🐪 How to create a food forest in the desert | Louis De Jaeger 🌳 

We are 8 months into our greening the desert project. Close to 40 trees and alot of earthworks. This year's monsoon season we estimate we captured over 10,000 gallons of water. We only get 6 inches of annual rainfall.

Years ago I saw Geoff Lawton's Greening the desert video and fell in love with the idea. I've been daydreaming about the idea ever since. Great video.

Simple people doing extraordinary things. This is why there is no such thing as lack and scarcity when it comes to food.

to clarify about the beginning - where they took care to create soil - to add information to the first 3 minutes of that video. With that horrible soil (dirt more like) they had in the beginning they made an effort to get their hands on carton, bio mass (what other farmers that irrigate would burn down after harvests or maybe even kitchen scraps from nearby household) carton, all from the kitchen / garden and their animals. Geoff also compsts dead animals btw (smaller ones like chickens, baby lambs that have died, etc.). Biomass imports from outside were important in the first years. Not anymore. They do not need it anymore, they now use chop and drop. And the people around them learn from them, so now they put biomass to good use on their properties. Major part of the soil building effort with that bad soil: They chop off branches from trees and drop them to the ground. So no transporting of the material and almost no cutting it up (only if branches are very long). Back in the day they had (thorny) but very hardy nitrogen fixing support trees. Those pioneers did a great job, but most of them have been cut down in recent years. Their hardiness is not needed anymore and they were quity thorny, so not so pleasant to work with. They were replaced by trees that bring a fruit harvest or by support trees that are more pleasant to work with or have even more growth (but those 2nd generations trees would not have fared well in the early stage). Chop and drop was and still is a major part of soil creation in the Greening The Desert project (it is not done on every permaculture site). In cooler climates the breaking down takes much longer, so other composting methods may be better. Many trees, especially those pioneer trees tolerate radical prunings well. Which are done at the end of the hot season. As the cooler winter saison also brings more rain (else there will be irrigation) the trees revover quickly with long shoots and create new bio mass again. (also in the temperate climate zones, there are many trees and bushes that will sprout again if you you cut them down. Even if you cut them to the ground - either to stimulate thicker and compact growth - or because you want to remove the tree. As long as the root system is alive, it can start to regrow a plant. We had a beech (it is called "blood beech" because of the red leaves, might be related to birches in reality. Anyway it was competing with the grape behind it and had to go. But we did not have the tools to pull the roots out of the soil. Now one year after cutting it down there are many sprouts of that bush/tree. We planted strawberries as ground cover, they were watered, nutrients were given - up pops the plant we intended to kill. Quite glad the plant with the red leaves came up again - I said I wanted it gone to benefit the grape, but then it was cut downimmediately - before I had time to cut take cuttings so I could grow tiny saplings. Yay to second chances ! I was quite pleased - and impressed. about the hardiness of some plants. At the moment we let the shoots grow out close to the stump - this fall (or next spring) we will try to nurture the shoots into several little plants and plant them into a hedge (as soon as the old thuja hedge is gone). Many bushes and trees have the ability to come back even after a heavy pruning, and some are so reliable that they are planted with that in mind (to achieve a thick hedge, to trigger ash or birch into more intense growth, or just to harvest firewood). Turning sunlight, water, air and nutrients from the soil into biomass (such sandy soils are nutrient rich, but the nutrients are not in a form that is useable for plants, even IF there is enough water. However the moist underground (mulched and here also irrigated) promotes the growth of fungi, soil bacteria and all kinds of beneficial soil life / critters. Especially fungi are important to turn the minerals into a form that plants can use. (the plants give them sugars in exchange so it is a symbiosis). And nitrogen and carbon is taken out of the air. Nitrogen with the help of bacteria in the roots (not all plants can do it), and every plant can fish CO2 out of the air to use the carbon to buil biomass (the O2 is released into the air). As for the chop and drop method: the cut down very coarse material is mulched AND water is provided (by drop irrigation) to keep the underground slightly moist so fungi process it quickly. (Carbon rich = woody materials are mainly processed by fungi. and the resulting soil is especially good for shrubs and trees, or plants that originate from forests - like strawberries or blueberries. The place has one advantage - year round warm temperatures so IF there is a moisture in the underground, and the underground is shaded (with help of mulch or other vegetation - for instance hardy trees) soil life will work at a high pace throughout the year. Think double the speed for every 10 degree centigrade. (Not sure about the exact numbers but in that order of magnitude. They certainly have at least double the activity in the soil compared to the cooler temperate climate zones. One reason for that: soil life more or less stops working or slows down a lot when the soil is also cooling down. In the regions with a real winter it is even beneficial to remove ground cover or mulch in spring - because the bare, dark soil will warm up faster. When it gets warmer the mulch can be put back on. The nitrogen fixing trees add of course nitrogen when they rot away at the gound. Young bark, tender thin branches and especially green leaves do have the highest content of nitrogen - that is true for any plant. So chop and drop schemes using nitrogen fixing plants really extract nitrogen from air and get it into the soil (or dirt that is going to be good soil soon). Not to forget humanure (composted human excrements) urin, and the compost, plus the manure / urin from animals (chicken, water from fish) that enrich the material soil life can work with. Fungi break down the stuff much faster if they have access to nitrogen - and if there is nitrogen nearby they will gobble it up (outcompeting any vegetation). So putting uring into the vegetation, the compost is really good, because it is a free nitrogen rich liquid fertilzer (liquid = immediately available for plants in which case it must be diluted 1 : 10 - but also easily available for soil life). And urin is not nearly as problematic regarding pathogens compared to excrements. With all the visitors using the compost toilets on the premises they imported a lot of nutrients into the system (with the human excrements and urin, which are composted and for safety reasons only used under the trees). They also prepare compost teas, have worm compost, and Geoff makes biochar. Not sure how important biochar is for them (I heard that it improves the ability of soil to store water, it is used as a soil amendment). All of that helpd to build soil - over the course of a few years. I think they saw some real improvement after maybe 3 - 4 years, and it started to get really good after 10 years.

I am starting my own food forest in the Australian desert. I get the same rainfall as this site (around 150 mm annually) and have similar rocky soil with very little organic matter. This is my blueprint and thank you to Geoff Lawson for providing inspiration.

With our hands we can do so much, we are the only species that concsiously can choose to help nature progress...otherwise it would take Mother Nature longer....Thank u for hearing her calls for assistance. We all need to realise that we are the only ones that can make a difference on our beautiful planet..

Great video! 😊

"Yesterday, you said tomorrow SO JUST DO IT!"

Hey Louis, I am going to start a small permaculture garden in Nuweiba, Sinai, Egpyt in January and your video gave me some really nice ideas! What vegetables did you have the most success with so far in hot/saline/dry environments:) Thanks so much for the video, Fran x

This video needs to go viral

9:30 Great words , Love from India

Awesome.

Boeiend om te zien! Heel inspirerend en hoopgevend!

I started my food forest here almost a year ago in the Southern California high desert zone 8. My well water is high in salts, boron, arsenic, and florid. I am doing okay using rain water when I get it and supplement with Reverse Osmosis water. Water is a big issue so I use wood chips to hold in water, shade the earth and to build the soil. I need to build a better water catchment system. It has been a fun project and I have hope that food forest food is in my future.

A fantastic video. Your words and enthusiasm are wonderful.

You have that face and voice, that makes you feel like listening to you. =) 🌷🌹

you should visit the Greening the Desert Project in Jordan.

Welcome to Jordan, I have 400 trees in Zarqa, a 4-year-old can pass by and advise me

Great video, love the work that you're doing!

Wonderful !!

Amazing ...

Cool!!

Masterful and Poetic presentation. Tre Bien! Tour de Force! Very informative and inspiring.

It should be mentioned that this site does not run on rain alone. If I am not mistaken, they do bring in water to irrigate, even on top of the grey water. edit: ah you mention it - should have finished the video before commenting ^^'

parabens amigos,vamos economizar agua e reflorestar

🙏👍👍👍🌿

Great work and an inspiration

Please go Big

Thank you

schitterend 💚

now that's a face for radio

7:04 was that Geoff Lawton ?

Hi🤝🤝👈👈

I have land in the Mojave!!!

Nipple Mountain or Breast Hill.

I like the cut of you jib sir. au

If you can keep the goats the sheep the donkeys the camels the deer the rabbits the wild bore and the local people

Thanks

I consider pee grey water in certain situations.

So how to get enough money to buy a piece of land? You can't go and start to dig on someone else's property.

I'm sorry, a what?

It can be done in Mars and other planet

Hoping to buy a few acres of land in the high desert of souther California thanks for this video

Thanks so much *Z5CRACKS* I will keep saying your good work to the whole world 🌎 yóu are the best recovery EXPERT I KNOW

Thanks so much *Z5CRACKS* I will keep saying your good work to the whole world 🌎 yóu are the best recovery EXPERT I KNOW