Sunseed Desert Technology
Sunseed Desert Technology is a Spanish association which focuses on living sustainably in an off-grid village in a semi-arid environment. Our Organic Gardens and Drylands Restoration departments run since more than 30 years to experiment practices to improve ecosystem functioning.
Description
Sunseed Desert Technology was founded in one of the most arid places in Spain, with the mission of identifying and disseminating ways to recover degraded, semi-arid lands and help people living in those areas.
Today, we are a non-formal education project for the social ecological transition in Andalucía, southern Spain. With more than 35 years of play, work, research, learning and experimenting, we aim to inspire and involve people from around the world to join the movement towards a culture of people and planet care.
We do this by focusing on different departments: Sustainable living, Appropriate technologies, Ecomaintenance, Administration, Communication, Education, and the ones most connected to soil, Organic gardens and Drylands restoration. Drylands restoration department takes care of restoring the ecosystem functions in the 26 hectares of land owned by the association, which have the potential to spread positive effects to the surrounding land. This department also focuses on the observation of the surrounding ecosystem in order to understand its functioning and to learn and experiment techniques to support it. Some of the activities in this department are:
- Revegetation with local plant species from wild harvested seeds that are stored in a small seed bank
- Prevention and management of soil erosion and runoff through earthworks
- Humanure management and composting
- Education on land restoration, circularity of resources and ecosystem functioning through workshops and courses
Organic gardens department focuses on growing fresh fruit and vegetables for the community hosted within the association, but is also a learning platform for growing rich soil, improving the nutrient cycles, playing with nature rather than against it and gardening with low technologies at the same time as we optimise the circularity of resources.
Some of the activities of this department are:
- Apply techniques such as companion planting and crop rotation to improve soil health and maximise yield.
- Prepare and maintain garden beds and compost heaps.
- Manage a garden nursery and adopt a systematic methodology to ensure species are grown according to the local conditions and needs of the community.
- Maintain and monitor tree and crop health. Use organic methods to overcome outbreaks of disease and control pests.
- Trial and develop improved schedules for irrigation and planting.
Website: https://www.sunseed.org.uk/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@SunseedDesertTechnology/videos