“The young peach tree looks gorgeous! The artichokes are getting dryer and dryer, there are some promising buds, but the lack of water is in your face. If I remove some of their leaves, the plants will be able to distribute overall more resources and waste less water through evapotranspiration. The red valerian is about to flower! How can I use red valerian as a medicinal plant?

 

Is the nitrogen-fixing vetch producing seeds? I like Klif’s idea to gather the seeds from the alfa-alfa that grew in those spots that never received water from our water catchment systems. From a plant perspective, producing seeds in these harsh conditions means recording the lack of water by mixing its genetic code to increase the chances of survival of the next generation. In the future wet season, the seeds with the most adapted genetic code will flourish in drought conditions and they can be selected for future seed collection for further spread. We accelerate the process of adaptation of the plants to our rapidly changed climate. This strategy called seed landrace, is what we learned some time ago from Jack and Jacqueline’s amazing permaculture project.

 

Strawberries are doing well in the wicking beds! Are they going to re-flower? I hope they are one of those re-flowering cultivated varieties, although, if I were a strawberry plant now, I would produce seeds and go to sleep until the rainy season again. I wonder if a thicker layer of mulching can help. At Can Siló they had a food forest made of many doughnuts (cárcavas) large 2 meter in diameter with one 2-year-old fruit tree in its centre and all around the tree a thriving orchard that they did not need to water: manure and mulching for a total of about 30-40 centimetres in depth were the key to this success. We should implement it here too! But where to get such large quantities of manure and mulch? 

 

Gallito is calling, did he use to sing more or am I getting more used to his singing? 

 

I should go check out the thyme terrace, I wonder how the pear trees are doing, those sprouts from the bottom part of the trunk, and nothing growing on the top part, were a bit worrying. I’m glad Nick answered about this, and I cannot wait to go visiting him and Silke again: We are going to help them sculpturing the cob layer of their strawbale house next week! Anyways, Nick said to not remove the green sprouts that grow above the graft union, so our case in point now is to not intervene. 

 

In permaculture, zone number 5 is the zone of no intervention: here, human energy should only be invested in observation and meditation to get inspired by and to learn from the master: Nature, its universe. Now, this closes the circle perfectly when you think that on the other end of the permaculture zones is zone 00: the personal and emotional dimension of the individual, its internal universe. We got to talk about the permaculture zones last weekend at the Can Siló permaculture gathering.

 

 

There, we shared, chatted, and chanted. Magical people and place I am grateful to have met and lived in. I was positively struck by some inspirational eco-living tools and know-hows. The solar oven, tasty chips of sun-dried thin fruit slices, washing the dishes without washing; i.e. cleaning dishes with ashes: its effectiveness was impressive, washing the dishes with no water, how out of the box-thinking!

 

Sara”

 

 

About the experience at Can Siló : 

“For me, the experience was quite intense: as a non-spanish speaker it meant spending hours of listening and never fully understanding what was being said. However, I was able to infer some things during the tour, since Ignacio and Juan were explaining the workings of their project very clearly.
Despite almost not being able to speak with the people around I did not feel neglected or not part of the group at all. There was downtime in which I was able to play some guitar, which was much appreciated, and almost everyone did try to have a short talk with me or ask me some questions. There was a general vibe of acceptance and they shared everything with me as much as with eachother.”

 

Klif