regenerating desert areas using swales and mulch

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December 19, 2009 at 8:02 pm #171957

Roland Beinert
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I found this article on treehugger today.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/greening-the-desert-permaculture-revisited.php
It follows up on a project in Jordan by a permaculture designer named Geoff Lawton. I think it’s pretty amazing that results like this can be achieved using swales and mulch. The original Greening the Desert video can be found on youtube by typing in “greening the desert Geoff Lawton”.

December 21, 2009 at 6:43 am #171959

Boilerplater
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Yeah, that is pretty cool that they can get such thriving plants with directed rainfall. In my experience working in the desert of Las Vegas, we often replace the soils entirely because the native soils are so poor and bereft of organic matter. And then irrigation tends to cause salts to come up in the soil, a problem also common to some soils of California’s Central Valley. People need to start looking at permaculture principles for more designed landscapes to be able to eat more locally. Here, everything is trucked in.

December 21, 2009 at 8:49 pm #171958

Roland Beinert
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I found it interesting in the first video that he said the fungi in the mulch were putting off a waxy substance that was locking up the salt and making it insoluable. I wonder if soil scientists are actually studying that possibility. I imagine rainwater will always be much more free of salts, which makes you wonder why the idea of swales is sometimes dismissed in dry areas. I think this project had some sort of drip irrigation in addition to the rainwater, though. At least in the beginning.
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