Chookie wrote:
In article ,
pete wrote:


Almost all of the info is negative and depressing and virtually states
that we are doomed to be swallowed up by mountains of salt unless we do
something ... the trouble is I can't actually find anyone who IS doing
anything other than devising yet another model or salt map for continued
monitoring ...of course all at great expense in the form of grant
money which ultimately gets passed onto the public in the form of levies
and surcharges.

My question is this .... does anyone know of any information on the net
which shows positive results from methods which can be applied by the
everyday person ?.


I posted about this last year:

Chookie Nov 1 2004, 9:33 pm
Newsgroups: alt.permaculture
From: Chookie - Find messages by this author
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 21:33:39 +1100
Local: Mon,Nov 1 2004 9:33 pm
Subject: Permie Practices Take Over WA

We did a bit of travelling in the Wertern Australian wheat belt a few weeks
ago (did a circuit from York to Corrigin to Wickepin to Narrogin, then across
to Mandurah and Perth) and were interested to see permie things taking root,
so to speak, on broadacre farms.

There is a new (and plainly recent) fad for swales, belts of natives, and I
even saw something that looked suspiciously like alley cropping -- single rows
of trees with wheat belts one harvester wide planted between them. It's very
odd to come upon all this hippie stuff in Ironbar Tuckey country!

The reason, we discovered, was salination. The wheat belt was originally
forest, and clearing and planting to wheat has raised the water table to such
an extent that low-lying patches are visibly swampy and infertile (they are
evil-looking brown areas, like something out of the Lord of the Rings). The
remedial work, familiar to anyone who's read any permie stuff, is working, and
is working quickly, too. The problem isn't gone yet, but there has been a
noticeable improvement, and the locals are hopeful that they can produce grain
sustainably over the long term.

Thought you'd all like to know. WA is viewed by most Easterners as populated
almost entirely by racists and conmen who believe anything that moves should
be hunted down and anything that doesn't should be chopped down or dug up.
Plainly, it is not!

Fanks Chookie ...I stand somewhat corrected, as I said before though I
see many initiatives taken up by farmers and larger properties and they
seem to be working well, trouble is things like alley cropping although
great in the right situation don't really have much in common with me
growing a few veg for home use.

I love the swales idea and thats one that I can use, at the moment I'm
pretty intent on getting some actual soil that will support life cos
it's great having a swale and planting on the up or downside of it but
that soil has to be able to grow something .... so thats where I'm at
....making some real soil so that when I do dig down I don't just fall
into a quicksand pit.

Thanks for that info it really is great to see farmers doing all this stuff.

Pete