Hello everyone! We are starting a small organic garlic farm using Hugelkultur beds. We have one acre and are doing a 3 year rotation with the beds. We are also using cover crops with buckwheat, clover, rye and fescue. After reading posts on here and doing our research, we are still left with many questions and are hoping many of you can help us. Our questions are as follows:
1) how much of the Hugelkultur bed should be dedicated to companion plants with garlic remaining as the main crop? Is there a % of main crop to companion we should target? We must rotate the garlic and only plant it in the same soil every three years
2) typically in a traditional garden bed, you don’t want to water Garlic one month prior to harvest in July/August as you want the garlic to harden off. With that in mind, Should we limit the size of the hugel so as not to maximize total water retention capacity of the mound? Is it best to plant the garlic only on the tops of the mound, and how should we change the design of our mounds with this in mind?
3) When we incorporate the companion plants, is it enough to plant them on the sides or is it better to plant them in between the garlic on top as well?
(So far we have rue, dill and chamomile in mind for companion plants)
4) When we make the beds, is it enough to curve them into half moon shapes to prevent the wind and drying effects? We are dividing them into 4 plots for the three year rotation. How can we maximize the 1 acre amount of space that we have for these mounds, and can we create curved hugels and still accomplish this? We have started to create the first 2 mounds running north and south in straight lines
5) if we surround the farm with 7 foot Hugelkultur beds, will that block the wind so we can keep the remaining mounds in straight lines running north and south instead of curved?
6)This is how we will construct future mounds:
An excavator first digs down 1-2 feet. Large pine logs are laid down, followed by soil to fill gaps and composted goat manure or alfalfa, followed by smaller branches, followed by soil and composted goat manure or alfalfa (whichever we didn’t use for the first layer), and then topsoil is added on top. The topsoil consists of Spodosol, organic soil from the landscape supply place, and a little bit of the goat manure mixed in too.
Can we make it better or is this ok?
Thank you for taking the time to read this! We appreciate your help.
Matt
