resource conservation, ecosystem health, sustainability

Thanks to Sepp Holzer, and Austrian farmer who practices permaculture, and Paul Wheaton of permies.com (a permaculture forum), I learned of hugelkultur last year.

Based on their explanations and how well it made sense (it agrees with my natural resource training and experience), I gave it a try. Late last summer I set up a hugelultur bed in the forest garden. I planted kale on it and it did quite well, until the slugs came along and discovered that I had failed to install a slug barrier. Gardener malfunction!

I'll be trying again this year - but the bed itself is holding up, the soil looks great, and the straw mulch is staying put on the sloped sides. I may be planting strawberries on top and leaving the sides for greens, or I may go the other way. Perhaps legumes on top . . .

In any case, let Paul Wheaton explain it.

http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

By the way, here's an unpaid advertisement for the book, Sepp Holzer's Permaculture. Some of it flies in the face of conventional agricultural wisdom, and that may be one of its strengths! I have found it useful for both ideas and practical suggestions that I can apply to our little acre here in New England. In fact, Sepp's farm is located in temperate high country, in Austria, and so his methods translate much better to New England than do some methods used in the tropics.