learnings after first year-ish of actual vs. imagination homesteading

I'll hopefully organize a top ten list at some point, but I wanted to get something out there for starters.

--Dog DESTROYS Hugelkultur in Senate Debate:

Actually it wasn't in the senate, it was in the nearby part of the yard to our country front door (country front door = backdoor, the one you always use, primarily in our case because it has a mudroom = airlock = cat-escape-prevention two doors).

I had tried to do bonfils wheat.  It didn't work.  Not because there's anything wrong with the bonfis method, but because my dog decided that he would like to do a reverse badge bit for the anti-permaculture site BigDestruction.com.  He tore up the entire hugelbed, the mulch seems to have disappeared entirely, this is not cute.  

The problem is the solution:
I don't have a really great solution yet except save yourself the time and effort of making the hugelbed in the place where the livestock guardian puppy is going to spend the majority of his time.  We had to tether him (legal and practical considerations), and it needed to be near where he could come in and out (this breed is supposed to come indoors a lot and bond with you, plus we want to be able to check on him easily, and in the first days he could come and go from the porch easily on his tether and get to his nighttime shelter.  All of this would have made putting the hugelbed outside the eventual fence line better, or just not bother this year.  Solution = not do it --> more time I get to be lazy or engage in Imagination Homesteading, OR solution = build it on the other side of the garage -- > a slightly farther walk to drop buckets of house wastewater on it but much less canine predation.  

(Also, the autopsy showed that, what with the drought and the sandy sandy soil, and the fact that the logs were just slightly-too-damp-for-firewood leftovers from it was such a dry hugelbed it didn't really start to rot down anyway.

--

don't irrigate hugelbeds from the top.
I had to irrigate because of the drought.  Year 1, if you don't have _soil_ (vs. dirt) on your hugelbed, you need to irrigate.  Well, irrigate I did, and it was a pain in the butt getting the hose all teh way over there or, later, a wheelbarrow of water, and about halfway through the season I saw how much erosion i was causing by trying to water from the top and read up on it more.  It seems you really want to irrigate at the bottom and let it wick up.  Now, if you have sandy soil it may not wick up very well, but a very small amount of water lightly sprinkled will be better than a larger amount poured or hosed onto the top.  

A frustration is that the water in the bottom of the hugelbed will mostly go down into the leachfield of our sandy, sandy soil did i mention our soil is sandy, and only a little will wick up.  Sand wicks faster than topsoil, though topsoil wicks _farther_/_higher_ than sand.  I don't yet know how to make use of this property, maybe there's something.  But the best thing to do is just be patient, maybe mulch around the hugelbed a lot farther out with anything available, in our case highway department wood chips were available for free and I'm 99% sure they don't spray anything.  (They trim branches off healthy trees that are trying to poke the power lines).

The problem is the solution:  I don't see any other than the value of a lesson learned.  Erosion is rarely useful.  I guess, better soil collecting in the trench at the bottom of the hugelbed, but that's a real mixed blessing.

--
seeds planted and STUNned--no result

I don't know, autoposy shows nothing. they seemed to just disappear without a trace.  10 chestnuts, in two different places.  Now, many would point the finger at rodents, but in their defense I must say that there is no evidence of any digging.  My working theory is aliens with some kind of teleportation technology.  I don't have evidence for my theory either, but if it's correct, they would have left no evidence....dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah

the problem is the solution: just don't bother.  unplant oaks instead.  (see my post about unplanting).  notice wild chestnuts already growing up the hill across the road in the undeveloped land/conservation-ish land (the signage is confusing)--they are American chestnuts and won't produce seed, but it's a great place for chestnuts.  Maybe my aliens replanted my seeds over there?

As I type this I realize I could have focused on making hugelbeds to provide water for the chestnut trees, rather than focusing on vegetables, but I didn't remember to do that at the time because I was just focused on "oh I have some wet-ish reject wood to use up from my neighbor's woodpile and I guess I'll just build a hugel here"

--

Please feel free to add some year-end learnings or observations here.  You don't have to have a definitive conclusion, the observation is probably more valuable than a premature conclusion anyway, and mine should be taken as tentative (except the aliens, I am sure of the aliens)

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:--Dog DESTROYS Hugelkultur  

seeds planted and STUNned--no result

Please feel free to add some year-end learnings or observations here.  

Maybe you had no results from the seeds because when the dogs destroy the hugelkulture the seeds got planted too deep.

Maybe the seeds were planted at the wrong time of year or the seeds didn't make good soil contact so the seeds did not germinate.

Maybe the seeds did not get enough water to germinate?

Well, the seeds might still germinate, I suppose, but the hugelkultur bed is destroyed so I figure the experiment is kaput. But you raise a good point, maybe they'll miraculously pull through.  However, it wasn't what I planned.  

So, to be fully accurate, I haven't completed the experiment yet, year 2 is when the wheat plants are supposed to put out a bonanza of grains, and I have not quite gotten to year 2 yet.  However, their odds look pretty slim, given Dogmageddon.  

Anne Miller wrote:

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:--Dog DESTROYS Hugelkultur  

seeds planted and STUNned--no result

Please feel free to add some year-end learnings or observations here.  

Maybe you had no results from the seeds because when the dogs destroy the hugelkulture the seeds got planted too deep.

Maybe the seeds were planted at the wrong time of year or the seeds didn't make good soil contact so the seeds did not germinate.

Maybe the seeds did not get enough water to germinate?

I may have misundestood your reply, if you're talking about the chestnut seeds, those were at the far side of the land and the dog didn't do any destruction there.  His alibi is he was still being born in Mississippi at the time.  

Just putting up another thing here that went wrong from last year.  I realized I've not been posting some of the mistakes/things that went wrong because I've been judging them as not worth attention, but it may actually be useful to someone.  Just as I don't understand everything nature understands, I don't understand everything about others' experiences.

The potatoes croaked a few months in, most of them, and turned to pulp.  All the potatoes on the hugelbed, the ones in the woodchip bed that was partly decomposed that the previous owner had left there.

I used Sonic Bloom on them, which I have found extremely effective, but I got off the routine of that after a while.

Drought was a big part of what did everything in, but I kind of would have expected smaller potatoes rather than pulp.  So I'm thinking that if I hadn't sonic bloomed them they would have survived the drought.  

Irrigation was not really possible with our limited well and my energy/patience/laziness, needing to wheelbarrow the water over there.  And I made the mistake of watering from above instead of letting water wick up.  

So, CSI Potato is inconclusive this episode as to the exact time and cause of death, but I am pretty sure the sonic bloom was too fancy.  If I'd kept it simpler it would have been a little better and a little less work early on in the season--I was a bit anxious for something to do and getting busy rather than observing and listening to nature's signals.

The potatoes over in the other area, in the former vegetable garden (of previous owner) actually did OK, though they were small they were tasty.

Hi, Joshua.
We all made lots of mistakes at the beginning. The point is to learn from these failures and try more things. Learn not only that you can't do something, but why it didn't work, so you get an idea on how you could make it work next time.
When I started my project, I was very motivated, I designed several guilds and went to look after the plants I wanted to plant. It turned out I didn't have the money for that kind of project, and I wasn't able to find cheap substitutes. Then, when I got my hands on a few species, I discovered that I didn't know a damn about growing plants. Next, as I slowly learned, I hadn't enough water resources, specially harsh with the draugh we are currently enduring.
After two years I was expecting to show some promising results, but reality is very different. But still... I'd say I've learned a lot from the mistakes.
For example, I no longer directly seed. My soil is not wet enough for that kind of luxury. I may grow a few seedlings, let them grow long roots, and then plant them in the soil with the little irrigation I can provide, then they have a small chance to survive.
I learned we have a dead season in mid-summer: that's two to three weeks where everything you planted which is not shaded or heavily irrigated just dies. If I want to succeed, I have to plan on harvesting before that date, and wait for planting new things after that period.

About your experiences, there's a lot to learn from them, not just avoidind the things you failed.
- A raised hugelkultur is not suited for dry climates, you may try a sunken hugelkultur instead. It has more work, you have to dig quite a lot, but the moist holds better. It doesn't help with the wind, though. You will need to build a living fence if you need to pacify winds.
- Irrigation must be done very very gently when your soil lacks structure. Use you hose 'mist' or 'spray' functions, and make short and frequent passes to prevent erosion. For building structure, best thing is allowing weeds to settle, then cutting them by the base before they got to seed. Spraying compost tea also helps, if you have it. Once you get good structure, you can irrigate as if it was soft raining. If you irrigate as if it was a hard rain, then you could damage your garden the same as a hard rain would do.
- I don't have dogs. Maybe you can find someone who helps you to educate him not to dig in your garden? If that is not possible, then fences might be your only choice.
- If you seed in dry soil, chances are that most of them become eaten by bugs. Weed seeds survive because there are millions of them. If you sow millions of seeds, even in dry soil, some of them will still be alive when rain comes. So you have two strategies here: either wait for rain (a soaking rain) before seeding, either make seedlings from seed, and wait at least one year before planting your trees on the ground.
- There are two types of tree seedlings: forestal and gardening. Forestal seedlings have only one year, the seedling array is very thin and long as to promote long roots, and you have to plant hundreds of these seedlings (they are cheap) and forget about them; the ones that survive will be there forever. Gardening seedlings may be five to six years old, grown in normal pots, they have more surface roots but struggle to get water on their own, so you have to irrigate them as needed. As long as you care for it, it will survive.
- Potatoes are tricky. They will rot easily in a soaked soil, so they need to be planted in rows above ground level, but then, they require some water. So far, I wasn't able to grow them in my drylands setting: I don't have enough water for the traditional method, and they couldn't stand my sunken bends when it rained. I may try growing them in bags. Some day.
- You mentioned soaking you hugel from the base so the humidity goes to the top. That wouldn't work. Water goes up by capilarity, it's a force that sucks a liquid into a 'pipe' structure, but it has to fight gravity force. Depending on the type of soil, water may rise 15 to 20 cm (8"?) by physics. Plants and funghi may pump water up too, if they reach it. You can use it to your advantage. You can take fresh leaves and stems, which hold some water that was captured from underground, and place it over the plants you want to get some extra humidity.

As for the chestnuts, if you planted the seeds in the fall, to germinate in the ground over winter, then it is indeed the usual experience that they will be lost (probably was rodents, maybe they hid their tracks). I've had good experience germinating them in a bucket and then planting the germinated seed in early spring. I'd way rather eat chestnut than acorn.