permaculture

[Michael Pilarski <friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com>]

The biggest hugelkulture I have ever seen was near the Bullock's property on 
Orcas island.  The owners had cleared an acre or so of land and had big piles 
of logs.  I don't know the whole sequence of activities as I was not there,  
but the finished product was that the big slash piles of logs were piled up 
and buried with soil on top.  The area was large and the mound was perhaps 20 
feet thick.  

The 2nd biggest hugelkulture I have seen was at Wise Earth community outside 
of Seattle Washington.  Albert Postema, the land owner, runs a heavy 
equipment business specializing in green septic systems. Albert had 
stockpiled a lot of big logs and stumps over the years and made a 
hugelkullture hundreds of feet long and about 15 feet high.  it incorporated 
many dump truck loads of manure and was topped up with soil.  We planted an 
orchard, etc on the top and sides of the hugelkulture.  After two years there 
were still blowholes of steam coming out of the top.  

Sepp Holzer makes big hugelkultures also.  Basically, the bigger the 
equipment, the bigger you can build huglekultures.  You can make some nice 
ones by hand.  In my opinion most hugelkultures should be built by hand 
without heavy equipment.  I just built one last month and it is already 
bearing eggplants. The concept works at many scales. 

Michael Pilarski

--- On Thu, 9/8/11, Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com> wrote:

From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Biggest hugelkultur?
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Thursday, September 8, 2011, 10:30 AM

I'm hoping our hugel's design will deal with most of the issues people have 
brought up. We started with a 5-6 foot deep trench, so at least 2/3 of the 
hugel is underground. That should help keep it moist. And I expect the walls 
of the trench to collapse, so soil will mix in with the wood. 

We lined the trench with 2 feet of hay, so that bottom layer should hold a 
lot of water. And if that part tursn to a gley -like liner, it will just hold 
more water. 

When we added the wood, we had in mind a concrete-aggregate approach, where 
there is a range of sizes so that the pieces form a pretty solid matrix. So 
we put a lot of small stuff between the big logs, and added a lot of green 
aspen and young pines to get nitrogen down in the wood. Lee then cut up a lot 
of the longer logs so that the pile collapsed. And to compress it further, I 
bashed it with the backhoe, which was great fun. I agree that mixing soil 
into the hay would have been a good idea, but that was about 2100 lbs of hay 
on top, so hand-mixing would have been pretty tedious (with that nest of 
angry yellow jackets ten feet away, we didn't like hanging around on the pile 
that much) and we ripped the bales apart pretty well with the backhoe and 
forks, so I think the soil will filter into it.  

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Sep 7, 2011, at 10:55 AM, paul wheaton wrote:

> A coupla bits:
> 
> 1)  I would very much like to see pics in about two years.  Especially
> around mid august where the surrounding vegetation is brown and
> dormant and the stuff on the hugelkultur is green and lush.  And if
> the vegetation could be stuff that is easily recognizable as typical
> garden plants (tomatoes, melons, etc.) that would be even better.
> 
> 2)  I think I would have mixed the hay in a bit.  Mix it in with the
> wood and mix it in with the soil.  To keep it from turning to
> glie/gley and making a water/air barrier.
> 
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 10:19 AM, Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com> 
> wrote:
>> We've been spending the summer at White Deer Ranch in Montana, north of 
>> Yellowstone while I've been writing. Yesterday the owners, Lee and Roxanne 
>> Dunn, asked me if I wanted to help them put in a hugelkultur project. 
>> Sure. I just didn't realize that Lee never does things on a small scale. 
>> He dug a trench 40 feet long with a backhoe, we dragged some huge logs and 
>> a mountain of brush from around the 450 acre ranch, added roughly 3500 
>> pounds of old hay, watered it in with water from the ranch's 12-acre pond, 
>> and tomorrow we will cover it with soil. Definitely the biggest 
>> hugelkultur I've seen.
>> 
>> Roxanne posted photos of the project on Facebook.
>> http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.245701522132088.52346.100000767271564&type=1&cmntid=245736072128633
>> 
>> If you're not a FB user, I'm planning on posting something on my website 
>> soon. And if you ever want an incredible vacation in Montana, in the 
>> shadow of the Beartooth Range and in gorgeous country, there are two 
>> rental houses on the ranch (organic hay and a few animals) that I highly 
>> recommend. It's an old homestead cottage and a new log home, and those 
>> oldtimers knew a lot about siting, water, and soil--a fantastic place. 
>> We've been in heaven all summer, hiking the Beartooths and swimming in the 
>> pond.
>> 
>> http://whitedeerranch.com
>> 
>> Toby
>> http://patternliteracy.com
>> 
>> 
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