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Hey,

my area is experiencing crazy drought since 2018. i’m from north africa and my area haven’t had any serious rain in the past 7 years or so so what used to be a vast-steppe-like land turned into a desert.

it’s at the point where it’s beyond repair or at least there must be some huge effort to reverse the change or at least to keep it as it is right now and don’t make things worse.

and to make the situation 100x worse. this area is dominated by aleppo pines and we’re losing those in crazy numbers. i keep noticing dead aleppo pines monthly. and whenever i go to the nearby forest there’s just thousands and thousands of dead aleppo pines

most of them are 100 years old around that age.

so to sums up the situation:

• no rain for 7 years
• we lost our ground cover
• desertification the land is now covered by sand
• this year we’re losing our aleppo pines

my original idea was just to diversify as much as i can by planting pistacia atlantica and oak trees. but by the time my trees would be ready it would become 100x worse i’m sure.

so i’m thinking of creative ideas to combat this. my resources are very very limited.

i have access to a lot of pistacia atlantica, oaks, peruvian peppers and carob seeds and tamarisk cuttings

i’m hoping for some sort of idea with direct seeding because that feels like the only option i got for now
but the issue with direct seeding is we aren’t having rain and i can’t spread myself too thin

So I have built a garden in my yard with a pond and I try to use perks I’ll whenever I can (I rent) but as of right now is very limited but my question is how stupid is it to put a sprinkler in the middle of it and water it that way, I know it’s definitely wasteful and I probably won’t do it but I want to know if anybody has anything to say about it.

I have rain water tanks but this would be for when they are empty

I teach at a school for autism and we are having our first raised beds this year. I’m also putting in a couple of new beds at my house. I’ve been making my beds with the bottom 1/3 woody materials (hugel culture style), 1/3 rich forest topsoil and 1/3 compost. I’m planning on using a living soil mixture in biodegradable small grow bags (Similar in size to a plastic 3.5 inch diameter pot) as a control. I teach 2-10th grades science. For one experiment, the independent variable will be adding innoculated bio char and another adding rock dust and a third with bio char and rock dust. So, if I have ten gallons of a base mix of 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 peat moss, how much BioAg, liquid seaweed, liquid fish fert., liquid sea minerals, Bioorganics Mycorrhizal fungi (this won’t be in the mix but put closest to the seeds or roots) and molasses would you recommend? I know many of those you would need to know the concentrations of (none are packaged as concentrated) but can you give me your best guess? Whatever you suggest, I’ll use as a constant for my control. I appreciate any help you can give me. I’ve been studying permaculture principals for over 10 years.