This is a man-made forest. It can cover acres and acres of area, or it could squeeze a little space -- as small as your house garden. Age of this forest is just two years old. I even have a forest within the backyard of my very own house. It attracts tons of biodiversity.I awaken to the present every morning, sort of a Disney princess. I'm an entrepreneur who facilitates the making of these forests professionally. A forest isn't an isolated piece of land where animals live together. A forest is often an integral part of our urban existence. A forest, for me, could also be an area so dense with trees that you simply can't walk into it. It doesn't matter how big or small they're. Most of the world we sleep in today was the forest. This was before human intervention. Then we built up our cities on those forests, like Sao Paulo, forgetting that we belong to nature also, the maximum amount as 8.4 million other species on the earth. Our habitat stopped being our natural habitat. But not anymore for a few folks.
I'm not a Agricultural Scientist
I'm an industrial engineer. I concentrate on making cars. In my previous job at Toyota, I learned the way to convert natural resources into products. to offer you an example, we'd drip the sap out of a rubber tree, convert it into raw rubber and make a tire of it -- the merchandise. But these products can never become a natural resource again. We separate the weather from nature and convert them into an irreversible state. That's industrial production. Nature, on the other hand, works during the opposite way. The natural system produces by bringing elements together, atom by atom. All-natural products become a natural resource again. this is often something which I learned once I made forest in the backyard of my very own house. And this was the primary time I worked with nature, instead of against it. Since then, we've made 75 such forests in 25 cities across the earth. whenever we work on a replacement place, we discover that every single element needed to form a forest is out there right around us.
All we've to undertake to is to bring these elements together and let nature take over. to form a forest we start with the soil. We touch, feel and even taste it to identify what properties it lacks. If the soil is formed from small particles it becomes compact -- so compact, that water cannot seep in. We mix some local biomass available around, which may help the soil become more porous. Water can now seep in. If the soil can not carry water, we'll mix some more biomass, some water-absorbent material like peat or bagasse, so the soil can hold this water and it stays moist for more time period.
To grows, plants need water, sunlight and nutrition. What if the soil doesn't have any nutrition in it? we do not just add nutrition directly to the soil. that might be the economic way. It goes against nature. We instead add micro organisms to the soil. They produce the nutrients in the soil naturally.
They feed on the biomass we have mixed within the soil, so all they have to do is eat and multiply. And as their number grows, the soil starts breathing again. It becomes alive. We survey the native tree species of this place. How can we decide what's native or not? Well, whatever existed before human intervention is native. that is the simple rule.
We survey a park to hunt out the last remains of a natural forest. We survey the sacred groves or sacred forests around old temples. And if we don't find anything within the least, we attend museums to determine the seeds or wood of trees existing there an extended time ago. We research old paintings, poems and literature from the place, to spot the tree species belonging there.
Once we all know our trees, we divide them into four different layers: shrub layer, sub-tree layer, tree layer and canopy layer. We fix the ratios of each layer, then we decide the percentage of each tree species within the combination. If we are making a fruit forest, we increase the percentage of fruit-bearing trees. it'd be a flowering forest, a forest that attracts a lot of birds or bees, or it could simply be a native, wild evergreen forest. We collect the seeds and germinate saplings out of them. We confirm that trees belonging to the same layer aren't planted next to each other, or they go to fight for the same vertical space once they grow tall.
We plant the saplings on the brink of one another. On the surface, we spread a thick layer of mulch, so when it's hot outside the soil stays moist. When it's cold, frost formation happens only on the mulch, so the soil can still breathe while it's freezing outside. The soil is extremely soft -- so soft, that roots can penetrate it easily, rapidly. Initially, the forest doesn't seem like it's growing, but it's growing under the surface. within the first three months, roots reach a depth of 1 meter.
These roots form a mesh, tightly holding the soil. Microbes and fungi live throughout this network of roots. So if some nutrition isn't available in the vicinity of a tree, these microbes are becoming to get the nutrition to the tree. Whenever it rains, magically, mushrooms appear overnight.
And this suggests the soil below has a healthy fungal network. Once these roots are established, the forest starts growing on the surface. because the forest grows we keep watering it -- for subsequent 2 to 3 years, we water the forest.
we would wish to remain all the water and soil nutrition just for our trees, so we remove the weeds growing on the lowest. As this forest grows. It blocks the daylight. Eventually, the forest becomes so dense that sunlight can't reach the bottom anymore. Weeds cannot grow now, because they have sunlight also. At this stage, every single drop of water that falls into the forest doesn't evaporate back to the atmosphere. This dense forest condenses the moist air and retains its moisture.
We gradually reduce and eventually stop watering the forest. And even without watering, the forest floor stays moist and sometimes even dark. Now, when one leaf falls on this forest floor, it immediately starts decaying. This decayed biomass forms humus, which is food for the forest. because the forest grows, more leaves fall on the surface -- it means more humus is produced, it means more food, therefore, the forest can grow still bigger. And this forest keeps growing exponentially.
Once established, these forests are becoming to regenerate themselves again and again -- probably forever. during a natural forest like this, no management is that the only management. it's a small jungle party. This forest grows as a collective. If equivalent trees -- same species -- would are planted independently, it wouldn't grow so fast. And this is often how we create a 100-year-old forest in only 10 years.
Many Thanks Considerably.
