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Post by seedywen on Jul 26, 2011 15:09:25 GMT -5
I'm distinctly getting the idea that I should be burying, fruit tree prunings, rotten logs etc. more selectively for the hugelkultur effect. My habit has been to throw the pruning branches after the goats or rabbits have a go at eating the leaves and bark into muddy areas of the farm in early spring where they always 'disappear' by next year. And burning the bigger branches, old logs and collecting and distributing the ashes. However, all these habits involve a fair bit of labor. Any techniques that reduce the physical labor factor these days, are appreciated! I started last year, to leave prunings of shrubs and perennials, wherever they fall instead of hauling the prunings off to compost or burn piles. The prunings become basically hidden by summer when the perennials mostly touch leaf to leaf. And so far, the prunings seemed pretty decayed or disappeared by spring. Maybe this old dog...has learned a new trick  |
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Post by steev on Jul 26, 2011 17:06:33 GMT -5
I'm so lazy, I drop the prunings between the trees to rot along with the weeds I throw in there. I know conventional practice is to strip the area under fruit trees, but I think I'm protecting my drip lines, conserving water, mulching, composting, encouraging native pollinators, and providing habitat for snakes, lizards, frogs, and toads. I'm sure I'm also sheltering voles, but Evil is a part of life, beady-eyed, furry, and scurrying though it may be.
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Post by raymondo on Jul 27, 2011 2:06:24 GMT -5
Regardless of whether or not it's hugelkultur, it will work...........Our raised beds all have black, very friable, very rich soil in them........... Mike This is encouraging. I'll finish off the new bed with renewed confidence. |
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Post by wildseed57 on Jul 27, 2011 17:08:04 GMT -5
I can't do it now where I'm at, but I use to just layer them with grass, leaves and soil then inoculate the pile with mushroom spore. I like using one that produces edible mushrooms. You can use ones like the king Stropharia also known as wine caps or you can use oyster mushroom spores even shaggy manes which can be started in one area and will expand outward into other areas the mushrooms will rapidly consume the waste material and will often fruit the first year.
George W.
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Post by mountaindweller on Jul 2, 2012 4:36:20 GMT -5
I go on with this thread because I will do a bed like this (as soon as the fruit trees are lifted and the pond is dug).
First 10-20 cm of topsoil, isn't that a luxury?? That sounds much to me!
If you pile the grass sods, how long does it take until the grass dies? I could them do the first bed, pile it and if the grass is dead quick enough use the soil for the second, but grass never seams to die. How important is it to remove the sods? Couldn't I simply go to the greengrocer for old boxes and lay some cardboard?
Until now I cut the twigs down a fair bit with secateurs but it is a lot of work, I am searching for a faster method.
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Post by raymondo on Jul 3, 2012 3:48:10 GMT -5
I didn't get to finishing the bed I started for varying reasons ... okay, okay I'm bone lazy! Anyway, I'm going back to my old method of bed creation and that's via sheet mulching - newspaper topped by whatever mulch I have available which at the moment is crushed woody garden material. In a way, it's like upside down hugelkultur, putting the woody material on top - would that be rutlukleguh?
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jul 3, 2012 4:08:19 GMT -5
I didn't get to finishing the bed I started for varying reasons ... okay, okay I'm bone lazy! Anyway, I'm going back to my old method of bed creation and that's via sheet mulching - newspaper topped by whatever mulch I have available which at the moment is crushed woody garden material. In a way, it's like upside down hugelkultur, putting the woody material on top - would that be rutlukleguh? That's totally not enough syllables for German, how about "umzukehren gartenbau vertikalen boden schichttechnik" |
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Post by raymondo on Jul 3, 2012 4:10:25 GMT -5
Where are all the umlauts?
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jul 3, 2012 4:13:22 GMT -5
I am a poor farmer, I can't afford a keyboard with umlauts?
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Post by steev on Jul 3, 2012 22:32:21 GMT -5
Can't make an umlaut without breaking eggs. Groan.
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Post by mountaindweller on Jul 4, 2012 0:50:42 GMT -5
ähmm for the Hügelbeet, if you put the woody stuff on the top, it won't rot down.äs timber consörves when it's dry. But you would not have to stake your peas tomatoes, whatever and could turn the stuff on the näxt bed afterwards. (Hopefully that wasn't too difficult to read). I'm going for the classic variety but still wondering weather there is an effective method to chop all these branches down.
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Post by raymondo on Jul 4, 2012 1:19:46 GMT -5
Yes, putting large woody pieces on top doesn't help in the short term. I'm using our council supplied mulch which is ground garden waste. It's all sizes from dust to small chunks of wood. It breaks down rather slowly but it does break down.
I think making hügelkultur beds would be an excellent way to develop a garden. Unfortunately, I don't have access to large enough pieces of wood nor do I have the energy to do it.
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Post by mountaindweller on Jul 5, 2012 3:03:04 GMT -5
Just call gardeners. They drive it to the tip and love giving these things to you.
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Post by 12540dumont on Jul 5, 2012 16:55:29 GMT -5
We have one 25 foot bed which is the nastiest bed in our whole garden. It was a path for a long time. So, I've been dumping the bone char/bio-char on it all year. I gave up buying charcoal and had Leo cut all our fruit tree trimmings into small branches and used that all year to make BBQ. So when I go to start the next BBQ, I dump the grill into a bucket. I stack up corn stalks or empty bean shells (this week it's fava shells) and put the wood on top of that. I throw on some bones from the last bbq (I keep them in the freezer in between bbq's). And set the whole mess on fire. When I'm finished queing, I close all the vents on the Weber. I always end up with bone char/bio-char. I dump it in a bucket and have Leo activate it. Men have amazing aim in the great outdoors. The charcoal disguises the odor. After a few days I dump it back on the same row. This week Leo pruned a huge locust tree that was in the middle of the garden and shredded the branches in the chipper. I piled that on top the bone char. This is where I will start planting trees this fall. Ray this has been surprisingly little work. I have chips from the Davey Tree guys as well. I'm ready to start a new row, so I guess it's BBQ fish tonight! Attachments:
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Post by steev on Jul 5, 2012 23:00:50 GMT -5
Isn't that how everybody cooked food before they invented little pastilles of pressed coal dust?
If memory serves, that's also how everybody put out the fire, too. So long as they were male and had beer, anyway. That's why it's called pisssss.
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