Hugelkultur

The commune activities began last weekend. I would like to thank Cousin David for giving his blessing to the project (I believe his exact words were, "you must be crazy") and for helping kick it off. The essential problem, in addition to the elevation, short growing season, devastating winds, and north-facing slope, is that there is very little topsoil. This land was clearcut in the 30's and again in the mid-90's, shortly before we bought it in 1997. The result is...there is not much topsoil.

In 1997, this was a stump farm. Today, as a result of forester re-planting (Douglas fir), nature working on her own, and our efforts at planting and thinning, we have LOTS of trees. To create a sunny spot to grow food plants, we selected a spot not too far from the house, which is next to the driveway and hopefully a "sun trap." Then the chain saws came out and we cut down a dozen or so trees, mostly alder and bitter cherry but also a couple fir, a hemlock and a willow.

Now what about the topsoil problem? We are experimenting with a technique called Hugelkultur, in which brush, branches and logs are buried beneath compost and topsoil. That seems to make sense for us because we have a nearly endless supply of brush and logs. In fact, as luck would have it, we have a dozen or so felled trees, right at this spot. If we can get the wood to start rotting fairly quickly, the idea is that the decaying wood holds in moisture and provides a long-lasting, rich soil.

We separated the brush and branches from the logs, put the brush on the bottom, then the logs on top. Whew, it was a lot of work to make this relatively small area; I think we can let the gym membership go. What did we make? In front is a 6x30 raised bed, two or three feet deep, for berries. We feel confident we can grow berries since there are lots of native species on the property doing just fine. Behind the berries we made six widely-spaced raised planting sites for fruit trees by mounding up the wood. We'll begin researching hardy varieties.

We still need to buy compost and topsoil to put on top of the wood and are hoping to find spoiled hay and manure locally for a cheap price. We'll get that done this fall and be ready for planting next spring or fall.

Our thanks to Cousin for suggesting Hugelkultur is withheld pending positive results.