Swale digging, tree planting and grafting pistachios

Last weekend we worked on the abandoned terrace project, digging a swale, planting trees and grafting pistachio branches onto "pistachia lentiscus".

I love the work we did last weekend.. implementing permaculture design with wonderful knowledgeable people and finishing all the tasks we planned.

Olive branches

The first job was sawing off the broken branches of the olive trees – many trees were damaged by a 60cm snowfall back in January. These branches were then used to make a fence along the far edge of the terrace we are working on. A barrier to keep the wild boar in the forest and not snuffling around our newly planted trees.

swale

We dug a swale along the lower half of the terrace which will fill with water run-off from the road. In the past we’ve had problems with these swales getting immediately full of mud and silt coming down with the water, so we dug a silt basin at the entrance to the swale. This silt basin will need to be emptied (dug out) fairly often – after almost every storm! But it means that water will get all the way to the end of the swale, and hopefully the swale itself won’t need to be dug out for a while.

The design for the whole terrace is two long swales reaching all the way across this terrace, with about 25-30 fruit trees in total.

This weekend we dug the first 5 metres of the swale and planted four fruit trees – 2 apple and 2 apricot.

fig trees

We will take “suckers” from the fig trees and plant them on this terrace as another useful, and under appreciated fruit tree that grows abundantly in this area. We were going to dig them up and stick them in the ground, but on the advice of Nat from Flores de Vida, we have left them in water, with some of the bark stripped away, to grow some roots for a while. Some of the suckers we took were cut, and some were dug out with a small amount of root still attached. We will leave them, making sure they don’t get dry, for a month or so, then replant them near the apple and apricot trees.

Grafting

Nick from Cova Fullola found 3 male and 3 female branches from Pistachio trees and we have taken around 20 female buds and 20 male buds and tied them to shady spots on branches of “pistachia lentiscus” trees that grow naturally and abundantly here.

On the larger tree we pruned around the branches we grafted, but left most of the tree intact to provide shade. On the smaller tree, which had shade from a nearby olive, we took almost all the branches except the two that we were grafting. In each tree one branch is grafted with male buds, and one with female buds.

Lou

Lou - I started on the Boodaville path when I bought the land in Matarranya in 2008 and have dedicated an incredible amount of time, and not very many euros, to building up the project over the years.

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Abandoned Terrace Project (On Friday’s I write)

As part of the Rovira Regenerativa project we are experimenting with ways to design productive terraces using regenerative agriculture techniques, with no irrigation in a semi-arid mediterranean climate. This post explains the first steps recuperating an abandoned olive terrace.

This morning I woke up wondering how I can inspire our Rovira Regenerativa team, (and anyone else who is interested!) to engage deeply with the work we are going to do on the 20th February in the Vall Rovira. Last week I wrote that the “Why?” is absolutely key to learning and motivated work, and I realised yesterday that I want to share the best story I can about why we doing the following work on an abandoned terrace near Boodaville in two weeks time:

Pruning the olive tree
planting support species and fruit trees (apples, pomegranates and figs)
making Gin infused with rosemary
Grafting pistachio on to the lentiscus tree

(You can see the terrace with the olive and lentiscus tree in the photo)

ECOSYSTEM HEALTH

These are the exact words we are using to define one objective of our project. We discussed yesterday, that in order to frame Ecosocial projects like this to fit with our current capitalist mindset and therefore secure funding, we can also label Ecosystem Health as a “return” on any investment in the project. So the overall “Why?” of the project is Ecosystem Health.

how does this implementation on the abandoned terrace lead to a healthy ecosystem?

As Mia, one of our team members rightly pointed out, the very best thing for the natural ecosystem would be to leave this terrace alone. To do nothing and let nature have space to regenerate. Complete “rewilding”.

But we live on this planet with nearly 9 billion human beings and people need to eat. Our current agriculture practices are degrading ecosystems on a massive scale, they are hugely wasteful and involve transporting goods large distances.

We seem very far away from it here in the Vall Rovira, but in the small shop in Caseres I have found apples from New Zealand for sale. This little village relies on MercaZaragoza, a huge international hub, for provisions for the shop.

With the design we are implementing here we are working with nature, to maintain and even regenerate the soil, and to improve water retention right here on the terrace in the photo. At the same time we are countering some of the damage done by most farming.

inspiration

By sharing the space and the project, by involving the local community, we encourage a change in consumption habits, offer hope, and ignite the imagination so people can replicate and develop these ideas.

Action

The terrace in the photo has been abandoned for over twenty years. Here is the thinking behind our planned work :

We will work with nature and use the healthy elements already present in the ecosystem – soil filled with roots, organic matter and life which is in a decompacted state compared to machine farmed terraces.
We will add support species to fix nitrogen, attract beneficial insects, increase biodiversity, and grow deep roots
Pruning the olive : In order to produce a yield we need accessible healthy branches only.
Grafting lentiscus : This tree could have a value as lentiscus (apparently it’s very expensive and used for funerals in the Netherlands) but a pistachio harvest would be appreciated by locals. (Apparently this grafting is possible but none of us have ever seen it working so we are going to try)
Support species and fruit trees : In between the life that already exists on the terrace we are going to add more nitrogen fixers and climate appropriate fruit trees to harvest.
Making Gin with rosemary : Juniper and Rosemary are abundant on this terrace and we are following up some ideas and suggestions with action to see how the abundance nature offers us in the Vall Rovira can be used to make products with a high value.

balance

A large part of what we are doing is Regenerative Agriculture, rather than complete rewilding.

The beauty of the design is that even the agricultural land will be improving the health of the valley ecosystem while at the same time providing food for humans and wildlife, and opportunities for producing products with a high value.

We recognise, however, that at the valley scale the design has to be a balance between completely natural spaces and agricultural land we we are continuing to explore what proportion of the abandoned terraces we will bring back to agriculture. This first experiment is a pilot to see how we can make the most of the natural succession that has already occurred and make a quick transition to food production.

Please feel free to add comments and suggestions below!