stones, large ones around trees like citrus or fig,


• Mulch as much as possible, catch OM on fences,


• opuntia and the mesquite will stop large, hoofed animals


• desert burrs can be collected and placed out in mass around things to protect from jackrabbits,


• pigeons are desert livestock, great manure, only hawks predate, eggs/meat,


• The Egyptians make the nesting hole big enough to lay two eggs, but to hold one young, so as they grow, one is pushed out and falls. Anyone can go and pick up all the fallen one.


• Rock shelters can attract reptiles, which you can eat (watch out for rattle snakes)


• camels as pack/transportation, but they are savage animals


• termite is your primary decomposer, the worm of the humid climate, termites can be flooded out but will recolonize the area if it dries,


• termite resistant trees are a must in the desert,they love live carob, black/honey locust work well in construction of trellis/etc,


• marigolds work against eelworm nematodes,


• trellis melons/vines high, under plant vegetables in shade, mulch, plastic moisture barriers can be trenched in around, [sunken bed?]


• high-100% runoff of hard surfaces like granite


• rock and cement dams


• As a designer, you are involved in strategy planning. You are going to sit at home for maybe eight weeks and work out a sin-gle truckload of provisions for three hippies, to last them about 18 months. These hippies will be moving out into the desert with a radio. They are a small pioneer group of hippies. They will be eating their dates and getting their plants in, and long before 15 months, they will have a solid vegetable garden base. Then they will be ready for more permanent people to move in to manage the heavier work systems. You, as a design-er, impart the strategy and management, which is as impor-tant as the end result.


• guard walls and brushwood to hold the flood waters on the flood plain until it soaks in, instead of just coming across the plain and then running away. The Egyptians also did this, allowing flood waters to lay silt across their fields.


• abrupt frost cut-off line, can design for frost free and frost pockets on same hillside,


• Reafforest the watershed and follow the water that is generated out into the desert, zone out from oases,


• 500-1000 ft of shelter belt will get things going, adding moisture downwind a long way


• camp dogs that chase away wild animals


• use a dog-hippie approach, a broadscale approach, an up-wind approach, and a headwater approach


• Herds are not appropriate in semi-arid regions. Hoofed animals in particular are totally inappropriate. [allan savory disagrees]


• chinese cover dunes with rice mats and plant trees in baskets into them following rains, dunes can be stopped, slowed, or sped up depending on how you pattern the vegetation on them


• stick sticks into sand (60% penetrable) to stop sand movement, lots of small 100 sq ft paddocks instead of large long fences,


• aquaculture can work well, isolation can let you do ?wild? things,