posted 12 years ago
Hi! I'm new here and have a couple questions. Very shortly I will be working at setting up an area anywhere from 4-8 acres with hugelkultur beds for growing vegetables. This will be a section of a 46-acre property. All around the perimeter of the property and in a few divisions, grows hedge apple. Much of this osage orange will get cleared out (at least a few of the hedge rows -- the outer perimeter may stay for awhile). At first I thought I could use all the osage orange trunks for the hugel beds, but now I realize osage orange has anti-rot agents. What advice can you give me on this? Can I get away with using the osage orange anyway? I do not want to compromise the quality of my hugel beds, but I also want to put all this osage to use!
(However, there are surely other types of trees on the property including oak, maple, etc. -- common trees of the northeast -- if all else fails, I could use those, though I do not know how much there would be available of that, nor how much of it I would wish to chop down...)
My second question is in regards to building hugelkultur beds as a buffer to runoff water from a highway. Alongside our property is a fairly busy road, and my intention is to raise earth-berm walls up along the edge of the road and set back about 15 ft or so, and then I will seed the whole area between the road and the walls with native wildflowers so that their roots suck up all the dirty, polluted water. What if I make the earth-berm walls hugelkultur beds? That way they might absorb any water that the wildflower buffer cannot absorb.
Sounds like it has a few useful qualities. good for firewood and fence posts, and might be able to sell the wood to artists. I was wondering why you would want to get rid of it?
