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Summary
Paul calls up another person who parted with real money to get a rundown of their property – this time Nate from Saint Paul in Minnesota. As if Paul didn’t have
enough of an ego…
When he bought the property, there was a micro-retaining wall made from apparently railroad ties. Paul recommends removing it because if it is made of rail ties, it’s full of toxic gick, and if it isn’t rail ties, it’s probably full of said toxins. The stones he has are quite rounded, so using them for dry stacks is going to be difficult, but seeing as the retaining wall is so small, but what he can do is layer stone and soil at a 45 degree angle to make a sort-of retaining wall. Turns out that Paul and Nate are on similar wavelengths as he’d already started doing exactly that.
Nate wants his entire front
lawn to be a permaculture garden, to which end Paul suggests putting some two feet wide raised beds about a foot away from the curb where
water gathers and there’s plenty of sun, whilst leaving enough room for foot traffic and car doors. Maybe even with some hugelkultur-esque structure on the inside part. He’d also put a more proper
hugelkultur at 4.5 feet tall and 4 wide parallel to the path that goes to the house, with one end finishing a foot away from the public sidewalk and goes to the rocks beside the house. Plus, if he takes soil from the side opposite the path, he’d have an effectively even taller
hugelkultur bed with a new path of subsoil sloping down slightly, towards the level of the public sidewalk to keep excess rainwater out of the basement. Even if there isn’t a basement, it’s a good idea to keep water away from the house to make sure the foundations don’t turn to mud.
Relevant Threads
New gardener in Minnesota, USA (zone 4b) - Nate's forum
thread
Hugelkultur forum
Midwestern USA regional forum
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This podcast was made possible thanks to:
Dr. Hugh Gill Kultur
Eivind W. Bjørkavåg
Suleiman, Karrie, and Sasquatch
Kyle Neath
Bill Crim
anonymous
Kerry JustTooLazy
Jocelyn Campbell
Chris Sugg
Sasquatch
Bill Erickson
G Cooper
Dominic Crolius
havokeachday
Penny McLoughlin
Mehron Kugler
Julia Winter, world's slowest mosaic artist
Pasquale DeAngelis
Greg Martin
Mark
Sean Benedict
Rita Bliden
Dana Martin
Candace Dahlk
Keith Kuhnsman
Eric Tolbert
Matthew Stone
Nuno Marta
Polly Jayne Smyth
Opalyn Brenger
ellen fisher
Eliot Mason
Katie Young
Ivar Vasara
JMBlackwater226R
Nathan Hale
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