I've been doing
carbon negative physiotherapy building a modified
hugel
It's too low to qualify as a grown up hugel, and only has branches underneath, but it's holding back street snowmelt and roof runoff, and there is a microclimate of high snow loads on the downside of the Gatineau mountains, so that's a meaningful exercise in keeping the
water in your
land, and it is like a hugel cut in half lengthways down 20 feet.
It was 4-5' high and is about 3' now and hasn't spread outwards
It contains a lot of big paper leaf bags, and
cardboard boxes up against the tree line / wind barrier virgin forest
I used cheap bags of topsoil to hold up the sides which are now mostly donated to a budding
permie, replaced with cereal boxes etc jammed with kitchen waste, covered in a thick double sheet of cardboard from big boxes folded closed
There are still bags further up and on top, and will need to stay into next year, but I am trying to add transplanted and apparently dead cherry bush
roots given me at the wrong time with a failed prayer
asparagus berries on top,
giant ground cherries,
echinacea,
And I have some leeks and onions and carrots already growing
And some thimbleberries on the sunnier side in the foreground at this end
It gets half day sun
Needed no watering this first year
I planted a couple of dead branches already for stability
I hope to grow peas up the back this coming year
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