Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] poplars and patterns

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Mark <mpludwig@facstaff.wisc.edu>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] poplars and patterns
  • Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 16:47:07 -0600

At 10:23 AM 11/12/02 -0500, you wrote:
When googling "water harvesting" I found an African site which had lots of
water catchment berms used for growing trees. I thought I'd adapt that
concept in an easier way and create a diamond pattern on my sloping crop
fields using the half V trencher instead of so many berms, like a cocked
tic-tac-toe board or a giant piece of graph paper on a slight rotation off
alignment with the slope. Thus we could plant all shade and orchard trees in
the intersections and all extra unabsorbed water in that 'quadrant' would be
channelled by the surrouding half V trenches directly to the trees, thus
multiplying the use of rain- as if several times the rainfall had occurred.

This sound both excessively complex and possibly failure prone. Unless I misunderstand you, these channels will all run down hill, and though you might think this will get more water to your trees, my guess is that it will actually hold less and will cause streams of water to meet at your trees and possibly wash them out. The advantage of trenches or keylines on the contour is that the water stops there and can soak in rater than running down the hill, this cross hatch will not really halt the water. Always keep in mind when working with runoff that you have to design for peak loads (referred to here as X year events, ie 10 year events happen once every 10 years on average). What would your system look like if a serious thunderstorm took place? How about a hurricane? I can't imagine this would be much fun to mow either. I also question wether water is such a limiting factor in your area to require extensive effort to conserve it, simple contours and efforts to build soil organic matter to hold water longer between rains may be quite sufficient.


This comment on poplars' longevity makes me wonder what other more permanent
trees could be suggested.?? I'd think some poplars would get 40-60 years old
or more. That should suffice fine for seasonal vegetable gardens. Permanence
is of course the best.

I would guess the life span to be about half that if our northern Quaking aspen is similar.



Mark P. Ludwig
Poultry Research Lab
University of Wisconsin -Madison
608-262-1730 WK
608-846-7125 HM





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page