Friday, January 11, 2013

By John Voket In researching this latest segment on mulching, I turned to the land of high-performance cars and timepieces to learn about Hugelkultur—a German word for building a new garden area with branches or even trees as the base. And we got a good lesson in Hugelkultur from groworganic.com, and Toby Hemenway, author of 'Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture.'

According to the site, those who have adopted the practice stateside sometimes refer to Hugelkultur as wood composting. Similar to sheet mulching or a traditional compost pile, the hugelkultur mound can be low or steep.

Organic waste is layered on top of the branches, and a cover crop or plants make the top layer. First timers shouldn't be concerned when the pile begins heating up -- for a few years this can make it a season-lengthening spot for growing tender vegetables.

And as the wood breaks down the temperature will drop, and air pockets will take the place of some of the lost wood. This mixture of soil organisms, oxygen, and moisture will create superb soil.

The book points out that a downed tree can also keep on giving to your garden’s ecosystem if you use it as the base of your mound, and heap branches at its sides, then layer on organic materials, and add plants on the top.

That newly fallen tree will use up a lot of nitrogen as it decomposes, so be sure to add bone meal and blood meal amendments over time. A tree trunk that is already rotten will not use as much nitrogen, and those nitrogen-rich amendments would not be necessary.

A fallen tree also acts as a reservoir of water, and as it slowly decays it will release that moisture. So bushes or small trees planted on the mound will reach their roots down to drink the moisture from the rotting tree to such an extent that they can survive in arid climates without extra water.

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