Illegal dumping area for permaculture project?

A little town is offering me a illegal dumping area for free, I visited the place and it looks awful.

So my question is:

Without moving the soil for collecting rain water, without expending any money and just throwing seed balls… what do you think? What kind of seed will you use to make the seed balls?.


Well at this moment i'm just in phase of acquiring a piece of land. maybe after i get a better place i'll take care of this one as very long term permaculture experience.


Thanks

 

it is very difficult to accept any dump location if you don't know what has
been dumped there. without extensive testing (boreholes, testing water
wells, etc.)... just sounds rather tough to want to take it on.

i would avoid taking ownership of such a place. also, if you are known to
be in that place could you be charged with the pollution found there even
if you don't have ownership? if someone sees you dumping stuff there
yourself.

sorry, i'm a bit paranoid about such things, but cleanup litigation and
expenses can run a person under all too easily.

i'd rather have bare rocks to start with.

the other issues are with how large an area and how much work it
would take to clean it up or to isolate the troubles and correct them.
if the groundwater has been polluted, etc... if it is a large enough area
perhaps only some of it is bad and the rest could be used, but having
pollution underground and possibly moving makes such things tough
too...

what it really looks like is that the small town is looking for someone to
clean up their mess without compensation...

 

The offer was made by the town hall so there will be no problem about the future supposed activities around the area. Well the compensation will be 7 acres of land for free. To clean it up will be more expensive than buy a similar clean plot.

My thinking's the same as yours, but is there any project made or to be made of the similar nature?. I mean I haven't found anything like that yet. Would be possible to regenerate an area like that just throwing seed balls and time?.

Thanks

 

Turns out that there is a solution, it's called Mycoremediation, the process of using fungi to degrade or sequester contaminants in the environment.

Paul Stamets inspired guy.

I asked Paul the way and the cost in money and in time of doing this with or without removing the debris.

Anyway I supposed that the cost will be much higher than buying a clean area.

But i think that we eco-philosophers have to have a parallel project where we can recuperate wastes areas as our charity goal.


Thanks

 

Seems that fungi can be the solution too.
Check out this article from Radical Mycology

https://radicalmycology.com/publications/articles/fungi-the-plastics-problem/

 

Mycorrhizal fungi do wonderous things to polluted land/ water. Our land experienced a house fire, seven years before we purchased it for back taxes (previous owner abandoned the land). I've spent two years spreading fungi and bacteria that deal with the pollutants left by the fire and the cleanup. We have a 12 foot high 30 foot diameter pile of "remains" it includes tar, metals, rubber, and everything else you can imagine. Today the pile is being eaten by the mycelium I've been seeding, the "junk pile" is looking more like a hyphae hill now, lots of threads when you move a brick or concrete block left over, these are even beginning to crumble from the actions of the bacteria and hyphae. It will work, it just takes time for our little friends to do the job of decomposition.

I have not yet actually planted anything on the pile, but lots of side oats and other native grasses have started call the pile home. I expect that in the next four or five years that junk pile will be able to be called a hugel mound. We currently throw lots of organic materials on top of it, scrub trees that we have to remove, grass cuttings, other organic "refuse" it all goes on this pile to give my microscopic buddies a great environment to thrive in and it is working quite well now.

 

Would you share or have you share this experience step by step somewhere?

Did you buy the mycorrhizal fungi or you just produced it?

If you bought it, Where did you buy it? How much you paid?

Did you work the soil for collecting rainwater or for other reasons?

How long do you think is gonna take?

Do you know some web link where somebody have shared an experience like this?

Seems like the permaculture`s design steps have to follow those of the earth. after the keylines comes mycorrhizal fungi then nitrogen fixation legumes rhizobium and then whatever can come, very beautiful.

Now I have to change my own vote.

Thank you for sharing.

 

hau Noosfera,

Mycorrhizal fungi can be purchased from several fungi companies: Fungi Perfecti is probably the leader of that group of businesses.

Depending on how much of your land you want inoculated, you can be well populated in a single year. I make additions every year but then I want all of our land inoculated, when we purchased our place, many areas were already full of mycorrhizae and now most of the main 5 acres is fully inoculated and doing quite well. This is something I don't really "Work" at doing, but when I get ready to develop a new garden plot, I inoculate prior to or at the time of planting.

I make my own inoculant slurries from the many species of fungi that are already on our land. All you need to do is collect some fungi fruits, plop them in a blender or food processor, add some room temp. water and whiz them up, take the resulting slurry and you can pour it directly or you can dilute by half then use the slurry to water where you want the fungi to grow. I add around 40 ml per spot and that is usually around roots I want to help out. If I am making a new bed, once any prep work is completed, I spot inoculate then I'll use inoculant again when I put the plants or seeds into the new bed. You usually only need to do this once, as long as you don't till or dig the whole area up again, your new fungi will go about spreading their hyphae as far and wide as they can.

I've been adding slurries to our farm for the past three years, now the hyphae are just about everywhere you dig. I even add them to our straw bales, all the gardens and of course around every fruit tree and grape vine. My goal is to not have any spot without mycorrhizal fungi on our 15 acres.

We will only do tilling if we are going to be growing root vegetables and since we use the double dig method for those spots, we have to rebuild the soil organisms since we kill them all off in the double dig process. It really doesn't take long to do this but it does need to be done prior to any planting. When we use this method we also add in some ground rotting wood and chopped straw, then we add in 3lbs. of coffee grounds per square foot of surface area, It is after the amendments are in that we will plant and water in with inoculating water. I like this method since it makes sure the fungi are in the same place as the plant roots. I've gotten a raised bed to be full of hyphae in as little as one month and undisturbed plots fully hyphae rich in 3 months just from surface additions of slurry.

 

Very useful information, These hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi are so fragile and so inteligent beings.

Now for the record as I gonna use these forums threads to follow and develop my Permaculture design:

1 To buy a clean piece of land over 5 acres. Around 5000 $ While sanitating the free 7 acres of ilegal dumping plot from the offer of the town hall.

2 To make the topographic plane and rent the bulldozer to dig the area for harvesting raining water, depending of the soil could be 10000 to 15000 $

3 Inaculating mycorrhizal fungi to create the Hyphae, while planting nitrogen fixators legumes with their rhizobiums. No money at all just time.

4 Desing the garden of Eden. No money at all just time.

5 Rest, must be a wonderful life, with plenty of free time, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something ripe to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon.

Thak You for your help Bryant Redhawk

 

Sometimes the government requires you to take responsibility for whatever is there. That could make you responsible for any remediation including water contamination issues that happened long before you bought it.