Well, your channel just kinda died so we never got to know whether your "contour" method worked for you. Would've been nice to see the after as well as the before. Hope you guys are OK. Best wishes from SW France, where I use and love my swales and wouldn't have it any other way.
Bonjour! The short answer is that I almost died. 😅 Heavy metal poisoning from a faulty water filter, malnutrition from repeated heavy crop losses due circumstances outside m my control (including one season where we went 180 days without rain, which we may get pretty close to again this year), long covid, and just the stresses of isolation and how hard I was pushing myself to try not to starve out here. I ended up bed-ridden for about 6 months. And I've had to be really intentional about where I put my energy as I recover, and honestly, at my lowest point, I just wasn't in a good space physically or mentally to interact with people, especially not in the internet where people aren't always their best selves. I've really had to make my focuses recovery and food production, but I have started posting more pictures and updates on my community tab in the interim, and am slowly working on a video to sum up this year and the last few years. The equally short answer is that laying things out on contour worked. The effect in that first year was probably too subtle to notice on camera. And it was kind of a trial by fire with the pandemic. I had just gotten here, and hadn't had time to do sufficient observation, and the U.S. failure of a pandemic response left me isolated without money, transportation, or resources to do anything other than try to survive. I literally almost didn't. And the government has consistently failed to provide unemployment, food assistance, or health insurance. I had to become my own doctor/nutritionist and slowly figure it out myself (and luckily I did.) But the end result of not being able to do sufficient observation first is that the original spot where I put the garden was not ideal because it was a major thoroughfare for wildlife, wasn't well positioned to capture water (especially in light of our lengthening droughts), didn't have good physical access, etc. After having a few years to observe, I've abandoned the old garden and moved it to a much better spot with regard to all of those factors. That move has paid dividends. This is the first year that I've had an appreciable yield that didn't just immediately feed the rabbits, gophers, deer, etc. (Of course, part of that is also just the land getting healthier after having been heavily degraded.) So, a lot what I was working on previously no longer exists to do updates on. But I have still been experimenting with and improving on planting on contour. In fact, this week I'm working on putting in some new contour lines as I plant out the winter garden. And, just this week, I was able to confirm that soil is accumulating on the uphill side of my contour lines. Still don't know if the techniques I'm employing will stabilize that soil long term, but I'm hopeful, and next season should start providing preliminary answers. I'll go post some pictures/observations about growing on contour on my community tab so you can see what I'm seeing right now. It'll probably be later today, after the sun gets too intense to be outside working in it. If I remember I'll come back here and post a link, but you're welcome to go check out the updates I've been posting there up to this point. 😁 Hope you're well, and glad your swales have served you. And glad to have you here! Peace! ✌️
Hey *Permanauts!* Thanks for stopping by and watching the video! Before you do anything else, subscribe to the channel: ua-cam.com/channels/tWvHnhwXkrPQu5wrYKgggQ.html What are some other human-scale projects that can completely change a landscape for the better? I'm now keeping a mostly daily journal of my progress here at Farm For All. You can read it at permies.com/p/1243213 I've designed a calculator to help you determine how much to grow in order to produce 100% of your own food. It's available for free or with donation at: permies.com/p/1199997 If you'd like to support my content but have no use my for staple crop calculator, you can buy me a coffee: ko-fi.com/stonedapefarmer Thanks for being awesome!
So much of my guiding principle has become "how will I want this to be when I get up in years?" If I design it for a young person, eventually I'll get too old for my own creation. Glad you enjoyed. Have an update on this very subject that I was supposed to post to my community tab the other, before I got busy and forgot, so I better go do that now...
I did a half ass contour project this morning. I coppiced a box elder that was in decline and used the wood up against the low side of my garden fence. Hopefully the stump will sucker out good and make goat food this spring.
That's great! A well planned coppice does wonders for the health of trees. It's time for me to start pruning back the regrowth from when they logged this plant. Get things back too one, it a few, good leaders and drop the rest as mulch. (Would have liked to have gotten to them before the leaves dropped, but what are you gonna do?)
Hiya, thank you for sharing this information! We moved to the South of France last year. We have a hilly field, heavy clay soil, drought conditions in the summer and like you we have hand tools available, and time. You have given me inspiration on how to improve our land! 😁 We are transplanting tree seedlings as we find them - oak and chestnut so far. We've got lots of blackthorn and wild roses growing too. We have boar 🐗 as well as deer 🦌 to contend with. Our ideal is to create a permaculture wood where nature provides resources for us and the wildlife for a better future on the planet! I look forward to watching your next videos! 🙏 💜 🙏 🌸 ✨ 💙 ✨ 🌸
That sounds like an amazing piece of land to steward. Glad I was able to give you some inspiration for how to manage it with hand tools. :) One of the things I find effective for deterring deer (not sure if boar are quite as picky) is nettle tea (the fermented variety) sprayed onto the leaves every other week or so. At least after heavy rains. Once they get a taste for it they avoid anything that smells like that. I also have some tips on managing garden pests in my previous video if you haven't seen it (ua-cam.com/video/jgHyOV75-ho/v-deo.html). I just a version of the stick method to protect young trees from deer. So far it's worked. Glad to have you around and hope to be seeing you!
I have been piling deadwood on contours in preparation for digging a swale (if needed), I have been applying a lot of these techniques, here in Australia it is Peter Andrew's Natural Sequence Farming which is the same priniciples, just seen by a person on another side of the world. Slow the flow, allow the water to soak, rehydrate the land and watertable, watch the life begin to flourish.
Thank you so much. I really got alot of value fr😊om this video. I am definetly going to try it. Nature is simple if you think about it. I dont know why we always complicate things. Supa awesome video.
Thanks! We have opposite here, sandy and a bit of clay. Plus monsoons! We also put in divots to slow the water. Just had big rain and everything held again. Planted trees on down slope and they are great two years later. Plum bushes, golden currents and choke cherries. Every property is a bit different.... You have a good plan.
That's great! I've only known coat my whole life. I wouldn't even know where to begin with sand. But at least a monsoon season means you get plenty of water, and it seems like you're having luck holding onto it. 🙂
I like the time and contemplation you are putting into the land. One person and a shovel is a way thats fun and meaningful - I do that, and also use a small 4x4 tractor with a variety of attachments on 15°-20° slopes and have found using a combo of every earthworx practice works best to allow low cost access, water control, and fertile soil. The most wet areas I try to avoid travel up/down, lay a 10' or so "bridge" of flatrock on the surface, dig swales above that point to direct flow to that concentrated road crossing (where I put the flatrock) then on the downhill side either brushy growth or another swale to soak/spread/divert water to another area. Al paths floow contour as long as possible with switchbacks and conections around the edges of the maintained areas. Soo much to learn and try, all the while ecosystems around you are developing :) I'm converting old pasture into a diverse spread of woodlands meadows, brambles and micro ponds with high, medium, and low roads throughout. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for sharing and the words of encouragement! Working on access and water management further out (and up) into the property are definitely priorities now that I've got food relatively under control.
Great video! I wouldn't bring heavy equipment onto my land even if I could afford to so it's just me and my shovel. Establishing wetlands one shovelful at a time. Wouldn't have it any other way. I've learned so much that I never would have known had I used a big machine. Keep up the good work!
Wooo! Thanks a bunch! I saw that I hit 999 last night before I went to bed and have been eagerly awaiting that fourth digit! Glad you've got something from my videos, and I hope I can continue to serve! 😁
Interesting concept. I too have heavy clay and we dug two small (fairly short) swales for our hillside garden which became a massive home for gophers. Recently we have decided instead to use them to construct a type of modified huglekulture bed that is more a slightly mounded raised bed. I definately like the ide af less digging because we are both 70+ . Am enjoying all your experiments.
Glad you've been enjoying the experiments! And I can't blame you, I certainly hope to be doing limited digging when I get up there in years. My ultimate solution for gophers was to observe where they regular would dig and avoid planting near those areas. But that takes a few years of observation. Thanks for watching, and good luck with your project!
Very interesting concept. However, in summary, I thought you were going to say that after you: 1-Mark, and 2-plant, on contour, that you next add some sort of 3-"obstruction", like rocks, tree limbs or logs just below your plantings, in order to slow down, more evenly disperse and capture more water? Wasn't that the purpose the large rock in your example served?
I did some where I just planted on contour and others where I also stacked rocks along the contour line. Ultimately, it seemed to rehydrate and revegetate just as well with just plants as it did with the rocks, and hauling and stacking rocks is significantly more time and labor intensive. Don't remember where specifically there were large rocks in the video, though they're all over out here. In decades past this was the site of a granite quarry, and there's still plenty of evidence of that. In addition, the landowners having the place clear cut caused all of the topsoil to wash away, so a lot of previously covered rock is now exposed. I certainly dream of making use of all of this rock, but at this stage it's not a good use of my limited labor.
You are doing great! Permaculture is all about the observation and design from what you observ in your specific setting. Swales are not at all for all places. I am active in Sweden aswell as in Kenya and the usefull technices are quite diffrent and sometimes the oposite from each other. Truely there are many techniches for water harvesting and distribution. In sweden i sometimes uses the one rock dams techiches but are instead using big loggs and branches as we have to much of forest and trees here. In Kenya I love using swales wich I have never used in Sweden.
That really is true! It was a rough few years, but experiments are starting to pay off. My latest video shows how I'm building on this technique to grow terraces in place. Definitely lots of greenery popping up wherever I use these techniques. 😁 Thanks for watching and sharing such an astute observation!
Hey, this just got recommended to me. I liked your video and concepts. I would definitely like an update on this project and to see more! Good job! I like hand tools and passive watering too, but in Texas I have not succeeded much without active irrigation yet. It's a long term project!
Just found you (via permies). Good stuff. I think you're in the Oregon Coast Range. Care to share where, roughly? I've got a fairly significant, south facing, slope that I'm hoping to put an orchard on. It was clearcut a few years back, and has some natural terracing to it. It's currently overrun with brambles, of course, so hopefully that will give some good material to slow water and provide cover for young trees on there, and hold the slope together until the trees get established well enough. Will be planting on contour, with on contour foot paths for access. I guess I don't want to actually dig swales, since it's probably too steep and would be subject to landslide. Nice to see options that don't involve unduly raising that risk.
Well, thanks for watching! I'm between Portland/Salem and the coast. Brambles definitely provide a lot of good material. Just gotta be sure to maintain them well as they provide a lot of ladder fuel in order for the fire to get up in the canopies of trees in the event of a wildfire. I've seen goats used very effectively in such circumstances. I've also seen controlled burn used effectively, but there hasn't been a history of it here in a long time and I imagine it would make a lot of people nervous. Glad I could give you some alternatives to swales. 🙂
@@stonedapefarmer I'm down between Newport and Corvallis. Short hot dry summer, long mild wet winter. I don't intend to keep the brambles, gradually replacing them with a less aggressive and more varied fruit bearing understory. But,nits going to be a long haul. Anyway, I'm enjoying your channel! Hope it works out, I'm subbed and looking forward to the next video. Also, super curious about the hugelpath idea, and considering it for us, too. 👍
@@andrewsackville-west1609 I know that climate well. I wish you luck with the long journey ahead. I want to do a video on the hugelpath, but it's all theoretical at the moment. Maybe I'll do a build video as I do some more work on it, but the real story is going to be in a couple of years when the wood has started to break down. Looking forward to that day.
We are on steep property in Queensland and doing many of the same things you speak of in this video. I just want to spend my remaining energies helping to put carbon in the soil where it belongs. Do not let the bastards grind you down! What you are doing has value. Take care of your young self.
8b, but it's not 8b like in other parts of the country (since USDA zones only tell the average minimum winter temperatures.) We can have 30-40 degree temperature swings between day and night because we're better the mountains and the coast, so we can't grow a lot of warm weather stuff like melons, sweet potatoes, and okra.
@@stonedapefarmer Interesting. I like to check what kind of conditions a fellow gardener is dealing with compared to my own. I'm in southern Ohio, zone 6. It's rather wet and the weather is swingy, but not THAT swingy.
@@slaplapdog Yeah. It kinda sucks to hit triple digit temps (or very nearly) during the day, just try drop into the 50s or low 60s at night. Human or plant, there's just no adjusting to it. Especially with literally no rain for the 3 or 4 months during the hot part of the year, from May or June-ish through August or September... depending on the year. Our springs are tricky too. Frost is unpredictable. We often have winters with only one or two weeks of freezing temperatures, but then we can get surprise freezes in spring after early heat waves that cause everything to bolt. This year my turnips were a complete bust. We went from cold and rainy, with nothing wanting to grow, then got a bit of heat that caused all my turnips to bolt when most were barely as thick as a pencil, and then we went back to freezing. Saving seeds from the ones that got the biggest and hoping I end up with something that can tolerate our erratic temps a bit better.
@@stonedapefarmer With temperature swings like that and long periods of no rain, I see why you are inspired by techniques developed for deserts. significant stone, you can use plants for dew traps and shade. Stone still might be be better mass for thermal moderation. I'm not sure what turnip seed pods are like, do they have any food value in and of them selves?
@@slaplapdog They're technically edible, but small. The real issue is that I save all of my own seeds, so I don't want any that are ill-adapted to our climate to pass on any pollen. Great minds think alike! I don't usually like working with rock because it's difficult to weed around, and we have a lot of really aggressive, allelopathic, invasive, perennial weeds. But I actually installed two more of the contour rows yesterday, one with bread seed poppies and one with popbeans, and started armoring them with our abundant rock. Thermal mass, helps further slow the water, gradually remineralizes soil (honestly; the most gorgeous weeds weeds out here are getting in gravel), and serves as a visual indicator of where the plants are so that less observant people won't walk or drive over them. We'll see how much the weeding sucks between now and when I get desirable plants established.
You'd be surprised how effective this stuff is even on seemingly flat ground. I think Pete Kanaris and Jack Spirko both have videos about water catchment in flat landscapes, iirc. Certainly there might be better strategies in your case. Hugelkultur? Deep mulch? Ollas? But a joint study between the EPA and the University of... I wanna say Wisconsin?... concluded that a third of American households would be priced out of affordable water within the next decade due to aging infrastructure that needs to be replaced, depletion of ground water (primarily from industrial agriculture), and increasing dependence on expensive desalination processes. It's scary to think what will happen if we don't seriously start to consider solutions. Growing food without irrigation, to my mind, is the most elegant solution. It's how all of our food was grown once upon a time. And with our combined knowledge we can make these systems resilient against drought. But hey. I should just shut up. I could damn near write a book on the subject. 🤣 I was so looking forward to hearing from you. So glad you were able to stop by!
@@stonedapefarmer Yeah, I'm just getting started in my small backyard so I'm figuring out how to apply all the things I learn to my situation. I did indeed experiment with a raised bed with wood buried beneath it (stripped christmas trees I picked up by the roadside this winter) and a tiny swale on top that distributes rainwater from the roof across the bed. Let's see if I can get some berries going on right there. Another section I sheet mulched with cardboard, the chopped up branches of the christmas trees and all kinds of greens and browns I picked up here and there. Most of the soil was so devoid of life when I bought it 4 months ago that this won't be enough to get everything going right away, so this summer I'm definitely going to have to buy additional compost and feed it lots of precious tap water to kickstart my little food forest. My goal for 2022 is to just rainwater and home grown compost. I'm sure I can make it work.
That sounds like an amazing start. Berries are the best. Starting with lifeless soil is a drag. I just found my first earthworm in the main garden the other day. I've had them in my compost, but this is the first time I've had the organic matter in the soil to support life.
Well, your channel just kinda died so we never got to know whether your "contour" method worked for you. Would've been nice to see the after as well as the before. Hope you guys are OK. Best wishes from SW France, where I use and love my swales and wouldn't have it any other way.
Bonjour!
The short answer is that I almost died. 😅 Heavy metal poisoning from a faulty water filter, malnutrition from repeated heavy crop losses due circumstances outside m my control (including one season where we went 180 days without rain, which we may get pretty close to again this year), long covid, and just the stresses of isolation and how hard I was pushing myself to try not to starve out here. I ended up bed-ridden for about 6 months. And I've had to be really intentional about where I put my energy as I recover, and honestly, at my lowest point, I just wasn't in a good space physically or mentally to interact with people, especially not in the internet where people aren't always their best selves. I've really had to make my focuses recovery and food production, but I have started posting more pictures and updates on my community tab in the interim, and am slowly working on a video to sum up this year and the last few years.
The equally short answer is that laying things out on contour worked. The effect in that first year was probably too subtle to notice on camera. And it was kind of a trial by fire with the pandemic. I had just gotten here, and hadn't had time to do sufficient observation, and the U.S. failure of a pandemic response left me isolated without money, transportation, or resources to do anything other than try to survive. I literally almost didn't. And the government has consistently failed to provide unemployment, food assistance, or health insurance. I had to become my own doctor/nutritionist and slowly figure it out myself (and luckily I did.) But the end result of not being able to do sufficient observation first is that the original spot where I put the garden was not ideal because it was a major thoroughfare for wildlife, wasn't well positioned to capture water (especially in light of our lengthening droughts), didn't have good physical access, etc. After having a few years to observe, I've abandoned the old garden and moved it to a much better spot with regard to all of those factors. That move has paid dividends. This is the first year that I've had an appreciable yield that didn't just immediately feed the rabbits, gophers, deer, etc. (Of course, part of that is also just the land getting healthier after having been heavily degraded.) So, a lot what I was working on previously no longer exists to do updates on. But I have still been experimenting with and improving on planting on contour. In fact, this week I'm working on putting in some new contour lines as I plant out the winter garden. And, just this week, I was able to confirm that soil is accumulating on the uphill side of my contour lines. Still don't know if the techniques I'm employing will stabilize that soil long term, but I'm hopeful, and next season should start providing preliminary answers.
I'll go post some pictures/observations about growing on contour on my community tab so you can see what I'm seeing right now. It'll probably be later today, after the sun gets too intense to be outside working in it. If I remember I'll come back here and post a link, but you're welcome to go check out the updates I've been posting there up to this point. 😁
Hope you're well, and glad your swales have served you. And glad to have you here! Peace! ✌️
Hope you are doing better. Get well soon @@stonedapefarmer !
I'm certainly doing a lot better now. Thanks!
Good on ya fixing land up. 🤠 Everyone should join the club.
Thanks! Everyone totally should! 😁
This was a very gentle and powerful way of proving the concept. Sometimes people don't want to receive the wisdom.
Hey *Permanauts!* Thanks for stopping by and watching the video!
Before you do anything else, subscribe to the channel: ua-cam.com/channels/tWvHnhwXkrPQu5wrYKgggQ.html
What are some other human-scale projects that can completely change a landscape for the better?
I'm now keeping a mostly daily journal of my progress here at Farm For All. You can read it at permies.com/p/1243213
I've designed a calculator to help you determine how much to grow in order to produce 100% of your own food. It's available for free or with donation at: permies.com/p/1199997
If you'd like to support my content but have no use my for staple crop calculator, you can buy me a coffee: ko-fi.com/stonedapefarmer
Thanks for being awesome!
Thank you for your "human scale" approaches and the helpful content index to your video.
Good info! Under 20 degree slope is ok for swales, over 20 degrees, use check dams!
Very useful info in my backyard food forest. I am 80 years old and not digging any swales!
So much of my guiding principle has become "how will I want this to be when I get up in years?" If I design it for a young person, eventually I'll get too old for my own creation.
Glad you enjoyed. Have an update on this very subject that I was supposed to post to my community tab the other, before I got busy and forgot, so I better go do that now...
Awesome idea!
Glad you liked it! 😁
I did a half ass contour project this morning. I coppiced a box elder that was in decline and used the wood up against the low side of my garden fence.
Hopefully the stump will sucker out good and make goat food this spring.
That's great! A well planned coppice does wonders for the health of trees. It's time for me to start pruning back the regrowth from when they logged this plant. Get things back too one, it a few, good leaders and drop the rest as mulch. (Would have liked to have gotten to them before the leaves dropped, but what are you gonna do?)
Hiya, thank you for sharing this information!
We moved to the South of France last year. We have a hilly field, heavy clay soil, drought conditions in the summer and like you we have hand tools available, and time.
You have given me inspiration on how to improve our land! 😁
We are transplanting tree seedlings as we find them - oak and chestnut so far.
We've got lots of blackthorn and wild roses growing too.
We have boar 🐗 as well as deer 🦌 to contend with.
Our ideal is to create a permaculture wood where nature provides resources for us and the wildlife for a better future on the planet!
I look forward to watching your next videos!
🙏 💜 🙏
🌸 ✨ 💙 ✨ 🌸
That sounds like an amazing piece of land to steward. Glad I was able to give you some inspiration for how to manage it with hand tools. :)
One of the things I find effective for deterring deer (not sure if boar are quite as picky) is nettle tea (the fermented variety) sprayed onto the leaves every other week or so. At least after heavy rains. Once they get a taste for it they avoid anything that smells like that.
I also have some tips on managing garden pests in my previous video if you haven't seen it (ua-cam.com/video/jgHyOV75-ho/v-deo.html). I just a version of the stick method to protect young trees from deer. So far it's worked.
Glad to have you around and hope to be seeing you!
I have been piling deadwood on contours in preparation for digging a swale (if needed), I have been applying a lot of these techniques, here in Australia it is Peter Andrew's Natural Sequence Farming which is the same priniciples, just seen by a person on another side of the world. Slow the flow, allow the water to soak, rehydrate the land and watertable, watch the life begin to flourish.
Thank you so much. I really got alot of value fr😊om this video. I am definetly going to try it. Nature is simple if you think about it. I dont know why we always complicate things. Supa awesome video.
We're so good at complicating things. Myself included. 😅
Thanks! We have opposite here, sandy and a bit of clay. Plus monsoons! We also put in divots to slow the water. Just had big rain and everything held again. Planted trees on down slope and they are great two years later. Plum bushes, golden currents and choke cherries.
Every property is a bit different....
You have a good plan.
That's great! I've only known coat my whole life. I wouldn't even know where to begin with sand. But at least a monsoon season means you get plenty of water, and it seems like you're having luck holding onto it. 🙂
Far from worthless bro!
We got some steep land here as well and this is giving me some ideas, so thank you so, sooo much!
Glad you found it helpful! 😁
@@stonedapefarmer yessir! 🤠
I subd and shared. Great content. Thanks
I like the time and contemplation you are putting into the land. One person and a shovel is a way thats fun and meaningful - I do that, and also use a small 4x4 tractor with a variety of attachments on 15°-20° slopes and have found using a combo of every earthworx practice works best to allow low cost access, water control, and fertile soil. The most wet areas I try to avoid travel up/down, lay a 10' or so "bridge" of flatrock on the surface, dig swales above that point to direct flow to that concentrated road crossing (where I put the flatrock) then on the downhill side either brushy growth or another swale to soak/spread/divert water to another area. Al paths floow contour as long as possible with switchbacks and conections around the edges of the maintained areas. Soo much to learn and try, all the while ecosystems around you are developing :) I'm converting old pasture into a diverse spread of woodlands meadows, brambles and micro ponds with high, medium, and low roads throughout. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for sharing and the words of encouragement! Working on access and water management further out (and up) into the property are definitely priorities now that I've got food relatively under control.
Thank you for sharing about planting on contour! It gives me some new ideas!
Thanks for sharing
Great video! I wouldn't bring heavy equipment onto my land even if I could afford to so it's just me and my shovel. Establishing wetlands one shovelful at a time. Wouldn't have it any other way. I've learned so much that I never would have known had I used a big machine. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the words of encouragement! Glad you enjoyed the video, and glad I'm not the only one that feels that way about heavy equipment!
Looking forward to watching more of your videos. Really sick of the attitude that if you're not into swales and hugels you're not doing permaculture.
Hey! Going through my backlog now that I'm back from hiatus. Hope you're still around! Starting to finally see some results out here.
You were at 999 subs, so I added you, good luck and thanks for taking the time to add your content!
Wooo! Thanks a bunch! I saw that I hit 999 last night before I went to bed and have been eagerly awaiting that fourth digit! Glad you've got something from my videos, and I hope I can continue to serve! 😁
@@stonedapefarmer I'm pleased I cold be the one to get you to this milestone...100,000 next stop!
@@markodeen4105 Choo choo! 🤣
Interesting concept. I too have heavy clay and we dug two small (fairly short) swales for our hillside garden which became a massive home for gophers. Recently we have decided instead to use them to construct a type of modified huglekulture bed that is more a slightly mounded raised bed. I definately like the ide af less digging because we are both 70+ . Am enjoying all your experiments.
Glad you've been enjoying the experiments! And I can't blame you, I certainly hope to be doing limited digging when I get up there in years. My ultimate solution for gophers was to observe where they regular would dig and avoid planting near those areas. But that takes a few years of observation. Thanks for watching, and good luck with your project!
Very interesting concept. However, in summary, I thought you were going to say that after you: 1-Mark, and 2-plant, on contour, that you next add some sort of 3-"obstruction", like rocks, tree limbs or logs just below your plantings, in order to slow down, more evenly disperse and capture more water? Wasn't that the purpose the large rock in your example served?
I did some where I just planted on contour and others where I also stacked rocks along the contour line. Ultimately, it seemed to rehydrate and revegetate just as well with just plants as it did with the rocks, and hauling and stacking rocks is significantly more time and labor intensive.
Don't remember where specifically there were large rocks in the video, though they're all over out here. In decades past this was the site of a granite quarry, and there's still plenty of evidence of that. In addition, the landowners having the place clear cut caused all of the topsoil to wash away, so a lot of previously covered rock is now exposed. I certainly dream of making use of all of this rock, but at this stage it's not a good use of my limited labor.
You are doing great! Permaculture is all about the observation and design from what you observ in your specific setting. Swales are not at all for all places. I am active in Sweden aswell as in Kenya and the usefull technices are quite diffrent and sometimes the oposite from each other. Truely there are many techniches for water harvesting and distribution. In sweden i sometimes uses the one rock dams techiches but are instead using big loggs and branches as we have to much of forest and trees here. In Kenya I love using swales wich I have never used in Sweden.
Subbed to see your place progress. Looking forward to it!
Thanks! It's slow progress, but it's progress.
Awesome video man, I learned a lot about how manage water without relying on the hallowed swale!
Thumbs up for channel name.
You aware of Mark Shepard?
Glad you like it! 😂
And oh yeah. Mark's STUN technique is a huge inspiration.
Thanks for watching!
@@stonedapefarmer .
It makes a LOT of sense.
It totally does! The combo of him and Joseph Lofthouse. It's pretty much the future of plant breeding and food security.
@@stonedapefarmer
So agree.
Great video, any updates? Think of this, how do eat an elephant? 1 bite at a time.
That really is true! It was a rough few years, but experiments are starting to pay off. My latest video shows how I'm building on this technique to grow terraces in place. Definitely lots of greenery popping up wherever I use these techniques. 😁 Thanks for watching and sharing such an astute observation!
@@stonedapefarmer ,I missed your latest. Going back to watch it.
Hey, this just got recommended to me. I liked your video and concepts. I would definitely like an update on this project and to see more! Good job! I like hand tools and passive watering too, but in Texas I have not succeeded much without active irrigation yet. It's a long term project!
Ditto on clay soil and hand tools.
Just found you (via permies). Good stuff. I think you're in the Oregon Coast Range. Care to share where, roughly?
I've got a fairly significant, south facing, slope that I'm hoping to put an orchard on. It was clearcut a few years back, and has some natural terracing to it. It's currently overrun with brambles, of course, so hopefully that will give some good material to slow water and provide cover for young trees on there, and hold the slope together until the trees get established well enough. Will be planting on contour, with on contour foot paths for access. I guess I don't want to actually dig swales, since it's probably too steep and would be subject to landslide. Nice to see options that don't involve unduly raising that risk.
Well, thanks for watching! I'm between Portland/Salem and the coast.
Brambles definitely provide a lot of good material. Just gotta be sure to maintain them well as they provide a lot of ladder fuel in order for the fire to get up in the canopies of trees in the event of a wildfire. I've seen goats used very effectively in such circumstances. I've also seen controlled burn used effectively, but there hasn't been a history of it here in a long time and I imagine it would make a lot of people nervous.
Glad I could give you some alternatives to swales. 🙂
@@stonedapefarmer I'm down between Newport and Corvallis. Short hot dry summer, long mild wet winter.
I don't intend to keep the brambles, gradually replacing them with a less aggressive and more varied fruit bearing understory. But,nits going to be a long haul.
Anyway, I'm enjoying your channel! Hope it works out, I'm subbed and looking forward to the next video. Also, super curious about the hugelpath idea, and considering it for us, too. 👍
@@andrewsackville-west1609 I know that climate well. I wish you luck with the long journey ahead. I want to do a video on the hugelpath, but it's all theoretical at the moment. Maybe I'll do a build video as I do some more work on it, but the real story is going to be in a couple of years when the wood has started to break down. Looking forward to that day.
We are on steep property in Queensland and doing many of the same things you speak of in this video. I just want to spend my remaining energies helping to put carbon in the soil where it belongs. Do not let the bastards grind you down! What you are doing has value. Take care of your young self.
Thanks for the encouragement! Certainly doing my best to put my energy where it belongs. 🙂
Nope... Sepp Holtzer has a steep property though. Interesting work you're into. Good luck in the storm coming xx
Hey, what zone are you in?
8b, but it's not 8b like in other parts of the country (since USDA zones only tell the average minimum winter temperatures.) We can have 30-40 degree temperature swings between day and night because we're better the mountains and the coast, so we can't grow a lot of warm weather stuff like melons, sweet potatoes, and okra.
@@stonedapefarmer
Interesting.
I like to check what kind of conditions a fellow gardener is dealing with compared to my own.
I'm in southern Ohio, zone 6.
It's rather wet and the weather is swingy, but not THAT swingy.
@@slaplapdog Yeah. It kinda sucks to hit triple digit temps (or very nearly) during the day, just try drop into the 50s or low 60s at night. Human or plant, there's just no adjusting to it. Especially with literally no rain for the 3 or 4 months during the hot part of the year, from May or June-ish through August or September... depending on the year. Our springs are tricky too. Frost is unpredictable. We often have winters with only one or two weeks of freezing temperatures, but then we can get surprise freezes in spring after early heat waves that cause everything to bolt. This year my turnips were a complete bust. We went from cold and rainy, with nothing wanting to grow, then got a bit of heat that caused all my turnips to bolt when most were barely as thick as a pencil, and then we went back to freezing. Saving seeds from the ones that got the biggest and hoping I end up with something that can tolerate our erratic temps a bit better.
@@stonedapefarmer
With temperature swings like that and long periods of no rain, I see why you are inspired by techniques developed for deserts.
significant
stone, you can use plants for dew traps and shade.
Stone still might be be better mass for thermal moderation.
I'm not sure what turnip seed pods are like, do they have any food value in and of them selves?
@@slaplapdog They're technically edible, but small. The real issue is that I save all of my own seeds, so I don't want any that are ill-adapted to our climate to pass on any pollen.
Great minds think alike! I don't usually like working with rock because it's difficult to weed around, and we have a lot of really aggressive, allelopathic, invasive, perennial weeds. But I actually installed two more of the contour rows yesterday, one with bread seed poppies and one with popbeans, and started armoring them with our abundant rock. Thermal mass, helps further slow the water, gradually remineralizes soil (honestly; the most gorgeous weeds weeds out here are getting in gravel), and serves as a visual indicator of where the plants are so that less observant people won't walk or drive over them. We'll see how much the weeding sucks between now and when I get desirable plants established.
I'll probably never need this information, living in the flattest country on earth, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
You'd be surprised how effective this stuff is even on seemingly flat ground. I think Pete Kanaris and Jack Spirko both have videos about water catchment in flat landscapes, iirc.
Certainly there might be better strategies in your case. Hugelkultur? Deep mulch? Ollas? But a joint study between the EPA and the University of... I wanna say Wisconsin?... concluded that a third of American households would be priced out of affordable water within the next decade due to aging infrastructure that needs to be replaced, depletion of ground water (primarily from industrial agriculture), and increasing dependence on expensive desalination processes. It's scary to think what will happen if we don't seriously start to consider solutions. Growing food without irrigation, to my mind, is the most elegant solution. It's how all of our food was grown once upon a time. And with our combined knowledge we can make these systems resilient against drought. But hey. I should just shut up. I could damn near write a book on the subject. 🤣
I was so looking forward to hearing from you. So glad you were able to stop by!
@@stonedapefarmer Yeah, I'm just getting started in my small backyard so I'm figuring out how to apply all the things I learn to my situation. I did indeed experiment with a raised bed with wood buried beneath it (stripped christmas trees I picked up by the roadside this winter) and a tiny swale on top that distributes rainwater from the roof across the bed. Let's see if I can get some berries going on right there.
Another section I sheet mulched with cardboard, the chopped up branches of the christmas trees and all kinds of greens and browns I picked up here and there. Most of the soil was so devoid of life when I bought it 4 months ago that this won't be enough to get everything going right away, so this summer I'm definitely going to have to buy additional compost and feed it lots of precious tap water to kickstart my little food forest. My goal for 2022 is to just rainwater and home grown compost. I'm sure I can make it work.
That sounds like an amazing start. Berries are the best. Starting with lifeless soil is a drag. I just found my first earthworm in the main garden the other day. I've had them in my compost, but this is the first time I've had the organic matter in the soil to support life.
Actually it can be even more useful on flat ground as flat ground floods, and drops water table more easily than hills