In the wicking beds, eggplants are still producing, having survived right through summer. Two perennial spinaches, Ceylon and Brazil, are thriving. These gardens are proving themselves as the most efficient watering system. Wicking beds are inexpensive to produce. The process starts with a used bulk liquid container, which is cut in half, frame and all, with an angle grinder. This provides two wicking beds at the perfect size, as well as a support frame. A piece of plumbing pipe is either … [Read more...]
Touring a Local Permaculture Site in the Desert
Hayal is another local permaculturist who has a fantastic home garden stuffed with examples of permaculture techniques suitable for the region. There’s a chicken tractor and even some milking sheep in the mix. Bee hives have been put in for pollination and honey-production. Wicking beds are producing well, and many rows of vegetables are growing beneath a shade house. The system is young, only three months, but there is already production. Some fruit trees, like date palms, have been growing … [Read more...]
A Garden is an Education
Jawaseri is the closest school to the Greening the Desert site, and it has one of the four school gardens the project sponsors. A shade house shelters a full garden, and there are wicking beds, as well as a young food forest. The gardens in the shade house are sunken beds with raised foot paths to maximize the water absorption into the plots. The soil has been dressed, loosening up with stones removed, and compost has been added. Hay mulch is used to maximize water-efficiency. The project is … [Read more...]
Where There Was No Food, Food Now Grows!
This is the 'domino effect' of the Greening the Desert project in Jordan, a healthy, affordable, and easily understood permaculture design that can be replicated, anywhere. … [Read more...]
The First Rainfall of the Season
The first rainfall of the season comes in grandiose fashion. Just after a dust storm blows past, a thunderstorm erupts across the desert. This is how it usually happens (dust storm then rain), and this signals the official start of the cooler season. At the Greening the Desert site, the event feels increasingly serious. Tents are collapsed, others blown over. Trees in the food forest go down, a tank blows off the rooftop, and a shade house topples. Everything is very wet, with water pouring into … [Read more...]
Amptee’s Olives Processing at the “Greening the Desert” Sequel Site (Jordan)
My mother-in-law, Amptee, is a very traditional Jordanian woman, having lived on and from the desert land all her life, and is a wealth of knowledge that has been passed on from generation to generation. The olive is a very traditional part of the Jordan diet and culture, as it has for 1000s of years. In fact, not far from our site there are olive trees that are more than 2000 years old and still fruiting well. … [Read more...]
Wadi Mukheris and the Wonder of Gabions (Jordan)
The year 1999 was a busy one, with the potential of Y2K and “the end of world as we know it”, with the threat of computers failing as the clocks trip over the year 2000 at start of the new millennium. For part of the year I was working as the lead permaculture consultant with a team in Louisiana, USA, on an ex-army ammunition manufacturing plant re-design into an eco-industrial park. We taught many PDCs to locals. For part of the year I was working in Macedonia after the Kosovo crisis as the … [Read more...]
Rough, Ready, But Very Real – a November 2013 Update on the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project (aka ‘Greening the Desert – the Sequel’ Site)
Project from above, featuring a garbage-accumulating fence edge Well, you would be hard pressed to find a tougher block of land -- a 400m below sea level, West facing slope, in an extremely hot, arid climate, with extremely poor, shallow highly alkaline top 'soil', covered in rocks, with a limited water supply and in a mostly Palestinian refugee-populated village. When we first started working on the site local farmers thought it was just ridiculous to even try to produce any kind of result on … [Read more...]
Jordan Valley Permaculture Project – November 2010 Update
The Jordan Valley Permaculture Project (aka 'Greening the Desert - the Sequel') in Al Jawaseri in the Dead Sea Valley (lowest place on earth), continues to develop as we gradually fund the project into action with our own permaculture education programs, volunteers and funding from Muslim Aid Australia and Kids are Sweet of Wisconsin, USA. The male and female shower and compost toilet block is now reaching completion using a basic faralone design system (PDF, with others composting toilet … [Read more...]
