Therese Asmus

Thank you for the feedback everyone. I was just reading Michael Phillips The Holisitc Orchard and he mentioned that mulching blueberries with wood mulch or needles is excellent for them, so it would make sense that a hugel bed would work well. Won't go into all the details of what he shares. He did mention that blueberries can do well in higher ph environments as long as the roots have a way to take in iron. He mentioned using sulfur as one way to encourage iron intake. Very interesting. Also, using the moss as one person mentioned can help. We happen to have wetlands filled with naturally growing moss, so perhaps I can get some from there and use them in some of the beds. I'm trying to decide if it's worth rebuilding the beds some, but don't honestly want the extra work. We are converting all of our gardens into hugel beds and that is already going to be a great deal of work since we have a spade, our arms and our backs and that's it.

Growing tomatoes on the ground... I've done that almost every year for one reason or another and have had pretty poor success with it in comparison to when I can actually get the tomatoes to stay up off the ground. Last year we had so much rain late in the season that the tomatoes would rot on the ground faster than I could get them up and slugs (I'm guessing that's what caused the damage) had a hey day. The ducks we have like slugs, but they like tomatoes too!

Hi,

We have 4 year old hugelkultur mounds I'd like to try and plant berry plants in. I was hoping of using 1 mound for blueberry plants and another mound for strawberries.

Couple of questions. The mounds are pretty broken down, but still about a 1' - 1.5' tall from originally being around 3'. Has anyone had experience with growing blueberries in the mounds. Did a quick search on the internet and didn't see a great deal of info. We've had a huge success with out mounds growing a variety of vegetables, so much so we are converting all of our garden spaces to mounds this spring. We live in central MN in zone 4a. I'm concerned about the ph of the mounds for blueberry plants. Does anyone have any recommendations for a trustworthy way to check the ph of them? I'm guessing it needs to be lowered some since cabbages, broccoli, squash have done amazingly well on the mounds and I don't believe they thrive in as acidic environment that blueberries would want. Was looking at some ph test on Amazon and they had very mixed reviews. I've had our soil professional tested through International Ag Labs with a focus of building nutrients for beyond organic gardening. However, I'd rather not have to spend the money to do that this year again, especially since each mound can vary depending on what we had decaying in it and where the soil was pulled from.

Also, those who have grown tomatoes in the mounds. How do you support the plants if they are placed at the top of the mounds? I really want to try the mounds with our tomatoes plants, but haven't figure out a good way to plant them and support them, while still being able to harvest from them. Plus putting such tall plants at the top of the mound shadows the plants below so much. The sun never goes directly overhead where we live. Our current mounds run east/west. Still deciding which direction is best for our property/sun/wind for the new hugelkultur beds we'll be putting in.

Thank you in advance for any recommendations.

Therese
artisttahomestead.com

I have been searching for farmers/homesteader who raise their dairy goats holistically and have 1-2 does (doelings or yearlings) for sale. Does any one have any recommendations of how to find goats like this or have some for sale and live in MN or WI? We would like to add to our beyond organic homestead herd.

Therese in MN

Steven - I'm open to any techniques that are tried and work, while understanding they may not work at our place. We've tried some planting around large rocks/boulders with some success, but our experimentation has been in the garden spaces instead of with trees. We have planted around 10+ fruit trees over the past 4 years, with a couple of losses. They've been planted in different areas some receiving more sun, others closer to water and in the shade until later in spring when the sun rises higher in the sky. We did this to experiment with keeping the trees from blossoming too early. The ground wasn't the best in this area, but the trees that did make it do bloom a bit later which could be helpful for late frost. The trees that have done the best are planted using the Ellen White Planting method that we learned about from an organic gardening workshop we hosted. The speaker shared about this method. The trees we planted using this particular method did extremely well and bore a great deal of fruit in their 2nd season. So much so that the branches almost broke. This particular method though doesn't help with zone temperature, but is focused on nutrient dense growing for the roots.

Methods we've tried growing within the garden spaces have been using hot spots/microclimates that are naturally occurring on our property in permaculture zone 1 and zone 2 where we plant the most items. Planting around large rocks/boulders. We have a lot of small boulders that we could use to build up around trees, but it would take a huge amount of effort to move them since we have little machinery to help. Before we do this I'm still not confident in how to best do it around trees. I haven't see how Sepp Holzer does this method in great detail. We have tried and had great success with hugalculture raised beds. People who come to our place are always amazed at how well veggies grow on these raised beds and I think part of the reason things do so well is because of the increased soil temperature early and late in the season. The heavy mulch/Back to Eden approach has also been tried and did not go well for where we live. Our soil temperatures stayed far too low and it took 3 years to get the wood chips to really break down. In the end we removed what was left and put them in a section of the garden that we weren't using to let them fully break down. Love the idea of Back to Eden, just not the best for our cooler climate and moisture level. We have no walls to plant along, although dream of creating some stone walls down the line. I'm not sure of other methods that can be used outside of greenhouses/high tunnels for trees or large bushes.

Russell - thank you for your thoughts. I was just researching seaberries and serviceberries. We have growing and doing well thus far raspberries, elderberry, currants (we'll know how well these did this spring), apple, plum, sour cherry, and apricot along with lots of different medicinal herbs and perennial edible plants. Each year we'd like to continue to expand the edible items and nut trees would be a wonderful blessing, along with a couple more varieties of fruit.

John - Thank you for the links. Great resources and have spent the last hour perusing the websites.

I'm looking for recommendations from those who have tried and true success at increasing their growing zone. We are in zone 4a of MN (USA), but would love to plant some edible fruit and possibly even nut trees that are most suitable in zone 5 - zone 6. We've read of what Sepp Holzer has done to increase his zones, but I'm wondering if there are any in a similar zone as ours that have had success doing the same and how they did it. We have 20 acres, but much of it is sloped from 4 degrees to about 40 degrees to the North. We are slowly incorporating a variety of permaculture designs into our homestead where our aim is to be growing nutrient dense, beyond organic foods with a longer term goal of becoming self sufficient on the land that we have. We've done plenty of experimenting, but would hate to invest into trees and loose them if there is a way to avoid it. The fruit trees we have planted thus far (suited for our current zone) are doing quite well, but would love a bit more variety.