making a quick 7 foot tall hugelkultur

Mike Haasl wrote:One benefit is a cool place to hang out in the summer.  Another is possibly a spot to plant a tree where you want to delay its blooming by chilling the ground around it.

What is the purpose of delaying the blooming of a tree?

Perhaps you're growing something like a peach that flowers a bit early in the spring and then loses its blossoms to frost.  If the bloom was delayed a couple weeks it might get past that frost...

Does anyone have any idea how long this would take? also could you do it with just yourself and a shovel, or would you need heavy machinery/a community work day?

Finn Torrey wrote:Does anyone have any idea how long this would take? also could you do it with just yourself and a shovel, or would you need heavy machinery/a community work day?

It could probably be done in a few hours by yourself and just using a shovel. The biggest time drain is going to be acquiring the materials. Do you have enough wood for infill on the spot already? Where is the dirt coming from? If you are doing a cut/fill with the 3 foot ditch and the top of the hugel 4 feet above the ground, is that 3 feet of soil/dirt easily diggable?

Finally, how will you get the sides to retain their angle of repose to stay 7 feet at the top? Clumpy sod may do the job itself, but you will likely need some sort of 'skeleton' constructed on the sides to keep the steep angle. Any of these things will add more time. But shouldn't need heavy machinery unless you want to knock it out real fast or do a long hugel...

So I am considering putting in a 7-ft hugel in a spot that floods seasonally due to snow melt. I want to do some kind of earthworks to capture this water and potentially have it collect somewhere else. But the trenching on either side has me wondering. If I trench down on either side of where I want the hugel and maybe use some of that material to raise the hugel above the water level, I could essentially have an island hugel in the middle of two water-filled trenches. Has anyone built hugels in a location that floods seasonally or has a high water table?

Wouldn’t the path that is dug down around the base of the mound create a frost pocket thus making it so you can’t plant along the base?

You can plant in a frost pocket, but if you have frost sensitive plants, and it gets to frosting temps, they're screwed.  I bet lettuce would love growing down there in a hot dry climate.

Mike Haasl wrote:You can plant in a frost pocket, but if you have frost sensitive plants, and it gets to frosting temps, they're screwed.  I bet lettuce would love growing down there in a hot dry climate.

Yeah but I live in New England. Maybe I can use large rocks around the base (thermal mass) to mitigate frost, on the sunny side anyway.

If there isn't frost elsewhere in the garden/landscape, I don't think it will magically appear in the frost pocket.  It's just a place for frost to collect so when frosts happen, they'll definitely affect plants down there if they're sensitive.