You said in a message that you do not like to weed. Then my man, hugelkultur is all you should ever do. Mine were 3x14. If I kept a pace and had the wood ready to go, I could set one up in only a couple of hours. Perhaps exchange your Centurion workout for a spade shovel workout. It will keep you in shape, and they are quite rewarding because they are permanent tributes to the food that is to come. If you wanted to be righteous they can be done in the shape of designs. When I get a lot here in Springfield I am considering doing one of those big mandala type designs.
I was doing my back yard brick style, with the 3x14. In the front yard I had a tree stump, which I was going to make a round mound out of, because I didn’t need to bury any wood at the stump. All those tree roots in the ground was the wood in the ground. I was then going to make it a sun, with mounds going out off of it in long triangle shapes. It was going to be really easy to grow orange and yellow flowers to complete my sun. I was going to make a smaller round mound without the splays, planted with white flowers on the other side of the yard; for my moon. People would have been driving across town to see my flower beds.
The brick style though is the most efficient. You are much better at math than I, and I don’t like to do it, so I don’t know the exact numbers. But imagine a 100x100 foot section of your yard. Now see it filled with mounds laid out brick style, leaving a foot or so between each mound. Let’s say, for the ease of example, each mound has the same arch, and height. What is the planting surface if all the mounds were laid out flat? This mounding business greatly increases planting surface. This is a critical aspect of hugelkultur mounds, and this point is the primary reason they are better than raised beds. As more and more roots are left in the mounds, their ability to achieve more height increases. I’ve seen photos of some really steep mounds with tons of stuff growing off the sides of them.
I dug my trench about a foot deep, which is usually when I would reach the clay. I then filled it with downed tree parts, all the big stuff in the bottom. In town people had piles of it everywhere in their yards. It was easy to find, because a lot of people are too lazy to haul it off, so they just have a pile in their backyard somewhere. Anyways, after the big wood is in, I removed, and piled the turf to one side, then the loose dirt to the other side. At this point a mass of food scraps, or manure, or anything really fresh, grass clippings, whatever, goes on top of the wood, getting it all around and down in the gaps. I also shoved a lot of leaves into mine; worm bait. Then the turf goes back over the wood, grass side down. Then on top of the upside down turf, all the small sticks, bark, and limbs that are say, smaller than your wrist, piled up. Then the dirt goes back on top, then mulch. It’s a nice little workout throwing one together.
Once done, it never gets tilled or stepped on again. I considered mine sacred ground. All one ever does is sow seeds, add compost, and add mulch to the top. A finished mound should be at least two feet high. I immediately sowed seeds on mine once I watered them a few times. As I’ve said, they take a few years to truly develop, but immediately planting is essential because the mounded soil needs plant roots all throughout it to hold it all together. First couple of years of plants just aren’t going to be magnificent. A good mulch cover will prevent soil erosion, but still it is critical to get to tending that soil asap with plant roots. This will also lure in the worms which are desperately needed in a new mound.
Here is a critical step to prevent weeding. No rows, just freely sow the seeds, everywhere on the mound. Using my beloved kale as an example, my mound would be entirely covered with kale, with no light making it through to the soil. And since I am never uprooting plants, I am only ever picking leaves, thinning them out as they grow, simultaneously feeding my family; that is harmony.
With a mass of kale, and some herbs and flowers mixed in weeds can’t grow really. You will only ever need to weed initially when the seeds are sprouting, and gaining some height. Once they are up and going, no weeds will gain enough hold to grow. Growing flowers and herbs all along the perimeter of the mound is ideal too. Now don’t get me wrong, you will have a few weeds still, but with the whole row crop thing, one is practically begging weeds to grow everywhere. And like I said, nothing wrong with letting weeds grow big, just for the compost, and to have a larger root structure left beneath the ground. Just make sure to keep the seeds out of the compost, or you will obviously just be propagating weeds. Depending on the weed though, sometimes it’s appropriate to propagate them.
One of the biggest benefits to the hugelkultur is that they never get walked on. As the years go by, with the plant roots always being left in the ground, with always being mulched and composted, with wood in the ground, in five years the plants growing out of these things will seem like they have been chemically fed, steroids even, yet will be fully nutritious and alive, healthy and harmonious, with no chemicals. This method really brings home the maxim that true rewards come from working hard first. There is some initial labor that most avoid, but the benefits down the road are worth the effort.
Remember though, I did not only plant kale on a single mound. I also mixed in herbs and flowers. This greatly improves aesthetics, and it greatly helps with pests. With kale for instance, it’s those little white butterflies that get you. They lay eggs, that hatch into little green caterpillars, which happen to love kale, collard greens, broccoli, etc. As you probably know they are voracious eaters. One way to keep an epidemic down is through biodiversity. Think of that little white butterfly like a bloodhound. It is smelling for its prey. If its prey is surrounded by powerful smelling flowers, it cannot necessarily find its prey. This is what Marigolds and dill are for.
Those little green caterpillars, well, there are wasps that love those damn things. I used to watch wasps hunt them down at the same time I was hunting them down. These wasps just hover around and purposefully duck under leaves searching for them. It was really cool to watch. Unfortunately I never got around to following those wasps home so I could figure out how to help them along better. Anyways, my fingers worked better than any pesticide ever did. The herbs attract the wasps. So the trick to pesticide is biodiversity.
A trick for the trade. You ever see those really big ornamental grasses? Those ones that put on 10-12 foot tall stalks? I call those a gardener's best friend. First, they must be cut off at the ground every season; compost. Second, those stalks make great growing poles. Pole beans will grow right up them, peas too. I’ve made trellises with them and have grown small squashes up them too. Cucumbers too. Anything that vines, grows up, can be grown on them, just not the heavy stuff like watermelons, or big squashes obviously.
Some biodiversity. Say, you have that first mound planted with greens. I say greens, because they are the most important in our diets. Well, none of those greens like this heat. Solution? Ring that mound with those dead grass stalks, then grow pole beans, or cucumbers up them. Make the stalks like a tent, converging them in the middle. Whatever grows up the stalks will provide much needed shade for those much needed greens. There won’t be any weeding because it will all be your food.
Thinking long term, one is going to need to rotate what grows on what mounds, forever creating biodiversity in the soil via the different plant roots. Another way to create diversity, to confuse the insects, is to make each mound it’s own garden. Say you had twenty mounds, put two tomato plants on each mound, one squash, one potato, etc. Using kale as an example, say you cover a mound completely with kale, and one of those white butterflies finds it. Actually, it has found a whole buffet of kale. The whole patch is at a much greater risk of being over run. But what if the kale is spread out, over all the mounds, and a white butterfly finds one? All the other patches of kale will be safe. In other words, any time there is a mass of any one type of plant, one is at much greater risk of losing it all. It’s why farmers are the most welfare recipients people in this country, they lose all if one thing goes wrong.
If you think about all the stuff trying to kill plants, mono-culture is pretty miraculous in that they have managed to make it work at all. My brother is a forester. He told me once that if I thought there are a lot of things trying to kill a human, I should see all the things trying to kill a tree. Really though, they have just created and used more and more chemicals to compensate for their ignorance. I never use any chemicals of any kind, just to prove how unneeded it actually is.
Aesthetically, everyone will be incredibly impressed by your hugelkultur garden. It is impressive after all, especially when compared to the methods others use to garden. Also, you lose nothing by leaving them alone for a year or two, or five. Remember what I said about the soil being alive, and like our skin it has different layers. This is another reason the hugelkultur mound needs time to set itself up, the soil, having been tilled from being dug up, must re-establish itself. This obviously will take it some time.
No comments:
Post a Comment