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Theresa
Theresa
13 years ago

Ingenious pond! Some horsetail and soapwort around it would make you completely self-sufficient for cleaning products. You’ve obviously spent a lot of time and hard work on your place since the beginning of the hugulkultur series. It’s really paying dividends.

White.Buffalo - Doug Bergstrom
White.Buffalo - Doug Bergstrom
13 years ago

Most excellent use of the pieces of wood – placing them on a contour line is what I had to do at my place because of the lack of rock available. The swales are now about 5 years old and have settled-in quite well – with a planting space ‘on top’ of the contour line (above the wood pieces – at about 2 foot wide) and pseudo-sheltered planting space on the leveled portion behind the contour line (each varies from 6 to 8 foot of planting space.
I did have issues with significant run-off before – no run-off now on the sloping piece of my property.
Very good presentation – keep up the good work and thanks for keeping all of us informed of your progress.

Backwoods Engineer
13 years ago

Very cool, Jack!

sweethearts mom
13 years ago

Jack are you getting a build up of fire ants in the beds and walls?

Rookinde
Rookinde
13 years ago

That is a great video Jack. Keep us updated….

Moonvalleyprepper
Moonvalleyprepper
13 years ago

Dang Jack!
Your place is looking great, I love seeing the before and after videos very inspiring. Keep up the great work!

doug_ks
13 years ago

Jack, I guess you’re gonna just dump soil over these wooden mounds, leaving a significant amount of airspace down below. Is this intentional and/or desirable? I made a large hugulkultur bed this spring, putting down a layer of wood at a time and then filling most of the airspaces with soil, compost, peat and manure, and watering thoroughly before adding the next layer. Just curious if I should have left more air? Seems to be working well so far, the buttercrunch lettuce LOVES this bed and other crops are passing through adolescence. Thanks for the update, Doug.

rob
rob
13 years ago

Nice work Jack. Any chance of using some of that wood for shitake? Provided you like them!

Patriot Warrior
Patriot Warrior
13 years ago

Jack,

Could you explain more the benefits of having the small little ponds you are building . . . I thought having small ponds of still water was a bad thing to have around due to attracting mosquitos etc.

Moonvalleyprepper
Moonvalleyprepper
13 years ago

I’m not Jack but I’ll take a stab at it.

Ponds make excellent predator habitat for frogs, lizards, and birds. One important aspect of natural pest managment is to favor predators and confuse pests. So the more little niches you can make where predators can live, bath and hang out the less pests you’ll have. For mosquittos putting a couple of small fish in there should help keep them down. I remember from Mollisons PDC DVD he talks about vietnam I think and basically how there is water everywhere but no mosquittos because any body of water, no matter how small, has a fish in it.

Lidia Seebeck
Lidia Seebeck
13 years ago

The ponds have had me wondering too. First, I wonder if they would create habitat for me, since the nearest water to me is 1/2 mile away. Second question– if such would be beneficial for the property, could they somehow be discreetly done with greywater, say laundry rinse water? Can’t have cattails sticking up– too obvious– but something like soapwort and such might work. I’ve plenty of access to Big R– think Tractor Supply, very similar– and so can get various tubs and such. Rocks are no problem– I’m forever chucking them over the fence.

Dene
13 years ago

Very nice!

Mark L.
Mark L.
13 years ago

FWIW I am a big proponent of more volume of less “quality” videos. The iPhone videos are fantastic. Of course I put quality in quotes because the content quality is far more important then the Audio Visual quality. I would even take a stack of old Polaroids is if ment we could get content more often.

Last fall I went out and buried a 5×20 foot plot about 2 feet down of logs and told my family “next spring this is going to rock!” They all think I am bat poop crazy so any content that help me make this thing work is good.

TL;DR +1 for the iPhone videos.