Al’s hugelkultur adventure

Photos Dawne Belloise

Decomposing layers should generate heat and support plants that don’t normally thrive in this zone.

Camp4’s Al Smith hopes his “landscape lasagna” of burlap bags, egg cartons and organic matter will soon teem with critters, flowers and food.

As Cement Creek Road deepens into its canyon, it narrows, weaving through stands of quakies in its dusty journey to Italian Mountain and Tilton Pass. In a grove several miles up, a berm rises unexpectedly – a fortified wall of tree trunks, dirt, burlap bags, cardboard and egg cartons layered among plantings and colored flags. There, on the moist earth, sits Al Smith, energetic Camp4 Coffee entrepreneur and now bio-experimenter. An elderly couple stops to ask him, “What is that? What are you doing?” Al beams his wide grin and launches into the story of hugelkultur, a permaculture concept from Germany and Poland that inspired this organic bio berm experiment edging his property.

Hugelkultur, according to Wikipedia, is a horticultural technique where a mound is constructed from decaying wood debris and other compostable biomass plant material.

Nel Curtiss of Rocky Mountain Trees came up with the idea for the Cement Creek hugelkultur. Al recalls: “Initially, I had a bunch of trees come down on my property here and I had to put them somewhere. My fence along the road was also down, so I stacked the trees there,” figuring the pile of trees would substitute for the fence. That’s when Nel stopped by to tell him about permaculture.

Al Smith working with his hugelkultur experiment out Cement Creek.

Nel explained how a layering system of greens and browns and vegetative matter, basically anything compostable, would eventually turn the berm into a living, composting bio creation that would generate heat, take in water and release it slowly.

“It’s like lasagna,” Al says of the alternating layers. “Grass clippings are green, twigs are brown.”

Nel started by bringing dump trucks full of sod and tree debris. When word got out, other friends began filling burlap bags with weeds, clippings and branches for the project. Eventually Al began cultivating plants in the berm.

“I put a bunch of flags around the plantings so I can figure out what’s what. The orange flags mark the ornamentals; they don’t have any food value, but they’re pretty.” Al points to a red twig dogwood. A geranium is not quite ready to bloom next to its yellow flag identifier. Volunteer currant bushes are poised to take over. Green

flags mark types of conifers that spike up next to stacked logs. White flags signal the silver buffalo berry, and Al explains that the regular buffalo berry isn’t edible, but silver is.

About 2,000 feet up the hillside is Al’s spring, so the hugelkultur receives plenty of unadulterated water. Walking along the inside of the berm is like being inside a fort built by kids…if they were botanists. There’s a corner flush with elderberry bushes and coldhardy blueberries. “We’re at growing zone 4B and these blueberries are supposedly good down to zone 3,” Al says hopefully, but he’s also experimenting with warmer zone 5 plants. “The hugelkultur can allow things to grow here that don’t normally, because the ground is warmed by the berm. The hugelkultur generates heat in the wintertime.” Al points to some flourishing plants that shouldn’t be able to grow in our harsh mountain climate. This past fall, Al planted apple, pear and cold-hardy peach trees from a nursery in Missouri that guarantees them even at 9,500 feet.

A squirrel jumps on top of the berm, which is about six feet tall, and Al says, “We didn’t used to have squirrels, but we have spent grain from Irwin Brewery on the top dressing. You just keep throwing twigs and burlap coffee sacks and coffee grounds and theoretically, you can get things to grow and thrive here.” Like the grape vines and paw paw trees he’s planted. Al explains that paw paw is North America’s largest native fruit tree, and like a proud papa, he shows off the new green foliage the tree is putting forth. “We have cranberries. They don’t look good,” he laughs, “but they’re still alive.” He creates the acidic environment cranberries need by throwing his Camp4 Coffee grounds around them. He walks over to a group of small bushes to make his point about the created climate of the hugelkultur. “These are cold-hardy goji berry bushes.”

Perpendicular to the existing berm is a new wall of layered organic material which will also help wind blockage for the established berm. What Al hopes to accomplish, he says, is multi beneficial and long term. “We started off just trying to clean up the place, but one of the coolest things is that you get to recycle a whole bunch of stuff instead of throwing it away.” Al smiles. “Then I realized what was possible, that down the road you can have this whole property that’s just full of life, full of animals, and full of food. Animals are attracted to the hugelkultur, a lot of birds, chipmunks, squirrels and voles are attracted to the grain.” Although, he laments, voles ate the rhubarb, so this year there will be a steel deterrent surrounding it.

In another experiment Al inoculated tree stumps with shitake and oyster mushroom plugs, by drilling small holes into logs and tapping the spore plugs into them. Shitakes grow in conifers and the oysters are inserted into aspens. Al explains the mushrooms won’t fruit until the log is fully populated. “If it works, we’ll have another berm with a whole bunch of mushroom logs leaning up against it. A lot of the logs are starting to do their own mushroom thing naturally.” He turns over a stump to reveal threads of white mycelium, a fibrous mass of threads which will break everything down. “When the snow melted, this entire berm was covered in a web of fungus.” He beams.

The wall keeps getting taller, and Al says, “If I can see the house from here, I need another bag on top. It’s going to shrink as it decomposes. We’re optimistic, but things may or may not work. It’s really fun, and I’m really hopeful.” b