Regenerating soil AND growing food

The land where I live has been exploited and badly damaged over many decades. The most noticeable impact is caused by the huge Eucalyptus and abundant Wattle that are overcrowding the area, dehydrating the soil, blocking the sunlight and limiting biodiversity. These plants were brought here for the vast monoculture  plantations that surround us- as a replacement for the indigenous old-grow woods when they became highly endangered due to over harvesting and deforestation.
Eucalyptus, Pine and Wattle are not from this country nor region, and our local flora and fauna cannot thrive here- they create a very limited ecosystem and wreak havoc on the natural ecosystem services that our unique endemic forests provide.

But, with the right tools and resources, they can become a blessing! With a chainsaw and a chipper, we are able to turn biomass into compost which we use in our indigenous tree nursery, in our food gardens and in our agroforestry systems to improve the soil. While clearing these unsuited species, we are converting them into fertility for a more appropriate, indigenous reforestation project. We mix the shredded greens from fresh wattle leaves with the wood chip from trunks and branches to create compost. We are fortunate to have the manure from a neighbour´s horses, as well as our own chicken manure and bedding, and vermicompostas, woodash, as additional amendments to improve the compost we make.

This week we began work on our new potato plot, which will become a future agroforestry system in a few months - when the tree-planting season starts.
The soil here is badly degraded, it is very compacted and contains almost no organic matter. Water doesn´t infiltrate well and I´ve observed that it has an "oily" tendency that appears to repel water!
We first had to break the soil with a pick and hoes, then we laid out the paths we would use and mulched them with woodchip, so as not to recompact the soil by walking over it again. Then we shaped the soil using hoes, into raised mounds and trenches.
We filled the shallow trenches with horse manure, covered with  a thick later of woodchips, which we then covered with straw.
In each mound we planted potatoes, and a line of buckwheat and some lentils and mustard on the tops of the mounds. We mulched the mounds lightly, until the buckwheat and lentils will act as a living mulch.

So far, the system is working well, we haven´t had to irrigate much, as the ditches full of organic matter and mulch are holding moisture well! As the the plants grow, through their photosynthesis process and  root exudates, with the extra organic matter (carbon) and manure (nitrogen) it provide food, habitat and moisture for the soil food web - I look forward to seeing an improvement in the soil quality. 

I look forward to harvesting the potatoes from a more fertile soil than they were planted into!

by Kate Curtis, South Africa, Trainer and Coordinator of the Soil4Life Manifesto