permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <london@sunsite.unc.edu>]

On Fri, 10 Oct 1997, Dan Settles, Dept. of Cell Biology DUMC wrote:

> recommended.  Their preferred method of controlling erosion seems to be
> to build waterways to slow down the water and move it away from the
> fields.  The waterways are basically flat shallow channels seeded in
> perennial grasses that are designed to slow down the water as it runs out
> of the tilled fields.  The eroding soil is then captured (partially) in
> these waterways and the excess water is channeled away from the fields
> and off into the woods.  Typically, the waterways fill up with soil in

You should probably build some sort of catchment area for the
nutrient-rich water after it leaves silt and soil behind in
swales planted in a variety of annual and perennial crops, legumes,
trees and shrubs. The catchment area should be a capable of allowing
you to develop aquaculture systems. Small gravity-fed watering holes or
small ponds interconnected and at differing elevations would position
irrigation water for use by different cropping systems along the way.

Instead of planting the fields between swales with the usual grass & grain
crops you could develop permanent turf there with a variety of native
weeds and special perennial and legume crops. Useful self-seeding weeds
such as ragweed, Carolina horse nettle (mineral mining), plantain, greater
and lesser burdock, small-flowered daisy (Monarch butterflies), goldenrod
(bees, paper wasps), milkweed (Monarch butterflies), lambs quarters, 
amaranth and wild millet would serve many purposes and not be
hard to establish and maintain. Tall white and yellow sweet clover,
comfrey, purslane, Jerusalem artichokes, red clover, alsike clover, 
lespedeza, alfalfa could be added as well. Annual ryegrass, winter rye, 
winter pea, crimson clover and vetch should be planted in early Fall
for Winter and Spring cover and erosion control. All these crops would
catch soil nutrients for later recycling mostly in situ, water runoff
would end up on the swales or in the catchment ponds.
You could easily turn this turf into production beds, orchards or row crop
gardens at any time. The weed seed bank developed after years of growing 
the above plants should not be difficult to work with. Crab, Johnson or
Bermuda grass, thorny pigweed and a few other annual weed plants will,
if allowed to spread in your turf, be difficult to eradicate and cause
lots of problems. 

I have had serious problems with soil erosion and nutrient leaching from
excessive runoff and have begun to implement some of these solutions
around my property. I now lose almost no topsoil and fields of diverse 
weeds, swales and small catchments areas hold and recycle valuable
nutrients.