To channelize our inspiration and begin some experiments in different soils, we finally convinced a friend in the Alps to build together with us a small “raised-bed” just on the border of his veggie-garden!
Actually the history of this plot of land is quite interesting too: after several years of free-time agriculture 2 heart attacks and 3 open heart operations, the “hard way”-agriculture wasn’t anymore an option, and a nice coincidence brought him to read some books of Bill Mollison and Masanobu Fukuoka. After an initial “no-will-not-work” phase, he began substituting some of the old patterns with the permaculture’s ones: now it’s a beautiful plot of land!
Here are some photos to document what we did for the raised bed, quite interesting!
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We used a lot of old wood, that was left near the garden, as the heart of the raised bed, quite near a cherry-tree and several privets to provide easy mulch in the next years. Then a lot of fresh branches and some grass covered all, before very little cow-dung was spread on top; a bit of 3 year old compost was then added, to inoculate the bed with thousands of earthworms and a nice pot-pourri of bacteria (both aerobic and anaerobic), fungi & molds of various kinds, yeasts (added sometimes with warm water and a bit of sugar when they forget to make new bread), rotifers and a wide spectrum of other micro-organisms: biodiversity in action! All is then covered with a nice layer of straw…
In a few weeks there will be planted several seedlings and seeds, now here it’s still too cold! But we will be very happy to take few more photos to show how it’s proceeding.
But, be careful: permaculture is contagious! After some work together and showing him the nice results of Sepp Holzer in Tamera, we decided to continue helping him to plan and realize here also a small lake, beginning in the next 2-3 months, to bring more water and life to this beautiful spot!