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In Reply to: It ain't fun trying to keep a 1/3 acre of vegetation from burnin' up. One good thing: lots of posted by tinear on September 17, 2014 at 13:35:38:
Inland SE Australia is not a desert, but it gets very little rain.
Fortunately, after the fires in 2003, there were lots of damaged trees and Canberra has lots of aging street trees planted from the 19teens and onwards.
Using my contacts with arborists I've been able to get quite a few big truck loads for free, and quite a bit some from removing and chipping trees already on the block which were sick. And the big Arizona Cypress that shade-limited our capacity to grow food. So, I've currently got three reserve piles of wood-chip.
I've been planing to use 1-1.5 inch lumps of recycled concrete around the house under the eaves to limit the effect of falling embers. Will still need a visit with the blower-vac twice a year.
Advantages of Mulching with wood-chip, are:
No mowing, which is a good thing for a music listener.
Less watering.
Soil-moisture is better maintained through the hot/dry seasons.
Disadvantages:
Cost? (I've been and will be lucky there) / time / effort.
Tends to wash away in downpours, requiring replacement with barrow-load after barrow-load. This work carries a slight risk from an-aerobic moulds/bacilli that can develop in the mounds.
Mulching with pebbles / recycled concrete? This might heat the soil surface a bit more, yet lets through most of the rain water. But it is NOT cheap and the work is way heavier.
Two other ideas are rain-water tanks off your roof/s. And, grey-water for almost everything other than root crops. Or even processed grey-water.
Warmest
Tim Bailey
Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger
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Follow Ups
- Try mulching the block. - Timbo in Oz 16:34:18 09/17/14 (0)