We tell you more about the sowing we do in the Sierra de Los Guajares. At the end of January we sowed orthodox seeds (small seeds) of mastic, aladern, carob and broom. The success of these sowings has been scarce, only a few seedlings have come to life.
Our hypothesis is that this is due to the heavy rainfall and the lack of vegetation to retain and infiltrate the rain into the soil. There have been 2 months of rain since we sowed. This caused a lot of surface water to run down the slopes of the mountains, due to the lack of vegetation to slow down the fall of the drop, which produced a continuous dragging of the soil. In the subsequent revision we have made, we took this photo, in which we can see that the lower part has retained soil, between 1 and 2 centimetres. This leads us to think that the soil has been dragged down, the seedlings are gradually digging themselves up, and that from the time we sowed until we carried out the inspection, 1 to 2 centimetres of soil may have been lost due to this dragging down by the rain. We believe that this is one of the causes for the lack of germination. The seeds that were buried between 0.5 and 1 centimetre were gradually washed away by the water. The small tree pits that we made when we sowed were practically destroyed, they were difficult to find, they had been smoothed in the direction of the slope, so the seed that was inside would also have been washed away. We only found carob seedlings growing, which is a larger seed than the others and was sown 2 – 3 centimetres deep.
