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RE: Greetings! My name is Alex, sustainably living and farming in the Colombian Andes
Looks amazing fellow green thumb...permaculture is such an amazing system...and Wow that is steep! Looking forward to getting to your wonderful country in the future. Followed! :)
We have to be the most careful on the steep slopes, I know areas that have lost entire acres of top soil to erosion because of deforestation. The trees are fighting all that gravity with their roots!
have you ever heard of swales? a system for growing on slopes permaculture based check it out would help alot it sounds like.
Also hugelkultur sounds like another option.
Yes, I will show more pictures in the coming days, but if the slopes are too steep we have to use terraces instead of swales, I'm actually building my first one now :)
awesome follow me and ill start posting some photos of my garden animals plants etc....actually just posted some pics of bee swarms i caught this summer check it out :)
Whats actually faster to make and just as good, are Vetiver system hedgerows. You can really save labour by growing rather than digging terraces
My understanding of hugelkultur is that it's not terribly appropriate in subtropical/tropical environment, as the soil biology/insect life has the ability to break down woody materials exceedingly fast. Tropics Usually have extremely poor soils as most of the nutrients are in the vegetation.
The tera preta soils of the amazon basin consist primarily of bio-char as it has the ability to soak up nutrients and hold them in a soil-like medium without the excessive rainfall leaching nutrients out of the soil. That might be a more appropriate use of permaculture locally (I'm unsure about your rainfall) and bio-char is equally inappropriate here in temperate climates.
Also, I feel like swales are a little over used and misunderstood. That much slope has got to be challenging.
Hugelkultur actually works very well in tropical climates.
Yes decay is faster but so is growth to replace it.
I'm glad to know that. I was under the impression it was less/marginally effective in the tropics. Thanks for that feedback