Silver Spur ranches is located on the way to Dustups, but is only an 18 minute drive from I-10. No money down for 20 acre tracts and just $199/no when you mention Dustups: www.lonestarinvestments.com/
I still think harvest rain water,, dig a well, and industrial farming. Grow corn or other millet. It produces a lot of carbon much easily as long as water is there. Cactus is a slow affair.
A note on the cardboard - you want the non glossy, brown cardboard with no tape and no stickers on them. The cardboard will eventually break down but the tape and stickers won't.
I was just going to mention this. Clear plastic tapes will eventually break down into a lot of pieces which makes it hard to pick up or remove later, so better to get it while you can. The toughest tapes are the ones with fibers in them. Currently I have a pile of cardboard which has styrofoam glued to it. I didn't pick it up, so I get to deal with it later, but at least I saw it before it got put down and then I won't have to find it in 5-10 years later and wonder where all the junk came from. I hate my gardens looking like trash heaps. Absolute worst mistake I ever made was having some compost mixed in with some sand and topsoil before I had it delivered. Many years later I'm still picking pieces of glass, metals and plastics out of the gardens I used it in. :(
@@dustupstexas I'm not one to buy a lot of pitched products, but if I see a legitimately great glove product come through as one of your partners/sponsors, and if it looks like it can truly handle a good stress test, while not being too expensive, count me in. I've gone through probably a dozen pairs of cheap to mid-range gloves while getting the landscaping going in my yard. Sooooooo much rock...
Something worth considering is to leave all the materials you find soaking in water for at least 24 hours so that the material can get its elasticity back. I have noticed that materials that have been left dry for long periods of time tend to take a while to soak in the water but once they have been soaked thoroughly, it is easier for them to retain moister even if they dry out temporarily. An example of this can easily be seen in a sponge that has been left out to dry and then put back in water. At first the sponge will repel most of the water but after a few minutes it comes back to its normal self. I have also seen a UA-camr do an experiment with what material absorbs the most water and the result was grass.
Love your learning curve Shaun. Shout out to all the big hearted ' helpers '! Rain will happen, droughts break with huge rainfall, just keep going, cheering for you from NZ
This years rainfall, it the perfect example of why the cactus is important. They can survive a year like this and create tiny microclimates that slightly less hardy plants can survive in. Would be a bad growth year regardless, but in the desert there can be decades of progress on the line. In your case a lot of labor keeping those plants alive.
Hmm, maybe Shaun should build a distillery and start selling Prickly Pear moonshine to support operations 😁🍸 Definitely some product potential there 👍🏼
From all of the planting videos I've ever watched, the most important thing prior to planting and after planting is water water water. Like another comment I saw, I think having all the planting materials completely soaked at first and a good watering after will definitely help to promote improved growing
I wonder if he could have done some kind of a compost tea, with some of his mulch/materials soaking for a bit? That would probably have helped. It would at least make for an interesting comparison experiment on another section of terrace: presoak materials + water immediately with a fair bit of locally made compost tea. Could maybe even strain it and add it to the drip line? Or maybe that could be a 3rd experiment...
🎯 Key points for quick navigation: 00:00:00 *🌵 Introduction and Cactus Growing Challenges* - Introduction to the video and initial cactus transplant update, - Challenges faced in growing a desert forest, especially with logistics, water, and soil amendments. 00:02:18 *🌱 Uses of Prickly Pear Cactus* - Explanation of various uses of prickly pear cactus, - Its role in living fences, animal feed, and as an irrigation aid for trees. 00:04:13 *🍃 Seasonal Changes and Harvesting* - Description of seasonal changes and their impact on the ranch, - Harvesting prickly pear fruit and its taste comparisons. 00:06:01 *📦 Cardboard Cactus Tacos Concept* - Introduction of the cardboard cactus tacos idea, - Details on how to create and implement the cardboard tacos with cactus pads. 00:08:17 *🌍 Land Purchase Information* - Information on land purchase options in Far West Texas, - Benefits and recommendations for buying land through lonar Investments. 00:10:38 *🔪 Practical Application and Labor* - Practical steps of implementing cardboard cactus tacos, - Discussion on the labor-intensive nature of the process and using cardboard. 00:13:09 *🌿 Biological Benefits and Microbial Life* - Exploration of biological benefits of cactus and potential microbial life, - Discussion on how prickly pear pads can act as an inoculant for soil. 00:16:10 *🏜️ Conclusion and Weather Challenges* - Conclusion of the cardboard cactus taco planting process, - Discussion of weather challenges, including severe drought conditions and their impact on the ranch. Made with HARPA AI
You need to make a rain roof look them up .I made two on my very dry property I never ran out of water.I got the idea from Homestead Economics absolutely brilliant.
Dont know how long you have soaked the cardboard for, but soaking in advance for longer with biochar, manure and whatnot mixed in the water, will give an instant boost
Attention! Pizza box cardboard most propably contains PFAS. They are used to seperate the food from the cardboard which usually would absorb water and fat super fast. Greetings from a European food technologist and chemistry teacher.
I have had to cut up cardboard for sheet composting, where you lay out sheets of cardboard like a tiramisu or lasagna in layers as composter and mulch. If you have to cut up a lot, get a cargo knife and a butcher block, or even a sheet of plywood clamped to sawhorses. Using scissors will exhaust your hands quickly, and the cargo knife goes a lot quicker.
I love the cardboard taco idea! About the rain missing you. If you can get things rolling during a drought, just wait until you actually get some usable weather! 👊🏻🌻👊🏻
One thing that I do with Clean Cardboard, and even greasy Pizza Boxes, is that I run them through a 14+ Page Paper Shredder and then toss it into my composter. Another friend of mine puts it into his worm bin tables on his property. You could probably shred it up and put it around the Prickly Pears like CHEESE or Lettuce rather than a Taco. It will still hold a good amount of H2O. You may want to start a Worm Composting bin on the site and bring out cardboard rather than tossing in the Recycle Bin and get that much more nutrients for the plants, even if it is minimal. And I love the Grass Harvesting!
12-14 page crosscut shredder is good for mulch. The cardboard taco is good, but it keeps the cactus roots from reaching soil until the cardboard breaks down. A cardboard mulch would allow roots to travel through and you could shred up bags at a time. If some random stickers or other small items are in there, they will be dispersed further apart to not cause as much harm.
Shaun, please, as a Brazilian: I know you won’t say “João” correctly, but he gave you the “Gil” (short nickname for Gilberto) option! It’s not “joo” like you’re saying, just say “Jill”, that’s pretty much the right way to pronounce it 👍 Great seeing the ranch coming along!
Good morning Shaun , I watch your progress whenever I come across your channel on my tv , quite impressive to see a person working for nature on his own resources with full dedication . Thanks for restoring nature .
Dear Shaun, I am really really asionished by what you are doing in that freaking desert. I live in middle-eastern Europe (Poland), so totally different wather and soil conditions than yours. But I still struggle with sandy land and in a terrible drought (as for forestry area, welp) I watch a lot of youtubers "from my zone" to learn how to grow food, but still - you are my best advisor. I struggle with drought - I watch your videos and learn. I am a biologist myself, but still: "someone" from the outside had to tell me how the soil really works. Biomass matter creates even more biomass matter. It's neverending story, that really works for us - gardeners. You are too a gardener, but on the impossible scale and with little to none benefits (for me it's tomatoes and zuccinis, but they don't grow, coz the soil dry) Keep up your good work, I have been and will be watching your videos, to learn not only from mistakes, but mostly from your succeses! I am really really glad to see that pro-biological apporach among all of my fav youtubers - with you on the top - is going into soil health and keeping care of not what we grow, but in what we grow into. Mulch everywhere and everyone!
Obviously Shaun is giving this a great amount of effort. And not for only short time period. Success may require years. Obviously this area wasn't always this barren. Hopefully Shaun and crew are rewarded with some success.
I like the cardboard taco idea. We have the same problem with the rain. I live in a small city. But the particular spot we are in gets missed by the rain most of the time. Out if all the monsoon storms we have had since the beginning of monsoon season, we have received a whooping total of 1/2 inch so far. Last week parts of our same town got 1.5 inches in one event, but not us.
Have you looked into becoming a conservation site for rare cactus species? You could propagate them at home, in more controlled conditions, and bring them out to the ranch once they're established.
Prickly Pear grows here in Florida too. When I was doing pool service back in the day. We'd snag some of the pears off customers plantings (they never picked them) and had a quick snack. We'd rub the fuzz off on the concrete before eating.
What you're doing is amazing Shaun. Huge fan 👍🏼 It's incredible how far the the project has come. It's a true story of dedication. Love it 💪🏼 Once you tap into those natural feedback loops, you're sitting on a game of exponents. 💥
You could look into how effective planting gels might be with cactus. Theyre extremely effective and rather low cost and typically are a slow release nutrient for the plant.
you put the cardboard under your mulch. it will hold moisture and it will breakdown and turn in to mulch. I would also put shade covers over you plants. get the shade covers that block 40% of the sun. it will also help with keeping the moisture in the soil.
In Israel they did deep trenches and layer thick plastic in the troughs swale like holes . They cover it with sand and then organic material. When it rains little water goes to the ground table. In that way they capture lots of water.
Lasagna method is a great cheap way to help with creating soil and retaining moisture. Basically just sandwich cardboard and organic materials in layers. You can also just use shredded paper and cardboard as mulch.
Amazing to see new techniques out in the field. Next time you make cactus tacos, mix up a paste or slurry not just the manure, but as you said, some bits of cactus itself, and of course a pinch of biochar! Plant those new types soon, then you can watch the two groups over time.
Good idea cardboard. Another good way is plant corn on the cob seeds, even just one row, not so much for the corn, but the stalks are great mulch. A little Kabota tractor with a good shreader would shred everything you are using, a little rotovator attachment would mean you could work the mulch into the ground. On the farm we used to grow mustard seeds, then rotavate it in as mulch and feed, of course water supply would be a little more. Love following your work Sean
Residential door shops have sheets of cardboard they throw away every day. Usually around 3 foot by 7/8 foot. There is probalby a ton of small shops in your hometown. The big ones might recycle them.
I think his problem is the distance to town and back. The fuel cost per mile is the killer problem he has or he would be loading up the horse manure thats closer than town repeatedly.
You should get a battery powered rotary cardboard cutter. I have a Worx one that make quick work of any box. But there are several brands available now including Ryobi
Ok so I live in New Mexico and I've bought so many of the plants that grow on your ranch for my yard this year. Lechuguilla, ocotillo, echinocereus, echinocactus. I would love to see a plant nerd come out and show us a botanical survey of what interesting plants grow on your land. I sometimes see interesting plants growing in the background and often wonder what other plants may be out there that aren't mentioned. It was cool to see the Echinocactus for a moment on this video.
You're technically building the foundation to the start of a food forest with the prickly pears. Edible and really healthy as well as give off fruit. Not a bad start at all. I'd love to donate some more rare desert plants to the project sometime. There's a lot of stuff from africa and madagascar that would love your ranch.
I just sent that link about vetiver grass.For your dam erosion.... I texted you about that a long time ago when you first started ti build your dam to use vetiver ...hope it works out...love watching ya
i understand the reasoning for your comment but vetiver is seedless and can only spread through intentional propagation and if you can recommend a species that is native that has the anti-erosion capabilities that vetiver has in handling tremendous rain events please let Shawn know@@jerrielindsey5939
You are working so hard! Inventing as you go! You have come up with awesome ideas......I thought I was clever but your project is more challenging and definitely larger and more barebones than my little two acres in Arizona that has city water. I am totally fascinated.
Hey Shaun, I've had an idea, when it starts raining again, why not try planting seeds and transplants into already established grass tufts? If nothing else it would be a good experiment to see how much attention you need to give them along with what plants do better without support.
My Dad's favorite part of Grandma's kraut prep was the "cabbage core jar"...she kept brine from past jars in a crock, and rather than cutting THROUGH the core, she cut to the sides of it, trimming off for the kraut, then cutting off the bitter barrier (for the pigs), and the core (which was a spear by this time) went into the crock to pickle ❤
I know that was painful to watch him cut the cardboard... He should have realized in two seconds that he'd chosen a painfully stupid way to try to cut those boxes...
The prickly pears can be eaten by People also Be sure and bring lots of paper Thats been shredded its good for youre soil plus most of the time its Free from youre home office
I know you've covered the issue of using a chipper, but I feel like instead of using big huge chunks of bark and other large kids pieces of dried up vegetation, a fine mulch would benefit you greatly
brilliant work i 100 percent agree they are probably endophytic additionally. the cactus likely secrete polysaccharides that improve soil water retention.
Please look into hardy weeds like wild mustard, mallow, amaranth, the one ants like you need ants to start making it easier for you to trap moisture. Shoot you need native grass in that patch.
I have had prickly pear wine and also sand plumb. You may want to try growing sand plumb, it is good ground cover and the deer will spread the seeds in their poo😂
I grew up and still live in Phoenix. Our house was on a foothill, a pile of rocks as my dad used to say. Very little soil. So I have watched with interest you using the dozer to build roads, dams and terrace. The driveway up to our house was very much like your road to the big dam. Erosion was a constant concern during the monsoons. You have more soil than we did but you have a high concentration of loose rock in it. I was hoping to see you and your helpers do a lot more prep work on the roughed out areas to smooth things out and make real, usable roads, terraces and bathtubs. I know you were anxious to get started, so I did a wait and see and just followed your progress. I have not said anything here so far, but at this point I think your project could benefit from a lot of rock removal from your planting areas. Rocks that are bigger than a half-inch or even a quarter-inch in diameter. Rake them out or sift them out, whatever works better for you. Your soil will be much easier to dig up when you plant or add mulch, and easier for the plants to push roots through. And especially helpful to compost your mulch. The more soil contact with the organic stuff the better! Then use the raked and sifted loose rock on the down-slope sides of the terrace and especially your big dam to control erosion. You have already figured out to re-contour your roads to eliminate the berms at the sides that act to concentrate rather than dissipate sheet runoff. Rake the rocks off your roads as well and push them off the edges to where the runoff meets the desert. All man-made slopes should be covered with a several-inch thick layer of rocks of various sizes, with the bigger ones near the bottom. The rocks act to catch and slow down runoff, acting like a mulch, and preserving the underlying soil from erosion Your dam faces should have this as well, that the side slopes should probably be about half the gradient they are now. Maybe 25-30 degrees vs. the 40-45 degrees they are now. What I have described is often done here in the Phoenix area, particularly noticeable along our freeways, many of which have dirt banks which are either raised from grade level to provide noise abatement for surrounding neighborhoods or where the roads are excavated below grade to make underpasses for surface streets. All exposed slopes are covered with a layer of coarse gravel or crushed rock approx. 1-inch in dia. Areas where extra drainage is expected get watercourses armored with larger stones 3-5 in. in dia. You could also add a series small terraces of approx. one foot width every few feet going down across the downstream dam face to further slow runoff and even catch a little water that would encourage grass and other plant growth among the rocks. Your check dams need a lot of small rocks and coarse gravel added between the larger rocks to really slow down the flow and help depositing silt and the clay that I saw in some of the better constructed ones. (You can tell there is a lot of clay in that silt because it cracks when it dries out.) Always build those dams with the lowest spot in the center to prevent erosion at the banks. I know a wood chipper has been considered and is a big expense, but one thing I know from 70 years living in the Phoenix desert where we average 7 inches of rain in a good year is that in the absence of much water and just lying mostly on the surface of the ground organic materials, dead plants of all kinds take years to decompose naturally. In ground, faster; with water, much faster; being broken into small pieces, way, way faster. I have a compost pit in my yard that gets weeds, bush prunings and kitchen waste. But anything larger than 1/4 inch in diameter I try to crunch up in some way. I don't have a chipper, so the bigger stuff I use for kindling in my BBQ and then convert to biochar -- charcoal that I can easily grind up and add to the compost. When I eventually harvest the compost after about six months to a year, I screen it to remove any not-yet-decomposed hunks which end up back in the pit with the next batch of raw material. On a side note, I find it interesting that even though your part of Texas gets twice as much rain as we do here in central Arizona, your desert looks a lot bleaker and parched. Is that a result of further desertification by cattle over-grazing, or is that the natural bio-system out there? Is it the soil composition? Parts of our higher desert here, above maybe 1,500 feet elevation or higher can be quite lush, with a huge variety of plant life and a lot of ground cover. Not lush as in a forest, but thick enough that standing out in it, once you look at any of it more than 30-40 feet away it is often hard to even see the ground at all for the bushes and trees. We have the ocotillo and prickly pear that you have and a lot more! Keep up the good work, sir! I wish you luck. You've had s steep learning curve.
Years ago, I watched a pair of javelina munch down on a 2 foot diameter clump of healthy purple prickly cactus. Seemed to be going for the roots mostly. Terlingua Ranch area.
Just an idea but you should plant something near the well that can benifit for any spillage when working on it. I don’t know if there’s enough but I just saw some loss in the footage. Thanks again for the video and even more thanks for habitat and ecosystem restoration
Shaun, I'd like to share something. I was watching some western movies and TV shows with my wife when I noticed the local fauna and INSTANTLY started naming all of the plants to her. She instinctively asked how on Earth did I know all of that as we live in a big city so I just replied: Dustups babe, Dustups. 😂 So thank you, I feel pretty acquainted to ocotillo and the likes of it now 😂😂😂
Small correction for ya -- it's flora, not fauna. Think flora, like flowers (plants), fauna like a fawn (animals). That's how I learned to remember the difference! Lotsa people say the words "flora and fauna" together so much it's like it's all one thing, so it is easy to confuse them.
@@dolaski Ocotillos will get you every time. I live in the Arizona desert and I want to plant an ocotillo in my yard. They're all around me in the desert just a couple miles from my house. I grew up with them living on the land where my dad built our house on a desert foothill. They green up quickly after a good rain and put out lovely red flowers in the spring. They can be propagated from cuttings of one of the stalks.
Hey Shaun, I recently found out about Vetiver Grass. It might be a good fit for the Dustups Ranch, apparently it can send roots down up to 15 ft, is drought resistant, and does not go to seed. Might be worth looking into 😉
Haveing made it through several drought and wet years here in not quite that far west , but close west TX. What you are considering as a hindrance of it being extra dry this year, may be a blessing when starting up. At least not extra wet. My experience when moving to a far dryer area is that having the first couple of years sverage to dry allows you to learn and be ready to make exponential growth when the floods come. If it rains a lot the first year or even two, you will not be able to take advantage of it and then the dry years will come and it will be a long wait for another rainy one. Desert areas tend to hold fast until a wet year and then explode in growth, then go almost dormant until the next time.
Have you read Brad Lancaster’s books? There’s a segment in one of them about using paper mulch in New Mexico. The example is that you use any and every paper source you can find to stuff in the hole then soak it with water.
Get as much rotten log you can find. Palm husks, dead palm or date tree stalks and branches. Any clippings or leaves from local yard cleaning companies.
If you look into paper briquettes / paper mache you could get some ideas to adapt for upgrading the taco method maybe with other organics added. I do it labour intensively for exercise by putting some water and recyclable paper / cardboard in water carriers and shaking / sloshing it around by holding them while I do katas and forms
Have you heard of groasis boxes? They collect dew. You can use them to plant trees. You fill them with water when you plant them, and they have a wick that brings the water to the roots. There is ongoing research. Modified boxes have been developed for different environments. The boxes have been used in Saudi Arabia. The researchers might be willing to sponsor you in some manner.
Silver Spur ranches is located on the way to Dustups, but is only an 18 minute drive from I-10. No money down for 20 acre tracts and just $199/no when you mention Dustups: www.lonestarinvestments.com/
Texas 😫 I just left Texas...
I still think harvest rain water,, dig a well, and industrial farming. Grow corn or other millet. It produces a lot of carbon much easily as long as water is there. Cactus is a slow affair.
What's up with the monthly payment? Is it like an HOA fee? Can you just buy it outright at 24k?
@@TheActiveLifeLivedIm sure they'd take a one time cash payment yeah
@@sage8573 so it's 24k or 199/mo...not 24k and 199/mo right?
A note on the cardboard - you want the non glossy, brown cardboard with no tape and no stickers on them. The cardboard will eventually break down but the tape and stickers won't.
I was just going to mention this. Clear plastic tapes will eventually break down into a lot of pieces which makes it hard to pick up or remove later, so better to get it while you can. The toughest tapes are the ones with fibers in them. Currently I have a pile of cardboard which has styrofoam glued to it. I didn't pick it up, so I get to deal with it later, but at least I saw it before it got put down and then I won't have to find it in 5-10 years later and wonder where all the junk came from. I hate my gardens looking like trash heaps.
Absolute worst mistake I ever made was having some compost mixed in with some sand and topsoil before I had it delivered. Many years later I'm still picking pieces of glass, metals and plastics out of the gardens I used it in. :(
I don’t wasn’t too picky about tape when i used cardboard and mulch to smother my lawn. Now when i dig rows to plant stuff, i still pull up that tape.
Yeah, you've definitely gotta remove the tape! Especially from amazon boxes, the tape has little plastic fibers in it
I've heard that PFAS are even in toilet paper for some reason.
PFAS are definitely part of glossy cardboard.
Our man needs a good glove sponsor.
Indeed
@@dustupstexas I'm not one to buy a lot of pitched products, but if I see a legitimately great glove product come through as one of your partners/sponsors, and if it looks like it can truly handle a good stress test, while not being too expensive, count me in. I've gone through probably a dozen pairs of cheap to mid-range gloves while getting the landscaping going in my yard. Sooooooo much rock...
No dance, No rain.
Something worth considering is to leave all the materials you find soaking in water for at least 24 hours so that the material can get its elasticity back. I have noticed that materials that have been left dry for long periods of time tend to take a while to soak in the water but once they have been soaked thoroughly, it is easier for them to retain moister even if they dry out temporarily. An example of this can easily be seen in a sponge that has been left out to dry and then put back in water. At first the sponge will repel most of the water but after a few minutes it comes back to its normal self. I have also seen a UA-camr do an experiment with what material absorbs the most water and the result was grass.
Love your learning curve Shaun. Shout out to all the big hearted ' helpers '! Rain will happen, droughts break with huge rainfall, just keep going, cheering for you from NZ
Thank you!
This years rainfall, it the perfect example of why the cactus is important. They can survive a year like this and create tiny microclimates that slightly less hardy plants can survive in. Would be a bad growth year regardless, but in the desert there can be decades of progress on the line. In your case a lot of labor keeping those plants alive.
Thank you for sharing why your rehabilitation area is so much dryer compared to the rest of Texas. Cheering from the side 🎉
Prickly pear . We call it aTurksvy in South Africa and its makes a potent mampoer. Mampoer is Home distilled brandy of about 80%
Hmm, maybe Shaun should build a distillery and start selling Prickly Pear moonshine to support operations 😁🍸
Definitely some product potential there 👍🏼
@@lagmonster7789 there is a pretty sweet prickly pear liquor where I come from
I’ve had some great cocktails with prickly pear homemade vodka. I think the fruit could really be marketed-jellies, sorbet, syrups, pastries.
Mampoer=Moonshine
@@TrinityMentality yes, and when we use grapes its Witblits.
The rain will come and when it comes, it will come with a vengence.
From all of the planting videos I've ever watched, the most important thing prior to planting and after planting is water water water. Like another comment I saw, I think having all the planting materials completely soaked at first and a good watering after will definitely help to promote improved growing
I wonder if he could have done some kind of a compost tea, with some of his mulch/materials soaking for a bit? That would probably have helped. It would at least make for an interesting comparison experiment on another section of terrace: presoak materials + water immediately with a fair bit of locally made compost tea. Could maybe even strain it and add it to the drip line? Or maybe that could be a 3rd experiment...
🎯 Key points for quick navigation:
00:00:00 *🌵 Introduction and Cactus Growing Challenges*
- Introduction to the video and initial cactus transplant update,
- Challenges faced in growing a desert forest, especially with logistics, water, and soil amendments.
00:02:18 *🌱 Uses of Prickly Pear Cactus*
- Explanation of various uses of prickly pear cactus,
- Its role in living fences, animal feed, and as an irrigation aid for trees.
00:04:13 *🍃 Seasonal Changes and Harvesting*
- Description of seasonal changes and their impact on the ranch,
- Harvesting prickly pear fruit and its taste comparisons.
00:06:01 *📦 Cardboard Cactus Tacos Concept*
- Introduction of the cardboard cactus tacos idea,
- Details on how to create and implement the cardboard tacos with cactus pads.
00:08:17 *🌍 Land Purchase Information*
- Information on land purchase options in Far West Texas,
- Benefits and recommendations for buying land through lonar Investments.
00:10:38 *🔪 Practical Application and Labor*
- Practical steps of implementing cardboard cactus tacos,
- Discussion on the labor-intensive nature of the process and using cardboard.
00:13:09 *🌿 Biological Benefits and Microbial Life*
- Exploration of biological benefits of cactus and potential microbial life,
- Discussion on how prickly pear pads can act as an inoculant for soil.
00:16:10 *🏜️ Conclusion and Weather Challenges*
- Conclusion of the cardboard cactus taco planting process,
- Discussion of weather challenges, including severe drought conditions and their impact on the ranch.
Made with HARPA AI
Thanks
You need to make a rain roof look them up .I made two on my very dry property I never ran out of water.I got the idea from Homestead Economics absolutely brilliant.
I have bigger priorities. We already have water
Dont know how long you have soaked the cardboard for, but soaking in advance for longer with biochar, manure and whatnot mixed in the water, will give an instant boost
Dilated urin is on of the best fertilizer there is. We often forget that we are a big part of regeneration. Loved the vid!
Attention!
Pizza box cardboard most propably contains PFAS.
They are used to seperate the food from the cardboard which usually would absorb water and fat super fast.
Greetings from a European food technologist and chemistry teacher.
I have had to cut up cardboard for sheet composting, where you lay out sheets of cardboard like a tiramisu or lasagna in layers as composter and mulch. If you have to cut up a lot, get a cargo knife and a butcher block, or even a sheet of plywood clamped to sawhorses. Using scissors will exhaust your hands quickly, and the cargo knife goes a lot quicker.
I love the cardboard taco idea! About the rain missing you. If you can get things rolling during a drought, just wait until you actually get some usable weather! 👊🏻🌻👊🏻
I love the dynamic of you and Brandon! I would love for him to be a permanent feature on videos!
One thing that I do with Clean Cardboard, and even greasy Pizza Boxes, is that I run them through a 14+ Page Paper Shredder and then toss it into my composter. Another friend of mine puts it into his worm bin tables on his property. You could probably shred it up and put it around the Prickly Pears like CHEESE or Lettuce rather than a Taco. It will still hold a good amount of H2O. You may want to start a Worm Composting bin on the site and bring out cardboard rather than tossing in the Recycle Bin and get that much more nutrients for the plants, even if it is minimal. And I love the Grass Harvesting!
12-14 page crosscut shredder is good for mulch. The cardboard taco is good, but it keeps the cactus roots from reaching soil until the cardboard breaks down. A cardboard mulch would allow roots to travel through and you could shred up bags at a time. If some random stickers or other small items are in there, they will be dispersed further apart to not cause as much harm.
Awesome, it looks like you are making progress!
You see tacos, i see the beginning of a new Baldassare Forestiere paradise.
Fresno!
it would be great to plant pine tree seeds in there . They're easy to sprout and are great in hot dry climates .
Cactus fruit is SOOOO delicious! One of my favorite fruits.
‘Are they really or are they just demanding your attention?’ My new favorite sentence
Shaun, please, as a Brazilian: I know you won’t say “João” correctly, but he gave you the “Gil” (short nickname for Gilberto) option! It’s not “joo” like you’re saying, just say “Jill”, that’s pretty much the right way to pronounce it 👍
Great seeing the ranch coming along!
Nice to catch you in a Premier, love what your doing, even though I think your as mad as a bunch of frogs, keep up the good work .
Good morning Shaun , I watch your progress whenever I come across your channel on my tv , quite impressive to see a person working for nature on his own resources with full dedication . Thanks for restoring nature .
Dust Ups is like an inverse Venice. Love it
Dear Shaun,
I am really really asionished by what you are doing in that freaking desert.
I live in middle-eastern Europe (Poland), so totally different wather and soil conditions than yours.
But I still struggle with sandy land and in a terrible drought (as for forestry area, welp) I watch a lot of youtubers "from my zone" to learn how to grow food, but still - you are my best advisor. I struggle with drought - I watch your videos and learn. I am a biologist myself, but still: "someone" from the outside had to tell me how the soil really works. Biomass matter creates even more biomass matter. It's neverending story, that really works for us - gardeners. You are too a gardener, but on the impossible scale and with little to none benefits (for me it's tomatoes and zuccinis, but they don't grow, coz the soil dry)
Keep up your good work, I have been and will be watching your videos, to learn not only from mistakes, but mostly from your succeses! I am really really glad to see that pro-biological apporach among all of my fav youtubers - with you on the top - is going into soil health and keeping care of not what we grow, but in what we grow into.
Mulch everywhere and everyone!
Obviously Shaun is giving this a great amount of effort. And not for only short time period. Success may require years. Obviously this area wasn't always this barren. Hopefully Shaun and crew are rewarded with some success.
I like the cardboard taco idea. We have the same problem with the rain. I live in a small city. But the particular spot we are in gets missed by the rain most of the time. Out if all the monsoon storms we have had since the beginning of monsoon season, we have received a whooping total of 1/2 inch so far. Last week parts of our same town got 1.5 inches in one event, but not us.
So sorry for your loss. I am sure that although Lisa has left her body she is still very much around. Lisa will be back. Much love to you all. X❤❤❤
My grandmother in south Georgia used to make cactus pear jelly and it was DELICIOUS.
Have you looked into becoming a conservation site for rare cactus species? You could propagate them at home, in more controlled conditions, and bring them out to the ranch once they're established.
This is an amazing idea
Why not extend to all xerophytes? He could make it a conservation for rare xerophytes in general
Cactus taco animation is on point
Prickly Pear grows here in Florida too. When I was doing pool service back in the day. We'd snag some of the pears off customers plantings (they never picked them) and had a quick snack. We'd rub the fuzz off on the concrete before eating.
We'd vist our neighbors patch too. We even made jelly from it once.
What you're doing is amazing Shaun. Huge fan 👍🏼 It's incredible how far the the project has come. It's a true story of dedication. Love it 💪🏼 Once you tap into those natural feedback loops, you're sitting on a game of exponents. 💥
You could look into how effective planting gels might be with cactus. Theyre extremely effective and rather low cost and typically are a slow release nutrient for the plant.
you put the cardboard under your mulch. it will hold moisture and it will breakdown and turn in to mulch. I would also put shade covers over you plants. get the shade covers that block 40% of the sun. it will also help with keeping the moisture in the soil.
In Israel they did deep trenches and layer thick plastic in the troughs swale like holes . They cover it with sand and then organic material. When it rains little water goes to the ground table. In that way they capture lots of water.
For what its worth, ceramic knives will cut cardboard into infinity, unlike steel which gets dull rather quickly on cardboard
Lasagna method is a great cheap way to help with creating soil and retaining moisture. Basically just sandwich cardboard and organic materials in layers. You can also just use shredded paper and cardboard as mulch.
Good day to you all!
Once again this is the first page I've ever commented on since the inception of UA-cam. Thanks Shaun!
Amazing to see new techniques out in the field. Next time you make cactus tacos, mix up a paste or slurry not just the manure, but as you said, some bits of cactus itself, and of course a pinch of biochar! Plant those new types soon, then you can watch the two groups over time.
I wont complain about how "rocky" my soil is again.
Or dry. Or hot.
Homeland security probably think you’re a couple of guys like breaking bad
they are!
Good idea cardboard. Another good way is plant corn on the cob seeds, even just one row, not so much for the corn, but the stalks are great mulch. A little Kabota tractor with a good shreader would shred everything you are using, a little rotovator attachment would mean you could work the mulch into the ground.
On the farm we used to grow mustard seeds, then rotavate it in as mulch and feed, of course water supply would be a little more.
Love following your work Sean
greetings from NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA (eh) 🇨🇦
Residential door shops have sheets of cardboard they throw away every day. Usually around 3 foot by 7/8 foot. There is probalby a ton of small shops in your hometown. The big ones might recycle them.
I think his problem is the distance to town and back. The fuel cost per mile is the killer problem he has or he would be loading up the horse manure thats closer than town repeatedly.
Shoots are a great sign 👍 considering drought
My brother has collected the hips from prickly pear and made an awesome jelly from it. I liked it very much and wished that I had more :)
What are the hips?
Cardboard can be yer incredibly inexpensive friend. It holds moisture well and breaks down naturally. Try running that thru yer chipper.
Crime pays but botany doesn’t
Get with
Him and watch his channel 🎉
Love that guy, he is so funny
Makes me want to load up my wife’s highlander, a trailer of mulch and help out for a weekend. When it’s cooler though!
You should get a battery powered rotary cardboard cutter. I have a Worx one that make quick work of any box. But there are several brands available now including Ryobi
You should try making prickly pear, jelly. It’s delicious.
Call it a Dust-up Prickly Pear Jelly
Ok so I live in New Mexico and I've bought so many of the plants that grow on your ranch for my yard this year. Lechuguilla, ocotillo, echinocereus, echinocactus. I would love to see a plant nerd come out and show us a botanical survey of what interesting plants grow on your land. I sometimes see interesting plants growing in the background and often wonder what other plants may be out there that aren't mentioned. It was cool to see the Echinocactus for a moment on this video.
Shawn you should do some survival videos or test some survival products, might get more people into your videos
You're technically building the foundation to the start of a food forest with the prickly pears. Edible and really healthy as well as give off fruit. Not a bad start at all. I'd love to donate some more rare desert plants to the project sometime. There's a lot of stuff from africa and madagascar that would love your ranch.
I just sent that link about vetiver grass.For your dam erosion.... I texted you about that a long time ago when you first started ti build your dam to use vetiver ...hope it works out...love watching ya
Please keep using natives not vetiver
i understand the reasoning for your comment but vetiver is seedless and can only spread through intentional propagation and if you can recommend a species that is native that has the anti-erosion capabilities that vetiver has in handling tremendous rain events please let Shawn know@@jerrielindsey5939
You are working so hard! Inventing as you go! You have come up with awesome ideas......I thought I was clever but your project is more challenging and definitely larger and more barebones than my little two acres in Arizona that has city water. I am totally fascinated.
Just a suggestion... When planting, to grow bigger, better, faster, try the Miyawaki method.
Hey Shaun, I've had an idea, when it starts raining again, why not try planting seeds and transplants into already established grass tufts? If nothing else it would be a good experiment to see how much attention you need to give them along with what plants do better without support.
My Dad's favorite part of Grandma's kraut prep was the "cabbage core jar"...she kept brine from past jars in a crock, and rather than cutting THROUGH the core, she cut to the sides of it, trimming off for the kraut, then cutting off the bitter barrier (for the pigs), and the core (which was a spear by this time) went into the crock to pickle ❤
Grass is the best water retention material followed by straw.
Brandon hanging out amongst the prickly pear in 3/4 khakis and sandals is *a vibe*
Been here from the start, can’t say I’m disapointed at the content 🤙🏻
Just use a stanley knife to cut the cardboard and then tear it apart. Use a board underneath when cutting...
I know that was painful to watch him cut the cardboard... He should have realized in two seconds that he'd chosen a painfully stupid way to try to cut those boxes...
That seems like a great idea, i use cardboard in garden beds, pathways and compost
The prickly pears can be eaten by
People also
Be sure and bring lots of paper
Thats been shredded its good for youre soil plus most of the time its
Free from youre home office
I know you've covered the issue of using a chipper, but I feel like instead of using big huge chunks of bark and other large kids pieces of dried up vegetation, a fine mulch would benefit you greatly
brilliant work i 100 percent agree they are probably endophytic additionally. the cactus likely secrete polysaccharides that improve soil water retention.
Treed desert property in the area of my property in Concho is under $1k/acre. I prefer juniper and pinon trees to creosote or mesquite.
I'm checking it out. Thank you!
This has me so psyched!!!
Please look into hardy weeds like wild mustard, mallow, amaranth, the one ants like you need ants to start making it easier for you to trap moisture. Shoot you need native grass in that patch.
Pickled prickly pear cactus is really good too....
you wanna eat the prickly pear fruit when they get a slight yellow tint on them, perfectly juicy and tropical tasting
Thank you!! I'm going to do this on our ranch
The way the farmers burn off the spikes from the cactus for the cows, could you do that for propagation? Might make the manual labour easier.
I have had prickly pear wine and also sand plumb. You may want to try growing sand plumb, it is good ground cover and the deer will spread the seeds in their poo😂
I've found the pinkish pears taste like a tart apple, the bright red are the most prickly flavored, as they turn burgundy they sweeten up
You can make jam/jelly from these as well. We peel ,& then put in the fridge to get really cold & then we eat them
Invest in a watermarker. On cloudy days it converts humidity and moisture in the air into clean drinkable water
I grew up and still live in Phoenix. Our house was on a foothill, a pile of rocks as my dad used to say. Very little soil. So I have watched with interest you using the dozer to build roads, dams and terrace. The driveway up to our house was very much like your road to the big dam. Erosion was a constant concern during the monsoons. You have more soil than we did but you have a high concentration of loose rock in it. I was hoping to see you and your helpers do a lot more prep work on the roughed out areas to smooth things out and make real, usable roads, terraces and bathtubs. I know you were anxious to get started, so I did a wait and see and just followed your progress.
I have not said anything here so far, but at this point I think your project could benefit from a lot of rock removal from your planting areas. Rocks that are bigger than a half-inch or even a quarter-inch in diameter. Rake them out or sift them out, whatever works better for you. Your soil will be much easier to dig up when you plant or add mulch, and easier for the plants to push roots through. And especially helpful to compost your mulch. The more soil contact with the organic stuff the better! Then use the raked and sifted loose rock on the down-slope sides of the terrace and especially your big dam to control erosion.
You have already figured out to re-contour your roads to eliminate the berms at the sides that act to concentrate rather than dissipate sheet runoff. Rake the rocks off your roads as well and push them off the edges to where the runoff meets the desert. All man-made slopes should be covered with a several-inch thick layer of rocks of various sizes, with the bigger ones near the bottom. The rocks act to catch and slow down runoff, acting like a mulch, and preserving the underlying soil from erosion Your dam faces should have this as well, that the side slopes should probably be about half the gradient they are now. Maybe 25-30 degrees vs. the 40-45 degrees they are now.
What I have described is often done here in the Phoenix area, particularly noticeable along our freeways, many of which have dirt banks which are either raised from grade level to provide noise abatement for surrounding neighborhoods or where the roads are excavated below grade to make underpasses for surface streets. All exposed slopes are covered with a layer of coarse gravel or crushed rock approx. 1-inch in dia. Areas where extra drainage is expected get watercourses armored with larger stones 3-5 in. in dia.
You could also add a series small terraces of approx. one foot width every few feet going down across the downstream dam face to further slow runoff and even catch a little water that would encourage grass and other plant growth among the rocks. Your check dams need a lot of small rocks and coarse gravel added between the larger rocks to really slow down the flow and help depositing silt and the clay that I saw in some of the better constructed ones. (You can tell there is a lot of clay in that silt because it cracks when it dries out.) Always build those dams with the lowest spot in the center to prevent erosion at the banks.
I know a wood chipper has been considered and is a big expense, but one thing I know from 70 years living in the Phoenix desert where we average 7 inches of rain in a good year is that in the absence of much water and just lying mostly on the surface of the ground organic materials, dead plants of all kinds take years to decompose naturally. In ground, faster; with water, much faster; being broken into small pieces, way, way faster. I have a compost pit in my yard that gets weeds, bush prunings and kitchen waste. But anything larger than 1/4 inch in diameter I try to crunch up in some way. I don't have a chipper, so the bigger stuff I use for kindling in my BBQ and then convert to biochar -- charcoal that I can easily grind up and add to the compost. When I eventually harvest the compost after about six months to a year, I screen it to remove any not-yet-decomposed hunks which end up back in the pit with the next batch of raw material.
On a side note, I find it interesting that even though your part of Texas gets twice as much rain as we do here in central Arizona, your desert looks a lot bleaker and parched. Is that a result of further desertification by cattle over-grazing, or is that the natural bio-system out there? Is it the soil composition? Parts of our higher desert here, above maybe 1,500 feet elevation or higher can be quite lush, with a huge variety of plant life and a lot of ground cover. Not lush as in a forest, but thick enough that standing out in it, once you look at any of it more than 30-40 feet away it is often hard to even see the ground at all for the bushes and trees. We have the ocotillo and prickly pear that you have and a lot more!
Keep up the good work, sir! I wish you luck. You've had s steep learning curve.
Years ago, I watched a pair of javelina munch down on a 2 foot diameter clump of healthy purple prickly cactus. Seemed to be going for the roots mostly.
Terlingua Ranch area.
Just an idea but you should plant something near the well that can benifit for any spillage when working on it. I don’t know if there’s enough but I just saw some loss in the footage.
Thanks again for the video and even more thanks for habitat and ecosystem restoration
Shaun, I'd like to share something. I was watching some western movies and TV shows with my wife when I noticed the local fauna and INSTANTLY started naming all of the plants to her. She instinctively asked how on Earth did I know all of that as we live in a big city so I just replied: Dustups babe, Dustups. 😂 So thank you, I feel pretty acquainted to ocotillo and the likes of it now 😂😂😂
🤣
Small correction for ya -- it's flora, not fauna. Think flora, like flowers (plants), fauna like a fawn (animals). That's how I learned to remember the difference! Lotsa people say the words "flora and fauna" together so much it's like it's all one thing, so it is easy to confuse them.
@@davidcampbell4870 OMG yes you're absolutely right, sorry about that! I still blame the ocotillos tho! 😂
@@dolaski Ocotillos will get you every time. I live in the Arizona desert and I want to plant an ocotillo in my yard. They're all around me in the desert just a couple miles from my house. I grew up with them living on the land where my dad built our house on a desert foothill. They green up quickly after a good rain and put out lovely red flowers in the spring. They can be propagated from cuttings of one of the stalks.
Hey Shaun, I recently found out about Vetiver Grass. It might be a good fit for the Dustups Ranch, apparently it can send roots down up to 15 ft, is drought resistant, and does not go to seed.
Might be worth looking into 😉
Haveing made it through several drought and wet years here in not quite that far west , but close west TX. What you are considering as a hindrance of it being extra dry this year, may be a blessing when starting up. At least not extra wet. My experience when moving to a far dryer area is that having the first couple of years sverage to dry allows you to learn and be ready to make exponential growth when the floods come. If it rains a lot the first year or even two, you will not be able to take advantage of it and then the dry years will come and it will be a long wait for another rainy one. Desert areas tend to hold fast until a wet year and then explode in growth, then go almost dormant until the next time.
Have you considered trying a small Miwake forest? Could be an interesting experiment
Dang good series I wish I found it when it was complete though now I gotta wait for all the videos
Have you read Brad Lancaster’s books? There’s a segment in one of them about using paper mulch in New Mexico. The example is that you use any and every paper source you can find to stuff in the hole then soak it with water.
Have you explored recent polymers who hold water? Added to a prickly pear smoothie might allow deep bowls to plant the taco in
you might want to mix the musalage (sappy water) and blended up pads into a tank of water and use it to innoculate some of your soil where applicable
Get as much rotten log you can find. Palm husks, dead palm or date tree stalks and branches. Any clippings or leaves from local yard cleaning companies.
Also coffee grounds most Cafés just throw it away
If you look into paper briquettes / paper mache you could get some ideas to adapt for upgrading the taco method maybe with other organics added. I do it labour intensively for exercise by putting some water and recyclable paper / cardboard in water carriers and shaking / sloshing it around by holding them while I do katas and forms
Have you heard of groasis boxes? They collect dew. You can use them to plant trees. You fill them with water when you plant them, and they have a wick that brings the water to the roots.
There is ongoing research. Modified boxes have been developed for different environments.
The boxes have been used in Saudi Arabia.
The researchers might be willing to sponsor you in some manner.
Excellent stuff bro