Natural fertility

I believe in using what we've got on our land, to improve the land. Nature is doing that part automatically anyway, through natural processes - which I will demonstrate, shortly. But as stewards, we can help this process along, by taming and stabilising, the features we want to use on the land the most. Rather than remove, dump, poison or burn these resources away: we sequester ours, back into the landscape instead.

 

Nature builds a pot-plant

It's important to make that mental shift in thinking: from this is just rubbish, constantly in my way, and an eyesore - to this is a free resource, replenishing itself naturally and how can I use it? Because this shift in mind, can engage the natural processes your land is already using, to replenish its natural fertility.

Why is this important to recognise? Well, for all the books you can read about gardening strategies, there's only one way nature is going to work on your patch of land. That is through pre-existing natural sequences. You can tweak the landscape, here and there, but if you don't learn to regard what's pre-existing, how can you improve it without inadvertently, working against it?

Our natural fertility isn't that rich here, but we're slowly working on it and noticing the difference.

2006 - the sand pit, pre digital camera days

Click to enlarge

Before we even built on this landscape, ten years ago, there was a pre-exiting system. Our house was destined to be built on the mid-slope, its not the one under construction, on top of the hill. Did you notice, the enormous sandpit on our property though? As a toddler, it was our daughter's favourite play area, when coming to visit the property. It also gave us a flat spot to stand on, and survey what was around us.

This was the lowest point on our property, and its where all the water ran to - as well as receiving run-off, several properties, uphill from us. The sand is silt, dumped from upstream (and our own property) because there was a plug we hadn't learned to recognise yet. This plug of thick foliage and fallen trees, near the boundary of our property, was forcing the water to dump its silt behind it, instead of taking it downstream.

2006 ~ grass growing on the edges of the sandpit

We were fortunate to have this enormous sandpit on our property. Several other properties we had visited on either side, didn't have such features. They had narrow channels where the water flowed in downpours, instead. We didn't think too much about our sandpit, until we moved here though.

It's only when I stumbled across Peter Andrew's book, "Back from the Brink," and his follow up book, "Beyond the Brink," I started to understand how that sandpit had formed. But more importantly, how it could help us improve the landscape, naturally. We had a pre-existing natural feature on the lowest part of our property - a dry, wide, gully bed, that would seasonally fill with water and nutrients. How could we work with that?

Same sandpit, 2016, with a new toddler

Well, its not exactly a sandpit any more, but that's because we've encouraged the natural system which was already working. The strategy was to hold back water, before it actually reached the sandpit, by creating more debris plugs, upstream. Which has since, allowed the grass to move into the sand pit. Now becoming one of David's regular mowing chores.

We're not mowing for the sake of a pretty lawn though. We're mowing to discourage snakes from venturing to the house, but more importantly, we're "using" that natural fertility, where it can help.

Partly filled

Same sandpit, with a slight incision, caused by the 2011 Queensland floods. But we've been assisting, to repair it since. We're filling it with vegetative matter, to create the same plug effect.

Vegetative matter will break down, but it can act like a filter too, catching twigs, which catch even larger ones. When they hit a fallen tree trunk, this filter, really comes into its own. It slows the water flow, catches even more debris, and reduces the erosion. It gradually fills up the channel with silt and debris, instead of carrying it downstream.

 Completely filled with vegetative matter

When David brush-cutted recently, he raked and dumped the vegetative matter, into the water channel. This stuff is growing in such abundance, it helps us to move around the property better, if we manage it. These natural sequences, are only irrigated by the seasonal water flows, which arrive between spring and summer. Mostly summer.

By holding the water back though, we also allow the water to sink into the soil, for longer. Which is why you'll find, this lowest part of our property is always the greenest, and the coolest. This is the epicentre of fertility. All the forces of nature, converge here and transforms our predominantly harsh conditions, into somewhat of an oasis.

So much of an oasis, in fact, it can easily convert into a jungle. Which is why its David's regular summer chore (when the rains arrive) to maintain the paths we use on the gully floor. These paths help us move around with relative ease. But they also help the kangaroos seek safe passage from wandering domestic dogs. They can feed without fear of being spotted from afar. Which is why the mothers will always raise their joey's here.

There's yet another purpose for these paths however. It directs and captures excess water, when it overflows from the channel. Which is why some of the debris cut, are always left on the paths too. Not only does it help keep moisture in the ground longer, but it also acts as a brake, when water comes rushing through. Instead of taking bare ground, it has to pass through the vegetative filter again. These natural resources and systems were already here. We just had to figure out, how to work with them.

I imagine if we were attempting to raise livestock, we'd feel the pressure to have to do something different with this landscape. I believe it can carry animals, but at this point, its predominately native animals, and our single, free-range chicken (Matriarch) above, who get the benefits. Because we don't need the financial pressure or guilt, of having to maintain animals in a system, which is not yet stable enough, to sustain them.

At some point, I hope to introduce herbivores, possibly in the form of goats. Because I would like them to help convert fertility for us. I believe animals are meant as part of the natural sequences we see at work, here, but domestic animals are what we choose to enter the equation. It's up to us to determine when the right time is. Or else we can end up with a pressure load, the land cannot maintain. Resulting in selling off livestock, or spending money on buying external inputs to keep them.

In the meantime though, we continue our work on the gully floor - learning to appreciate where nature is directing the cues. Such as, a small tree, fallen across the water channel, and into a lantana thicket. It grew successfully, but then one day, just fell over.

This is the origins of how plugs, naturally end up in the water channel. We did not orchestrate this feature. Nature decided its form. You can see the silt which has built up over the years, and made the water channel, barely noticeable. The trees upper branches (not visible in the picture) are what's helping to plug the channel.

It's shallower here, than down stream. This shallower depression makes it easier to cross the channel, to the other side of our property. The wildlife uses it too. So nature builds multi-purpose, species neutral, features, to ultimately benefit the landscape.

Even further upstream, the vegetative barrier which has built-up, by the force of water, shows the natural filter at work too. It slows the water down, dumps nutrients and debris from upstream, and makes it available for plants to feed from. We can then cut down that fast growing, vegetative matter again, and so on and so forth.  But here's what it looks like, just a few meters, upstream, from this debris pile.

Green grass, is growing on the nearly filled-in with silt, water channel. It's almost flat ground now. In fact, this is where the water will spill over the edges, on both sides, when the flow is too much for the almost non-existent channel.

This area has not been irrigated by us. Its purely maintained by natural rainfall, which I have to say, has not been as impressive as other years. Yet we still have green grass. Which cannot be said for the slopes, higher up.

New toddler enjoying a new sandpit. This is the remnants of our sandpit now. Only, due to all the biological plugs we've encouraged along the spanse of our water channel, its migrated to the opposite end of the property now. That former sandpit you saw at the very beginning, has been choked out with vegetation. The only reason we have a sandpit, at the very border of our neighbour's upstream property, is because they don't utilise the same plugs we do. So we get all the silt from all the upstream properties.

At the edge of our upstream, neighbours property

There's a completely different story, for the downstream neighbouring properties, from us, who have benefited directly from our plugs. There are no sand pits downstream, only extremely green grass, which we quite envy. Only because the slopes which encroach on our narrow gully floor, widens up for them. It's like the delta, where fresh water meets the ocean. The nutrients have accumulated and been release into a wider pool. So everything flourishes on a wider scale.

But you have to work with what you've got, and that's what we continue to do.

 

2006

 2016

I have more to share about capturing natural fertility on your property. If you're not recognising you have it, then observe where water flows on your landscape. That will give you some clues to start from. Because there's always more to observe, than meets the eye.