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| Wood in bed before soil |
So this year we are trying something a
little different. The co-gardeners have been researching
hugelkultur. You may ask yourself “What is hugelkultur?” and
that is a valid question. And, I'm not really sure, at least about
the German word part of it. But basically you take a well dug garden
bed and bury wood in it down at the bottom, and it waters your
garden. Eventually anyhow. The decaying wood soaks up and holds
lots of moisture that the plant roots can suck up.
At first I was skeptical, but after
looking around on-line, seems like there is plenty of proof out
there. And part of the convincing is our own experience. Last year
we got compost from the city. People take there branches, sawdust,
grass clippings and leaves and dump them around the back of the
animal shelter. The city eventually gets an industrial chipper
machine that grinds all the wood up. A big front end loader mixes
and turns it and it becomes this dark substance with big wood chunks. And when I
say chunky I mean huge chunks. We sifted it before we put it into
the garden, and it still had fist-sized chunks of partially decayed
and dried out wood in the compost, lots of it. We used the chunks we
sifted out to mulch the garden pathways.
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| Pumpkins on F150 |
Don't know about this hugelkultur stuff
with sawdust. There may be a problem, not sure yet. According to
Mother Earth News sawdust does makes a good mulch (on the soil surface, not mixed in) if you add a little
extra nitrogen along with it. I think the chunks of wood don't have
as much surface exposed as sawdust so the nitrogen levels (that the
plant needs to be green and fruit) are okay. For whatever reason,
our garden did well, especially considering the summer temperatures
we had to deal with last year. There was no sign of nitrogen
deficiency and lots of growth. Maybe we compensated because we added plenty of horse manure from
the neighbor's stable (Thank You Marielle K.).
It will be a fun test, and a chance to
use up some wood we didn't have any good use for at the moment. If
you want to read more about hugelkultur and square foot gardening
check out one of the co-gardeners blogs- larrydgray.wordpress.com
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| Deck possum waiting on the steps |
I am still smelling chicken litter from
my gardening today. Our newly acquired piles of litter are next to
the garden and the husband threw some onto the wood in the bed.
There is water still standing in that bed and the aroma of the wet
litter is stuck in my sinuses. Or maybe that is also what's stuck on
the bottom of my my grungy garden sneakers sitting next to me and the
computer. On my way to shower and bed I think I will leave the shoes
out on the deck. I bet the possum will be impressed.
