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How He Turned Desert Sand Into Fertile Farm Land In 3 Months!
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How He Turned Desert Sand Into Fertile Farm Land In 3 Months!



John Graham is a specialist in desert farming who has taught hundreds of farmers how to run profitable organic farms. He has 30 years experience creating farms out of arid sand in Mexico’s desert region of Baja California, successfully transforming sand into fertile soil to cultivate a large variety of vegetables. He worked for many years as an organic farm inspector and co-founded Baja’s organic market that’s been running for two decades.

John’s home garden is a highly abundant paradise of fruits and vegetables and although he has been in a wheelchair for 25 years after a road accident, he has constructed a system of ramps and paths all around his property so he can access his incredible garden.

John is currently helping a local co-operative of farmers on a new farm producing organic food for the local market, restaurants and a delivery service. @LeafofLifeWorld met up with John to find out about the techniques he uses to transform desert sand into fertile soil, as well the different methods he uses instead of chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.

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music by LiQWYD

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this Farm is using a special technique to transform desert sand into productive soil it’s gr 60 different crops it doesn’t use any chemicals or machines and it’s all a work of one man and his students and to make this story even more incredible that man has been in a wheelchair for the last 25 years this soil used to be the worst soil you could imagine and over the years it’s it’s highly fertile you don’t need chemicals I’m here to tell the world that you don’t need chemicals to grow food this is the home farm and garden of John Graham he’s a specialist in desert farming who uses a special method to turn desert sand into highly fertile soil and he is one of the pioneers of the organic food movement if you’ve ever bought organic food in the US or Canada or anywhere else for that matter it’s partly because of him really The Cutting Edge is working with nature understanding the soil people are accustomed what they consider cheap food but it’s not cheap I think it’s just super important to learn how to grow food John Graham lives in the desert region of Baja California in Mexico it receives between 4 to 6 in of rain a year and the temperatures can reach as high as 40° C in the summer the climate is dry and mostly subtropical the southern most Parts being tropical although rainfall is low the Pacific Ocean provides some humidity and moderates the temperature in this episode we had the rare privilege to meet one of the world’s top desert farmers who has years of experience transforming lifeless Sandy arid desert land into extremely fertile farmland and he does it all by applying several special techniques which are considered some of the most productive ways to grow food that’s also far more nutritious and tastes a lot better than conventional farming methods and it all comes down to a few simple steps that include a modified gardening tool organic alternatives to pest control and how his soil is prepared all of which we’re going to learn about today so John is taking us to his new Farm to show us what they’re growing there and to explain the special techniques they’re using to turn the desert green I’m uh working with a new gardening project here we have about 2 and 1/2 acres about 1 hectare of land we started about 3 months ago and we’re growing food for the local market I’m working with a crew of five people basically trying to fill up this piece of land right now with just all kinds of different vegetable crops we have probably 60 different things planted right now and we’ll we’ll get up to probably 80 during the winter we’re trying to work without machines we don’t have any tractors or roota tillers it’s all hand labor we’re not like anti- trctor or anti machines it’s just a more productive way of managing a small farm so these are the the gardeners here this is Rosie has a number of years of experience as a gardener she’s a world class Gardener this is Tanya Tanya has a stand at the farmers market and she makes a like a prepared food and so we’re growing all the things that she’ll use in her Farmers Market stand here in the the garden Carmen has worked for me for over 20 years and she she’s a key part of this garden and then Alexis is a young fellow that’s learning the the art of gardening we started a uh local organic farmers market here over 20 years ago it’s been going ever since it’s all about local production and talent you know that what what uh talents we have in the community of people that live here we just basically opened up the place and and uh it grew like people and vendors kind of grew [Music] together at John’s house there is food growing everywhere it is the headquarters for his farming operations there is a seed bank to collect and store seeds there is a specially designed plant nursery and it’s where food is prepared for market and deliveries the entire property has been adapted with a system of Pathways and ramps so that John can access everything in a wheelchair we produce all of the the seedlings for the big Garden Here We Grow them in these flats and that just gives us control we can control you know how many plants are being planted out opposed to direct seeding in the garden you know that can be kind of risky so this just improves the odds and we plant continuously like every week we’re planting new things we use a drip irrigation and it’s really in this climate in the dry the Sandy uh soil the dry climate it’s really ideal system we use Organic pesticides like pyrum a crysanthemum flow pesticide also neem these trees here are neem and the seeds that make a biological pesticide and then soap we’ll use like agricultural soap and those are the main three things that we use but we also we’re observant to any kind of diseases or if we have a problem we’ll Rogue the plants out and plant a new healthier plant so we’re constantly monitoring the garden to try to take care of pest problems you know as they occur before they get out of hand that’s really the kind of the key now another thing we do in the garden is we don’t have any kind of monocropping it’s all mixed up the bed might be 50 m long and have 20 different crops in it you know so by having a constant change there’s not like one whole area that’s susceptible to one pest it’s very Diversified and we kind of minimize the pest Problems by doing that we have about 80 different vegetables and herbs there’s not a huge risk in failing you know when you have 80 different crops if one of them doesn’t work out that’s no big deal most people people especially people beginning and gardening worry too much about insects I think at least half of the insects are beneficial so it’s a matter of encouraging the right mix of life in your garden like yellow flowers attract certain beneficial insects or they draw insects that instead of attacking you know your garden crops they they focus on the yellow flowers They’re distracted or uh like B for example is very aromatic and crops like that can repel certain insects but there’s also something else that makes John’s farming so productive and able to change unfertile desert sand into highly productive soil and it to comes down to a special technique he learns on a trip to England from the methods of an inspirational organic gardening Pioneer Alan Chadwick was an Englishman a Master Gardener who inspired many young gardeners back in the 60s he a very eccentric Gardener but he started the whole French intensive biodynamic gardening a movement you might say and I was fortunate enough to uh in England in at Emerson College to study under his disciples so I learned the Deep bed gardening method sometimes called double digging or trenching and that’s kind of our in a nutshell that’s our style of gardening the gardening beds are cultivated every two or 3 years we dig them and they’re like say over 2 ft deep cultivated and then we never walk on them there’s never any compaction the beds are permanent they’re in continuous production so when one crop goes out we put another one in and we try to maintain something growing in the beds all year round we use two tools so we use a gardening spade and a gardening fork and we dig and loosen the ground around with those two tools up to 2 ft deep and then on the very top layer we make a very fine kind of a very fine surface so we can plant into that for cultivating the beds we use a version of what’s called a broad Fork which is a wide Implement that has spikes in it with long handles and you push it into the ground and pull it backwards and it loosens up the soil without uh inverting it or or turning it over so what we’ve done is we’ve modified the broad Fork by making machete blades a series of 18in Machete blades like I think we have eight of them on the frame and uh with our light and Sandy soils that’s we’re able to penetrate the soil and pull that back so we just get more depth you know soil has its own Universe of life and there are different levels and what’s called soil structure and uh we don’t want to disturb that in modern agriculture we do we turn it over but what we’re doing is we’re kind of killing back the life in the soil and then adding fertilizers or the nutrients that plant needs and the whole idea of loosening the soil without inverting it is to maintain the soil structure but introducing air and where air goes uh water can go so it just opens up the drainage and the Iration of the soil and it it makes an environment that Roots can penetrate into that soil and one of the concepts of organic agriculture is the soil feeds the plant we don’t feed plants we we take care of the soil and the soil takes care of the plant that’s the concept in order to raise the fertility of the sandy soil John and the team are continually adding special ingredients to build up the life in the earth which includes a recently discovered method used by ancient civilizations in the Amazon we use compost compost is just an allaround good thing for for soil especially here because we have very sandy soil with low organic matter and so the compost raises the organic matter scientists used to think that the Amazon was unpopulated before the Europeans arrived that turns out not to be the case it turns out that the Amazon basin was densely populated and along the rivers and tributaries of the Amazon they found very rich black dark soil in Portuguese they call it Tera Preta it turns out that this is man-made soil it isn’t a naturally occurring soil part of that was using charcoal in the soil the charcoal which they call biochar the charcoal is the Char part but the bio is it’s inoculated with beneficial organisms and charcoal has an amazing amount of pore space if you look at it under a microscope it’s just full of pores and so the charcoal can absorb beneficial nutrients and and keep them in the soil for a long periods of time the carbon doesn’t break down beyond the charcoal it’s pretty much a permanent thing in the soil it also absorbs several times its weight in water and so it helps retain moisture in the soil the only difference between charcoal and biochar is the bio so we grind up the charcoal and add it to compost in producing the biochar end product of that or a byproduct is Ash so we also use the ash in the compost because it’s basically minerals it’s just the minerals that are left over from the burning but we also use it in the garden as an ant control ants don’t like ashes we found that you can sprinkle ashes around plants that are attacked by ants but it has to be dry once it’s wet it doesn’t function in that regard this soil used to be the worst soil you could imagine and over the years it’s it’s highly fertile well I was in a traffic accident driving up to the states uh probably I don’t know 25 years ago and the car rolled and I was luckily the only person that was injured but I broke my back and so I’ve been in a wheelchair since then and you know everyone thought I couldn’t really survive in Mexico and they just wanted me to stay up in the United States but I couldn’t stand that idea so I uh came back and just started here at my house just building ramps so I could get myself around and kind of see what’s going on and I just just never tried to let it be or let me put it this way be as little a limitation as possible I Tred to do everything I can for myself you know without asking for help I just don’t try to think about it too much I have to you know every day you know one time or another but uh I try not to let it slow me down too much I guess my many maybe an example to others that are you know have disability ities try to do as much as you can for yourself well people are accustomed to what they consider cheap food but it’s not cheap if you consider the contamination of the groundwater the air all the resources all the subsidies just a whole mechanized Market that is geared toward these production Farms there’s huge costs involved in that that are unaccounted for particularly the environmental cost you don’t need chemicals I’m here to tell the world that you don’t need chemicals to grow food I know for a fact that you don’t The Cutting Edge is working with nature understanding the soil the plants what makes them tick we need to learn a new way and the new way is really not so new but it’s uh becoming a aware of what we can do and what we can accomplish by really understanding uh nature in new ways

34 Comments

  2. @user-hx2hl1zw3w

    I don't know how you started this but I sure hope you started growing weeds, and not straight into cultivation?

  8. @cartmanrlsusall

    I like the intent behind this but the rhetoric is nonsense he is still using chemicals just processed in a different way. Organic is a very abused term

  10. @oldies8710

    I solved my aphid problem with 4 mustard plants and a bucket of water.
    plant a mustard on each corner of garden. let it grow, it will outgrow most all plants. as it gets flower shoots all the emerging aphids will congregate on the tender flower shoots, clip these and plinge into the big bucket of water, problem solved.

  15. @cathrynmartin4395

    Love the idea, but one should read The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming by Masanobu Fukuoka. He also believes in more labor intensive farming/gardening, but the big difference is NOT DISTURBING THE ACTUAL SOIL! Cover the ground with straw or grow a cover crop (clover or something similar) and DISC IT. No actual "scratching the soil" as that releases too much of the few nutrients in marginal soil (like desert). Discing straw or cover crop allows the material to break down more easily, but that cover also keeps the moisture – what little there is in desert land – IN the soil (scraping the soil around plants releases that valuable moisture to the atmosphere) Swales around trees to capture the small amount of rain helps, too…just sayin' there are many ways to bring marginal land back to productive.

  21. @Nillominati

    He's the real life Capt. Planet. We need millions, if not, billions like that amazing man! God bless you, sir.

  22. @vljkck

    Your video is very nice, it is interesting, informative and a feel good story. I would just allow myself to suggest two things, that may benefit whole watching experience: ditch the background music and consider someone else for naration. I understood the farmer much better then you (you are understandable, but not equally pleasant for ears, especially with added background sounds). Generally, you will not hear such sounds and music added in high quality productions. It's more of a trend and cheap trick to elevate viewing experience on social networks and you tube. More often than not it is just a reason people get annoyed with content and move on to next video. In you tube shorts, it is somewhat bearable, but not in other, longer forms.
    Your video has excellent story, make that a centerpiece! Artificial sounding naration and edgy music background threat to ruin your worthy effort. I speak with the best of intentions and hope you will see it in such way. At least consider it, or ask someone whose opinion you hold in high regard, if they might share the sentiment.
    Best wishes and keep the great work!

  25. @clarestucki5151

    Everybody knows an irrigated desert is the very best and most productive place to grow food. The only problem is finding the water to do it!

  28. @BCK00318

    I was so interested in watching this video but your background music is so distracting- I don't ever leave negative comments but the music choice is so terrible for this one, what a shame :/

  30. @user-qi2vi7mm9q

    What about rocks? My parent’s property is in Tonopah, AZ and is rocky, sandy dirt that everything dies in.

  31. @LupusMechanicus

    99% sure you absolutely need chemicals to grow food. What does this wheelchair bound invalid think bio available nitrogen potassium and phosphorous are? I wonder if he puts di-hydrogen monoxide on his plants?

  32. @berndtherrenvolk1951

    It’s astounding that people think that there is much new in this form of farming. People may not have known the intimate, microgeology, and microbiology, but they knew what did and didn’t work. I’m 70 years old and people still knew all this when I was young. It’s only when people stopped going their own food and began relying on commercial agribusiness to grow all their food the issue of pesticides, chemical, fertilizers, etc., have become huge problems.

  34. @user-by2ml8qx8r

    Pertanian organik, bebas pestisida, bebas polutan hasil tanaman sayuran sangat SEHAT. Tuhan YESUS memberkati, Amin

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