Good Evening Steemians! I thought i'd try posting some content from my phone this time, as an alternative to those heavier carefully thought over and sweating over the grammar posts
I want to share with you some of the plants at our demonstration site as though theyre quite familiar to us i've come to realise they arent so common elsewhere
We are in Lombok, Indonesia. Its the Island next east of Bali and we are in the extreme south east. We have a demonstration plot in some damaged forest where we are trying out some techniques to rehabilitate the site and the economy
This Tree is amazing. Sesbania grandiflora , here its called Kentujur or Turi, in India its Agathi, and in English the Hummingbird tree
It has edible flowers, leaves, it grows super fast and we can use the wood poles for roofing support timbers in building after 3 years, which makes it faster to mature than bamboo
Cut wood is soaked in the sea by the mangroves for a month and the salt makes the wood unattractive to borers.
Can you believe these trees were planted only 5 and a half months ago from a 10cm seedling.
We pulled out 500 of these from around established trees in a nearby garden, we wrapped them in wet banana leaves and transplanted to this site.
Many are flowering already and some are over my head (>6 feet)
Kentujur can do this because it has bacteria living on its roots that may pull up to 500kg of nitrogen fertiliser from the air per Hectare planted to this tree
We are pairing it up with vetiver grass on the contour to create a soil stabilising and mulch producing partnership
The Kentujur feeds the Vetiver grass the nitrogen it needs to stay productive, which is cut to mulch our fruit trees like Mango, Citrus and Acerola.
Eventually when its all established we'd like some sheep and then this tree and the grass will be the food supply for the animals.
A diet of 75% Vetiver and 25% Kentujur will support our animals.
We transplanted 500 trees and about 300 survived. This december we want to plant another 2000 plus direct seed some more. No special treatment needed just plant it.
This photo was taken at the wrong time but it shows one i planted in nearby Sumbawa 1 year ago. Its so tall. And this is growing in pure sand, almost no water, super salty and poor soil, 35 C heat , and just a little compost
Im the dry season where there can be 7 months of no rain, it just drops its leaves and waits.as soon as rain returns it springs back to life.
Kentujur really is one of my favourite pioneer plants for the Tropics