Elliot Everett

Hi all. I have Art Ludwig's book and have read most of it. I am finishing up a kitchen sink gray water system and could use your advice. It has a grease trap (from previous traditional system). Soil is heavy black clay, but perc test I did came out alright. The grease trap was about 1 foot underground, so that is how deep my pipe is going out to the mulch pit. I will be adding in rain water from a very small roof (2 meters by 1.5 meters) that will drop in after the grease trap. I have already laid down 2" PVC pipe out to the pipe with a 2% grade. We have lots of thirsty eucalyptus trees on the property and the roots get everywhere.

I found a neat, sturdy outlet cover. We have "tarrinas" here in Uruguay that are used for bulk shipments of olives that range from 20 to 250 liters. They are made of a thick blue plastic and have really sturdy tops. My idea is to cut the bottom out of a 50L tarrina and have the top exposed at ground level so I can inspect it from time to time.

Question 1. How big should the holes be in the outlet cover? How far should they go up? How many liters should the outlet cover be?


Question 2. I really couldn't get an exact answer as to how big my mulch pit should be. Given my situation, what do you say? Also, can I fill it up with euc leaves and sticks, maybe some grass clippings?


Thanks!

Old threat but...

Logs at the bottom of a grey water mulch pit is interesting. In his book, Art Ludwig mentions that you want to use material that won't break down so easily. I wonder if that would work.

I guess you are not talking about a mulch pit though, just a regular hugel with a pipe sticking in it.

What did you end up doing?

Absolutely! I have made several hugels with eucs and they all have worked out nicely. My most recent project was a "cinder hugel": a raised garden bed made from cinder blocks stacked 2 high with euc logs at the bottom and in the cores (holes in the blocks). Go for it!

That's a good question Richard. I'll let you know when I find out!

Meanwhile, the ash mystery continues...

I must have read somewhere that covering stumps with wood ash prevents regrowth. So I tried it after cutting down two eucalyptus/gum trees in the yard. Normally, these guys would shoot right back up. Not this time. In fact, now I have bermuda grass/gramilla taking over where the stump was. It grew right on top of the ash with no dirt or anything!

What I did was cut the tree down to the ground as low as I could and on top dumped ash mixed with water (to make a nice paste). Boom! No regrowth and no having to grind stumps, etc. People here usually say you have to drill into the stump and dump in chemicals.

But why does the ash and water mixture work?

I would say all in Spanish, but there is a "Bruce Kirk" as one of the teachers. Don't know who he is, but I assume he is a native English speaker. In any case, a lot of educated Uruguayans speak English at least to some degree and I would imagine this group would be pretty well educated. The cost UYU 8000 (around USD 420).

Near Aiguá, Maldonado department.

http://www.permaculturauruguay.com/cursos.html

I have found with my experiments that existing bushes really started to take off after I put hugels next to them. Anybody else experience this? So I might put trees right up next to the hugel and plant other stuff (veggies) on the hugel itself.

I have had very good initial results with eucalyptus. I used smaller branches and leaf waste to make my first test hugel. Even though there is partial shade, things are growing very well: comfrey, jerusalem artichokes, sweet potato, potato and mint.

Pics:

Hi, I live in Uruguay. I have not gotten together with any of these, but there are permaculture groups and courses. Here are some links:

http://www.permaculturauruguay.com/

http://villaamendoeira.blogspot.com/

I don't know how good you Spanish is, but I would guess that at least few of these folks can communicate in English pretty well.