Chris Giffin

Thanks for the pictures Eric!

Eric Hanson do you have any problem with it making baby ones all over? or is our cold enough to stop that? If you could would you mind posting a picture of it? Thanks for the replies.

Thanks for the response..yah the paulownia sounds like a permies dream so I assumed it wasn't as great as they made it sound hehe. I have a couple tulip poplars coming up as well..I already got a few root cuttings for the paulownia started so if its no good Ill just chop it yearly for added mulch.  Thanks for the responses.

Thanks for the response. The tree we removed was actually a maple..For some reason they're not doing well in this little section. All of the ones in mine and my neighbors yard are having issues. Arborist told me they needed fertilized and he'd gladly do it for 500 dollars hah. It was dropping a lot of limbs and had the whole north side of its bark was wet and rotting. Hickories are in place..found a decent deal on two 2 year old trees. I'm patient but this summer is gonna be painful for me and all the plants with no shade at all.

Yah we grew black mountain watermelon last year and they grew well..this year I've added some golden midgets and cream of saskatchewan's. Hoping they cross and make something interesting. I was amazed at how much green stuff the vetch made. A few flowered out but I didn't wanna wait much longer to chop it..have some in the back area though that I'll let flower. I still have some seed left in the refrigerator for this fall. The Hugel is bigger than what it looks as well. I was about 10 foot up in the air for the photo.

Long story short dug a pond used all the clay from it to mound up on some well rotted 3ft around logs. Seeded it with hairy vetch, red winter wheat, garlic bulbs and comfrey root cuttings in October I think..memory fuzzy and Im bad about writing things down.  Chopped it today and seeded it with 4 different type of watermelon, calendula, radish, planted some gooseberry at the base, an Antonovka apple tree, strawberries. The whole thing was loaded with ants and worms and other critters and the clay was noticeably softer. The hairy vetch produced a lot of mulch. Will post more pics if the watermelon come up.

Vetch is starting to flower now and the winter wheat has put on heads..it'll work but I think Ill try barley and rye this year to see if they are ready sooner.

I'd love to see some more pictures..I'm in the infancy stage of the same adventure in Cincinnati.

It looks like a deer had a fight with it..but the dieing back to the ground I dunno about that.

So this last year I planted some winter wheat and hairy vetch around early October as cover crops. The wheat didn't seem all that happy about growing here. The vetch however grew awesome on my newest hugel. I would like an overwintering cover crop that I could harvest early to mid April that would provide a lot of straw/mulch. Just wondering if anyone else from a 6a/6b zone has had any luck with anything that meets this criteria? Been doing a bit of searching but not having much luck. If I can get a seed harvest from it that would be a huge plus as well. Its about .25 of an acre with full sun and decent moisture that I'd be covering. Ill gladly experiment next fall but if anyone else has more experience and wouldn't mind sharing it, I'd love it!