Thanks for the advice, 36Gr0w. I read up a little on Hugelkulture. I've come across it before but had forgotten about it. I also did a little inventory of stuff on my property. It turns out that one of the recommended trees for the logs is poplar. Guess what this is:
And this:
These too:
There's more: a few more good sized logs, a very big stump, and probably a couple of yards of chips. We have 10 poplar trees along our driveway. Big branches kept blowing off in the wind, so I topped 8 of them a year ago. The logs and rounds have been sitting uncovered ever since, and it rains a lot here. I wouldn't say that the rounds are rotting quite yet, but there's definite give when you push on the wood, so I'd say they're primed for it. Some nice microbial baths, and I think we'd be off and running pretty quickly. That should probably take care of roughly a third of the volume of my beds (I'm aiming for about 100 cubic yards).
Other things my inventory turned up:
Several good sized, well-into-rotting logs, plus a few old stumps that are still in the ground.
Roughly 2 yards of biochar, ranging in size from powder to superchunk:
There's still a giant pile of wood waiting to be dealt with.
I'll dig through it. Anything that's dry will go into the next biochar burn, and anything that's wet will join the hugel fun. I expect I can get another three yards of biochar.
Also: about half a yard of forest duff (mostly fir needles and cones, small branches and bark, and the remains of last year's leaves from some plum trees).
I'm going to clean the donkey pen and move the mobile hen house tomorrow. I expect to get about two yards of manure and urine soaked pine shavings from the donkeys and about half a yard of chicken manure.
I have two other piles of donkey manure from previous pen cleanings. One, from last fall, is about two yards. The other, from February, is about half a yard. Both got pretty wet from rain and stopped cooking well ahead of schedule. I just moved the big pile yesterday and mixed some straw from the goat pen into it, and today it was already feeling warm. I think if I mix another bale of dry straw into it, and maybe some alfalfa pellets, it should get going again. Same with the smaller pile.
I also have three bales of straw that have been wet since last fall and are composting (I peeled a flake off one today--it was warm inside).
Also: a vast hillside of fast-growing blackberries and some sizeable patches of fast-growing Canada thistle.
I ordered 2000 red worms a few days ago, and I'll have a worm bin up and running shortly.
Last but not least, I have an unlimited supply of pure clay soil.
So I'm thinking that the blackberries and thistle could be worm food or compost material for future use. The chipped poplar and the fresh donkey and chicken manure can form the filler between the logs and rounds for the lower layer of my beds. The wet donkey manure piles can be merged and the wet straw bales and the forest duff added to them with some more dry straw. I think if that cooked for a couple of weeks, it would be in pretty good shape. That, mixed with my clay soil, some sand and pumice, the biochar, a few amendments--oyster and crab shell, rock dust, alfalfa, kelp, and neem seed meal--and probably some purchased compost to fill it out could make up the upper layer. Instead of making that the middle layer and topping it with my boutique soil, I plan to start my clones in 3.5" plastic containers with a light version of the boutique soil, move them up to 1 gallon canvas pots with full strength boutique soil, and then either plant them directly in the beds or move them up to a bigger pot of boutique soil before putting them in the beds. That way they'll get a good start and build a nice rootball in some high quality soil, and always have that plug of goodness right at the core of the roots. I have about 500 gallons of the full strength stuff cooking right now.
I plan to make the worm bin a pretty sizeable thing so I can start topdressing the beds with worm castings as soon as possible. A good chunk of the straight garden will go to growing comfrey, yarrow, nettles, mint, lemon balm, bee balm, sage, cardoon, alfalfa, and borage.
That's my tentative plan for The Ultimate Soil. I'm pretty stoked about how much of it will be truly locally sourced. If anyone has advice on how to make it better or any potential problems, I'd love to hear it.
Thank you for all that valuable information you've coaxed off the internet. I can only imagine the challenges you all go through.
