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  • From: be peace <seed4peace@yahoo.com>
  • To: PClist <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] mediterranean orchards, terracing and fire protection - continuing the conversation
  • Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:43:51 -0800 (PST)

Hello folks!
sorry for very belated reaction to all your wonderful thoughtful emails! I
live offline most of the time and so i sometimes have difficulty catching up,
but this conversation is very important to me and i very much appreciated all
the inputs from u, i would like to continue the conversation as especially
some of your comments steared some good thinking in me and some more question
marks!

In order to make it more simple i will write names of people who contributed,
then quote them and then insert my reaction in italics - so please look
bellow especially if u have been part of this conversation before!
thanx!

Keith Johnson - Similar but not exactly the same. Swales focus the
concentrations and
depth of moisture more than a terrace, unless your terrace also has a
swale / ditch at the rear or pitches to the rear. I often saw terraces
in Europe slope toward the lip or wall which might spread the moisture
but might also increase evaporation.

hmmm, this one i found very interesting, i would liek to try this, i have had
a bit difficulty imagining how it would look though, like lets say we just
have a regural level terrace and then we just dig a swale on it with the
lower part towards the wall that goes up and the elevated part towarss the
wall that drops down? would u maybe know about some resources online - best
if accomplanyed with pictures - of this?
also i never have done any swale myself before, i wonder if we do this in the
veg garden wouldnt it make the watering difficult? (i know i will have to
water less but later on in the dry season i will have to for sure)

"Vital Scherrer - Some more plants, which are useful, fire retardant and/or
fire resistant,
reasonably shade tolerant, compatible and will benefit the olive:
Edibles, among other common vegetables and fruits:
- Helianthus annuus, Sunflowers
- Helianthus tuberosus, Jerusalem artichoke
- Pumpkins and other Cucurbitaceae's
- Sweet potato
- Passionfruit
- Figs
- Mulberries
- Quercus ilex, Holly oak,
- Quercus rotundifolia (or ilex var. ballota), Holm oak
Nitrogen fixers:
- Evergreen Elaeagnus x ebbingei, -macrophylla, -pungens and more (fruits
ripen before June)
- Glycyrrhiza glabra, Liquorice
- Acacia dealbata, -decurrens, -saligna, -sophorae, -baileyana and more.
Basically any plants which are fleshy or sappy, evergreen or remain green
during the dry season. Some more detailed info you can find in Bill
Mollison's "Introduction to Permaculture" pages 64-66.

thanx vital! is this information from mollisons book or where have u found
it? or is this perhaps from your personal experience? would u know in what
way would these plants each one respectively benefit the olive?

Vital, u also asked - What kind of soil do you have (pH etc.)? well, frankly
i dont know yet, im still learning about these things and right now im
reading about soils a lot and next thing im going to do when i come back to
greece (im in denmark now working fro couple of months) i want to do all sort
of tests with the soil and try to asses it as much as my humble knowledge
will allow me. i will share results witht the list no doubt. if anybody has
any suggestions about soil assesing in the meantime theyll be most
appreciated:)


Dieter Brand - Portugal - hey, thanx for very useful fire related advice,
very clear and practical, it would be lovely to hear more! i very much like
the idea of using brambles as a growing medium also! :)
as for stone mulching around the trees - whta i did previous season around
one lemon treein turkey inmy friends garden was that i dug like a pool kind
of thing around it and kept throwing all sorts off organic stuff there and
kept is covered with flat stones, i had some weeds coming through but they
were very easy to pull out and also the material under the stones kept nice
and moist an composted well. that was especially good as i had generally
problem composting stuff in such a dry climate.

Rain Tenaqiya - olive guild - I am also in a fire-prone, Mediterranean
climate, in northern California, and have a few olives. I recommend coming
up with a guild of low-growing plants that can grow with olives. There are a
few species that are fire-resistant and even fire-retardant that shouldn't
compete too much with olives

hell yes! that has been my thiking as well, designing a olive compatible fire
proof or fire retardant (more likely:) guild! whos in? i think it would be
worth it cooperating on such an idea more closely, even connecting through
skype, design together and evaluate together the results, with few people
participating we could be testing few ideas at the same time and also smae
techniques in diverse conditions, i think with focused effort and some
research we should be able to come up with something really interesting and
useful, not to mention the dire need to gear the olive farming towards more
sustainable practice as anybody living in the med will know...i alos looked
at the cretean olive guild u posted the link of, the info there was very
short though, u know these folks? im thinking of getting in touch with them...

Charles de Matas - Swales and terraces can be difficult to build on very
steep slopes. If the terrain is difficult I would suggest a permanent
multi-storey tree cover with close planting of trees. That should reduce
erosion to a minimum.

i hear that and i would love that solution the best myself but that again
this seems to be like a solution that could be potentially dangerous in case
of wildfire, what do u think? especially because ine the multi storey tree
cover cthe bushes and smaller trees could function as fire ladders and let
the fire climb up the trees?


some more general questions that came to me:
what about composting cleared stuff off the land? i dont like the idea of
having to shred it cause we would have to buy the machine and then petrol for
it but then my experience is that the piled up stuff just dries and becomes
perfect place for weeds to grow, and then composting process runs only in
winter when its moist and it can takae million years to compost. also its a
fire hazzard in summer. i also thought of digging in the stuff but that again
is too overwhealming a task with such a huge land that we have plus again
causes more soil disruption... any ideas?

also i had the idea of creating something like a swale specially designed to
keep the fire out of the land, and place it around the perimeter of the land,
anybody heard of/saw/did something like that before?

ok so thats my thoughts for now, thanx to all!
peace&pace
norak








'Modesty is dangerous: If we believe we are here to do something, if in fact
we have the daunting task of turning around a system which appears destined
not only to degrade, demoralize and dehumanize us, but to destroy the
ecosystem in the process - we don't have time for outdated social customs.
You need to tell me what you can do, what you are good at, how you can
contribute to helping to make these changes. And i in turn need to tell you
the same. Anything less endangers us. Anything less leaves one of us
wondering why the other is not being clear, 'Are you unaware of your gifts?
Are you unsure of them ? Am i wrong in estimating your ability?' Paxus
Calta



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Subject: [permaculture] re. Lactoferments
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Lawrence wrote:

"The kim chee/kraut foods are truly ambrosia-class delicacies and keep
you in
top health, vital when lab cultured biodiverse probiotics are not available."

I look at it quite differently. Lactofermenting a variety of foods at
home is part of permaculture, not just something to do "when buying
lab-cultured biodiverse probiotics are not available!"

For ages, people all over the world have made and eaten lactoferments.
Only in modern commercial society have "consumers" started buying
lab-cultured probiotics.

How did people change from being makers of things to "consumers?"

Shivani in WI


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  • [permaculture] mediterranean orchards, terracing and fire protection - continuing the conversation, be peace, 01/31/2008

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