Back in February, we initiated a collaboration with the Life Terra association, which gave us 100 trees to plant on the Boodaville site. The operation was a success, with almost all the saplings surviving the summer heat! This is why, 8 months later, we decided to accept many many more trees from LifeTerra.

Thanks to the commitment of the Boodaville volunteers, as well as volunteers who had come to lend their strength in the Matarranya, we were able to take on the mission and WE PLANTED 1000 TREES! Jacqueline, Sam, Angela, Jack and Anna Louise gave their time and expertise to organise and lead the event. During this 4 days tree planting event we were working to plant just over a 1,000 trees in the neighbouring farm, where we try to develop the project Rovira Regenerativa. We were following an agroforestry design that we created in 2021.

On the Saturday and the Sunday we worked on a bigger group of young permaculture volunteers from Catalunya. We planted along the bottom of the valley, at the edge of the vineyard. We planted with a pattern developed with Jacque and Jacqueline which was to dig a bowl for every 3 trees. In each bowl we put a fruit tree : apples, European Plum, Pomegranate, fig, White Mulberry and some other very dry resistant varieties of fruit trees. The support species that we were putting there were Spanish Broom, Terebinth. In total we dug and planted 220 bowls, which makes 660 trees. 

We also took part of the vineyard terrace that was not planted with any vines and now we call it the orchards. In this section we’ve planted rows of trees with support species. We also made a windbreak in the orchard area with some of the oleander. We were careful with them because they are not part of a natural forestry design, they are more a gardening plant. 

We also ordered 140 almond trees because we really wanted to put some almond in the valley but we actually received 300 hazelnut trees. Because the hazelnut trees needs a lot of water we did put some of them in the valley gave away about 200 of the hazelnut trees. 

On days 3 and 4 we worked up in the almond growth, in the area number 3 on the map. Sam Miller helped us making decisions about the exact plan and how to plant. The area is obviously much more humid than other places. It’s surrounded by trees, there is grass growing all over and between the almonds on this terrace and even moss on the ground in some places showing us that it is a humid enough place and that these trees has a chance of survival. We are happy that we manage to have a tank of 600 L of water up to this terrace with the help of Robert and his truck. It’s good for the future of this project to know that if we need to we can drive water up to this area to water the plants. 

In the area, the planting plan was to plant individual trees around the edges of the terrace, in the places where it looked like there was more access to water in the soil. We planted madroños, figs, pomegranate, pear, some fruit bushes and a few other species. Everything on the terrace was planted with some activated biochar, which we activated by peeing in a bucket !! We also added compost. 

The planting plan on the almond terrace was to design edges and the rectangles. In between the existing rows of almond trees we dug a slightly lower row, just a few centimetres below the level of the soil to encourage water to come and sit in the ground there. In each rectangles we planted 4 or 5 trees, and left some holes for the almond that we don’t have yet and for the support species that did not arrive yet. In those rectangles we planted nitrogen-fixing species in the middle of the rectangle. In total we had 25 rectangles. 

Thanks to an app provided by Life Terra we managed to take pictures of each tree planted, so we can track their evolution. Now we hope most of the species we planted will survive! This is an important step in the development of our project Rovira Regenerativa ! 

We’re all exhausted from these intense days, but absolutely delighted, our minds full of wonderful memories shared throughout the weekend, and our hearts bursting with hope and strength to continue fighting the climate crisis.