Annette Jones wrote:A year on - I'd love to see an update on how your hugels (in your year ago post), are all producing now after arid weather stretches and to snow, also if what you planted as shown in your charts is still going through self-seeding and producing as intended.
I realise other boots may now be looking after them but would love to know if Syour goal of learning more gardening experience has worked as well as you hoped. What are your thoughts on the gardens and your progress towards your goals since then.
Seeing the breakdown of your last year's efforts has motivated me to keep records so I can see how each year's planting is progressing. I'd been totally relying on my phone images and now wish I had hard copied my efforts as the phone was smashed in an accident and the sim card irrecoverable. Note to self, don't rely only on technology for records 
Looks like you are learning a whole heap more while winter is upon you and looking forward to more progress reports along the way.
Oooh! It's a
request...! 
Seriously, I appreciate the questions. Let me see if I can sum things up appropriately.
SUPER SHORT VERSION:
Nothing went as planned last year, as we switched things up and grew Three Sisters (corn, pumpkins, beans). Potatoes were also strong performers, including volunteers. Sunchokes are practically endemic here. Kale was a trooper. We're in the midst of cultivating
landrace rye grain, derived from
Sepp Holzer grain.
"BIGGER PICTURE" DETAILS:
To provide structure to this past growing season,
Paul directed that some version of
Three Sisters be on the top of the list. So for my first growing season here as High Commander, I attempted to keep things simple with these emergent guidelines:
- kale at Basecamp, cabbage at the Lab (we didn't want Brassica to cross-pollinate and provide us with mutant broccoli or whatever)
- corn on the upper half [of the
hugel berms],
- potatoes on the lower half,
- once the corn is high
enough - as in, early July-ish - we'll plant beans and pumpkins/squash around them,
- let sunchokes grow as volunteers anywhere they like,
- the only grass we want is
Sepp Holzer Grain, otherwise mulch it,
- anything else you want, plant it anywhere you think it'll do well on a hugel berm.
I ought to do a much more extensive write-up on the full garden output, but in terms of the hugels I was responsible for last year, they were mostly unrecognizable:
- Basecamp One: dominated by corn and potatoes. Kale was a strong performer.
- Basecamp Too:
trees grew well over there, at least.
- Cricket Hill: Corn, sunchokes, potatoes, onions.
- Swamp Castle: Corn, sunchokes, onions.
If you like indigenous greens, then you would have enjoyed the bushels of
Lamb's Quarters that came out all over the berms, in general. I eat them right off the stalk while working out there. A variety of cherry tomatoes -
Matt's Wild Cherry - kicked ass here in a lovely patch I would visit every day we gardened at the Lab. I'd grab a handful and then split them with the rest of the team for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. We planted
Dinosaur Kale - a fantastic, rich purple-and-green kale from Montana Survival Seed Company - at Basecamp and I would eat a massive leaf every once in a while. Paul's miscellaneous
curly kale was also a standout. Kale in general lasted well into the cold season, so we had fresh greens into December. Finally: we have a couple strains of
Sepp Holzer Grain (a rye grass) that seems to be doing quite well, year after year, though it relies on humans to sow it.
THE UPCOMING GROWING SEASON:
Paul and I just completed ordering most of our seeds and plants for this upcoming growing season, and now that most of our
water worries seem to be over we're going for something more conventional: a wider variety of typical garden veggies, and several
apple trees, blueberry bushes, and raspberry bushes. We also planted 100 seeds each of
apple, plum, apricot, and cherry for this past Appleseed Day (a Half-Assed Holiday of ours in early December). Corn - a needy resource-hog, in my opinion - will be relegated to a single hugel berm. Sepp Holzer Grain has a few designated spots we'll be able to expand in comparison to last year. Beyond that, we have volunteers to expect: sunchokes, potatoes, asparagus (surprisingly persistent), and maybe some squash.
If the
Boot team remains small, I think we'll still be able to manage some good
gardening. My personal priority will be the trees and berry bushes, and for Basecamp in particular we'll have more kale.
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This is all exciting to think about...! Thanks again for the questions.
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