The Problem
We wish to improve the soil in our school courtyard and demonstrate hugelkultur to students in all our schools and our community. We hope this will help people understand the important of permaculture and building healthy, organic soil to sequester carbon, growth healthy food, and farm in harmony with nature and natural processes. We have begun creating a pollinator garden with some vegetables in an underused courtyard within our school. It is entirely surrounded within the school, so protected from deer - frequented by birds and pollinators. The garden is already registered as a monarch way station and a Climate Victory Garden. Some of the soil is extremely depleted, and we would like to rebuild the soil in an area with hugelkultur, so that it is more fertile and sequesters more carbon.
Our Plan
In the fall, we will dig a trench, fill it with maple logs from a tree that was cut down a couple of years ago, branches, etc. We will add composted leaves from our town, surround it with straw bales, and plant cover crops of winter rye and hairy vetch. In the spring, we will plant peas, which fix nitrogen, as well as being delicious. We would research other plants that would make sense for the area: maybe mushrooms, currants and blueberries. The result we would hope for would be good soil with lots of microorganism and edible plants for ourselves and the birds successfully grown from it. We would photograph it, and science classes could analyze the soil and micro-organisms. We would also use this as a demonstration of hugelkultur for students at all our schools and for the community - posting on a website and hosting visits.
