tatermctot
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questions about how to make an efficient garden

google wasn't working out well for me so I decided to find a gardening forum.

I don't know what other place to post this but my garden will be mostly vegetable based so here it is.

I am a bit of an apocalypse believer. I think there will be an economic collapse, so I'm going to have as large of a garden as I can so I can grow my own food. I am thinking of using a hugelkultur technique for it, here is a pic below
Hugelkultur_0.standard 460x345.png
I would like an actual person to talk to, not articles on the internet all day.
here are my questions:

1. I'm thinking of moving to arkansas, is it a good place to grow vegetables and fruits such as potatoes, onions, carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, and hemp (No not for smoking, for fibers such as for clothes and rope, remember, preparing for apocalypse, not just planting food.)? arkansas seems to be on a lower latitude so it is warmer. I heard it has long growing seasons and mild winters. is this true? do you think this would be a good spot to grow a huge garden on?

2. in the hugelkultur technique, the sun can only directly affect one side of the mount at a time unless it is noon. does this matter? will both sides be stunted in growth because of this?

3. can potatoes, onions, carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, and hemp grow at an incline on a hugelkultur mound?

4. does the PH of the soil matter THAT much? will it just help or hinder crops, or not let them grow at all?

5. would you recommend the hugelkultur technique?

6. what is humus?

7. what type of wood should I use in hugelkultur?

8. how can I preserver my vegetables through jarring?

I would like someone I can have a conversation with and not just a quick question and answer. thank you for reading this post!

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applestar
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For my first quick reply, I'm not going to answer point by point but just shoot comments as they come to me.

The illustration you posted in interesting in that it represents only one aspect of hugelkultur as I understand it. Your question seem to imply that somewhere, there is an instruction to lay the bed North -South? Please post the source of the illustration, I'm curious.

To the best of my understanding, best branches, logs and stumps to use in hugelkultur are already inoculated with native wild or intentional domesticated mycorrhizae/fungal hyphae and are starting to or partly breaking down. Since hugelkultur is typically discussed in context of permaculture, I have always believed that they should be laid on contour of the land in conjunction with swale building to sequester water/moisture -- in organic curves not straight line.

The direction of the sun and slope of the hugelkultur can create microclimates that you could and would take advantage of. North-Eastern morning sun face would be more suited for leafy greens, south-western intense sun face would be more suited for heat loving. Top of the mound for drought tolerant and base of the mound for moisture needy.

PH matters because different vegetables and fruit plants have different pH needs and ideal range.

All that said, I have not actually plunged into the full scheme of hugelkulture. It is a big project requiring heavy earthmoving and landscape altering. Most likely better done with machinery. I have been tinkering with the concept though, burying rotting stumps, freshly cut shrubby branches, and up to 4" aged branches and logs from the woodpile. Varying levels of success with different kinds of crops. Some have done better in freshly piled (pseudo) hugelkulture compared to others that have failed miserably, lots of fungal/mycelial activity for first couple of years, 2-3 yr old beds have been bountiful and could be attributed to break down of wood into more usable nutrients, etc.

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jal_ut
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" hugelkultur technique" ???

Never heard of it. From your description, sounds like so much BS! Sorry.

Do some reading on this forum. Maybe you will get some ideas?

imafan26
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When I researched it hugelkultur is common in cold climates. It was the lazy gardener's way to use logs that were felled and would have to be carted off anyway. Some wood that doesn't do much rotting or are aleopathic like walnut, cedar, or redwood may not work well. Pine has resins but depending on the stage of rot, that may be less of a problem.

I thought about trying it, but I remembered wood in the ground is a bad thing here because of termites and trees are not that easy to come by.

It would take a lot of work in the beginning to stack the logs and then build the soil mound over it. Especially if the recommendation is for a 7 foot mound. If you don't get a lot of rain you will probably have to put some irrigation on it and if reminds me a bit of terrace gardening. It is good because the height will help to maximize the planting space with a minimal footprint. It will shrink over time, but good luck in trying it.

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rainbowgardener
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To start with, you said efficient garden and I'm not sure I know what you mean by that. I was thinking you meant growing a lot of food in a small space, but then you said you are thinking about a huge garden. So what does efficient mean?

You sound like you don't have much experience in gardening. I would REALLY, REALLY recommend you don't start gardening as a beginner with a huge garden. You are talking about moving to Arkansas, but you are not there now. Where are you now? Can you start a small garden where you are now, while you look for land etc? Even a bunch of containers would be a start to get some experience of gardening before you plunge in. I am planning to move to Tennessee later this year (maybe late summer or fall), for some of the same reasons - more frost free days, longer growing season, more sunny days, etc - but in the meantime I am busy getting my garden ready here.

Arkansas is a mountainous state with a variety of different climate zones - the Ozark Plateau, the Arkansas Valley, the Ouachita Mountains, the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (referred to as the Mississippi Embayment), and the West Gulf Coastal Plain.

It encompasses cold hardiness zones (which describe the average minimum winter temperature), from 6a which is the same as where I am in OH, in the northern mountainous part of the state, to 8a in the south part of the state, which is the same as Alabama, Mississipi, Georgia, a wide range. So you need to be more specific when asking about the climate of Arkansas. Texarkana is in the southern part of Ark, Little Rock is central, Fayetteville and Jonesboro are more northern. Sperling's best places website gives lots of climate and other data about any city you enter (or zipcode). For example looking up Texarkana https://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/ ... /texarkana, it says it gets about 2 in of snow a year, with an average Jan low temp of 35 deg F. Dave's garden website gives frost free days and dates by zip code. https://davesgarden.com/guides/freeze-frost-dates/ Looking up the Texarkana zip code 71854 says average frost free days are March 13 through November 15, average 247 frost free days. https://davesgarden.com/guides/freeze-fr ... &submit=Go

You can do this for any city/ zip code you want and compare them. I did a bunch of this kind of research when we were deciding where to move to.

James (jal_ut) is a skeptic, but hugulkulture is a well-recognized permaculture technique. As the wood at the base of the hill/pile rots, it has an incredible capacity for holding water, and creates promotes a healthy soil web of microbes, fungi, insects and worms. Eventually the decaying matter provides nutrients to the plants and critters, and as the wood decays it helps to prevent the soil from becoming compacted. BUT it is not the easiest and it requires knowing something about what you are doing. As applestar noted, it requires not just throwing a bunch of logs down, but starting with partly broken down wood, inoculating it with appropriate organisms to help the breaking down process, etc. AND it is known to not produce very well the first year. All that wood, not very broken down yet sucks up huge amounts of water and nitrogen. Better in the second year, and excellent in the third.

Depends on how long range your time scale is. If you want quicker results, start the hugelkulture bed, but also do some regular beds for the first couple years.

The wood you should use is what ever you have lying around that you want to compost. One of the main benefits of hugelkultur is that it is an effective way to compost wood that would otherwise lie around doing nothing for years.

Yes, soil pH matters that much. Most plants have an optimum pH where they thrive best, a range of pH that they can handle (some being more sensitive than others), and beyond that they either struggle or ultimately die. I have alkaline soil. For sometime I was trying to grow native woodland shade plants. But many of them require acid soil. Despite my best efforts, they would struggle along not doing well and then die a slow lingering death. You need to know your soil pH and grow things that are adapted to that.

The incline of the mound doesn't matter very much.

Worry about how to can (jar) your veggies, once you have actually produced some!

Welcome to the Forum and best wishes with your very ambitious plans! Keep us posted how it all works out.

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digitS'
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It looks like it will all be new to you, tatermctot. New location, new to food preservation, new to gardening, and an uncommon approach to gardening.

When I was a young guy and having gone through a failed marriage, I was in a hurry to get back to my plan A, move to the country. I'd grown up on a farm. We had gardens each year although there wasn't much emphasis on it. My parents had both grown up on farms. Within a few years of moving off the farm, I had a garden - as a teenager. As a young married guy, I had a garden. Plan A was to get back to the farm.

I knew somewhat of what I was doing when I moved to the sticks and I worked for the neighbors, on their property. At home, I had a big garden. I made mistakes. Let's just look at one. I had never grown that very important food crop: potatoes. I decided to grow them on tilled ground but under a heavy mulch. That was a compounding of the new. It failed terribly! My lovely crop of potato plants attracted a whole herd of field mice! Those voles damaged every tuber in the spud patch. I found one - that hadn't been chewed on, out of about 900 sqft of plants.

Farmers know a lot about what they are doing. Often, they only have 1 or 2 crops. Gardeners have a lot more of balls in the air. It depends on how interesting you want your homegrown diet.

A diversity of vegetables and fruit is quite a challenge. It also can be insurance against having your eggs all in one basket.

Back to the idea of burying trees. I once asked a Southeast Asian farmer if it wouldn't be better for him to bury the trees and brush he cut down rather than burning them. He just looked at me ... I mean, we didn't have a tractor with a backhoe on the farm where I grew up. What was I thinking he'd be doing, dragging trees around by hand and digging great long trenches with a hoe?!

Steve

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jal_ut
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The decomposition of wood in the soil actually takes nitrogen from the soil. Using wood or wood chips is not a good way to try to enrich the soil.

Wood is good in a wood burning stove to heat the house in winter.
Wood is good for a fire outback in a pit for roasting hot-dogs and
sitting around with your friends while telling yarns.
Wood is good for a lot of construction projects and turning on
the lathe.

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rainbowgardener
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Well, yes and no. Note what I said before " AND it is known to not produce very well the first year. All that wood, not very broken down yet sucks up huge amounts of water and nitrogen. Better in the second year, and excellent in the third. "

In the initial stages of decomp, it does use up/remove from the soil a LOT of nitrogen. That's why I was suggesting the OP use regular beds the first couple years. The only thing I would probably grow on a bed like that the first couple years would be legumes and other nitrogen fixers, that can get their N from the air.

But eventually, as the wood is more decayed (remember, you should have started with well rotted wood to begin with and you inoculated it with mushroom spores or other fungi to help the process along and the next layer was turf, so the decaying grass provides a lot of the N the decaying wood needs) and it has created a rich diverse soil community around it, the ecosystem as a whole there is not subtracting N any more. Remember that we aren't actually trying to feed plants, we are feeding the soil web of life, which feeds the plants. Natural gardening is not about chemistry (adding various elements); it is about biology, lots of active/ interactive/ interdependent processes.

It stores a lot of rainwater and sequesters carbon in the soil for long term use. (Carbon is half of what we put into a compost pile. We don't think about carbon when we talk about NPK, but that is only because it is already there in the soil, and is stable, not evanescent like the N, which has to keep being added. It is just as necessary.) There is little in the way of controlled studies of hugelkulture around, perhaps because there are so many variables in there (what wood did you use, what fungi, how high did you build your pile, climate variables etc etc) it's difficult to even define exactly. But there are many people who have been using this technique; in Eastern Europe, it is traditional and has been done for centuries.

But apparently tatertot is another one of our one-shot wonders. After saying "I would like someone I can have a conversation with and not just a quick question and answer" he (?) never bothers to come back and respond to any of the detailed posts people have done. Sigh... I may quit responding to anyone until they have come back at least once to demonstrate some seriousness. But it stimulated a good conversation amongst us, so I guess that's a good thing.

Rairdog
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I have thought about making a hugelkultur bed. You can't argue with the way a forest floor produces. An ole timer once told me they used to plant a Lilac on top of an old stump instead of trying to remove it. Nature is not going to wasted all those nutrients a tree spent generations gathering. I considered using 8-12 inch tall cross sections of trees in a shallow trough, covering it with leaves and mulch and building a raised bed on top of it. IMO this would be good for long term growing in new subdivisions where they have stripped off the topsoil and it's only clay or sand with just a couple inches of topsoil spread back.

Tree service companies go around trimming and removing trees for a hefty fee. Then they chip it up and pay $10 a load to dump it at a mulch company. Then you pay 30 $/yd to buy the mulch and put it back in your yard to retain moisture, add nutrients and suppress weeds.

imafan26
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$10 a load to dump. That's cheap. Here the green waste facility charges commercial and the city $40 a ton to dump green waste and the landfill charges $72 a ton. That is why there is so much illegal dumping.

Rairdog
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Since it appears 1 and done we can just take it over right? lol

There is an organic lady a couple miles away that I met last year. She charges 10 for truck, trailer or 1 ton truck. She has a huge trommel screen with conveyor. She sells leaf compost for 30 $/yd. It is aged 2 years and 140 deg....supposedly. She sells organic AA Bark mulch for 35 $/yd. I am very tempted to try some leaf compost in a raised bed this year for peppers.

There is Greencycle a couple blocks from here. It has a big pond that was once a peat pit until they mined it out. I think they charge $10 a load also. That is where I get my expanded shale for aquaponics.

I have put my name on some tree trimmers list to drop off chipped wood when they are close by. It's free if it is quicker for them than paying to dump it.



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