I live in a place where there is heavy drought as most of the water is used by intensive agriculture and pine tree plantations. Since I come from a region where water is abundant and there is much green, my heart sinks looking at the devastated landscape, it's dusty soil and lifeless plains.

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This is an update of an experimental method I called a "healing circle" which seeks to restore the ecology of the soil. There has been some interesting progress and I'm quite happy with the results that can be appreciated in such a short amount of time.

A lot of the post is shown in GIFs, please be patient while they load :)

As you see, the ground is covered by dry leaves and "ripple-shaped" layers of hay. The idea is that you walk in the leaves and leave the hay alone to decompose, providing nutrients to the soil and preserving the moisture.

This is how the soil looks everywhere outside the circle. It's dry, dusty, compacted and has little to none activity from insects, fungi, and worms. A pretty sterile environment in which few plants can thrive.

After little more than a month you can appreciate the huge change in the soil. It already shows a better structure, it is soft and retains moisture. If you look closely, you'll see there are two little larvas which is a good sign of ecosystemic recovery.

If you noticed at the center of the circle there is a dense green patch. That was where it all started by me placing a few drip irrigators and letting Nature do it's thing. The plant it chose to work the soil out was plantagineum echium, known as purple viper's bugloss. I wrote a post on the plant, check it out here.

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Two other plants have begin growing here as well but I don't know what they are. If you know their names or have a vague idea of what they might be please leave me a comment.

Now that the center has been completely covered by vegetation it has protection from the sun and can thrive pretty much on its own. I do put a little water there from time to time, but I've left it alone for days without consequences.

The drip irrigators were moved to a new lane we can see how its already greening up. Yesterday two tiny mushrooms popped up but today they were gone. Still, it proves that fungi coming back to the soil and that means more nutrients will be available to plants.

Daily activities to make this happen

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Something that is important for me is to use the least amount of effort possible. Usually I don't work more than half hour daily on this, though when I'm inspired I go for a couple of hours. It is more like the drip irrigators, making it grow drop by drop. I do have a daily minimum of work programmed though and it goes like this:

Thank you for reading. Feel free to tell me your ideas on this and whatever you think could be done to improve the results.

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