Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Why hugel?

Today, someone asked me the logical question- Why hugel?  Why go to the effort of mounding logs, manure, dirt, and mulch?  Does it have greater production than your other gardens?  Why go to all the extra hassle?



The Orchard in January
I wish I had more experience with other types of gardening so that I could compare and contrast better.  But, alas, I don't. 


The Orchard in June

I will say that the fact I am gardening at all is a testament to hugels and to hugeling.  (Yep, we've turned the German noun into a verb.)


First, let me say a little about hugels themselves.  When we hugel, we're trying to mimic nature's process- wind knocks trees down, animals browse the leaves and deposit manure, dirt gets kicked up over the logs, leaves and plant stems cover it in the fall, and the cycle of life in the forest is renewed.  We just speed up the process to days instead of years- logs, manure, dirt, mulch, plants. 

 
 The center of the driveway turnaround Fall 2012
And in the process, we create a garden which is much easier for me to use.  

 Let the hugeling begin!

 I am 42 years old and despite much progress, I am simply not agile enough to spend all my time doubled over reaching towards the ground.  Hugels allow me to garden from my ankles to my shoulders making the work much easier for me to do. 

 
In addition, there are advantages to gardening in 3D.  I have become accustomed to being able to see more of my garden at a time, like the difference between making eye contact with people in folding chairs on the gym floor versus the same people in bleachers.  In the same way as I can make eye contact better, so can the sunshine.  It's easier to ensure that everyone is getting light, tall or short.  Plus, I get more surface area to plant in the same space.  (The shortest distance between two points is a straight line like flat ground and we're purposely taking a longer curve from Point A to Point B over the top of the mound.)  As I garden better, I will be able to produce more in a small space using hugels.





Thirdly, I like being able to have different 'microclimates' specifically being able to adjust the amount and timing of sunshine.  I planted my tomatoes on the sunny, southern face right next to the blacktop driveway for maximum heat and sun.  Meanwhile, I planted my lettuce on the northeastern face which gets more direct morning sun and less during the heat of the day. 




"Yeah, yeah," I can hear you saying, "That's all well and good but surely there's got to be an easier way to accomplish this rather than hauling logs and dirt around?"  If it was only about convenience and curved lines, there probably is a more convenient way. 




However, hugels have at least 6 additional advantages.

 
 Hugel 1 covered in dirt nad manure
1.  Nutrition- All the nutrients those trees stored over years is released into my plants' roots slowly over time.  Combined with the manure, we've got great fertility all without expensive chemical fertilizers. 


2.  Water retention- Rotting logs soak up water like a sponge when it rains and then release that moisture to the roots of my plants as needed.  Also, mounds on a hillside catch the rain runoff and give more of it a chance to soak in rather than flowing away downhill, especially if openings and ends are staggered to force the water to wind back and forth, preventing a fast flowing rivulet straight down. 
  
 
 Hugels with some leaf and cardboard mulch

3.  Erosion prevention- If the logs are placed perpendicular to the slope, then any eroding dirt is caught and held within a few feet of where it started.  We have experienced no significant loss of topsoil even after clear cutting on a 30 degree slope in our orchard because of this.  The hugels' winding path also forces people to walk back and forth, again preventing those straight line paths which are so prone to erosion.



Note the hugels perpendicular to the slope with staggered openings

4.  Heat- As the logs, manure, and mulch compost they release heat making the ground stay warmer, longer.  Because we have relatively small hugels, we will see a small gain but those who create hill size hugels (think Sepp Holzer) can harvest root vegetables from the unfrozen ground beneath snow cover because of the heat released from the decomposing core below.  We're on the border between Zone 4a and 4b.  Perhaps once decomposition is in full swing, we'll experience enough gains to keep us solidly in 4b so the trees do better.  Or perhaps we'll gain a few days in spring and fall.  Time will tell.



In the middle of the hugels with cardboard and plywood temporary 'mulch'
November 2012

5.  Angle of the sun-  This is a hard one for me to explain half so well as Eliot Coleman did in his book Four Season Harvest.  Basically, for every so many degrees the soil angles up off the ground towards the sun, the microclimate gains enough sunshine to change its effective latitude slightly more towards the equator.  Like I said, better with his diagrams and maps.  By increasing the slope of my dirt to an angle more favorable for receiving and absorbing the rays of the sun through mounding over logs, I change the latitude of my microclimate to my advantage. If I combine this with the heat from decomposition in #4 above, eventually it might be possible for us to gain a whole zone (from 4a to 5a).  Or perhaps during a hard winter, our advantage might keep fruit trees alive which otherwise would have died.  Or maybe we'll extend our growing season a week on either side.  We'll see.



Late May 2013- Tomato Guild on the southern exposure

6.  Convenience- Many of these functions could be accomplished by other means- plastic trays, wooden tables, rock walls, etc.  However, the trees were here and free and once we cut them down, they were in the way.  I feel more clever when I'm thrifty.



Tomato Guild late July 2013

7.  Microorganisms-  The microscopic living plants, fungi, and creatures in the soil are responsible for translating the minerals in the dirt into bioavailable nutrients that plant roots can absorb.  Without these wee workers, plants have a more difficult road to productivity.  Repeated disruptions of the soil community like tilling, are hard on the microorganisms, decreasing natural nutrition and increasing dependence on chemical fertilizers over time while occasional disruptions like natural disasters seem to increase activity.  (See Farm for the Future and YouTube videos of Sepp Holzer, Part 1 and then follow links, for more science.)  Therefore, hugels which mimic natural soil processes are a strong option for soil fertility.  Plus, it's impossible to till a hugel so I'm not tempted to borrow a neighbor's rototiller even on the bad weed days. 




Well, we're beginners and all theory aside, we've got a lot to experiment with and learn about hugels. But, boy, are we having a good time trying.



First carrot- Way to harvest, Mark!





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