permaculture

[Thomas Allen <thallen@nwlink.com>]

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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