Pebble Garden

Imagine, creating soil out of nothing.
This is essentially what "Pebble garden" does.
200 million years ago, the land around Auroville was rich tropical forest. Eventually, the British and French came, and settled a small town called "Pondicherry". They had issues with the tigers and elephants, so they cleared an area of 10 kilometers to prevent the animals from coming into their settlement.
However, tropical land and growth is very fragile, and can easily erode. With the monsoons, the topsoil can easily get washed away, and then no plants can grow. This is what happened to the land all around Auroville. From the deforestation, vast desertification was caused.
So now, the land we are left with here is thousands of years of layers washed away, and the result is pebbles. We are in an ancient riverbed.
The only trees that can grow in this terrain are Australian acacias, which somehow got introduced to the area along the way.
The only problem is, we can't eat these trees. So, the folks at Pebble Garden have tried to figure out how to reforest their land, using ONLY materials from that land itself. Otherwise, the 50 million acres of desertified land across India would have to be supplied with soil from elsewhere, and this doesn't solve the problem.
So these people decided to study the land. They noticed that termites are the best example to follow. Termites climb inside trees, and eat the bark. They then produce earth, or soil. So the PB folks used this method essentially, working with what they have:
They took the Australian acacia trees, grew them in flower beds, and as soon as they were grown, cut them down. Then they chopped them into little bits, and soaked them for a day. They then spread a layer of the chopped trees down on their garden bed. (Similar to fallen leaves). They then spread a layer of silt on top, which they collected from ponds they had built. (This layer of silt develops over time from rain and things getting washed into the ponds over time- don't ask me how they figured this out!!) They then repeated this many times, until they had a bed of 9" of shredded trees and silt. Then they let it process for 3 months. (Things in the tropics grow 100 times faster than other places!)
SO, from this process (it is really simple!) Pebble Garden now has an incredibly diverse garden, and they are invested in maintaining traditional crops. They have many different types of eggplant, tomato, and many other crops, which unfortunately are going out of use. This is because the large corporations that want to sell food for profit use mainly GMO, which are resilient to the pesticides that they use. This not only narrows down the type of crop produced, it also harms US. WE put these pesticides into our bodies through the food, and there is no way to time-test the effects of these pesticides. Who knows what could be the outcome of GMO food in 50 years...
Unfortunately, Obama made a deal with India to pass along the US's GMO technology. (NOOO!) So essentially, Pebble Garden is working to fight this monopolization and narrowing of crops, by growing diverse types of crops traditionally grown in India, and distributing 5000 seeds per year to many different farmers. They grow most of their crops for seed.
And imagine.... they began this in 1994 with no soil, and now look at what they are doing! This is truly inspiring.
And the best thing they said was, "Anyone can garden!"