Professional Permaculture Design since 2004

How To Build Bad Soil In a Dry Land

Desert Soil:  Oxymoron?

Those two words seem like opposites when you think about it.  A desert doesn’t have soil really, does it?  Living in a dry climate doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the desert.  Your home could be situated in a semi-arid “Mediterranean” zone that gets far less water than many places but still supports a variety of plants.  Whatever the ground is composed of, that’s your growing medium.  I firmly believe most “soils” can be recovered, but you may be starting with more of a dirt than a soil.  And that’s okay.  If your goal is to create or improve a landscape with little rainfall (clouds occasionally hovering but not always releasing their magic for the ground to soak up), you can focus on improving your soil’s capacity to hold what water does fall onto it.  This is one step toward moving it up the scale in terms of how well it will grow plants.

I recently tried to find information about how specifically to improve a special type of clay soil but didn’t find much at all.  Most people familiar with what I was looking for were adding it to their existing non-clay soil.  I wanted to know what to add to it in the case where a property’s soil was made of it.  The soil type in question?  Bentonite.

READ MORE

December 30, 2020 0 Comments

Small Garden Landscaping That Lowers Your Bills

Pay Less Because of Small Garden Landscaping?

Yes, you can indeed reduce your maintenance and utility costs with small garden landscaping.  I’m not talking about saving money on a landscaping project, I’m talking about saving money with a landscape project.  The reasons are simple:

  1. A house shielded from the elements with the right plantings costs less to heat and cool.
  2. Soil correctly protected from the sun loses less moisture to the air.
  3. Shielding soil from weeds makes your yard easier and much less expensive to maintain.
  4. Grading your property the right way protects soil nutrients and halts runoff.
  5. The right plants in the right places stop erosion in its tracks.

image: small garden landscapingGet our Soil Tip Sheet,

and quickly see how

you can build soil for free!

 

 

Click the book to preview

this and other of our titles.

 

READ MORE