guildfordcycads

A big wind flooded my property with dried pine needles and as I started to clean them up this morning I got to thinking.

I am on a shared well that has been down for 5 months and therefore I am buying water by the truckload. It costs me $250 for only 2000 gallons and therefore I do not have much water for irritating my trees.

Normally I would put the pine needles all around my trees for a mulch, but due to living in a very high fire danger area in California, this obviously is not wise.

So my question is; what is wise to use for a mulch? I have about 25 trees on a half of an acre and all of them are too dry right now. I had NO water until last week (five months I was not able to irrigate but twice with the neighbors hose).

I am happy to dig down around the tree areas and fill with a mulch, but what can I use that is not a fire hazard and does not require even more water than the trees need?

Hi hive mind, I’d like your thoughts please.

I’m really passionate about the urgency of repairing topsoil worldwide, since there’s only a few decades of it left if we don’t stop ploughing/fertilising/poisoning and monocropping. Big Ag as we know it must die, right?

Ok. So I’ve got a PDC but no money for land, so I try to join in with local permaculture projects all I can. But it never seems enough. I’m frustrated by the lack of public concern for the ecological crisis, and by my current inability to do more good.

Am I alone in this concern? I guess, not entirely. But I’m committed to spending the rest of my days doing my best to expand healthy soil care, and shine a spotlight on the industrial errors that have brought us to this point. I wish I knew how to be more effective.

I have a large front lawn on a corner lot and I’m wanting to grow a natural fence or border to keep the dogs in the area from walking up into it and leaving me “presents.” I also think it would provide habitat and look much nicer than a large grassy area.

Does anyone have and suggestions for what to use? I live in Mississippi and we often get periods of drought and then excessive rain in heavy soil. I’ve asked my local nursery and they recommended dystillium, which certainly seems to fit my needs. The only issue is that it’s not native. It’s not invasive either but I’d prefer native if I can help it.

Is there a suitable plant or should I go with the dystillium and then use natives inside the border since it’s more of a utility planting? I’ve tried googling but most results are ai generated articles and irrelevant stuff, and most gardening books I’ve seen are not focused on native planting.

soo… did anyone have success growing these around the mediterranean sea? if yes, what did you do to your soil? and where did you place it in terms of sun/light?

We are in Turkey, Aegean Coast, and finally after some years of looking out for it, we got two bushes of European Blueberry. The issue is, they call it “Yaban Mersin” here, “Wild Blueberry”, but they also call myrtus communis “yaban mersin”, of which we now unintendedly have 4 beautiful bushes that are native here and grow well.

But the European Blueberry likes acidic, always wet soil, the opposite of what we have here. so anyways this will just be an experiment, not intended to large scale work against the natural environment.

we’ve got the water, we’ve got horse and chicken manure, we’ve got compost, we’ve got the neutral-to-limey natural soil, sand, we’ve got coffee leftovers, vinegar, we’ve got lots of pines / pine needles / also wood chips of pines or olive/oak/pistaccio/wild pear if helpful..?

how do i artificially build an acidic soil corner, preferrably with natural ingredients?

and should i find a north side shadowy spot? or will the plant not mind getting some serious sun?