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  • From: Thomas Allen <thallen@nwlink.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Some other big Hugelkulturs and urbanite
  • Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2011 07:57:12 -0600

I have a hugelkulture that began as a pile of laurel roots and scrap lumber.
It was 4' high and 10' long. I covered it with 3 yards of bought compost from
the Seattle municipal composter. Three + years later the soil has slumped
into the wood and the pile is ~ 30" high. It has been a raging success.
Springtime temperatures are 15 deg. F higher than other garden soil making it
a good nursery bed for early crops. Bought compost has needed ammending with
microorganisms, though as it's composted very hot (160 F +). It does need
water, unlike some mounds I have heard reported.

Tom Allen

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 9, 2011, at 9:27 AM, Michael Pilarski <friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> Hi Jay Woods,,
>
> You hugelkultur surrounding an acre sounds monumental considering you are
> doing a lot of it with hand work. You mention using urbanite for retaining
> walls. I'd just to point out for you and other readers is that the
> concrete makes the soil nearby alkaline. Thus plants that like an acid
> soil are likely to do poorly, I got tipped off to that when someone asked
> why their rhododendron was doing poorly after being surrounded with
> urbanite. It wouldn't be good for blueberries for instance. Of course it
> would be great for plants that prefer an alkaline soil.
>
> Michael Pilarski
>
> --- On Fri, 9/9/11, Jay Woods <woodsjay@cox.net> wrote:
>
> From: Jay Woods <woodsjay@cox.net>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Some other big Hugelkulturs.
> To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Date: Friday, September 9, 2011, 6:19 AM
>
> On Friday, September 09, 2011 02:21:45 AM Michael Pilarski wrote:
>> 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.
>
> The one I'm building is a berm around an acre. Since I'm forcibly retired,
> the
> hand labor (including doctor bills for aggravating a bad back) is free.
> Heavy
> equipment is not readily available but brush and weed trees are. The beds
> don't sag down as much as I expected during the summer. They are about the
> same height as they were when covered with soil in May. The beds are six
> feet
> wide. Since the city complained about using logs for retaining walls, I am
> using urbanite. They surprised me by not collapsing at all. I've used up 5
> dump truck loads so far and expect to use another 25 truck loads before the
> 6
> foot height is reached.
>
> Concerning urbanite (concrete sidewalk and driveway chunks mostly). I am
> happy
> to report that a lot of other useful waste will be delivered. This city is
> over a hundred years old and expensive materials were used for sidewalks,
> curbs, and streets. I have put to use a lot of quartzite slabs (at 600 lbs
> each - those were difficult for two people to move by hand - I need to
> break
> down and get some heavy cables and pulleys), granite curbs, and street
> pavers.
> My driveway strips are looking great from the slabs and so are the two new
> benches under the trees.
>>
>> 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.245701522132088.52346.100000767
>>>> 271564&type=1&cmntid=245736072128633
>>>>
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