Trying New Things with Hugulkultur

What?! is...hugulkultur. Well, simply put hugulkultur is a method of gardening designed to save water and add nutrients and tilth to the soil. I lazily used hugulkultur for a large flower bed at the old farm and I am planning to use a combination of HGK (hugulkultur) for my new raised beds because they are so deep and wide enough to accommodate this to a certain extent. That old flower garden did grow beautiful flowers that multiplied and all of that without much of any effort on my part. I rarely watered in and only once a year pulled a few weeds out of it. Of course, like everything that I do I modify things a bit to suit me. So let me explain HGK in the way that I understand it. Typically with this method of gardening a pit is dug, filled with wood and then the soil mounded over the top of the wood. Like I suggested this created a mound on which all sides can be planted. This is much like the concept of biodynamics and deep digging. As the wood breaks down organically is tends to hold more moisture therefore creating less need for water. It also improves the tilth of the soil. Much like a forest floor that has years of organic matter broken down on it. The soil is soft and spongy, easily workable. Getting a little more scientific it is thought that the breakdown of the carbon in the wood will lock any nitrogen breakdown into the soil so that it is available for the plants to use. Therefore the soil is full of nutrition for healthy strong plants. The true puritan method of hugultur sounds like a lot of work and seems like it would require a good amount of wood. Since I am building raised beds then I have my own bit of work of a different kind, but at least it isn't digging a trench. Also, we don't have a lot of excess wood. We have some....mostly small branches cleaned up from around the yard and off the fenceline. Just tidying up kind of stuff. However, all that little stuff will help fill these large raised bed containers that I am building. See that is my main motivation, because having moved and not able to bring all of my good soil from the old farm I am starting fresh. Starting fresh translates to I don't have much to start with. I am simply trying to fill some space that might actually have some use. I get rid of the yard trash in a useful manner and it might help make my garden grow. But if you are really interested in hardcore permaculture then check out hugulkultur gardening more in depth. Hardcore permies type folks swear by it and they know a whole lot more about it than I do. Blessings, Kat

Lasagna Gardening

I read the book Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza right after it first came out years ago. I used that method for my first couple of small gardens and did really well. Then I moved more into biodynamics looking for more production and bigger gardens. The reason that I abandoned this method as my gardens grew was that it was hard to find enough "lasagna" materials for a very large garden without spending money and.. well.. back then we didn't have any to spend. So all of our materials had to be free and found. However, we are shrinking in size again and I need to help fill all of these deep raised beds. I have a large round bale of hay that is old and needs to be gotten rid of, I have an uncomposted pile of horse/goat/chicken manure, I have a copious amount of weeds being cleaned up from a very overgrown yard, and now I have a ton of leaves falling daily into the yard. Sounds like lasagna material to me. With the lasagna method you build a compost pile, layering green and brown material. Ideally, you would then let it compost. Then you would plant it and watch your garden grow. However, in the book Patricia was in a rush one year and so she built her "lasagna" then planted directly on top before it had a chance to fully compost. She had the best garden ever that year according to her book. I am using relatively fresh horse and chicken manure which tends to compost "hot" and can burn plants. I have a few months before I plan on planting. I also am putting that material further down in the lasagna layering so as not to burn any plants from the heat produced. So, once I layer my lasagna layers then I will have filled most of the space within my beds and will be able to scrounge up enough dirt (from the French drains around the barn) to layer on top. Then I should have some really rich material from which to watch my garden grow! Let's hope it works. Blessings from the farm, Kat