Monday, October 18, 2010

Engaging Underground Allies

In the past 3 years Common Vision has worked with GreenFriends to develop a permaculture design the 380-acre property of the MA Center in Castro Valley.

Under the guidance of Dr. Elaine Ingham, expert in soil microlife, we have been working to create a rich soil that functions biologically like a forest soil. Forests have the most complex populations of microorganism dominated by fungi as opposed to grassy hillsides which are have much simpler populations that are primarily bacterial.

By adding over 450 cubic yards of decomposing wood chips, inoculated with a great diversity of microorganisms and fed with fungal foods (like fish and seaweed), we are quickly building a forest-like soil. The result of this bottom-up approach is much healthier trees, deeper penetrating root systems, lower watering needs, and little to no fertilizing needs.

We will keep you abreast of further developments.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Mapping 180 School Orchards

As part of Fruit Tree Tour 2011, Common Vision is expanding our tree care support for school orchards. To get a good picture of the 180 planting sites from 7 years of the tour, we plugged the schools into a Google Map. Here we get a birds eye view of a 4,200-tree orchard spread through the state. It's an interactive map so click around.


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