Organic Producer
I have written the following article as the first in a series about Hugelkultur for Organic Producer magazine. I
will be a regular contributor there. My articles will be monthly or bi-monthly and will relate to the urban side of organic agriculture. It is an amazing opportunity, and I am honored to have been asked to contribute. Here it is:
By Will Martens
Here’s a little introduction. I am an arborist by trade and a tree-hugger
at heart. I have learned a lot about
trees by walking among them and touching them.
I also had the fortune of being born to parents whose own parents had
been farmers, or were raised on a farm.
Growing food and preserving that food has been a part of my life since I
started developing memories. Indeed my
favorite and most vivid childhood memories involve plants, gardens and
preserving the produce.
As an arborist I have trees to
thank for my livelihood. I have learned
much from them. I had a realization that
the material that is produced by trees is often treated as a waste
product. This product is treated as
waste by clients, but also by the community at large. It costs a lot of money to truck wood and
wood-chips around town from individual properties to the place where the
material can finally be described as “disposed”. When I moved to Milwaukee I learned about a
growing movement of farmers who are turning under-utilized urban spaces into
urban farms. People like Will Allen and
Robert Pierce of Growing Power, and Gretchen Mead of The Victory Garden
Initiative have had the vision and character required to buck the trends. Instead of waiting for a large corporation
and the tax money that it would ideally bring to the community to produce
prosperity in the urban environment these people are reclaiming the land and
trying to produce food in these spaces. Their problem is that the soil on many
of Milwaukee’s urban lands is so depleted or poisoned by years of pollution
that they cannot even legally grow food in it, as recognized
by the USDA. These visionaries have found ways to overcome these
challenges. One solution is to build soil through composting directly on top of
the soil in deep mounds.
In the reclamation of these spaces
these farmers are increasing the quality of life in blighted neighborhoods by strengthening
the social bonds and increasing the overall health of the community.
I have started making
my contribution with hugelkultur. Hugelkultur
is an ancient technique of sheet composting. It has been practiced in Eastern Europe for
at least 2.000 years. Though it can aid
in the production of the mounds, hugelkultur does not require the machinery
that is necessary for making wood chips and then adding wood chips to
compost. The wood – branches and stems -
is buried and used to build a mound upon which food is grown. In addition to the wood, the builder will add
as much woody debris or other locally available plant material as
possible. The soil that was taken out in
order to bury the wood is then replaced.
On top of this, it is best to add fresh compost. What is planted can be vegetables, shrubs,
trees or anything that produces edibles.
Last year a client of mine was still harvesting tomatoes from their
hugelkultur in November. That is late
fall in Wisconsin. I have been amazed at
what we were able to accomplish.
The real value in this composting technique is, realized over
the long-term however. This is because
the buried wood soaks up water and decomposes for years. While this occurs the cellulose and lignins
in the wood also sequester nitrogen.
Over time, the mounds store water
and nitrogen for the gardens as well as for any trees planted near them.
An example of the benefits is the large Bur Oak (Quercus
macrocarpa) in my client’s yard. This
tree is easily 24” in diameter. It is a
veteran. Last summer was unbelievably
hot and dry in Milwaukee. Under such conditions
there were many trees like it that died of drought stress or were at least
defoliated. The negative impacts of
these stressful situations will play out for years to come. My client’s tree put on almost a foot and a
half of new growth last summer, largely in part because we built a hugelkultur
bed directly over the tree’s root zone!
It not only was living, it was thriving.
The wood that was used to build the mound came from the normal pruning
of deadwood as well as structural pruning to provide clearance for power lines
and the client’s garage. By building the
mound out of this material we turned waste into a vital component in the
long-term management plan for this property.
It was much more cost effective to build the hugelkultur for the client
than it would have been to remove the material and dispose of it.
The vegetables that were produced were amazing, as you can
see on my blog Vertical
Urban Gardener. I bought three cubic
yards of compost from a local composter and used it to top off the mound. This provided an amazing growth medium for
the vegetables. We grew beets, carrots,
beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, melons, peas, and more in this garden. With few exceptions I was impressed at the
results.
The poor soils in urban environments are in need of such
improvement that the value of building hugelkultur should be pretty
obvious. The trees that are already able
to live in the nutrient poor environment produce material that when utilized
properly can build good quality, nutrient rich growing medium. The water and nutrients that are sequestered
by the decomposing wood benefit the garden and the trees thereby making the
whole greater than the sum of its parts. While Hugelkultur
has been practiced for thousands of years in Eastern Europe, its value is being
realized today in the urban environment of Milwaukee, WI.
Hugelkultur should not however been seen as a solution to an
exclusively urban problem. On the
contrary, the use of hugelkultur in a larger-scale permaculture project will
only enhance the success of the farm.
Authors such as Michal Pollan, Joel Salatin, and Toby Hemenway all extol
the virtues of biodiversity within the context of agriculture. Hugelkultur is the essence of this. The soil that is produced in such a paradigm
promotes life in general. Indeed it is
almost impossible to eradicate the many creatures and plants that grow there
without the intention of the agriculturalist.
This biodiversity contributes to further biodiversity. Within the mounds, the wood is the basis for
water retention. Water retention is a
problem to which any agriculturalist can relate. The mounds literally take on a life of their
own. While the farmer sleeps, the
insects, plants and mammals as well as (and especially) worms and grubs turn
the mounds into rich repositories of soil that is perfect for growing
food. That soil promotes a diversity of
plants that attract pollinators whose benefits seem self-explaining.
On bigger farms there are always trees of some kind. Almost any type of wood (except treated
lumber) can be used for hugelkultur. I
encourage the reader to look into the practice and survey their own
resources. In the process they will
realize that they have everything they would need to start a project. I suggest starting on a small scale using the
materials that are readily available such as fallen branches, dead trees and
other high carbon content wastes. It
could be that there is need for a berm or hedgerow or some other type of
barrior. That is a perfect place to
create a hugelkultur using plants with which the agriculturalist is already familiar. These projects are long-term in scope. However they can be quite rewarding as they
require little maintenance at first and literally no maintenance after the
first five years.
Hugelkultur is an ancient answer to an ancient problem. The poor soils that are a product of urbanization
as well as intensive agricultural techniques can be enriched by this
practice. Though the method requires a
long-term commitment to reach its fullest potential, the agriculturalist can
produce relatively impressive results within the first growing season.
