Site Prep
I have a client that is interested in starting a Hugelkultur garden. I started with a free site visit and assessment. When I got there I was pleasantly surprised to find an ideal scenario. This site was packed with leaves and volunteer plants. It contained a couple of nice trees that would benefit from the water retention qualities of a Hugelkultur garden. This site gets a lot of sun and will be able to sustain a vegetable garden as well as a nice variety of perennials. The site has a few nice volunteers as well. I was happy to notice a nice Yellow-bud Hickory (Carya cordiformis). A couple of Horse Chestnut (Aesculas hippocastanum) also popped up. They are the descendents what is now a tall stump on the site that will be used for a structure upon which to grow peas.
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| Horse Chestnut stump |
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| Lots of woody debris on this site! |
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| The site is loaded with organic material. |
We scraped the site clean of all the leaves and other debris that was not mulching something important and collected it in piles on the site. We were going to be able to start a Hugelkultur garden but wouldn't have nearly enough material for the size of garden that the client desired. There was a resource that would be able to provide quality material for free. This site has three large trees residing within it. The dominant tree is a Burr Oak (Quercus macrocarpa). It is a wonderful tree! This Hugelkultur garden will of the most benefit to this tree. It is well worth the effort to provide quality soil and water retention for this great resource. The site also contains a nice immature Red Oak (Quercus rubrum) as well as an adolescent Black Walnut (Juglans negra). There is a nice American Beech in front of the house which provided some very nice leaf mulch for the garden. We will prune the Burr Oak and use the material for the garden. We will not use the material from the Black Walnut because of a toxic chemical that is produced by the tree. In the next post I will outline the pruning process and illustrate the volume of valuable material that is produced by a mature tree.
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