Lawns and Car Storage. Name a More Wasteful Use of Land.

#PlanningMemes | +1₁₀₀
link | 0 comments in 7 minutes

Decorative Roundup is my new favorite lawn insult

I made a tiny, shitty little butterfly garden full of grass and weeds and hardly any flowers. I really sucked at building this butterfly garden, but it had milkweed and cilantro and a bunch of different tall flowers.
After just one year, there is so much more life. So many more birds. It doesn't take a lot to make a big difference.

Just. Don't remove the dandelions. You can do so much just by not putting in the effort to weed dandelions.

Good Idea: Dig some holes!

https://www.climatelinks.org/blog/lunar-landscaping-how-digging-half-moons-helps-re-green-niger

In the arid landscape of the West African Sahel, where climate change and desertification threaten livelihoods, innovative approaches like "half-moons" offer hope for water conservation and landscape restoration. These semicircular ponds, implemented by initiatives like the World Food Programme, help retain rainwater in dry and degraded soils, supporting vegetation growth crucial for farmers and herders. Satellite imagery analysis reveals significant improvements in vegetation health post-intervention, showcasing the efficacy of these low-cost and sustainable techniques. With the potential to stabilize communities' livelihoods and enhance regional water resilience, initiatives like half-moons represent a promising step towards a more resilient future in the face of climate change and desertification.

🙏to our friends @klimadeswandels

This is such a basic, classic permaculture technique that works so well it's insane.

It's spring, and I am honing my observational skills and planning my garden, and I want to share some tips for building these skills in a way that lends itself to practicing permaculture.

When building an ecological mindset, it's essential to start with the practice of simple observation, noticing the plants and animals without making any assumptions or judgements about how the land came to be. It takes a lot of practice, but from then on you can start formulating questions that will lead to a greater understanding of how the land around you is or wants to be.

OBSERVE THE EDGES: If you look at the edge of your yard, or the edge of a sidewalk, you may notice a greater abundance of growth. The edges between biomes are often the most biodiverse because it effectively doubles the amount of species present, but even the edge between grass and concrete, or rocks and flowers, gives a lot of insight into where plants like to grow - is the shade cooling the plants? Is there a dip in the landscaping where water is pooling? Are rocks bolstering the insect population in the area?

OBSERVE THE PIONEER PLANTS: Although "weeds" such as dandelion, kochia, and mallow can and will grow in very poor soil conditions, where they accumulate is still in an indication of soil quality and water retention. If there are no pioneer plants in a given area, could the soil be too rocky? Too compacted? Too polluted?

OBSERVE THE TOPOGRAPHY: Even fairly flat stretches of land have some degree of incline and decline. Are some plants growing more successfully in low areas compared to high areas?

The half moons are for retaining water on gentle slopes, with the flat side pointed uphill. The major function besides water retention is to prevent topsoil erosion by wind and water. They still need about two feet of annual rainfall and some soil fertility to work.

There's a similar method for highly degraded and hardened soil called a 'zaï hole' where one foot deep holes are bored at regular intervals and filled with compost. This, combined with shallow half moon walls built similar to the crescents pictured above provide a low-dig method with broader application and similar results.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Za%C3%AF