Tim Auld : Hey, great to hear! Would you mind sharing the details of how you are improving the soil? Also, your photos would be more accessible if they were reduced before uploading. Cheers and good luck!

Chief Phillip 'Cloudpiler' Landis : The procedure depended on the time and money available. Lots of time, no money. I trimmed the trees up to twelve and fifteen feet. The limbs were placed at the bottom of the berms, whether they were fishscale, circle or just raised beds depended on location and runoff sector map. Molded hay that I acquired from a neighbor went on top of the limbs, then a layer of sand. On the sand went another of hay. Then another of sand and another of hay. Then a top dressing of composted fescue hulls went on top. I know you should leave all this to compost in place, but I put in little pockets of sand and planted melons, squash, beans, potatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes, comfrey, and I placed apple, cherry and gourmi at the driplines of the circle and fishscale berms (they were built around mature oak and hickory trees). The plants did much better than ever I expected. One wintering over, and what you see in the first and second pic is what I have to plant in this spring. What's more, when I reach into the berm, like in the third pic, I can bring up molding, rotting limbs that are just as spongy and wet as can be. This will bode well right around the end of August when our two-week draught hits.