Lockdown Days 5, 6 and 7

We seem to be settling into a bit of a lockdown routine. Hubby goes off to work, apparently it's temporary but that changes daily. I make plans for my day. Morning video call with family and then I achieve nothing more. I beat myself up about what I haven't done and tell myself I've got a month and promise myself I'll do better tomorrow.

In all fairness to myself, today is the first day in nearly a week that it hasn't been raining so it hasn't been practical to sit outside plucking roosters or moving firewood from the pile where it's been weathering into the woodshed.  I know this, but the part of my brain that tells me off doesn't really care.

I've still been spinning and knitting. The Romney fleece I was given is working up to some lovely balls and the blanket for my youngest granddaughter is about three quarters done.

I  still keep thinking, here's the opportunity I wanted, I have the time to get some things done.

An online friend recently made a list of different garden beds that work in small spaces. She's a talented gardener and passionate about growing food. One of the styles she mentioned was hugelkultur.

I'd heard of it before, it was one of the many things I found in our early days on our block. Back when I seemed to learn about something new that sounded useful for us each week. I would start to research it and start making plans to put it into practice and the next disaster would happen.

We spent so much time firefighting and dealing with a new emergency constantly that improvements were few and far between for quite a long time.

Reminded of it, I started reading up about it again.

It literally means 'mound culture'. It's a system where you create mounds that require little to no watering. They retain plenty of moisture and are perfect for growing things in dry areas like ours.

You start with a base of branches. In the examples they started with whole trees, any wood that size would be going for firewood, but branches, I have them.

We've been slowly working on bringing down some of our macrocarpa hedge. It grows up into the power lines. We got a professional in to trim and top it a few years ago but that turned into more drama than it was worth, a lot of money and they missed the branches that were the most problematic anyway.

We decided to take the trees out that were around the lines and replace them with natives that are easily grown and don't get as tall. The problem is that macrocarpa branches go sideways and through the branches of the trees on either side. It's not as simple as just dropping a tree. In my job, trees or branches that can twist as they fall are referred to as 'widowmakers'. For good reason.

We've started by trimming off the side branches. Many are still mostly where they were, enmeshed in and held up by the neighbouring tree. We've pulled down what we can, trimming some of them as we go. There's a good pile of firewood for next year forming already.

We tried mulching the smaller branches. Macrocarpa is a very hard wood which has meant we've had to put a lot of work into resharpening blades and we've had to do it often.

Hugelkultur is an opportunity to use those smaller branches without killing the mulcher.

So since we have some fine weather today and I'm feeling a need to achieve something (anything!) I started piling the branches to begin my first mound.

My initial mound of branches 

 It isn't as big as the article recommended starting with. Two meters high seems impractical in my vege patch and frankly, I don't have the energy for that. This is also somewhat of an experiment, so I don't want to commit to something on that scale until I have more confidence in the project.

The next layer is recommended to be almost any organic waste. Compost, kitchen scraps, leaves or manure. The idea is to create a nitrogen rich layer.

I have a pile of mulch with what came out of the roof gutters when they were last cleaned sitting not far from my pile. I also have a compost bin that has been working for more than a year. It's mostly filled with sawdust and sweepings out of the chookhouses with a few dead birds and offal, bones etc from my home kill. There's at least a cubic metre there. I also have a mound of fairly well rotted cow and horse manure. I think I can use all three on this bed.

Mulch and gutter rubbish 

It's probably going to take me quite some time to get this all done, but I have a month, right?