Geoffrey Haynes

HI everyone.

I am involved with a retreat center near Cranbrook, BC (which is an hour from the U.S. border near Idaho/Montana), which is looking to heat some 12' x 12 ' retreat cabins in the winter, where it can be -20C/ subzero F in the winter. The current mini-stoves need reloading every hour and a half at night which isn't practical for rentals.

I'd love to learn how to build rocket mass heaters myself, but not there yet - would need a lot of experimentation and guidance, although I love some of the designs I've seen here such as the Cyclone and others.

A challenging part is to know what size is practical for this space. The cabins are reasonably well insulated with windows that are perhaps 4 ft x ft

Any suggestions are most welcome!

Thanks

Geoff

Here are the beds in the front yard of my friend's house.

They're not super big but I wanted them to look attractive in someone's front yard. The wood is buried maybe a foot deep. The one in the back is maybe two feet high, and has a swale in the back.

Geoff

The clover/alfalfa is for the nitrogen (maybe extra important because wood is said to absorb nitrogen). I've seen it dug into the bed - probably the same video. Don't know if it's better to do it that way or go the no-till route.

It's not the time of year for potatoes here. We are entering the frost season soon, followed by winter in another 6 weeks. Temperatures are dipping down to just above freezing even though it's still been hot here in the day (25C or more). But maybe in the spring time. Potatoes are resilient, and I assume they'd break up the soil, and leave behind organic material, especially if you leave some of them unharvested. Radishes can have the same effect and I planted some of them because they grow very quickly.

I also wanted to grow beets. I have read that the roots can extend downwards to 11 feet! Maybe not here, but they'd bring some nutrients from down below, and mix the layers.

As for manure, how about any place that has horses, or cattle, that are allowed to roam freely and eat grass? That's probably close to organic, even if not certified.

Here are two of the Hugel beds I made in late August.

Because they are in someone's yard, I made them relatively flat, so that they look like raised beds. I dug down at least a foot when I was creating them.
You can see the difference between them - both were planted with clover and alfalfa, but the first was topped with manure (and perhaps more heavily watered).

That sounds ideal, bill. Rotten apples will provide organic matter and nitrogen.
I just used dirt in the first beds I built. I topped them with clover/vetch mulch, because that's all I had access to. Where I am living now, I went and got some composted manure for $2 a bag. (Sometimes it is given away for free). Straw is a little harder to come by around here.

I really think permaculture involves creative use of whatever resources are at your disposal, so it sounds like you are doing fine.

One tip, from what I've been told, and read.... if you have a choice of manure, chicken or sheep manure is best. Horse and cow manure is still fine though. A friend of mine is looking for llama manure.... don't know what the advantage is exactly.

Finally, some more questions that have arisen in my mind as I built 3 more hugelkultur beds (since my previous posts)... Anyone want to tackle these?


- What is the difference between using coniferous (pine, spruce, tamarack) and deciduous (poplar, birch)? Any direct observations?

- If using newish wood (much of it from blow-down trees earlier this year), is the extra nitrogen consumption a problem? Can this be compensated by planting nitrogen fixers?

- Does it help to incorporate things like strips of cardboard inside? I've heard that we want to encourage fungal growth in the beds.

- Is there much of a difference in the length of the growing season? It's been said by people on the west coast, and Pacific NW, that the growing season begins earlier. Does this apply to colder climates, or does it take a while for the bed to thaw and composting/decomposition to kick in?

I will share some more pics soon!

Thanks Tyler.

The second video was interesting... (Here is an irrigation pipe, and over here is another pipe draining leading away from the water fountain - what's wrong with this picture?)


I am thinking of a combination of a gravel bed, surrounded by vegetation to help store the water. I'll post some pictures if I make some progress on this.

Hi...

I am currently doing some permaculture in a friend's yard, in the southern interior of BC (Canada), where the summers can be hot and dry. (It has been 30C/nearly 90F everyday for 3 weeks and only rained once or twice). The soil is bone dry, and I am really thinking about a rainwater collection system, but here's the catch. Nobody around here uses eavestroughs (or rain gutters, depending where you live), because they get damaged with the load of winter snowfall. So I probably have to collect water as runoff from the ground.

Would you recommend laying down a gravel bed, in sort of a trough, where the rain falls from the roof, and channelling it down towards a swale? I could even get some piping if I wanted to channel it further away from the area into some garden beds? Any ideas? Right now there is just plastic laid down, which probably is just increasing evaporation, so it wouldn't be hard to improve on the situation.

Any suggestions appreciated!

Ah, I missed that, you're in Upstate NY! I have no idea what grows around there, but my book here lists a whole bunch of nitrogen fixers such as Bayberry, Alder, and Black Locust.

Where do you live, Tim? (I have never heard of Franklin County).

Alfalfa/Clover/Fava Beans are frequent choices for living mulch/green manure. You can cut them down after they flower. (Some people recommend adding Rhizobium for non-native peas and beans).

In some countries, like Australia, they use leguminous trees, such as Acacia, but I don't know of any where I live.

There are other non-leguminous nitrogen fixers like Buffaloberry, and Silverberry (found in the northern Rockies where I live). No doubt there are others in your area.


Just about any compost would help with the sandy soil.

Why don't you post some pictures, Tim?

I would have posted sooner but I only check this forum about once a week, and I was busy building my own bed.

I planted it with a mix of alfalfa and white clover, and added some mulch to prevent drying. (Necessary in this 32C weather).

It was also newish wood (from earlier this year) so I figure it needs more nitrogen to balance things out. Thinking of putting some garlic in for the fall - one plant that will survive the winter, and not get eaten by deer...