A spoonful of healthy soil contains more organisms than there are humans alive right now. Isn’t that wild?
My true love is land stewardship. I think land care is an important part of creating a healthy home, so I’m going to write a little about what we’re doing. I’m a certified Permaculture consultant.
The name of our land is “Terre de Vie.” With a nod to our French heritage, it has two meanings: “Healthy soil” and “Land that gave us life.” Together, those two mantras constitute the mission statement of our land.
We were lucky to have our land included in a giant government-funded forest health project. They are masticating underbrush from most of our land right now. Not only will this project prevent future forest fires, but it’s also the first step towards rehabilitating our soil to improve the health of our land, and all of its inhabitants, including plants, animals, and humans.
After they’re done masticating, I’m going to spread cover crop seed. I’m sowing 20 pounds per acre of:
- Clover 40%
- Daikon 40%
- Native grasses 20%
I’ll sow these as soon as they’re done clearing so they are watered by the winter rain. They shouldn’t need any additional watering.
The Daikon has a deep 1-3′ taproot. It will push its way into the rocky soils and then die and compost there. It’s sort of like rototilling, except that it doesn’t damage the beneficial mycorrhizae the way tilling does, and it adds compost. Daikon is an annual. I’m not sure whether it will reseed, but even one season should improve the soil immensely.
The Clover is a nitrogen fixer, meaning it pulls nitrogen from the air and sinks it into the soil. It’s basically like living fertilizer. It’s a reseeding annual and will keep coming up to improve the soil year after year, but should die back as soon it’s no longer needed. It’s also a high protein forage crop – I’ll get to that in a minute.
The grasses are relatively low-growing (about a meter high max, but probably much less than that in these soils). They’re perennial native grasses with deep root systems. I chose high forage value, easy to establish perennials. They also support some of the local pollinators that are being disturbed by all of this clearance. I don’t expect the grasses to do very well because the soils are so poor right now, but I’m seeding them anyway because I want native grasses to crowd out any invasives that might want to establish now that the clearing is done. I will probably re-sow native grasses in a few years once the soil is better.
These are all cool season crops that will be watered by rain and will die out with the dry season. I have two options for keeping them low.
One, rotational grazing. I’m talking with a couple of local property owners about going in together on a herd of grazing goats and a shepherd to go with them, to keep things mowed. I’m looking into that as well as my own herd and electric fencing. Ideally I’d love to share goats so I don’t have to add “rancher” to my list of job titles.
Two, prescribed burn. These low growing grasses should respond well to a cool prescribed burn. I’m active in the local Prescribed Burn Association and learning how to do this. All burns are supervised by firefighters and the association and nothing happens until you’re trained and have done multiple successful burns elsewhere.
Both burning and grazing add nutrients to the soil and continue to improve it.
Many people would use Round Up to keep weeds and unwanted vegetation down. Round Up has horrible health and environmental connotations and will never touch my property, ever. I think it’s important to have a pro-active land management plan so that you don’t get desperate and resort to Round Up.
Our land is mixed oak/pine forest now, with more oaks than pines. A more experienced local permaculture consultant I’m working with says that our land used to be conifer forest before they logged it during the Gold Rush. My goal is to start the process of returning it to conifers. Once the soil is better, I’ll plant the types of conifers that currently grow on the property (Ponderosa, Sugar Pine, Jeffreys Pine, Incense Cedar), plus some Sequoias in damper microclimates I think might be able to support them. When the time comes I’m planning to water those with a tank of water, gravity-driven drip hose, and solar drip timers. The permaculture perspective is that what’s on the ground controls local precipitation. Returning the area to conifer forest will attract more precipitation which will then beget more conifers and on and on.
Aside from the direct climate benefits, healthy soil and trees draw carbon from the atmosphere and sink it into the ground. We can actually reverse global warming by focusing on soil health. The documentary “Kiss the Ground” explains how and is an awesome watch if you haven’t seen it.
Obviously this is a “7 generations” project. I’ll never live to see the end of it. But someone needs to start it, so that’s what I’m doing. And we will benefit our entire lives from being surrounded by healthy soil, teeming with beneficial micro-organisms.
