Groundations: Spring 2021

Hello dear reader! How are you doing these days? It seems like it's been one of the gentlest and most beautiful springs in recent memory to me, with flowers blooming extra long, the air perfumed with the scent of lilacs and apple blossoms and honeysuckle, and days of perfect weather that was not too hot or too cold. Now that it's June, the air smells like roses, particularly along the walking paths that border the West River here in Brattleboro, Vermont.

I want to tell you about a gardening project we have started NEW in 2021, and we'll see how it evolves for the rest of the growing season. I'm calling this post "Groundations" because it's a lovely word I heard ultrarunner Jorge Maravilla use in a podcast interview (it was the Morning Shakeout with Mario Fraioli). With all the nuttiness of the world, being able to work together on our garden and know that we'll have a little food coming our way from these efforts is very grounding and gives us foundations that feel good. It's all about the groundations.

So this year we are trying hugelkultur, which is essentially a type of permaculture-slash-raised bed that doesn't have a frame. I believe the word means "hill culture." Permaculture Magazine calls hugelkultur "no-dig raised beds with a difference," though we definitely did a lot of digging to set up our hugels. Today I'm sharing how we set up our two beds and how they're going so far!

First, we decided to let the original plot that I started back in 2017 go back to lawn for now. Instead we decided to dig two long beds--24 feet long it turns out--right across our front yard. We did this back in April when the ground had thawed but it wasn't yet blazing hot.

I am the "family forker" (I love using a digging fork) so I started things off by removing the turf in the area we wanted (turves are to the left in the photo above). Next we dug out more dirt to create two trenches below ground level.

The idea of hugelkultur is to put a lot of biodegradable material of different types into the structure of each bed. We had collected all of our maple leaves from last fall and wintered them in a bit of fencing. (Prof. Kitty trivia: the fencing we used was last year's cucumber trellis and tomato trellis wired together.) 

 

We also spent several weeks in March and April collecting sticks and branches and rotting logs, including getting a local work crew to drop off their yard trimmings one day instead of putting it in the chipper.

So after digging out the trenches, we built them back up with organic materials that will decompose over the next few years. First we put in the leaves.

Then we put in the newer sticks.

We topped that with older logs that had started to decompose already--the idea is that you're making an environment for both microbes and fungi to start their busy little communities.

We put more leaves on top of the wood, and then put the turves back on (trying to do this grass-side down). Finally we put the dirt on top while mixing in some bags of commercial compost.

In the photo above, the nearer left-hand hugel is done, and the right-hand one has the wood and leaves and is ready for turf and dirt. We were ready to plant! Except it was April in Vermont, so we needed to wait a few more weeks until the frost was done.

For the next part of the project, we got some wood chip mulch to cover the hugels and keep warmth and nutrients in and weeds down. In the above photo taken in May, the upper part of the frame shows a layer of the mulch on the hugel. We've never used mulch before, so this is a learning process--especially how to water a plant that buried in mulch as the water seems to just run down the side of our little hills. (We ended up clearing the mulch away from the plant stems, and we pour water into the little bowls that this created.)

Above are the hugels after we got the plants in at the end of May. We buy starts from local farm stands because we usually just want 1-5 of any particular thing. We planted beans, summer squash, a sugar baby watermelon, lettuce, spinach, parsley, onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

Below are the hugels today in June. (I don't know if "hugels" is the proper term, but we fondly call them our hugels.)

Three cucumbers plants are starting to take hold and flourish.

The tomatoes are growing nicely so far. Our next project will be to concoct a bamboo trellis for them--we're inspired by the setup that Jag Singh demonstrates in his Cheap & Easy Tomato Trellis video.

The lettuces on the near side of this hugel seem very happy. I'd like to plant some chard and kale on the other side.

That's the hugelkultur story so far! We're excited to reclaim more of our yard for food purposes! My understanding is that the soil will get richer after overwintering, which is a great time for microbial activity. I'll keep you posted on how the plants end up spreading out--we gave them a lot of space and I hope that it's enough!

How does your garden grow? Are you planting in new ways this year? Have you heard of hugelkultur before? How are your GROUNDATIONS?