This week we had some wonderful guests from the Moving School join us for Chanting and Planting. 22 students from South Korea and their teachers were eager to help when we met them at Friday night’s Eco Film Club and we suggested they come join us the following morning.
The students arrived bright and early at 7am and they assembled along with 10 enthusiastic Sadhana Forest volunteers by the forest nursery. Together we carried tools, trees and compost made in our composting toilets! We all marched happily into the forest as the sun rose.
We started by building some planting mounds for the trees near our water catchment ponds, or mudpools. The students were divided up into several teams, each with at least one Sadhana Forest volunteer as a Team Leader to guide them in the technique and safe use of the tools. Each team perfected a ‘volcano’-shaped mound ready for a tree to be planted in it. After they were ready we formed a bucket-line to pass buckets of water from person to person from the mud pool. These mounds were filled with water so when the tree is planted there is a good supply of water in the soil.
We left these mounds to soak with water and we moved to some other mounds that had been built a few days earlier. Again, we split into groups and started tree planting! The first stage is to add compost to the soil in the mounds and mix it. This should be 30% compost to 70% soil. The compost we use in the forest is from our composting toilets!! We produce 10-12 tonnes of this manure from our volunteers each year!!
After mixing the compost, we remove the tree very carefully from its sack and place it in the hole in the mound. Then we close in the soil around it and pat the soil down around the tree, completely covering the roots. The top of the mound must be flat so rain water will not erode around the roots and the sides of the mound need to be smooth and sloping so water can run easily down the side into the trench without eroding it.
The last things we did were water the trees and adding mulch. We did this by creating a bucket line to the mud pool again. After this, we spread leaves for mulch on top of the soil around each tree. This creates an organic barrier for any evaporating water and therefore keeps the moisture within the soil.
What a beautiful morning!
