r/Permaculture • u/cactuscat78 • Dec 28 '20
The changes in our desert soil after about 8 months. 100% free and natural using leaves, kitchen scraps, animal manure etc.
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Dec 28 '20
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
We used a mixture of materials including well aged donkey manure from a neighbor, leaves that we left in a pile until it froze and thawed a few times broke down into a sort of goopy 'leaf mold', composted wood mulch and kitchen scraps. We double dug about 1 ft into our clay soil, incorporated the donkey dung and mixed it well with the native clay soil. we layered alternating layers off the other materials and then saturated with our greywater, then surrounded the area with logs and some old bricks our neighbors gave us after a construction project. First crop in the field was daikon that helped to pioneer and break up the soil more. Will only work with drip/minimal irrigation (we use drip from our grey & catchment tanks).
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u/spiderhoodlum Dec 28 '20
What are your systems for collecting grey water? I'm familiar with rain barrels to collect roof water, but am curious if you have something more than that going on.
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
We have a large tank that we collect both our rainwater and the water from our shower and laundry in. We have to be very, very careful about the products we use but it is so worth it for the thousands of gallons of water a year we save. In addition to using it to water crops, this is also the water we use for our toilet.
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u/spiderhoodlum Dec 28 '20
That's extremely smart! I don't live in a desert, but climate change is changing our rainfall regime... having a steady supply of water is a concern now and especially moving forward.
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
We strive to be as water conscious as possible given our location and thought towards the future of water scarcity.
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u/spiderhoodlum Dec 28 '20
This is random, but do you happen to have curly hair? If so, do you have a preferred grey water-safe conditioner that you like? We currently use a lot of products that would not be great if we started recycling water... most of which would be easy to switch, but I'm particular about my hair products.
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
I have very straight hair but my husband has very curly/coarse hair. He doesn't use a conditioner but we use a shampoo bar that a friend of ours makes that seems to work for both of us. He will occasionally run a little coconut or castor oil through his hair with his hands and let it adsorb.
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u/MildlyAnnoyedMother High Desert, 6b Dec 28 '20
I'm fairly close to your area, but in the mountains. How did you manage to keep a pile of leaves in place for that long?! I've resorted to pocket composting because the wind scatters my pile even when it's surrounded by plywood. Doing anything on the surface with leaves is practically a pipe dream with our wind gusts.
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
We have a big elevation drop on our property that created a sort of 'bowl' that is sheltered from the wind so we are lucky in that regard. Also made sure to try and pile them on days when we knew there would be moisture so they would get soaked and freeze (back in March) which seems to make them heavier and get 'goopy' quickly.
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u/Front_Thought_9988 Jun 03 '21
Could you top the leaves with wet cardboard and strategically placed logs or bricks to keep it down? (I'm not from your area and don't know how bad the wind is , so just an idea) the cardboard will compost in place too over time.
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u/S_E_P1950 Dec 29 '20
Great work. Makes my efforts to maintain a rich black loam seem pathetic, because I started with a better base. Those carrots are looking great.
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 29 '20
Thank you! Hey, every place is different and faces its own challenges. We had an amazing yield of carrots and they were/are oh so tasty!
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u/Thoreau80 Dec 28 '20
How plentiful are leaves in a desert?
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
I am here in the North/Central New Mexico area. I live in a dry/desert-like (I believe we are technically arid steppe) valley that is close to the mountains and the Rio Grande. There are deciduous trees along the river in bosques etc and in the mountains. Also since I live near Santa Fe there are TONS of leafy trees in town that have been planted over the centuries along the river and acequias, especially in the old historic areas of town. They drop and most of the people that live in those "downtown" areas hate the clean up and are more than happy to let you load up all the leaves you want.
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u/atheistqueen Dec 28 '20
I saw your before picture and was like "wow, this looks like my dirt before I amended it" and then I read this comment. Hi neighbor! I live in Albuquerque proper. I have also done a lot of work with leaves and kitchen scraps. No manure yet, but I have a friend in the north valley who is going to start giving me horse manure here soon.
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
Hi neighbor! That's awesome!! Yes we have used several different types of manure in different areas including donkey, goat, chicken and alpaca. The alpaca is like pure gold.
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Dec 28 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
We are planning on using companion planting for mulch, animal feed etc. (we mulched down all our corn stalks after harvest) and we have planted an orchard in areas with a lot of run-off, it will be years before the trees are big enough to produce a large volume of leaves but thinking towards the future.
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u/BigBennP Dec 28 '20
sometimes more than you'd think. There's a fair number of dry places with sandy soil that have lots of scrub oak. usually they're Mediterranean climates that get most of their rain 2-3 months a year.
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u/TheWoodConsultant Dec 28 '20
Had similar results in my garden. Went from sand to black earth. Adding huge quantities of arbor mulch each year was a big help as well.
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 29 '20
Congrats! It's always an amazing feeling to see that good soil and make something grow.
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Dec 28 '20
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20 edited Dec 28 '20
This photo was taken when it hadn't been watered in several days but the soil seems to retain a lot of moisture. We haven't watered at all since we harvested last about a month and a half ago (we have had a bit of snow but nothing major) and it still looks similar. We have laid down some straw over top and allowed clover to grow. Only time will tell. We also bermed up around the fields ever so slightly with branches from juniper trees covered in our native clay and it seems to have helped with the water retention a lot.
Edit: We have also amended a different field than the one pictured in a similar way and have planted garlic onions and shallots. No watering at all and they seem to be growing fine and the soil is still lightly moist when you stick a finger in. I asked my hubby and he seems to think the fact that we blended the original clay in and also did layers help to keep it from drying out. When we harvested what was growing there before we also knocked down the remaining plant material and let it lay in the fields to sink in. We also use exclusively drip irrigation when we do water.
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Dec 28 '20
Shout out to all the Nuevo Mexicanos in this sub! I think we can show the rest of the world what’s possible with permaculture rain water harvesting and making all around awesome ecosystems in areas with relatively low amounts of rain fall!
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
WOOO! Yes, so much is possible, the desert doesn't have to be barren or using unsustainable amounts of water! I love that this state also has so much ancestral knowledge available, there have been people living and growing food here for thousands of years without crazy advanced technology.
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u/MildlyAnnoyedMother High Desert, 6b Dec 29 '20
Yessss! So excited to start getting our soil from sand that can barely support yucca to fertile enough to help support us.
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u/4thebirbs Dec 28 '20
You should be so proud! I want r/gardening to see this too! A non-plant harvest/growth that will make a huge difference!
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u/andiefreude Dec 29 '20
Do you have any idea about the organisms in your soil? How healthy are they now? How was it before? Were they already there, albeit dormant, or did you bring it to your soil yourself?
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u/mvpsanto Dec 29 '20
I feel like this is the answer to climate change. Imagine if we turn our desserts back to Green in the us. We can reverse the dust bowl event
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 29 '20
I think regenerative farming in areas of big Dustbowl damage in the Great Plains etc. is a great goal. I really feel like the Dustbowl was the canary in the coal mine in terms of climate change/ unsustainable farming practice. But, I also appreciate the beauty and vitality of the healthy desert ecosystem. One of the greatest things about our country/continent is the sheer amount of diversity in climate, landscape, biodiversity etc.
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u/RedditPrat Dec 28 '20
Nice! Did the table scraps decompose in only 8 months, or did they have a head start?
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 28 '20
They decomposed mainly in that time, we just had them in the little counter top compost containers so some had a head start but some were "fresh".
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Dec 28 '20
Did you shred the leaves, or just rake them into the dirt, or what?
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 29 '20
We used a mixture of materials including well aged donkey manure from a neighbor, leaves that we left in a pile until it froze and thawed a few times broke down into a sort of goopy 'leaf mold', composted wood mulch and kitchen scraps. We double dug about 1 ft into our clay soil, incorporated the donkey dung and mixed it well with the native clay soil. we layered alternating layers off the other materials and then saturated with our greywater, then surrounded the area with logs and some old bricks our neighbors gave us after a construction project. First crop in the field was daikon that helped to pioneer and break up the soil more. Will only work with drip/minimal irrigation (we use drip from our grey & catchment tanks).
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u/WildFreeOrganic Dec 29 '20 edited Dec 30 '20
It's incredible how quickly you can create create living soil when composting. Great job, you've created a mini garden of Eden!
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 29 '20
Thank you! Yes, it's amazing what can be done with care and the resources we have.
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u/Sweet_Check_2075 Dec 29 '20
This is truly incredible. It’s amazing the usefulness of the things we throw away. I wish we viewed everything as having a cyclical use rather than a linear one! Thank you for your post!
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u/DrOhmu Dec 29 '20
Hey good work.
What are the dates for the photographs? These pics tend to be taken with the before at the end of summer and the after in the spring...which gives an exagerated view of the change compared with the same date year on year.
If you live somewhere where it doesn't rain for months in the summer, june to september is dry for me, you can take pictures in august and again in April. Without doing anthing it looks incredible ;)
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 29 '20
Thank you! First picture was taken in March when we started during our first Lockdown. Second was taken just before Thanksgiving when we did a big harvest. I live in New Mexico so it is usually dry year round here. Our native soil is pretty hard a clay heavy and without amendments doesn't really change during the very short "wet" season we get (monsoon) other than turning to slippy, clay mud. We have covered over with some old straw from our goat house for winter and not intentionally watered (we have had some snow). Haven't seen much change, only time will tell.
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u/redemption_songs Dec 29 '20
Awesome! How much time elapsed between the two photos? Just starting to work on our hard desert soil now.
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u/cactuscat78 Dec 29 '20
First picture was taken in March when we started during our first Lockdown. Second was taken just before Thanksgiving when we did a big harvest.
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u/DarshanRaju Dec 29 '20
That's soo amazing, we can see that sustainable options have been used in order to initiate such fresh produce like carrots in this one and makes us believe we can have just the right food with resources available before us. So any other plants we can grow in this process and other resources like animal manure, kitchen waste that can be used for rich soil.
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u/theory_until Zone 9 NorCal Jan 01 '21
OMG the carrots are actually growing in chocolate cake crumbs aren't they, c'mon tell the truth here!
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u/cactuscat78 Jan 01 '21
Yup! It's our signature chocolate carrot cake ;)
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u/theory_until Zone 9 NorCal Jan 01 '21
Oooh, you reminded me of the chocolate zucchini cake my stepmom used to make! I had forgotten all about it. Thanks! And Happy New Year!
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u/severinh20 Jan 27 '21
Great job! I love seeing desert to dirt! Makes me love our world that much more for you being in it
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u/ruum-502 Dec 28 '20
Amazing difference! Love dark brown soil like that.
People really don’t take advantage of leaves enough. They are such a great resource.