Natural Sequence Farming

This greening the desert video shows many of the effects NSF and Peter Andrews have been talking about for 30 years. The practical applications are very similiar but the explanations regarding salinity control need further elaboration.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnW ... rg%2Eau%2F

As any good gardener will tell you; MULCH! MULCH! MULCH!, COMPOST! COMPOST! COMPOST!

Hi Colin

I think you may have answered your own question already... about the rocks that grow only in Puckpunyal...this video clearly show how YOU CAN GET VEGETATION to grow where only rocks and salinity once prevailed before......
WATER, OM in the form of mulch, and plants....all are key components of any functioning landscape that supports life.

But the real key point in this video is the link between water and mulch.
Ultimately, as the mulch breaks down thru oxidation and microorganisms and other invertebrates..... this becomes the fertility that feeds the plants. BUT without water to carry this fertility to where it is needed in the top 1 or 2cm of the AO soil profile, this cycle would not occur.....IT is the water that is crucial NOT the mulch on its own. Put the mulch in a desert and without rain or moisture it would oxidise in a few short days and disappear.

Here is something every backyard gardener, permie, organic grower can do....regardless of what you want to grow.
1. Pick the highest point in your garden
2.Put your compost/mulch heap at this highest point
3. trickle feed water thru the compost/mulch heap
4.watch as Nature does the rest

This is part of the natural sequence of landscape function.

Hello Duane
My own suburban backyard looks like a piece of corrugated iron, wouldn't know where to find the highest point, my own newly started compost heap is hidden out of the way behind the garage.

Why aren't KEV07, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, the Department for Sidestepping Everything and all the others doing this on a larger scale for Australia?

Here in Melbourne the sewerage treatment plants are running out of room to store their biosolids, in the good times there are enough grass clippings produced to sink a battleship and people are looking for places to get rid of it . I know I used to mow lawns for a living, any contractor out there is just looking for somewhere to get rid of their clippings. We as a nation could be doing our bit to improve our own countryside!

What about all that waste water that just flows out into Bass Strait, or wherever it goes in the other states?

Regards

Colin

I think part of the waste/collection problem is cultural. As modern day 21st C humans we don't recognise that in Nature NOTHING is wasted.

We let our waste water run out to sea...because it is cheap and easy to do so. We bury our household waste in open cut quarries because it is cheap and easy to do so.

We don't think globally how could we recycle, reuse and reduce this excess.

The planners, bureaucracies, governments of this world need to be held to account to the people. Some things are being done and awareness is SLOWLY changing....

All of the above things you have mentioned could be achieved if we ALL collectively decided to do something about it.

Call or write to your local council, parliamentarian both state and federal and get 3 friends to do the same....determine that you would like to be a part of the solution and no longer a part of the problem.

Begin difficult things while they are easy, do great things while they are small. For the difficult things of the world must once have been easy and the great things must once have been small.

I saw a documentary recently from North America (can't remember exactly where) but it was about a road kill crew who collect the dead animals from the side of the roads (traffic hazard), return to depot and toss on a huge compost heap. Within a few months, a rich blood and bone mix.

Colin, my lawn clipping have never left the property in 29 years. I suppose I should be turning it over, but it never stays higher than 3ft high for very long.
About a year ago I was mucking around with a metal detector in the backyard and found the old shed key that my son lost about 16 years ago. It was 2 inches below ground!

The guy behind the Greening the Desert project featured in that video is teaching a course called "Designing Water into Landscape" over the Anzac day long weekend in Goulburn NSW. Should be well worth a look.

More info is available at http://www.milkwoodpermaculture.com.au/ ... pr-08.html

Geoff Lawton is the 'guy' running this course and is also a director with his wife at the Permaculture Institute.

Peter and Geoff both presented at APC9 recently in Sydney where they meet and exchanged business cards.

I think I am correct in saying that Peter offered to share his understanding of how this landscape functions so that Geoff's important work can be further improved.

It is now part of my role to help make this happen.

I found the video interesting, but I didn't come out of it completely understanding what we're going to do to bring Australia's landscape back to health (as Peter talks about)

This video was put here to demonstrate TWO things:

1. in his book Peter speaks of running contours from the creek out as far as you can trying to get water from the flats up the slopes....this video shows how to build those contours graphically. It's very good I believe.

2. yes, your right this video doesn't show Peter's complete plan of how Australia's landscape can be saved, only a very small section, but it does show the importance of capturing, holding amd slowing down the movement of water and the importance of mulching and biodiversity....three VERY important ways this Australian landscape managed both water and fertility.
The permies have ONLY got a small piece of the puzzle here....but they have got this one pretty close. Well done to Geoff Lawton and the team....