Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Introduction and a question about Swales

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Introduction and a question about Swales
  • Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:36:32 -0800 (PST)

Dick, Kathyann, thanks for the feedback. Since my last message got through
unscrambled, I will send my original message again. Please ignore, if you
have already received it.

Original message:

Jeff,

I don’t have any experience with the type of conditions you describe;
however, I have to cope with extreme dry and hot conditions during the
summer. My overall rainfall is probably above yours, but in a normal year
there is zero rainfall from May trough September with temperatures hitting
the 100 F mark in the July/August period.

In the beginning, I did some earthworks but soon switched to zero soil
disturbance. We have a hillside property with clay soil. Most of the
topsoil washed away due to plowing by previous owners. Any soil disturbance
(making swales, ponds, terraces, raised beds, waffle beds, etc. or plowing)
will turn up pure clay from the subsoil and burry the little subsoil there
is. The clay soil will crack in the sun and dry out rapidly. Dams made for
artificial lakes will often stay barren for ten years without any vegetation.
The situation may be different on sandy soil.

My strategy has been to improve the soil by keeping it covered at all times
with vegetation and/or mulch, practicing zero soil disturbance and returning
as much organic matter as possible to the soil surface. A soil covered by
vegetation (e.g., grass sod) will allow water to penetrate and prevent
runoffs even on hillsides. A soil with good structure and high organic
content can store an enormous amount of water for a very long time.
Therefore, rather than turning part of my land into swales or artificial
lakes that dry out before it gets really dry in the summer, I prefer to see
my entire land as one big water reservoir. The more I improve the soil the
more water it will be able to store. In the garden, I have been able to
reduce irrigation by about 80% in the last 5 years.

Dieter Brand
Portugal



--- On Tue, 12/30/08, Kathyann <knat@sprintmail.com> wrote:

> From: Kathyann <knat@sprintmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Introduction and a question about Swales
> To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 12:23 AM
> Dieter Brand wrote:
> > I have no idea what happened. Did everyone get my
> message scrambled? I had the encoding in my browser set to
> UNICODE (UTF-8). Should it have been set to a different
> encoding?
> >
> > Dieter Brand
> Fine here.
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subscribe or unsubscribe here:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> Google command to search archives:
> site:https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture
> searchstring







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page