Gentle Earthworks for Abundance

Go Easy There’s more than one way to shape the land and direct water to your gardens. Most people can’t afford machinery to shape the land and build abundance. So, they usually abandon hope of reshaping their site and work with what is there. Why bother shaping the landscape? We can shape the landscape to: collect surface water when it rains store water in shallow ponds provide water for birds, lizards, frogs encourage beneficial insects improve the soil water the plants prevent erosion and nutrient loss What are our no-dig options? We can use animals (pigs, chickens, guinea pigs) or …

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Compost Lasagne

In our workshop on making a swale without using soil we use compost lasagne along the contour to catch and store water and make new soil. We used lots of layers of old building waste – timber, a bit of biochar, ash, cardboard paper mache, grass clippings and leaves. This gave us a rich Hugelkultur method of creating soil.