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Post by pinhead on Apr 14, 2014 8:32:50 GMT -8
After seeing Donkey's hugels and watching innumerable videos on Geoff Lawton's "Greening the Desert" project, I decided to take the plunge, though admittedly on a relatively small scale. Let me know if you can see these pics.  |
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Post by 2tranceform on Apr 14, 2014 8:59:34 GMT -8
Very cool. What are you planning to grow on your hugel? It looks like you have plenty of wood for a few more hugels.  |
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Post by pinhead on Apr 14, 2014 9:45:32 GMT -8
Probably spaghetti squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, watermelon... Not sure what else. We could probably grow more water-intensive food than usual, though, so I'll be looking into stuff we haven't planted before.
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Post by Vince Runza on Apr 15, 2014 5:42:17 GMT -8
One point I noted was that the first year, those hugels tend to suck nitrogen to aid decomposition. Has anybody tried adding manure to the wood, to boost nitrogen without stealing it from the soil above?
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Post by 2tranceform on Apr 15, 2014 6:06:48 GMT -8
I added manure to mine. It will be planted for the first time this year though. There is still a bit of snow on it though, so no word on how well this works. |
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Post by pinhead on Apr 15, 2014 6:58:55 GMT -8
One point I noted was that the first year, those hugels tend to suck nitrogen to aid decomposition. Has anybody tried adding manure to the wood, to boost nitrogen without stealing it from the soil above? Yeah, I've got a couple of trailer loads of cow manure from when we recently hauled our cattle between pastures. I'll get a few more pics put up. However, I have read that the hugels don't draw nitrogen out of the soil as burying wood chips does, for a couple of reasons. The first is the smaller surface area, and the second is the presence of air. It is impossible to completely encase the wood in soil - inevitably there are large air gaps. The bacteria and fungi that break down the wood are able to pull nitrogen from the available air more easily than from the soil which mitigates the loss of nitrogen. This is why the hugels tend to be so rich after a few years - they facilitate nitrogen fixation from the air directly instead of waiting for it to be available through complex root systems. |
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Post by Vince Runza on Apr 15, 2014 7:24:30 GMT -8
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Post by pinhead on Apr 15, 2014 7:35:55 GMT -8
From the article you linked: Another thing to keep in mind is that wood is high in carbon and will consume nitrogen to do the compost thing. This could lock up the nitrogen and take it away from your growies. But well rotted wood doesn’t do this so much. If the wood is far enough along, it may have already taken in sooooo much nitrogen, that it is now putting it out! Maybe I'll get lucky and the 3-year-cut cottonwood is already far enough along as to work well the first year. We shall see! |
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Post by Donkey on Apr 15, 2014 22:40:12 GMT -8
Any nitrogen that the wood steals will be given back with interest when the log rots. Although there is a LOT of wood around to soak nitrogen (at first), the actual area that is doing the soaking is relatively small (interface between wood and earth). Use larger stuff, add manure, companion plant with nitrogen fixers (and other support species) and be happy. |
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Post by pinhead on Apr 18, 2014 5:31:32 GMT -8
I was walking around the yard today (we have a big yard) and discovered something I didn't know we had - two separate piles of cow manure and straw. The first pile was mostly manure, about 6 inches deep, covering about a 6-foot square that had been setting for at least a year. The second pile was straw and manure, which had come from our makeshift trailer-shelter that we kept our baby calves in over the harsh winter. A lot of the straw/manure has already evolved into super-rich soil.  So - my question relates to the overall goal of the garden. Do I "layer" the mixture - fine manure first, then straw/manure, then wood chips? Do I mix the wood chips with the fine manure and layer the straw/manure over the top? Do I mix the fine manure with the straw and then mulch with wood chips? I've been amazed with the moisture-holding ability of wood chip mulch and considering the drought we're experiencing here, moisture retention is one of the biggest factor we have to consider. Anybody have ideas? |
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Post by matthewwalker on Apr 18, 2014 7:04:13 GMT -8
It really depends on what you are going to grow there, and how the soil is already. I have had great luck using the larger chips like you have there as top mulch, to smother weeds and retain moisture. Try not to mix it in as you plant stuff, just keep it on top. As for the straw/compost stuff. It still might be a little carbon rich for most plants, or, at least, it might be hard for them to get nitrogen. There are plants where that's great though, and it looks like absolutely perfect potato growing medium. I'd probably just throw some potatoes on the ground and hill a bit of that stuff over them, but save some to keep hilling the vines as they grow. You will probably have a great harvest with that stuff. Otherwise, I'd use it the same way as the wood chips. I probably wouldn't mix either of those right into where I wanted to plant unless it was in a fairly low ratio.
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Post by pinhead on Apr 18, 2014 12:15:40 GMT -8
And here I thought I ran across the panacea of gardening when I found the manure piles. But from what I've been reading, regardless of how I apply the manure and straw, some type of nitrogen will have to be added to "supplement" the low N content of the poo.
Poo.
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Post by matthewwalker on Apr 18, 2014 12:44:24 GMT -8
Potatoes man, they love that low nitrogen top mulch piled up around the vines.
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Post by pinhead on Apr 28, 2014 5:07:23 GMT -8
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Post by Daryl on Apr 29, 2014 1:56:33 GMT -8
No worries. I can't answer your wood chip question but I can encourage you to keep plugging away at the garden. Everyone here is way behind because of the harsh winter. Our big start date is Memorial Day. We don't dare put much in the ground until then. |
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