The Daily: 7 February 2024

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Wednesday Word

for 7 February 2024

crescent

You can respond in the comments below or go visit the All Poetry contest for February. Your response can be anything made from words. I love poetry, but anything can be poetic and you needn’t even be limited to poetics. An observation, a story, a thought. Might even be an image — however, I am not a visual person, so it has to work harder to convey meaning. In the spirit of word prompts, it’s best if you use the word; but I’m not even a stickler about that. Especially if you can convey the meaning without ever touching the word.

If responding on All Poetry, you are limited to the forms of that medium, though my contests are fairly open as to form. However, if you have something long, post it in the comments below. That said, please don’t go too long. Keep it under 2000 words. I’m not going to count, but I’m also not promising to read a novel.

Unless it’s really good!

If you have nothing to say, that’s fine. I know you all are busy and distracted. But if you’ve read this far, then I’ve made you think about… crescent.

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It has been sunny for three days in a row. Apart from the joy that sunshine brings in and of itself, I am constantly being surprised by small delights. My solar-powered garden lanterns were lit for the first time in I don’t know how long. I think I’d largely stopped seeing them. If I noticed them hanging there at all, I assumed they were broken and probably needed to be replaced. Similarly, I was able to open the curtains on the upstairs windows and let in delicious warmth — free warmth! Sunlight is also somewhat disinfecting, so that it can usually remediate stale odors almost as well as opening up the window. (Opening windows is still not something we can do here in Vermont this week. It’s been in the single digits.)

But one of the loveliest things that happened is that I saw the waning crescent moon rising on Monday morning. It has been a long time since I’ve seen the moon, and I don’t often see morning moon-rises even when the weather is fine. (Because mornings…) But seeing it hanging like a sickle in the eastern sky reminded me that the Wolf Moon is in its last days. The Snow Moon — or Hunger Moon — is new this Saturday. This is the time of the crescent moon: one week of waning ahead of the sun, then one week of waxing behind the sun.

The new moon nearest Candlemas is often when I really start my garden seed ordering in earnest. However, I haven’t placed any orders yet this year because I’m still trying to decide what I’m doing this year. I am torn between just putting perennial herbs out there in the hügelkulture mound with a few favorite veggies in the raised beds — so that no storage is needed — or going all in on veg for next year — but kicking my neighbor’s vintage VW out of my garage. This is a fraught decision… one I don’t want to make.

I do want to have a place to store the potatoes that apparently grow themselves in this climate. But I love my neighbors and feel horrible about removing the baby blue Bug. And there is just no way to make a root cellar in my basement. That failed miserably. I can store winter squash down there for most of the winter, and some of the better storing apples seemed to be content, if a bit leathery. But the roots just desiccated, the garlic turned smelly, and the onions are growing. (I haven’t tossed them yet, the composter being full and frozen…).

However, I have a few cool season veg seeds, mostly left from the autumn garden I did not plant last year, last year being hell. I think they should still be viable, so I’ll start some cabbages and leeks, maybe some broccoli and cauliflower. I don’t need much of any of that because none of it stores well in the summer months. (Not much does store well in summer…) With the spring foods, I grow what I will eat, with maybe a bit extra to share.

So I am putting together my new seed starting space in the basement in anticipation of starting seeds here soonish. I bought a couple relatively affordable grow lights to hang over a metal table. I already had an electric space heater and a pile of wooden shims to keep the seed trays off the cold metal. Of course, there are hurdles… because nothing works as advertised anymore. So it’s going a bit slower than I thought it should. But I don’t need to have any seeds in soil for another couple weeks at the earliest. Strictly speaking, I don’t need to do anything until it’s time to plant nightshades — which can’t happen until March — so I have time to figure it all out.

Aside from the leeks — which take forever to mature! — the few early spring crops that I might plant will be harvested and done before I have to make up my mind on the hügelkulture mound and the possible VW eviction. But I think that even if I plant more potatoes, I still want to put more perennial plants — herbs and dwarf fruit trees — in the mound. I am a big fan of mound planting, but in that space on the edge of the jungle I would like more weed suppression than annuals provide. And a pile of rotting wood makes a great herb bed, but it’s not so great for roots that need space to develop. So I’m still working that out too.

Meanwhile, for those who haven’t seen this before, I’m re-posting my how-to hügel… you’ll notice that all the beds are crescents. This is the optimum shape for maximizing planting surface area with accessible bed interiors. I like to make curvy, four-foot-wide, lobed beds nested into each other with small footpaths between them. My current mound is a long curve around the veg garden, a crescent moon waxing with produce. I’m going to make a couple more on the east side of the garage this year. These new ones will hold my summer squash. I think they’ll be sort of shaped like a yin-yang symbol but with a path between the two sides so I can reach the whole mound.

Mound building is one of my favorite garden jobs. There is little that is so immediately satisfying. With a pile of prunings and downed limbs, some dry filler materials like cardboard and straw, and a few cubic feet of compost, you can transform a patch of weedy grass into a rich dark bed of loam in just a few hours. What a tangible accomplishment!

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A Hügelkulture Refresher

Hügelkulture (pronounced HOO-gl-culture) is the funnest word ever to come out of agriculture. Sounds like the hoopla around faddish felt gnomes or something…

Definition of Hügelkulture: a horticultural technique where a mound constructed from decaying wood debris and other compostable biomass plant materials is later (or immediately) planted as a raised bed. Adopted by permaculture advocates, it is suggested the technique helps to improve soil fertility, water retention, and soil warming, thus benefiting plants grown on or near such mounds. (Wikipedia)

Fun word just got not fun. So perhaps a definition of the definition is necessary?

Hügelkulture is translated from the German as “hill culture”. This is more than simply making a raised bed. The idea is to pile up decomposing material into a crescent-moon-shaped mound. The mounds can be any height, depending on how they will be used. Foresters will cover downed trees with small branches, leaves, and soil all in piles up to ten feet tall and let the pile decompose in place, creating ideal nursery conditions for seedling trees. Most garden variety mounds will be under four feet tall because that is also how wide the beds will be — and 4 feet is a comfortable work width.

The idea behind these mounds is that the woody base will decompose slowly and gradually add carbon to the soil — while, yes, sequestering that carbon in the soil. The hills, like all raised beds, improve drainage and are easier to warm in the spring, though unlike raised beds, they do not dry out or freeze as easily because the hills are very deep, the top of the hill is covered with denser soil and mulch to prevent water loss, and the bottom is a heat-generating rotting log. Hills can also be used to direct or contain surface water — a technique usually used in conjunction with some sort of ditch or swale. Some piles are intended merely to serve as slow-acting compost piles, but most gardeners will plant in them. Because why would you want all that space that isn’t growing stuff?

What goes on top of the woody base is determined by what you intend to plant in the hill. If you want to plant perennial herbs and flowers — things that will develop roots as the mound decomposes — then there is less immediate need for a deep topsoil layer than if you want to grow your tomatoes or rutabagas in the hill. Generally, the idea is to put the slowest decomposers on the bottom and work up to soil on top. Things that are woody but small should go on top of the base layer of thick branches and trunks. Usually, a layer of grass turves will go on this wood layer both to make a smooth surface on the wood and to introduce soil organisms to the wood.

The next layer is mostly leaves, dried plant material, paper and cardboard. You should add a bit of soil into this dried layer; the idea is to not have so much air space between the particles that roots can’t find water and nutrients. This layer will be about one quarter of the height of the pile above the wood and grass turves base (this stuff above the woody base is the growing medium portion of the hill). The next layer is half-finished (half-rotted) compost; it will be about one half of the growing medium. The half-finished stuff will be chunky but will have about as much fine soil as larger particulate matter. This is where your root crops will be developing, so keep that in mind while determining the thickness of the layer and the degree of un-rotted compost you want cozying up to your carrots.

The final layer of the hill, about one quarter of the growing medium, is good finished compost. To stretch out the compost, which is sometimes a limiting factor (especially in dry regions where it takes years to rot stuff), you can add garden soil as well. If you are planting perennials or shrubs in your pile, you may not need this top layer. Annuals will require a thicker layer of finished soil, with perhaps some silty sand or vermiculite mixed in at the very top to make a seed-bed. But, annual or perennial, you will want some top-covering of mulch to protect the soil and keep the hill from washing away.

Hügelkulture works best with perennials. It’s perfect for an herb garden, especially in cold and damp regions — herbs generally favor warm and dry. Adding a hill to a given width of garden plot also increases surface area. You can fit more plants into hügelkulture than a flat bed. And you can fit in a more diverse selection of plants in the hill because it has variable conditions — micro-climates — up and down it surface. Plants that thrive in the breezy sun at the top will create shade for plants that prefer protected conditions. Plants that need deep root space will go on top; those that have wide, shallow root systems (most of the grasses and many herbs) can go on the sides to help stabilize the soil.

Hügelkulture can also be used for vegetable gardening. The main advantage of the hill over the raised bed in this case is the increased surface area. However, to take advantage of that extra space, you have to be careful about sculpting the hill to have a gradual slope, then plant the sides with leafy or vining crops so as not to disturb the soil. I plant greens and legumes on the slopes. When I’m done with the plants I just cut the stalks to the soil level and leave the roots in the ground — to become soil while holding it all together.

If you plant your hügelkulture with perennial food plants — artichokes, rhubarb, asparagus, berry plants, culinary herbs, and so on — and mix annual veggies and herbs in between the perennials, you’ll have dinner right outside your door every day for nearly the entire growing season. And you hardly have to do anything except waddle out there in the morning and pick stuff off the plants — which, being on a hill, are also easier to reach than those planted in normal garden beds.

Permaculturists love hügelkulture. It creates soil, sequesters carbon, controls water flow and improves drainage, uses up all the woody bits in the garden, increases garden space — AND you can pile it all up and never have to do anything with it again. It will produce great plants year after year without any digging or amending. If you are careful about keeping seeds out of the initial pile and if you keep the mound mulched, the mounds also tend to be less weedy than regular garden beds. And there are also fewer pest issues because this is healthy soil; pests are eaten by healthy soil critters. It is virtually work-free once constructed. This is the real goal of permaculture, you know: to get food (and yeah, ok, flowers) without doing any work.

It should also be noted, for those of us without trust funds to throw at garden maintenance, that hügelkulture is a very cheap path to good garden soil. If you have woody plants and a compost pile going already it’s almost free. If not, it’s fairly easy to get the materials from city parks’ maintenance folks or landscapers (though with both make sure you’re not getting sprayed toxins in the mix — soil critters can’t grow in poison). 

And finally, hügelkulture is beautiful. Gardeners in Central Europe have been using this technique to make gorgeous textured landscapes for millennia — to hide work areas and highlight special plants, to draw eyes and feet along sinuous paths filled with color and scent, to create seclusion and intimate space. Add a bench and you have a perfect meditation garden. Put in a fountain or plant a central fruit tree and it becomes a medieval sanctuary garden. Or build an outdoor oven and you have an open air kitchen. You can bake bread while relaxing with the herbs. The design options are limitless.

So rather than hauling all those storm-downed limbs to the dump — which does not want or need them — lay out a design in the snow and pile the wood on top. You can add the rest of the layers later. (See? Another wonderful thing! It doesn’t have to be done all NOW.)

And, of course, you’ve now got a new word to impress your less garden-savvy friends.

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©Elizabeth Anker 2024