Water harvesting and soil building webinar with Michael Judd - 90 minutes

Hey there Paul,
Is it possible to touch on implementing this topic in relation to shallow soils? My property is bedrock, good quarry land but my soil might only be 2 ft deep at its deepest point. Most areas average a foot to maybe 18 inches and some only a few inches. How could I make water work better for me and stick around longer? I love your site and what your doing, keep it up, permaculture will be a household word before you know it.

if we own this due to kickstarter level, do we need to pay 15 on top of what we paid for the kickstarter?

This is the Michael Judd show, so I am not sure of the answer to your question.   My understanding is that he has a formal presentation - and people can type in questions as he goes.   And then there is a Q&A afterward.  I'll be there too - for whatever that's worth.

S Smithsson wrote:if we own this due to kickstarter level, do we need to pay 15 on top of what we paid for the kickstarter?

Nope.  You're in.  

If you want to give it, as a gift, to somebody, you could buy a gift code.

In the meantime, maybe there are two people that didn't back the kickstarter, but would be up for parting with fifteen bucks and they will get it and be part of the festivities.

I would be curious about cistern types, initial filter or cleansing, and or a solar still over the cistern. Methods of keeping it fresh or cycled, but also topped off as much as possible. Also tying this into a home water supply.

Hey Paul,

I live in Europe. Central European Time zone.

I'm not sure I understood the time zone for the event.
Might be a good idea to add a link for those who don't live in the US, to calculate the event's time in their own country (here's one website for that: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html)

Nicholas Tedford wrote:Hey there Paul,
Is it possible to touch on implementing this topic in relation to shallow soils? My property is bedrock, good quarry land but my soil might only be 2 ft deep at its deepest point. Most areas average a foot to maybe 18 inches and some only a few inches. How could I make water work better for me and stick around longer? I love your site and what your doing, keep it up, permaculture will be a household word before you know it.

I share your pain; we tried to dig for a hugelculture bed and hit tuff not even a foot deep.... so all earth works to collect water have to be built up, not dug down.  I've just been taking note of the streams when we get a rainstorm, and putting little berms in place to redirect/show them down.  


Some ideas for shallow dirt properties would me most welcome!

This looks great! I'm looking forward to it. We have karst soil, so any information on water harvesting with that would be wonderful.

And forgive my ignorance, but I am also a little nervous about water harvesting above our house (because of concerns about causing flooding in the basement). Any thoughts or guidance on that?

Dori Ron wrote:Hey Paul,
I live in Europe. Central European Time zone.
I'm not sure I understood the time zone for the event. Missoula is MST (Mountain Standard Time)
Might be a good idea to add a link for those who don't live in the US, to calculate the event's time in their own country (here's one website for that: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html)

Hi Dori, I have an app on my computer https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ I missed a number of zooms because I was not out of bed in time - problem is now solved.  It is a very easy app to use in my opinion
It is great for not waking relatives up at 2 AM their time as well (Yes I have done it 😂)  Hope this information is useful.

Have been waiting for the link to be active, but I just found the day and time in the first paragraph.  Oops!

Did I miss the event?

I'm not sure since I didn't see any emails about it...


Hi Dori, I have an app on my computer https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ I missed a number of zooms because I was not out of bed in time - problem is now solved.  It is a very easy app to use in my opinion
It is great for not waking relatives up at 2 AM their time as well (Yes I have done it 😂)  Hope this information is useful.

You didn't miss it yet.  From the top of the thread:

paul wheaton wrote:Saturday, December 18th at 11am Mountain Time

The recording is now up.

Great presentation well worth your time.

Fantastic presentation.

Glad to hear a primary hugel mistake of not planting perennials near the base of the hugel, that is like a yuge +200% success rate in my experience.  Unless you do 70% soil and 30% wood, then no problem planting perennial's halfway up a hugelculture.  When you are trying to make as much wood as possible disappear without fire, which is common when a person is doing it by hand (like 30% soil 70% wood) you are going to be doing a significant amount of tamping in the next few years to keep them berms green longer into dry summer.  Wanna bet they'll spongify twice as fast if you do not allow multiple yard critter/wind tunnels.  A steel fencepost is the tool for fixing that.  A great way of getting in a sweaty workout without grinding the knees or back!  Also late dry/early wet season is the season for tamping hugels.  probably better to just wait 10 years, gravity and rain will do it for you.   Except your gonna have to wait 10 years to plant those perennials with the greater survival rate, without the tamping.

I'm like yes, we want spotty diversity in your input soil cake.  But also! YES!!! lasagna layers often work very well.  So you can't spot diversity garden your way to a beet or potato patch.  But you can lasagna garden way your way to a flat uniform patch that is uniformly accessible to a desirable plant.   VERY useful for weeding/labor management input...

Funny counter narrative story, after having seed scattered beets fail for 4 years on hugels (which I needed to tamp more...) the first place the beets took was an already flat spot which I forked, 1-2" manured, cardboarded, 2-3" buried in clay and than mulched, and then fertilized again...and then beet and potato patch.  After so many years of failure with scattering lots of seeds and getting a few beets in the hugel berms, the slow, uniform rate of drying as summer fades in, in the flat lasagna is key.  Super key, for a continuous patch.

Also, I think that not all cardboards/newspapers are made equal.  Like manure.  The ones that are not heavily loaded with some slowly biodegrading toxic gic are rightful recommended for use when it come to suppressing already existing undesirables in the native soil you are working with.  The trick is telling which cardboard has got 10x more 5 year glue than the next?  In my experience, the single layer of cardboard on a level spot, buried under 3 inches of heavy soil, has disappeared in 1 year.  And killed the quack grass!  Super win!!!

John Hutter wrote: The trick is telling which cardboard has got 10x more 5 year glue than the next?

how??? please say more!

For piping the downspout to a swale, how far should it be from the foundation of the home? I have raised beds I've dreamed of turning into swale/basin beds and didn't for whatever reason but now I'm wondering if I should try at least making the first one a berm this year and I can work on the others later. Especially since I'm in hot, hot Texas. (loving the 75 degree weather today, though... Jan 14th lol)

The first bed as it sits now is maybe 4-5' from the foundation so the swale would probably be 4' from the foundation.

I just finally made time to watch this webinar. It is great. Thank you Paul for making it available. There were so many actionable ideas in there for me, starting with a better understanding of fish-scale swales which means I'll be reworking mine a bit (with trees in place - carefully) in the coming season.

Thank you so much for access to this.

Many thanks!