Category Archives: Soil Building

Prepare for Storms, High Temperatures

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With climate change, comes instability in a system experiencing rapid change.

When we began studying permaculture nearly a decade ago, we did so because it represented a preferred method of farming. Today, we’re applying the fundamental principles of permaculture toward  survival.

In anticipation of increasing global temperatures, we’re paying close attention to methods of building and maintaining healthy soil. Healthy soil maintains moisture levels and temperatures, decreasing the need of supplemental watering and nutrient inputs.

This process may be sustained long-term with perennial polycultures planted specifically to improve soils through nitrogen fixation, dynamic accumulation and redistribution of nutrients, and broad leafed ground covers that shield top soil from a scorching summer sun and drying winds.

Why grow resource-gulping grasses when you can grow your own food?

Soil building requires little more than resourceful thinking. Most materials used in soil-building are typically available on site. Materials like newspaper, paper bags, cardboard, straw, and dead leaf matter provide sources of carbon. These layered with coffee grounds, manure, fresh leaf or grass clippings, and kitchen wastes, all nitrogen rich sources, provide for an ideal 1:1 CN ratio to begin soil-building and engage the carbon cycle decomposition process.

Planting newly developed beds in legumes inoculated with N2 fixing bacteria is a jump-start for next season. Why grow resource-gulping grasses when you can grow your own food?

Mama, the Unicorn can Sleep in the Barn

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ideaboardWe gathered the kids together in the living room for some advice. In creating a five-year plan for the farm, we wanted some input from those members of our family not so limited by the confines of practicality, for inspiration, and to include them in the planning process as an educational component.

We were not disappointed.

While listing options for livestock, our eight year old suggested raising unicorns. “We could sell them for a lot of money,” she said. With a smirk, the eleven year old chimed in, “They also have healing powers.”

Me: “Sounds like they might be costly to purchase?”

Eight year old: “But they only eat grass.”

So, unicorns made the list, though in the end, they were voted down due to initial expense and size. Chickens made it to the top of the list, followed by Southdown sheep and a llama. Pigs and the cow went the way of the unicorn.

We then spent time working with the kids on examining structures on the property that might house chickens, food sources that are already growing/or will be grown there, costs of supplemental food sources, bedding, and what kind of egg production we might see out of which breeds. Our eldest began researching the number of chickens we could keep at two of the existing structures, based on square footage. She then calculated the approximate number of eggs they might produce per week, and estimated profits based on those figures.

Next, we looked at preparing for the first, second and third growing season. The girls drew site maps, noting soil types and proximity to water. We talked about elevations, using topographical maps to show low-lying areas where frost might make growing fruit trees more of an issue.

The eight year old made up a worksheet of questions to be answered, like “Why does the stream have fish?” and a question that was rather pertinent, “How did the river get here?”

One of the streams, we explained, was naturally occurring, but the other was created when the farmer long ago created a trench to reach his livestock at the barn.

In the end, the planning had less to do with how to do what, when, and where, and more to do with engaging this next generation in exploring a landscape, its ecosystem, history, and future. Making decisions based on the constraints of budget, landscape, utility corridors, soil types, etc. And without knowing it, they received a great lesson in the permaculture design process and without rolling their eyes even once.

From grounds to ground, a soil building recipe

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To grow the very best food, you must build the very best soil. This doesn’t mean

adding copious amounts of NPK, but rather helping establish a soil climate teaming with helpful microbes and mycelium to facilitate the continued recycling of nutrients through the system.
To accomplish this task, we build soil, much as the forest does, one layer at a time, alternating nitrogen and carbon-rich sources.
Generally speaking, carbon-rich sources are brown or gold, while sources of nitrogen are typically green (though coffee grounds and fresh manure is considered a “green”).
See a general recipe below to get started building beds to support your long-term food-growing goals.
  • Start with digging up or tilling under the bed (this is not essential, but will help spur bacterial involvement – the bed is no-till following)
  • Pile 4-6 inches of chipped wood/mulch (preferably stems and trunks less than 2in in diameter)
  • Soak the wood with water
  • Overtop, layer 2-4 inches of grass-fed horse-manure (I stay away from cow manure unless I know the cows have been pasture raised)
  • Soak
  • As a weed barrier, lay down non-bleached cardboard or newsprint (most local papers use soy-based black and white ink) – pre-soak these materials
  • Next, layer flakes of green hay, soak
  • Then a layer of coffee grounds, compost, or other green rotters (coffee grounds are free and in abundance at local coffee houses!)
  • Add another layer of wet, heavy paper, then flakes of straw to cover the entire bed (should be appx 2-3 feet tall – will shrink down to 8-12 inches in three weeks time)
  • Over top the beds, add a thin layer of composted coffee grounds and plant peas that have been inoculated with Rhizobia bacteria (available at most garden centers) and leave to bake for the season

This recipe will generate a great, rich soil, but requires patience for best results. It may be used safely after one year, and will produce best after two. To maintain this no-till bed design, plant 25% N2 fixing plants and dynamic accumulators (like comfrey) that may be mulched in place. 

That’s a quick recipe for good earth!

Reinventing invasive

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What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

-Ralph Waldo  Emerson

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Elaeagnus umbellata

The word invasive is thrown about so easily whenever we humans talk about the fragility of our ecosystems. Though the plants many have labeled “invasive” are able to spread prolifically, it is rare that the ability of the plant to thrive has anything to do with a natural process. Rather our own foolish adherence to a desire to “own” and “control” the land through clear-cutting, removal of topsoil, massive monocultures, application of biocides, etc. leave us with a barren soil that invites those “pioneers” with high tolerances and preferences for disturbed soils.

And how we gawk at those pioneers and throw our labels at them with such vehemence for their impressive tolerances to nitrate contamination, ability to digest pollutants, and those incredible deep tap roots able to seek out nutrients despite a lack of sufficient topsoil. The truly invasive species is not a plant, it is a most obtrusive primate.

Up at the Eco Learning Center, where a number of former ELC folk have gathered to learn from an old, well-established vineyard, talk was underway of removing some autumn olive that was now growing amid the grapes.

Walking past these shrubs, I noticed a diverse grouping of plants, all thriving, and considered for a moment the potential for these shrubs to act as trellises for the grapes. Was the vineyard already trying to show us something?

As it turns out, our prolific friend, autumn olive, introduced from Asia where its berries are harvested for both medicinal and edible purposes, is loves our climate. It grows well in disturbed soils and even fixes nitrogen in the soil. Nitrogen fixers harbor bacteria within their roots that convert nitrogen from the atmosphere to useful nitrogen compounds in the soil. As such, this particular N2-fixer is referred to by some viticulturists as a “plant nurse,” a far friendlier label than invasive.

In the vineyard, the vines are reaching out to the autumn olive for support. The short stature of the shrub makes it an ideal trellis for grapes (and we humans hoping to harvest grapes by hand). In addition, the shrub provides a late-season berry, producing well after the first frosts in Michigan. These berries may be eaten, or prepared in a variety of ways and provide an excellent food source for birds and other wildlife.

So, perhaps the conversation might shift from how do we get rid of the autumn olive stands within the vineyard, to how might these stands prove a valuable resource for all? And perhaps, over time, our own tolerances for the consequences we face for having altered the landscape so abruptly will lend itself to a whole new set of teachings from our plant elders. It is this education that represents the very best of the harvest.

The following is a wine recipe from Jack Keller

AUTUMN OLIVE WINE    * 4-5 pounds Autumn olive fruit
* 2 lbs granulated sugar
* 1¼ tsp yeast nutrient
* ¼ tsp tannin
* 1 tsp pectic enzyme.
* 3 qts water
* Lalvin RC212 (Bourgovin) wine yeastPut 2 qts water on to boil. Meanwhile, wash and cull fruit for soundness. Put fruit in nylon straining bag, tie closed, and place in primary container. Bruise fruit by squashing with hands or a piece of hardwood, being careful not to crack seed. Pour boiling water over fruit and cover primary. Combine remaining water with sugar and stir until dissolved–may heat the water to aid in dissolving sugar. Add sugar-water to primary, replace cover and set aside to cool. When room temperature, stir in tannin, yeast & nutrient. Replace cover and set aside for 12 hours. Stir in pectic enzyme and again cover primary and set aside. After 12 hours, add activated yeast and again cover the primary. Stir twice daily until s.g. drops to 1.015 (1-2 weeks). Remove nylon straining bag, squeezing well to extract juice. Allow to settle and rack to secondary and fit airlock. Wait 30 days, then rack, top up and refit airlock. Repeat when wine clears. Allow another 60 days under airlock. Stabilize, sweeten to taste if desired, wait 10 days, and rack into bottles. Age six months before tasting. Improves with age.

The hill

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I must find a man who still loves the soil

Walk by his side unseen, pour in his mind

What I loved when I lived until he builds

Sows, reaps, and covers these hill pastures here

With sheep and cattle, mows the meadowland

Grafts the old orchard again, makes it bear again

Knowing that we are lost if the land does not yield.

-Jeanne Robert Foster

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Up an old farm road, some ways out of town, there’s a place that grows ideas. It’s a little unconventional (thankfully), and as the woman who owns the property has always said, “If you make it up the hill, you were meant to arrive.”

I could drive it, and sometimes I do, but mostly I prefer to park at the base of the hill and trace the two-track up through the still of the forest. A few days ago made the trek on foot and met up with a deer, all the while contemplating the juxtaposition between the system and game that is played in surviving via a new set of rules, versus the simplicity of rules laid out by nature. How one system deprives us of purpose, while the other feeds it to us in abundance.

I digress.

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The hill is my transition in and out. A time for me to process what I have learned, or while ascending, consider all that I have learned that has lead to my return. This farm is where I got my start in permaculture. It’s the place where I was given information, shown how to grow food, how to build soil, how to live and think outside of the melancholy of the free-market system.

A biodynamic farm. What happens here is dynamic, from how we build thematrix of the food web from that which we eat, to that which eats what we eat, to the larger picture of how we relate to the plants, each other, our place within this universe. This is where I first heard the universe described as “one voice, one song.”

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And that word “dynamic” – I love how it feels to say it. How it opens my throat like a yawn. How intrinsic a vocal movement meets definition is this word, dynamic.

We have been asked here to help an old friend restore her vineyard, planted 25 years earlier on a bluff over the bay. The vines are still bearing, though many other plants have joined them and there is much to learn about the ever-increasing intricacies of this now self-regulating ecosystem.

And in returning, we are visiting the ghosts of our past. Walking past echos of ideas still standing. Thoughts pending. Heartbeats rendered through the undulating landscape where milkweed, vetch, and valerian have replaced annuals in the fertile soil. This is a living memory. And to think I felt sadness when I first looked upon it! When it has so thoughtfully produced in our absence! Lifted the roof off the greenhouse, and blanketed the orchard in a cloak of yarrow and gentle green grasses.

We have been charged with more than the responsibility of salvaging a vineyard for harvest.

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That is too one-dimensional and careless a thought. We have been shown a path that will lead to wisdom gleaned from the harvest or from the goal of harvest. And what better way to begin, than to learn about a vine?  A vine that is so careful to root itself in depth and breadth before reaching out to others for support.

We will not be saving a vineyard; we will be saving ourselves.

HTF What the heck is hugelkultur, anyway? events

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Interested in learning to build soil for your raised garden beds? Wondering about that crazy German word you’ve heard floating around of late? What is hugelkultur, anyway? We’ll share the answer and much more as we build beds all around our new, old, old house.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll welcome people or small groups to our urban farm and illustrate the art of all things earthy, including information on indoor and outdoor composting and how to find free materials for use in building soil. These informal gatherings are FREE and open to all.  Call to set up a time that works for YOU.

http://www.healingtreefarm.org • Healing Tree Farm • (231) 499 – 8188