Hi All While this is not my own property I am heavily involved with it's set up and development. The idea is to develop a new income producing system based on sustainable organic permaculture systems and developing a new business which will sustain the two families living on the site. The two areas currently under development are; 1. A dam connected swale zone for the development of a food forest producing family and excess tradable food. 2. A home based business producing boutique soil improver's including biochar made using my Bazman Rumbler Gasifiers. This starting ground work has just been completed (10/2014) I hope to bring you more of this project as it develops. The below link to my blog hosts a slide show of the project. https://www.biochar.net/the-earth-haven-project/ The dam connected five swale system over the roughly 3000m2 North/East facing slope was completed using a common farm tractor, grader blade, ripper, dumpy level, bamboo pegs, rake, shovel, 2 days and 2 blokes. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. Kind regards Baz PS During all the earth works completed I did not uncover one single earth worm so I am keen to see how this site's soil biota improves over time.
No earth worms at all? Scary…. I always wonder how they come back to a site. How long can the eggs lay dormant? Or do lazy birds drop them as they fly over head? Nice pics by the way...
We will bring in beneficial biota including suitable earth worms. Local earth worms will also turn up over time. Up to 6 months I think.
Do keep up updated - I'm interested to see how it evolves over time. BTW got this today from the Nutritech people. Might be worth a try? How to make your own EM super brew at home.
Looks good Baz! Is your soil dry? When I moved here the soil was bone dry and any earthworms were well hidden in the tree roots. After a year of drip irrigation and mulch, they are now abundant. Do they go dormant somehow??
if you have earthworms in tree roots then they can spread back into the wider area when conditions improve (as you've seen). of course, how fast this can happen is based upon species, how fast it reproduces, etc. my "native" garden soil in some of the gardens is a fairly large percentage of clay and sand, so when those are turned into raised beds (which i have to do to avoid temporary flooding) it makes them very inhospitable to most worms. as i continue to amend the soil with organic materials and also innoculate with a mix of worm species the worm populations are gradually recovering. when you add worms, it is best to add worm cocoons because the adults are adapted to the soils where they are raised. the worm cocoons will hatch small worms which will be more adapted to where they are placed.
[BTW got this today from the Nutritech people. Might be worth a try? How to make your own EM super brew at home.[/QUOTE] Beauty more EM "Discussion"
Hi Bazman, I can't seem to access your biochar.net website past the homepage using both Chrome and Firefox, and I'm interested in the Bazman Rumbler. Any suggestions? thanks, JBN