I read years ago that the local Indians, instead of farming or conventional gardening, would create gardens with the desired plants all mixed together (including trees and bushes). This would create an ecosystem of interdependent crops which would provide food year round.
They're largely abandoned and forgotten, but one can find them having gone wild in various places. They're marked by a marked diversity of flora.
I think there's a bit about that at the end of Seeing Like a State.
Sometimes this is what is meant by permaculture.
What is the normal outcome of these orange peels? Fed to livestock? Mulch? Or just added to landfill?
The results were impressive, but I imagine there were months of rotting orange peels. Which is probably not ideal neighbors, but fine in otherwise barren, uninhabited land.
You don't need to imagine:
>"Kind of passing through this gross stage in between of kind of sludgy stuff filled with fly larvae."
I read about that case years ago, and as a result started composting my biomass garbage, especially the orange peel! I don't generate enough to make a difference, but the local fauna eats most of it. A couple of onions have sprouted in the pile.
I wish they had a picture of this fig tree they mention.
> a fig tree so huge it would take three people wrapping their arms around the trunk to cover the circumference.
No way that grew in 16 years…
Fig trees are incredibly fast growing. They can grow 15 feet in a single year
Very misleading title. Barren soil is barren soil. Desert is a classification based on rainfall. Dumping ground is/was not a desert.
Ok, we've put the barren pasture the article talks about back in the title above.
You could call it a “ecological desert”, but that said, it’s not even the title of TFA, which is more accurate.
Thanks, I wasn't happy with the title either, for what is otherwise a decent article. TFA's title exceeded the HN limit, so I've done what I can.
This article is from 2017