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  • From: Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Tvo post Mar 98- Trashland Treasure
  • Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:28:03 -0700

SISU! wrote:

Bill Jones wrote:


That's not nearly enough to keep grass green. Maybe it's just that
I'm color-blind, or something.>


Grasses will surely die out in a drought. There's probably not much you
can do about that. That may mean that raising goats would be easier
than raising sheep, or that you have to buy hay during the dry months,
but you gotta find a work-around.

All those resevoirs and rivers

are only there because of the snowmelt. Where in the world did you
get such a ludicrous idea as there is no snowmelt from the Coastal
Range?




It could be that our tallest Mountain in the county is too short to
have any serious glacial snowmelt.


Yeah, but you made a general statement about the whole Coast Range, not
just your county.



This place is heaven, compared to S. California. I guess theoretical
discussions of people cope in dry areas are just beyond you. I'd
never leave the West Coast, and no one wants to freeze either.


Your place, from previous posts, sounds nice to me, better than some
places in the country, for sure.


If you look at this map you'll see that every place you go out west,
there's less than one inch of rain for all of July. That's
one-quarter the amount it takes to keep gardens and pastures green
(generally accepted to be about an inch per week).


Yeah, but Bill, EVERYONE has a dry season or a wet season.

But when the dry season coincides with the growing season, instead of the other way around, how does pasture growth happen (on most randomly chosen square feet within the "brown area") except during a short spring or fall window?

Perhaps you can't grow or maintain a forest or orchard without
irrigation in your location, but with some planning, you might be able
to mitigate how much you have to supplement water. Your conifers are
building soil, it is just that the terrain is so new, geologically
speaking, that they haven't built much soil, and what is built is washed
away by the steep terrain during the rainy season.
Actually I looked into this question years ago. I wondered if anything can be done with conifer waste, other than spreading it in the paths to kill weeds. And other than whittling and a fun homemade soap, I found the answer is no. Even if not for the turpentine and rosin, the lignin molecule of conifers cannot be digested by fungi, and doesn't break down into healthy soil. That's why the land under them is barren except for a few specialists. If it were otherwise then anyone could have a grand garden just by dumping on fir needles, as I once envisioned. If you'd like references for all the details, check the links to "ramial" AND "LaVal". Some of the papers are probably in French.

If the Incas can
grow things on the slopes of Machu Picchu, surely there is a way for you
to overcome your climate deficiencies, too. It might come down to
hauling buckets of collected rainwater to your trees once a week, but
it's gotta be possible.

My galfriend places no faith in her barren pasture at all, and gives her sheep a big bowl of Lamb-Gro twice a day each. Fortunately I'm in no such position.

Bill
S. Oregon coast




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