|
 Gardening With Natives
Native Planting Instructions
Zone Map
Soil Protection & Improvements
Stratify & Scarify
Gathering & Holding Rainfall - For hundreds of years after coming to the "New" World, Europeans did not see the low walls on hillsides built by the Papagos to direct water to fields below, or the shallow ridges on the pampas dug by South Americans, transforming those grasslands into farms that fed a hundred million people. We have to practice seeing. Nature, and cultures living close to nature, have so much to share.
Funneling - "Funnels" formed of low stone walls (about 3 ft. high) built by the Papagos directed rainfall down slopes from hundreds of acres to a few acres where the conditions were good for gardening. The exact same method was used on the Sinai peninsula in the Negev Desert. At times an entire hillside was directed to the watering of one tree.
Contouring - Carefully contoured land conserves a great deal of water. Torrential rainfall can be slowed down to seep into, rather than erode, the land that it flows across. Thousands of permanent swales, earth dams & gabions were built during the Dust Bowl days. Here's a slope of about 6%. Rototill along the contour every 100 ft. Throw the loosened soil on the downhill side to form a dip & stamp in a berm about 1 ft. high. Repair after the first storms. Plant - you'll be surprised.
Leaky dams - Gabions are leaky dams or rock walls, often in wire baskets, built across a water path to slow water and prevent soil loss. Wherever water infiltrates, plants grow.
Prints - Waffle or diamond gardens are infiltration gardens with raised sides and sunken middles in repeating patterns. After 700 years we can still see their shapes in the dry Southwest. Recently, we've used this garden pattern for making discrete intensive gardens, removing hard soil, adding
improved soil to the lowered part and using the perimeter to walk on.
No doubt that was part of how they were used originally, replacing soils and double digging are as old as gardening - but these shapes were also used on slight slopes. In each diamond, the lower part was planted, the upper part was catchment. Once again, a gravity runway for rainwater, with an infiltration area.
Imprinting is a catchword for this work and it's a good one. Water can run down the small sloping imprint made by a paw or hoof and where the water ends up, a seedling grows. An imprinting device like that made by Bob Dixon, which is a many sided roller, forms miniature rain catchments across the desert and helps vastly in reclamation.
Ridges - Ridge agriculture was practiced in South America's pampas for at least two thousand years. Crops were planted on the approximately 3 ft. high ridges, which kept them safe from floods, ground frost and salt, while the lower areas provided compost & algae for fertilizer and a part-time home for fish & birds.
|
