!! SEPP to Boot: Stephen's Experience (BEL)

BEL #832

Here's a video recap and assessment of how one of our hugel berms has recovered after suffering a landslide last year. Things are looking all right over there.



Thanks for watching, and enjoy your day...!

Stephen it's looking good,

The stakes and trellis grid have sure worked, you've done a great job at anchoring the soil and it's showing good recovery. The trees look in very good shape as well (love nectarines) and you obviously have knowledge of cover crops and the biomass they produce to get nutrient back into the soil.

From experience of flooding here on my hugels in Australia I've found a couple of reasons soil at the bottom might not be as productive.

Soil after being washed down can compact a lot at the bottom so it doesn't absorb as well and new seeds/plants don't take as well.

The sand looks on the sandy loam side from the picture, so the water would also carries away nutrients leaving less in the bottom soil.

Legumes and brassicas have good sturdy root systems to hold soil, so the daikon is a win, I also use dandelion and clovers for quick cover, doesn't hurt the leaves are edible either. I also use leaves and roots for tea or pound clover leaves in mortar and pestle and add it to pastry and dumplings, they're nutritious and pastry turns pretty green.

Love watching how your block is developing and looking forward to more on the hugel recovery.

I didn't realize the slump had been that recent when we were there.  I have a vague recollection of throwing down seeds in there...vague memory includes dandelion.

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:BEL #830

Here's a research video I cut together after fellow Boot Esteban and I found an enormous, currently-unidentified vegetable growing just outside the Library.

Thanks for watching, and enjoy your day...! :-D

Almost definitely either a rutabaga, or a Gilfeather turnip!

Gilfeather turnip is the state vegetable of Vermont and one of my favorites for eating. They are some kind of turnip-rutabaga hybrid and they get gigantic (as in, twice the volume of your head!) The original breeder tried to keep them from being propagated, but I believe his neighbors got some seeds and after his death they were spread around.

They are very sweet, almost like a brassica-potato-apple.

I believe Gilfeathers have white flesh and rutabagas have yellow. Gilfeathers also look less purple typically. Rutabaga seems the more likely considering where it is, but they look more like gilfeathers to me. Maybe someone threw some Gilfeather seeds on the hugel?

https://www.motherearthgardener.com/profiles/gilfeather-turnip-zemz18fzsphe/

Any chance that veggie is a Khol rabi? It too, is in the Brassica family and I've seen them grow that large.