We managed to hold off the rain till last night (!), and started filling the trenches yesterday. Twelve are done, and what beauties they are! They all have a mix of soil, cowdung, straw, and leaves. They are porous and feel rich and ready to welcome new life. It finally rained last night, so thatContinue reading “First trenches done!”
Category Archives: techniques
Hello, babies!
The two things we have been working on for the past few days are seeds and trenches. Re: the latter, we are in the process of buying and gathering together massive amounts of straw, leaves, and cowdung, and trying to distribute them in piles all around our site. It’s a lot of manual labour, andContinue reading “Hello, babies!”
Seeds and cuttings!
We have started working on our seedlings. We will be able to afford to buy about 2000 plants from the nursery. Those will be our specialty fruit/nut/spice trees and trees that aren’t available easily in the vicinity. But all the others – over 4000 – will have to be added over the monsoon and followingContinue reading “Seeds and cuttings!”
Making jeevamrit: first batch
One of the organic fertilizers we’re going to be using is jeevamrit: a mix of cow urine, dung, gram flour, jaggery, and water. Jeevamrit is a liquid microbial culture. We’ll treat the soil from all our trenches and pits with it, and later spray it on the topsoil as well. (above) Gaurav measuring and mixing.Continue reading “Making jeevamrit: first batch”
Who we learn from
Akira Miyawaki: for intensive planting mainly around our boundary and places where our land is threatened by erosion Masanobu Fukuoka, Subhash Palekar: Natural farming techniques Robert Hart, Martin Crawford, Geoff Lawton: Forest gardens and food forests Others: There are so many inspiring individuals around India and the world who we read and listen to, andContinue reading “Who we learn from”
First steps
Digging, tool-building, organising The excavator is busy making trenches along the entire boundary, in order to plant intensively, Miyawaki-style. The trenches are 10 x 20 ft, and each will contain about 75 trees of four different sizes. We’re in the process of making lists of trees and contacting nurseries to order the saplings for nextContinue reading “First steps”
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