Hi Pricsilla
You have my sympathies - I live in a hot, arid, subtropical, clay, deforested, horse-infested place, though perhaps with not as many challenges as Haiti. And the neighbours' animals are generally kept out by our fences!

I was struck by your remark about prickly local trees, because I remember watching a documentary with Bill Mollison where he was working in a hot, dry, deforested African country, basically almost desert. The local people cut down tress to make fences around their compounds, to keep domestic animals in, and wild animals out.

His suggestion was to use the thorny local trees as living fences. Animals could go through them, as they were too thorny, so he said just grow them where animal pens needed to go, and the goat manure would fertilise them.

I don't know how long you will be living where you are, but if it is going to be a number of years, can you sprout the seeds of those spiky trees, or take cuttings and get them to sprout? If the ground is moist enough, and the plant suitable, you might even be able to take cuttings and stick them right where you need them to grow, in a row.

I have found that composting doesn't work where I live, as it is too dry, but in-ground mulch pits make a big difference in plant growth and survival. Yo seem to have hit on this idea already. Just like you, I use whatever I can get my hands on. I work in the IT dept of a large high school, so I bring home cardboard boxes, which I lay as mulch around young tress, and weigh down with rocks. It cools the soil and keeps some moisture in. I also bring home the inner cardboard moulding, that serves to hold the computers firmly inside the boxes. Each computer also comes with a paper booklet. All the paper and cardboard packaging goes in the  pits, and the pits get filled in again and planted on. Seedling trees grow at about 4 times the rate compared to just being planted into undisturbed soil (though it is still slow compared to somewhere with good rainfall). If you are at a university, there may be big streams of waste paper that you can use to chuck into pits. I put our bills, flyers and other waste paper at the bottom of my fruit and veggie peelings bucket, to mop up moisture, and also make it easier when it comes to tipping out the contents.

I also buy old towels for my dogs to sleep on, and when they get too old and stinky, in they go to the pits (the towels, not the dogs!). I collect coffee grounds at work, pick up fallen sticks, gather manure when I can. If it is vaguely organic, in it goes.

I have only hit on this method in the last few years. I am hoping it is something that will continue paying dividends as the underground organic material continues to break down.

Hi Tyler

How is this project going?

I can say that Geoff Lawton's farm is in an incredibly lush, high-rainfall area. It also has (rare for Australia) deep volcanic soils. The area was settled in the 60s and 70s by hippies, no doubt because it is one of the places where you can provide quite a lot for yourself if you are trying to be self-sufficient. It is one of the most beautiful areas in Australia. (The interior of Australia is arid/semi-arid, usually with very poor soils.)

I live about an hour and a half north of Geoff's area (closer to the Equator), and my climate sounds like it is more like yours, particularly as it is getting drier with climate change. Our rainfall sounds good, until you look at the fact that a large amount of it comes over a one or two-day flood event, so it just flows over the dry ground and away.

Luckily my husband has a skid steer and has made some swales for me. But it is still too dry for a lot of things, and I spend a lot of time watering using our dam water, and only really keeping things alive.

I have a suggestion for paths, but it's a bit ugly.

I mulch with cardboard boxes. As I work in an IT departments, there are times when big orders come in and there is a lot of cardboard to get rid of. I just lay it over the grass where I want to kill the grass, and hold it down with rocks or bits of wood. I also protects the soil from the hot sun in my semi-arid climate.

Since I'm not too fussed about looks, I just leave the cardboard bare, but if you like you can lay it and then put a thin layer of mulch over the top, and it will keep the area weed-free under the thin layer of mulch. That way you can spread the mulch further.

Also, I would put the hay and chips (except for dog poop ones) in with the chickens, letting them turn it over. It will all start to break down and add micro-organisms to the soil, ready for when you move the chickens away. Then your mulch is ready to just rake into whatever parts you need.

Dan, I am extremely jealous. I love gooseberries. My English granny used to make me Gooseberry Fool - whipped cream and custard folded through stewed gooseberries.

I am jealous of your overall abundance. The area I live in is pretty dry, so it is a bit of a struggle to produce food, even 11 years since I started gardening here.

Lastly, here is a pineapple (or 2).My friend is a real green thumb, Maltese immigrant background, learnt all gardening skills for his family and their traditions. He grows heaps of rosemary and chilli. I assume he just got a pineapple top and stuck it in a pot. It was sitting under a tree for a couple of years, and was very happy. My friend moved house, and the pineapple pot came to us. It's been sitting outside with me too busy to attend to it. Already ti looks miserable and sunburnt. Tomorrow I will move it and put it in the shade.

Behind it is some starting aloe vera. I'm going to toss it, because I already have heaps.

I just inherited 2 pot plants from a friend. One was a pot of ginger. I unspotted them and took them to put in my new wicking beds that are yet to be planted out. I had covered them with cardboard, to protect the soil/horse poo/lumps of clay/mulch that I had thrown in for soil. I want them to start breaking down to make proper soil. When I ripped off the cardboard, I found a nest of large ants had taken up residence. Luckily they are not stinging ones, so I chucked the cardboard on the ground and I trust the invertebrate community will relocate over the next 24 hours.

So you might see some ants if you look closely.

I will also plant mint and other hot weather herbs in this bed.

Hi Mike
I got all inspired by your interest in plants that I can grow, and took some photos for you. This photo is of a finger lime growing in my orchard. It must be about 9 years old, but because my place is miserably dry, and more so each year, it has only grown very slowly.

Of course, looking at the photo, you will not believe my place is dry. In fact, 3 weeks ago we have a violent storm, and 96mm (3.7 inches) of rain fell in an hour. We had had 20mm of rain the day before - yeehah - so the soil was starting to moisten. It created a huge sheet of moving water that filled our empty back dam. Anyway, we only have a few storms a year, but every March there is a big rain event that fills people's dams. However, it has been a-2 day event previously, when a tropical cyclone is formed up north, and then travels down the coast over a few days and turns into a tropical low.

Anyway, that is enough of that. Here is the lime.

Mike, I can tell you a bit about some of your chosen plants.

Mangos grow around here. Old ones are absolutely enormous though. I have not had much success, as frost has killed my 2 expensive attempts. We get to -5 C at times, and it is those occasions that just burn up the small plants.

I did plant one about 13 years ago, at another place, and saw it the other day. It is growing fine, because it is in a suburban area 30 minutes from here, which does not get frosts (my place now is more inland, and has not roads, houses etc to mitigate cold air). It is about 2 metres, and has produced one or 2 mangoes I believe. They are slow-growing though.

Avocados won't grow where I am, as I have heavy clay soil. They need well-drained soil, and apparently even 24 hours of water logging will kill them. They grow on a nearby small mountain, which is well know for having many avocado orchards. It has volcanic soil (one of the few places in Australia that does) and has lots of subtropical rainforest. I guess it doesn't get frost much. It certainly gets rain, as the clouds come off the coast, hit this series of mountains, and dump all their rain before they get further out to where I live :  (

They seem to be a little faster growing than mangoes. Also, you can buy dwarf ones that only get to about 3 metres, which is much better than the 20 metres that mangoes get to. I want to try growing 2 in containers. I am going to try with those plastic containers that transport liquids (can't remember the name of them). They are large and have a metal frame around them. I have cut 2 in half to make wicking beds, and I figure I can cut the top off and turn them into large plant pots. I have a sheltered spot where quite a few trees grow around the sullage (grey water) outlet, where they would be protected.

The best thing about it would be that I could pick avocados as I needed them, as you can leave them on the tree for months, and just pick them when you need them. Way to go for storage.

I was thinking about citrus for you, but I thought that your greenhouse would not be sunny enough. My citrus are one of the few things that grow well and without pests, and produce something for me to eat. I have a lemon, mandarins and a lemonade tree, which is a sweet lemon and absolutely delicious. But then I read your  comment and remembered my grapefruit is in almost full shade and is still producing. I also have a lime tree, in semi-shade. It produces well and is fabulous with avocado!

Pigeon pea grows in extremely dry environments. It is grown in India in hot arid areas. I grew some. It was supposed to be a favourite of chickens,  but mine never seemed to discover its seed pods. I don't know if it would like the humidity of a greenhouse, but then again you grow it from seed (it's an annual), so you wouldn't lose much by trying.

Pineapples can be grown by chopping off the top and planting it. It grows happily in a pot in the shade. It's very spiky.

If you are growing limes and ginger, I recommend growing lemongrass. Garlic, ginger, lemongrass and fish sauce combined give you a great Vietnamese marinade. Yum yum. Chills too.

I have a custard apple, which is a relative of the cherimoya. They taste very nice. The dry weather meant though that the few fruit it produced this year just shrivelled and fell off, so nothing from it yet.

Passionfruit likes rich soil, and will grow rampantly. It doesn't mind pruning though. In fact, you are supposed to prune off old growth every year. My mother grew one in the cool temperate city I grew up in, and it produced fruit. It was planted on a wall that faced the sun (north for us), so that created a warm microclimate when the bricks heated up.

I have subtropical apples, nectarines, plums and peaches planted. Unfortunately, the changing weather patterns combined with fruit fly mean I don't get to harvest anything edible from them (I have been questioning myself why I live here recently).

When I moved up here I bought "Tropical Food Gardens" by Leonie Norrington. She has gardened in the true tropics of Australia. If you want to ask about a plant, I can look up what she says.

Here is a link to a (fairly) local seed company. They have a fabulous list of information sheets about growing different food plants. It should help you with some of your questions - though I think it will introduce you to so many more plants that you will just end up with a lot of  new questions!

http://greenharvest.com.au/GreenGardenNotes/GreenNotesIndex.html

Hi Mike
This all sounds super exciting. What a great project to have.

I grew up in a temperate zone, but moved to a subtropical one 15 years ago. Basically, my original city was 24 hours drive to the south of where I am now. I came to live near my husband's family. The area was wet subtropical when he was growing up, but has moved to dry subtropical in the last 2 decades.

When looking at your most excellent creation, the thing that springs to mind for me is "light". The light up here is incredibly bright. I believe it is unimaginably strong for someone who has not spent time here. In fact, this state has the world's highest rates of melanoma/skin cancer, as there are a lot of fair Anglo-Saxon types living in such an intensely sunny place. During summer, it is actually too hot - by which I also mean sunny - by 8:30am, to do exercise outdoors. I always garden during the last hour of daylight, which makes dinner a bit late. But otherwise it is really unpleasant.

Subtropical sun doesn't shine, it glares. At times it can feel like it is boring holes in you. It can be like that leaf you had under a magnifying glass as a child, where you hold it so the sun's rays concentrate, and burn a hole. It is fierce, it is biting. It is full-on.

My concern would be that some of these species would not get enough sun. Now, plenty are understory plants, which would be fine, but the ones that are not may suffer. Maybe some will just keep growing at a slower rate, and be fine, but I would wonder about the ability of some to ripen fruit or to develop properly.

The thing though with gardening is that I have found you can't really predict with certainty for a lot of things. As long as you get it vaguely appropriate, you just have to try and see how plants like your greenhouse, and my guess is there will be surprising successes, and surprising failures. Maybe you can start with small seedlings, rather than invest in expensive, more mature plants? At least that way you will minimise losses. And perhaps one of each species to start, just to test them out.

I find fresh herbs make an enormous difference to a dish. Just adding those can make a meal very exotic, and in the end, it's all about what you get to put in your mouth :  )

Loving your work!

And hopefully that poop goes to good use now.

That first photo is a tea tree I planted a month ago. It is surviving the heatwave with lots of TLC.

This photo is of a poinciana I sprouted about 18 months ago. Both these have a hole with organic matter thrown in. The cardboard usually goes out about 80cm around the tree, and it stops the grass as well. It looks ugly, but who cares when it means the difference between a live plant and a dead stick.

Hi Daz

What part of Australia are you in? I love the fact you have seen a wild platypus.

I have heavy clay soil, I'm in Qld, but I used to garden in Victoria, where I grew up. I find the limiting factor is water.

If you don't have water in your soil, you will not have soil life, and your clay will not develop into good soil. That's just the way it is over here. The other factor is sun. If you are anywhere but quite far south, the sun will fry your soil organisms too, when combined with low moisture.

If you are somewhere warm and dry, the best thing you can do is shade the soil. I have finally come up with a way to manage plantings on my place (it's taken me 11 years). It is too dry between the rainy seasons to sustain most plants, so it is hard to keep baby trees alive. I had a few that survived, but would just sit for years in the soil, not growing. My husband has a bobcat, with a post hold digging attachment. Now he drills a hole, I fill it with whatever organic material I can find, and I'm not fussy - old paperwork, kitchen scraps, cardboard, cotton fabric scraps like old towels used for dog beds, empty toilet rolls, used tissues and paper towel, paper being thrown away at my work, doggy doo doo, bark, sticks and twigs, grass, hair cuttings - and I put some of the dirt back over the top. I make a lip all around and a depression in the centre and plant my little tree into it. I then lay cardboard around the tree, so that sun will not hit the soil around it. I put a rock or chunk of wood to hold it down, and if I've done it right, the cardboard will slope down towards the centre where the small tree is, meaning any rain flows right to the base of the tree. I will attach a photo.

Almost every one of the trees I have treated this way have not only survived, but managed to grow to around 60 - 90 cm in a year. That is amazing for me.

Buried organic material makes an underground sponge that grabs onto the water that may flow through. It also puts the compost underground where the organisms are free from the sun.

The cardboard makes a lot of difference up here. I even had some 5 year old  Tipuana Tipus that were just not doing anything, and the year after I mulched their roots with cardboard, they finally started to grow. Lots of places throw out cardboard, or paperwork, so it is possible to keep collecting and burying, but by bit.

The other thing is overall shade. There was an old greenhouse here, and we moved it and I put veggie beds inside. I mulched with cardboard and paper, and it managed to say a lot more moist that all the surrounding areas with normal sun exposure. I even managed to get some black, crumbly, delicious soil. Sadly the posts rusted, so I had to pull it down.

But if you are trying to grow veggies, put up a shade structure and have small, intensively planted beds. Save your water for this area, and try to get your hands on as much cardboard as possible. If you have one area that is shaded and where you can modify the environment, it will be satisfying and cheering.

You may find people getting rid of old ripped shade sails. You can run wire along the edges to stabilise. You can make a shade structure by hammering in a star picket on either edge of your shade area, bending a piece of poly pipe so one end slips over the top of one star picket, and then arches and the other end slips over the other star picket. Then you have a big hoop to hang any shade cloth over.

"I know people who have been living here for many generations who will tell you that 'climate change' is a hoax. Go to the next person and we are all going to die from climate change. The fact is the climate has been accurately recorded for 100+ years, hotter and wetter is the trend in SE Qld"

Well, that's the thing; I live in a conservative area, and my father-in-law is no greenie. He still thinks Jo Bjekie Petersen was the best thing ever. His ex-wife, my mother-in-law, supports Cory Bernardi from the Australian Conservatives. The only thing that sets my father-in-law apart from other conservative National Party supporters is that he loves plants. He is always fiddling around in his garden, sprouting something. But as far as being environmentally conscious, the family collects and burns rubbish, they don't recycle their cans, they use plastic plates for any bbq and then just chuck them away. I am definitely different to them.

It's because he is always in his garden, working with his plants, that he notices the weather. I don't know that he would be convinced about climate change, but he does talk about the weather. And none of the other locals who have told me about the summer storms of their youth are remotely interested in environmental issues. That's why I take them seriously - they have no skin in the game.

Last week I saw this article in the Conversation:

https://theconversation.com/slowing-climate-change-could-reverse-drying-in-the-subtropics-111526

I can see the tropics are getting wetter, and Australia overall is getting hotter, but I don't see that areas south of Brisbane are getting wetter (though NSW does seem to be in parts).

"The last few years have been a bit dry, but it was much worse in the early 2000's and many other times in history. While it is possible that a new weather pattern may be starting, the long term trends show it is actually wetter and hotter now."

Chris, I don't know where you are in Qld. I am near Ipswich, and a number of people have told me how much drier the summers are now, in particular my father-in-law. He is an old bushie, a green thumb who fed his family on what he could grow and raise. He is 70 now, and his father went to a nearby primary school, so he is very much a local.

I certainly notice a change in the 11 years I have been living on my property. The first year, the flood came in early December. Then it was January. For the last 3 years, the flood has not come until March - that is, in Autumn, not summer. It looks like we will get the cyclone in a few days, but again, this is still very late in the season. And dams all around me are being dug out, because people need to catch more water to make it through.

The current stocking rates for cattle and horses, and the dairy farms, will not be sustainable if this rainfall level continues.

That's why I'm on arid land permaculture sites - I'm transferring over to these techniques as it seems this is the way we are going.

I am interested too.

I live in an Australian subtropical area that has lost it's Wet Season over the last decade. That means it is now arid- though I doubt many locals would agree. There is always one sizeable flood event every year, it's just that all the other summer storms seem to have disappeared. Being a gardener and a greenie, I've been watching more closely than some.

Actually, one of the signs to me is that, as I have driven around the local area. I have seen 2 dams on 2 different properties that are being excavated to make them deeper. My husband was until recently working as an excavator operator, and has had a number of jobs in the last 6 months digging out dams or installing watering troughs for stock. There are a lot of cattle and horses in this area (even dairies), but I suspect the rainfall will no longer support the same level of stocking. If the weather patterns continue in the same way, it will be interesting seeing it play out in public discussion.

Joe, I would imagine seeing a lot of improvement in vegetative cover after fencing out the horses. Has this happened?

"What bothers me is that, as with many teachings that end up going in the direction of a religion or philosophy, we lose the ecological context.  What works for the soils in the Rhein basin, continental Europe or the Alps--or wherever Steiner actually came up with the preparations--of the early 1900s could very likely be quite different from whatever works in a different place and time.  Understanding the processes behind the myths liberates the wisdom, making it accessible to other ecologies.

The use of animal parts worked great in those farms of central Europe, where dead cattle was a given, and, at a time when de-horning was a general practice, these recipes made good use of a resource that would otherwise become a waste.  But, to me, importing cow horns just to be "true" to the original sounds like not the best ecological practice, no matter how biodynamically grown those cows were.

Funnily enough, one of the principles of biodynamic agriculture is flexibility: every farm being unique and different, requiring a lot of observation and individually designed amendments."



Just for interest, Biodynamics has not only been developed in Europe. There is a leader in the field called Alex Podolinsky, who grew up in Poland but emigrated to Australia, where he has been developing "Demeter Biodynamics" for over half a century.

https://www.ifoam.bio/en/alex-podolinsky

In the past, I subscribed to the Australian Biodynamics magazine. What impressed me about this movement is how much time was spent observing their plants/soil. To me, it's the opposite of the approach that you get in industrial agriculture: "I read it in a textbook, so it must be true, and that theory fits with my other theory, so it will work, no need for study". I would far rather listen to a careful, thoughtful person tell me anything about the world, than one who has every degree known to humanity. That's not because I don't believe in science, because I do, but because humans often seem to be attracted to simplistic theories rather than complicated reality.

I never particularly believed in the theories of Biodynamics, but I could see the real-world results they produced. Each edition would cover several Biodynamic properties, and would include a photo of the soil, often with a photo of a neighbour's soil. It was quite clear that the Biodynamic soil was darker, fluffier and more crumbly. They also talked a lot about increasing the depth of their topsoil, and testing that showed a large growth in soil carbon. To me, no matter the method, any practise that increases soil carbon content organically is pretty good.

I am very satisfied with Dr RedHawk's explanations. I always felt the Biodynamic practitioners were onto something, but because they didn't actually know what it was, various rather airy sounding ideas were given. Probably the magical sounding theories put people off, where just a list of tests and results achieved may have been more convincing.

Just thought I'd post this, for the benefit of anyone who had not heard of Australian Biodynamics.

The other thing about mulching, and using what is a 'waste" product, is that you are turning it into abundance. A decade down the track, you will have a rich soil and probably enough plants producing their own mulch. And people in your neighbourhood will be able to see your fertile soil and systems.
A picture paints a thousand words, and seeing a property with superior fertility will inspire others. To be honest, at this stage, we need to convince all the people we can to take up natural gardening, which includes trapping carbon in soils. If we convert a waste stream into fertility, we build not just our own garden, but the place where others may be inspired. And they can start tapping into that stream of 'waste" after we have, to build their own place of abundance.

John Duda, I totally love your post!

This is the absolute spirit of science, the basis that we humans have always had, and have only refined, rather than inventing something new.

Careful observation is what good science is all about. It is not the job of the world to explain itself to us - it is our responsibility to look, to engage, to watch, to think about, and to learn to understand.

Humans have observed nature for as long as we have been around, and that it what has ensured our survival. Before we had sophisticated instruments, we had our eyes, our sense of touch, our sense of taste. We could see changes in our crops from year to year, depending on different conditions. We may not have been able to explain why, but we could certainly observe the "what" and "how".

Science is about trying to understand reality. If you have your head in a textbook, and don't check what you are doing against your results, you are not a good scientist. You are being led by your beliefs, rather than by evidence : )

I have an old pony at my place, and she eats the vetiver.

It only started to grow once we fenced her out!

Hi Martijn

I was worried about that too, but Dr RedHawk said not to fuss too much. My next idea is to create holes nearby, with organic matter (I have lots of horse poop) and create a plug of moisture and underground compost that the roots might stretch into.

Perhaps I should keep some photo records and see how they go in the future. Might be useful for others!

Vetiver grass grows here despite the frosts.

We've just had some frosts and many leaves on my ice-cream bean tree are burnt. My small mango is burnt too, which is what killed the last one, so I hope this one survives.

Vetiver grass is not affected, and neither are my citrus.

I think I understand where you are coming from.

I live in the dry subtropics in Queensland, and there are mountains between me and the sea, which catch almost all the rain.

The infuriating thing is that it floods once a year, and inches and inches just run off and away. Apart from that, there are months and months with no rain, and very intense sun. In this time of year, winter/the Dry Season, there are frosts and cold winds as well.

The sun cooks the grass, which dies off each autumn. Then the dust starts to blow. When I look around, the green hangs around a little longer in the shade under trees, and I am trying to add a lot more to my block. I have a very heavy clay soil that sucks off your flip flops walking in a puddle in summer, and cracks open in winter. Trees just sit in the soil once planted, creeping taller ever so slowly.

However, I asked my husband to dig some holes using his post hole attachment on his bobcat (skid steer). Then I chucked in organic matter/paper/cardboard, and refilled. Trees planted in these holes are 5 times the size in just one season. The holes seem to hang on to moisture too, so everything is surviving. I am looking forward to next summer, to see if there is another growth spurt once the rain arrives.

I find that the grass goes nuts in summer, and grows over the new plants. I have come up with a method of planting in holes, and surrounding it with a mulch of cardboard, to kill the grass. Although it stops any small rain getting in (not that we have many small rainstorms), it also keeps moisture in the soil once it is in. I find the sun just cooks moisture and life out of the soil, so the cardboard helps preserve things.

As I work in an IT department, I have ready access to cardboard boxes.

If I had more time, I would be out fixing my cardboard rings around each plant, ready for summer. I have some dam water, so I irrigate once leaves are curling up to get my trees through to the next rains.

Climate change is well and truly here. Whereas the rainy season used to start around November - January, in the last few years it has not arrived until autumn, in March. So the groundwater is not recharging like it used to.

Dry, dry, dry...I feel your pain.

Here in Queensland, it is dry winter, and everything is curling up and blowing away. It's all a dull, dusty, grey/brown.

Swales are important. I am going to ask hubby to make ours even deeper. But the one thing I have found that really works for me is to bury the organic material. My husband has a bobcat (smaller earthmoving equipment, don't know what it's called overseas), and it has a post hole digger. it's basically a giant mechanical corkscrew.

Well, thank goodness for that, because our clay is as "hard as a bull's head" 11 months of the year. But he drills holes for me that I fill up with wood, bark, paper, manure, fabric, weeds etc. I then backfill with the dirt from the hole, and make a bit of a water-catching saucer shape around it. The trees that I planted last spring are now half as high as other trees I planted 8 years ago. It is making a huge difference.

It is still a windblown desert, but one day there will be a tipping point, when there is lots of shade and relief from drying winds (or at least, I hope so).

Have a loot at your worksite. I work in an IT department, and there is so much cardboard coming through. I am stuffing some down holes, using some as a grass-suppressing, water-conserving mulch. and piling up some for when it rains and composts down. There is a lot of waste paper at many workplaces, so see if you can help yourself to some. I even look at the used paper towels in the toilet (for drying hands), but haven't yet taken that as there are so many boxes I am taking anyway.

You can also have a scrap bin at work, for coffee grounds, used tissues and fruit peels, and dump this in the holes too.  Better rotting away and contributing to holding moisture in your soil, than in an ordinary dump anyway.

Yes, in my subtropical climate, the sun is so intense that it just dries everything out. The soil turns to dust a few weeks after rain, and you can see all the life being fried out of existence. This includes mulch, which just sits there as desiccated shreds the do no decompose.

I put cardboard around my plants to protect soil organisms, and to try to retain moisture. It still means that the soil underneath turns to dust, but not as quickly, and I hope that it protects the soil life so that it can spring back more quickly once rain comes. Once I came up with the idea (I'd only really heard of it for lasagna gardens before), my young trees actually started growing faster.

I don't know if this is possible for you, but there was an old greenhouse on our property, which was re-used to put in more delicate plants. I've got taro and cassava in it, but the thing that has gone 100% crazy is sweet potatoes.

It is hot and dry here. We have a few good summer storms, and once a year, a flooding, or almost flooding rain. But it is very hot, and often windy. We are in the rain shadow of mountains, so they get most of the rain and we are dry. Also there are extremely drying, cold winds in winter. Winter we go about 5 months with no rain. Spring is extremely dry, with most plants dropping up to 50% of their leaves, dead grass and dust blowing everywhere. Rains start anywhere from Nov to Feb, but climate change has meant for the last 3 years, no heavy rain until the end of March (the end of the rainy season), and then a wetter summer this last one, but no deep flood event. Even so, the greenhouse plants survive well.

So I'm establishing lots of windbreaks and shade trees. Leucana grows well, gif the ground is shaded, tipuana tipu, a number of Australian small trees (NOT eucalyptus, which kills other plants) and oleanders. As these are starting to grow, they are modifying the climate somewhat. But not enough for the root crops above. However, at the dump, you may find people throwing away shade cloth. I even knew someone who was pulling down an old shade house. And I have some strips from a pub shade sail that got ripped, so they threw it out. So, if you keep asking around, you may come up with quite a good amount.

Our ABC gardening show had one presenter from the dry tropics who made shade houses by putting in 2 rows of star pickets. She then put poly pipe over the end of one picket, curved it up, and then took the end and put it over the top of another star picket to make a hooped roof. The poly pipe was firmly attached in place by being slid over the star picket. So if you make a row of these hoops (like a covered wagon), you could then attach shade cloth. It might be a bit patchwork, by the plants don't care if it look ugly.

Fantastic!  Well done. You will be a leader to others in the future.

And you have all those stalks and leaves you can use as mulch to improve the soil when you plant the next crop!

My partner has started feeding the chickens by pouring their grain onto prickles. We have some lawn prickles, and the chickens scratch where the grains are. We hope they will uproot the prickles.

I work in the IT department at a school. I am bringing home cardboard packaging from new computers to lay over my veggie beds and under my fruit trees, to smother grass. In my hot and dry subtropical climate, the cardboard covers the ground and stops the soil biota from being fried into oblivion. I've also gotten my husband to drill holes with his post-holer, and I chuck in old paper, weeds, kitchen scraps, used tissues and kitchen paper towel, and fill it in, to make an underground sponge for planting above.  

I have 3 dogs, one of them poops on his bedding now and then. The 3 went crazy chasing toads and dug up my mango tree (only 2 years old). I was furious. It was in a small mound that I had created to give the young plant drainage with our hard clay soil. So I replanted it, and spread the latest poopy old cotton towel around the base. It's protecting the tree roots from drying out, and hopefully keeping the dogs away. He pooped on another old towel since, and it has been added to my "dog deterrent" cover.

I have placed some pruned bougainvillea branches over a seedling to stop the horse eating it. It's thorns haven't stopped her, but I will add more and then hopefully it will be prickly enough,  I will be turning a waste product into a resource.

Silly Australian visa office! They made a mistake! I am sure with an invitation to speak at an Australian university, a visa will be granted.

Unfortunately, the work of American oil company executives has infected the English-speaking countries, but other places are not so behind on climate change and environmental concerns. Having European parents, and having lived there for 3 1/2 years, I am certain there is a big audience for your book in Germany, Italy and Scandinavia. I suspect France, Portugal and Greece would share that interest.

China is committed to environmental sustainability. It has a vast amount of poor farmers who will be interested in increasing their yields with affordable, home made treatments.

Indians are well-educated and fantastic English-speakers. They suffer from the same population pressure and lack of farming wealth as China. I am sure there is a big market there.

Angelika, you would agree with me about Europe?

Hi Redhawk

Thinking about your book, and your dissertation, I am glad that your book is being written for the layman. When I suggested "theory", I meant knowledge. I believe that knowledge is for all, and I am not a fan of opaque language, which just excludes lots of people. I write myself, and I believe communication is about transferring information. Therefore, as clear and direct as possible is best.

However, that is only for your book. May I suggest that you have an accompanying website, with your dissertation and all other scientific work in this field? There are so many doubters of organics, and it would be great if people could access all the data that you have created. I think there would be a lot of people going there to either confirm what they believe about organic farming, or to view something that might change their mind about it.

I don't know if your literary agent has a publishing deal already, but I think this could be a very major book. The selling point for many people will be the fact that it gives clear, achievable ways in which they can improve their soils. I don't know if there is anything out there quite like it. After all, the original permaculture books contain both knowledge and practical instructions on how to achieve the lifestyle. My mother and step-father live in the same area as David Holmgren, the co-author of the permaculture books.My step-father wrote a letter about willow trees in local creeks ( a weed species here)  to the local paper, and David Holmgren, despite not knowing him, called him up and they met and discussed the issue. So he must be a pretty open and approachable guy. Would you like me to get his number/address from my mum? I imagine he would be very interested in your work.

I also subscribe to the blog of one of the presenters of our national ABC gardening show. He lives in the closest city, and is scientifically trained. He is an organic gardener. He may also be interested in your work. I could post on his blog about your work.

Lastly, my dad lectures in chemical engineering at the Australian National University. I have told him about your book. Would you like me to find out the names of the lecturers in the biology department? Some of them may be interested too. Perhaps you could visit Australia one day! But just thinking about it, I could do these things to promote your work, and raise the audience for your book. If your publisher understands how important this is to the worldwide cohort of organic gardeners, they will hopefully put in some good resources to bringing it to print.

It will become a gardening classic, I am sure of it.

May I suggest that the first section is theory, with your explanations of soil life, plant interactions etc, and the second section is practical, with clear instructions on creating good humus, compost teas etc. It would be great to also have photos of different types of soil, and photos of healthy examples of different types of soil. Even some images of microorganisms.

It would be interesting for gardeners around the world to be able to look at the photos of the different soils and find their own. And for them to read the "Why" first, and then the "How" of creating those healthy soils. So often, you get only one or the other. I think many people like to understand why they are doing something, so instructions only can leave you a bit empty, and on the other hand they don't want to read something theoretical and get all fired up to make changes, but have no idea of how to go about making them.

Am I correct in believing eucalypts were brought to America by people who thought they would be a great, drought-tolerant landscape tree?

Your bad luck, if that's so.

Hi RedHawk

Billabong is an Aboriginal word for swamp/pond. So that gets me thinking that there would be good soil in the low patches around here that keep moisture, or are next to a creek.

Happily, I am too far south for crocs. They are only in the Tropical parts of Australia, all along the north. I refuse to live anywhere that is hot but you can't swim!! They are huge, nasty creatures that lurk underneath muddy water, and now and again someone gets eaten when they swim across a river (alcohol is usually involved, unless they are tourists ignoring the signs.

I come from Melbourne, which is the capital city of the most southern  mainland state. (There is a further southern island called Tasmania.) Melbourne's climate is similar to maybe southern France. Temperate, cool, cloudy and drizzly. Cold miserable winters without ever getting cold enough to snow. Fantastic cafes, restaurants, clubs and cinemas, because it is an indoor lifestyle down there. Any of the gardening books from England are good, because you can grown the same plants.

12 hours' drive north, you get to Sydney. The state it is in, New South Wales, probably has the most beautiful climate in Australia. It is a big state, so it moves from warm temperate to subtropical at its northernmost. The weather is balmy and pleasant, and it gets good rainfall too. The beaches , as you move up the coast, often have that beautiful white sand that gives a lovely turquoise colour to the sea. In the north is Byron Bay, where the actor from Crocodile Dundee lives. This area has volcanic soil and incredible rainforests. There is a hippy vibe around there, as it is the best place in Australia if you want to grow your own food and live an alternative lifestyle. It is also a place that can leave its inhabitants with magical thoughts. This is a combination of the drugs in the lifestyle, and also the rainforest, which is half-jungle. When you go in, it wraps around you and swallows you up. You can't hear anything of human habitation, and the huge old trees, and swarming plant life, have an amazing effect. This northern area is where Iggy Azalea came from, and is only 2 hours south of my place.

Another 12 hours' drive from Sydney, you come to Brisbane, and I live half an hour away from the outskirts of this city. Lots of poincianas and jacarandas line the streets. It has an outdoor lifestyle, as about 85% of the time it is sunny. Clouds only come in the shape of afternoon storms, which can be violent, knocking over trees and lifting off roofs. On New Years Eve we had one that pushed over a tree and lifted the 8m plywood skate ramp my husband had built for our son, and snapped it in half. (I'll try and attach a photo.) By the coast, the climate is gentler, but inland, where I am, there can be a number of frosts in the winter, with daytime temperatures then moving up to t-shirt weather ( about 25 - 80 degrees Fahrenheit.) In summer, it stays around 80 -100 degrees. The hottest day was 45 degrees C, which is 113 Fahrenheit. Fruit bats dropped dead in their thousands after that heatwave.

Another 24 hours' drive will take you to the northernmost tip of Australia, so you can see it is a very big place. I am maybe 6 hours' drive from any croc area, and that is how I intend it to stay!

Platypus are small and very shy. I have never seen one in the wild. I don't think the venomous spurs on the males' back legs would ever be a danger unless you managed to find one and pick it up. The biggest danger in Australia is thirst, because in the Outback you could walk for days without ever seeing water. People always take water containers and satellite phones, at least if they have any common sense. However, unless you head towards the interior, the only real danger you will face is from snakes. We have some venomous ones, and 1 aggressive species. I have seen lots of snakes since I moved here, but our dogs mostly chase them off around our property.

Two weekend ago I got my husband to dig some holes for new tree seedlings. Despite what has been a wet summer, I was very disappointed when the post-hole digger churned up dry earth, hard and powdery and completely dry beyond the first few millimetres.

I have been preparing the holes as before, by throwing in various bits of organic material and topping with the excavated clay, mixed with some sandy soil from a heap I have. It is done quickly, as I don't have much spare time to give to gardening.

In all the holes I have thrown bits of wood, which I hope will form underground sponges. I also put in horse manure, because we have some. This time, after reading this thread, I was inspired to add more beneficial organisms. I had been troubled to read that it would be good to use a scoop from under the largest tree in a forest. Here, we don't have many forests: in Australia, is is called "the bush" because the trees are dotted sparsely. There is not a nice build-up of organic material. Apparently eucalypts suppress competitive species in two ways. Firstly, the eucalyptus oil is spread to surrounding soil when their leaves drop. Secondly, eucalyptus leaves droop vertically, allowing sunlight through to the ground around the trunk, heating the soil and making it inhospitable for other plants. Certainly quite a few Australian species seem to suppress the growth of other plants. I have never liked eucalypts for this reason, nor any other plant that has dead and dry-looking zones around its base.

So I was a bit cast down until I thought of my greenhouse. It was left behind by the previous owners, and has a collection of tropical plants smothered under lots of weeds. However, I have layered cardboard and sawdust over the paths in the last few years, and the soil there is black and crumbly, and full of life. You can actually see the little springtails leaping whenever you scrape some up.

So a good trowel-full has gone into each planting hole, and I mulch around the plant with cardboard. I work in an IT department and we get lots of stuff in boxes coming in. I am trying to bring most of it back for recycling, (into soil that is). It keeps down the vigorous grass that would swamp little seedlings if it had the choice. It looks ugly, but it works, and I'm reducing waste while getting a benefit.

When you were writing about the long dry spell, I really felt for you! Australians know what it is like to have a drought. There are months every year where I wring my hands and spend lots of time checking the weather forecast. For 2016 and 2017 my internet bill actually went up in the dry months because I was checking the forecast every night. And it is only because I love my plants, not that I need to depend on them for food or income! At the same time a few charities sprung up where you could make a donation to buy some feed for farmer's cattle, in the driest areas in the interior of Australia. They were sending out trucks of hay, and positive messages for the farming families, who were facing the desperate situation of not being able to pay their bills and maybe losing their farms.

I am lucky that my husband is very good at construction, and has studied earthworks. He made some swales for my orchard, and dug the dam a bit deeper, using borrowed equipment. Many of my fruit trees only just survive the dry times, but without these extra resources they wouldn't survive at all.

When I travelled to Italy in my twenties, the first thing I noticed on arrival was the light. It was a warm, nurturing, gentle light. The sun was so benign, so benevolent. It was sunny without being harsh, and warm without being hot. It was also very stable weather, with no tornados or droughts. It was a mild, dependable climate, and it made me see just why great civilisations had risen up in the Mediterranean. Although humans had suffered the same awful diseases that they had in other places, here it was possible for civilisations to survive and build, without regular devastation. Without the extreme challenges of the tropics or cold climates, humanity had been supported in its development. In other places, it had been too much of a challenge just to survive, or what had been built up was regularly destroyed by natural disasters.

Over here the weather can be life-threatening, either with bushfires or drought. Mother Nature is not always friendly. Best of luck in finding a way to manage hot sun and unreliable rainfall. Human ingenuity plus technology will find a way somehow!

Here in Australia, there is a strong Biodynamic community. It has been inspired by the work of a Polish immigrant, Alex Podolinsky (from memory). He is in his 80s now, but devoted his life to farming and spreading the techniques of Biodynamics.

We are lucky to have him, as he seems to have taught people to have respect for the fragile Australian soil. There is a magazine that Biodynamics brings out twice-yearly, that I have often bought. It has always been interesting to look at the photos of the dark, crumbly soil that practitioners develop. I've always respected the fact that they tested their theories by observing what was going on with their plants, rather than referring to a text and following it without checking the results in detail.

There is another Australian who developed a method of natural farming he calls Natural Sequence Farming. It's core principal is to re-establish natural waterways, allowing them to become overgrown and filled with plant material. They then flood and rehydrate the land. I saw a documentary about him. He said to start a compost pile at the top of your hills, to let the organisms move through the landscape via water.

Here is a link to his site, if anyone is curious:

http://www.nsfarming.com

Wow, it can take time for organic gardening to show results, but your maize looks fantastic compared to the ones without mulch. Well done! Surely your neighbours will start to look at your fields and see the benefits of your methods. I hope the rains arrive soon and give everything a good drenching. I know what it's like to wait for rain.

I will plant all those seeds suggested. I came up with the idea of collecting some dock seeds and sprinkling them in the bottom of the swales, to wait for the next big rain. I have in the past crouched at the side of the road picking clover flowers to sprinkle around. I'm going to do the same with dock. I also have some comfrey plants, and if it gets wet enough, I will stick some of them in the bottom of the swales. The only thing is they are dry for most of the year, so I don't know if the cuttings will take.

I can understand why it took your friend 3 years to get enough soil moisture to grow kale. Inner Australia is a dry, dry place. And the sun is unrelenting. I met my husband in central Australia, on a trip to visit my cousin, who was working on a cattle station that was 3.2 million acres. It was endlessly flat, with small scrubby trees. The water sources were called "turkey nests", and they were dams built up out of the surrounding landscape, filled with pumped bore water. My future husband was the bore mechanic on that cattle station. The cattle were Brahmin, which could cope with those difficult conditions.

When an Australian encounters white American culture, it seems very individualistic. I think these 2 place, which have the similarity of being taken over/settled by Europeans in the last few centuries, are very different in that Australian conditions did not bring riches for most, and everyone would have had to rely on their neighbours to survive. It is a place to be humble, and ask for help. It quickly teaches you how small and irrelevant you are. It's a place to learn the meaning of the word "harsh".

I would be very pleased to hear from your friend.

Thanks heaps

Nicola

Whoops, my boo boo. Perhaps I should preview before posting.

Then there is a photo of a recently planted tree using the new method.

Here is a photo of our soil which, after reading one of your other posts, I guess is a vertisol.

Husband excavated more out of our bigger dam about 3 years ago, and the clay from that is much lighter. I guess this is what is under our "blacksoil". Here is a photo of the pile excavated, and some casuarinas which just popped up on it. To me, it shows how well things can grow when the soil is fluffed up a bit.