Update from Rovira Regenerativa (2)…

New team member, James, visited for a week, staying at the house in Caseres. He met Alex and Sara, who gave him a tour of Boodaville and the surrounding valley. Although James was working online in the mornings (giving private English lessons), he helped out with a few gardening tasks in the afternoons. These included:

– Digging a trench next to the tree saplings alongside the (dried up) river and adding a mix of biochar* and compost tea. ** Given the months long drought, the ground was absolutely parched, but as luck would have it, it rained virtually every day after their labours. This should help incorporate the organic matter into the soil and aid its transportation through to the trees’ roots.

– Cutting back some of the dried up wild fennel stalks, for future use as mulch.  

– Collected hay and manure from the donkey and horse living in the valley. Alex pointed out that we’ll have to check that neither animal has been treated with particular medication, e.g. antibiotics, which means their faeces could have a deleterious effect on the soil.

Alex and Sara continued the Regenerative Agriculture course at Gandesa. Both feel that the course remains fun and informative, if a little overwhelming at times. Sara was interested to learn that land which has been farmed conventionally for many years requires a transition period before it can be farmed in a fully regenerative way, e.g. soils which have been consistently tilled should not be suddenly subject to a no-dig method. Instead, they should be gradually tilled less often and to a lesser depth over a period of about five years. In this way, the incorporation of organic matter and deep rooted green manures can better improve the soil’s structure, drainage and biodiversity.

Finally, Sara removed one of the mould plates from the two quadrants in the edible forest. The rice contained within the mould had turned a few different colours, predominantly grey, but some grains were orange and green. A wider range of multiple colours would have indicated a more fertile and biodiverse soil, so there’s clearly work to do. Meanwhile, the other plate had mysteriously disappeared! Initially bamboozled as to what could have happened to it, Alex suggested that a search of the site might be in order. Sure enough, the plate turned up about fifty metres away, perched on a wall next to the path running down the valley. The mosquito net in which the mould had been wrapped was also nearby, ripped to shreds, and the plate contained a little remaining rice, but the mould was gone – presumably snaffled up by a local fox or wild boar. Something to bear in mind when releasing the chickens from their pen, or leaving the door open to the house!

* Compost tea is a liquid produced by extracting beneficial microorganisms —bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and micro arthropods—from compost using a brewing process. A true compost tea contains all of the organisms that were present in the compost before brewing. The brewed water extract should also have soluble nutrients from the compost. Compost tea is a good overall plant health booster (a little like vitamins for people), and healthy plants are better able to resist pests and diseases.

** Biochar is biomass (wood, leaves, straw, or other biosolids) heated at high temperatures without oxygen. This process, known as pyrolysis, concentrates carbon in a form that is very resistant to biological decomposition. When applied to soil and other products, a large fraction of its carbon content is sequestered for 100+ years.