hugerkultur

We have a problem.  Most of the land we live on (even in rural communities) is barren.  That means the soil can't support life without massive injections of imported petro-chemical fertilizer's, irrigation, and mechanical labor.  Worse, it takes years to reclaim dead soil.  

A home or community with dead soil (as essential first step to building a productive landscape), won't help you survive an economic winter.  So, here's a trick that may help out, but you need to start earlier than latter.  

It's called Hugelkultur (it's from a brilliant german permaculture engineer called Sepp Holzer, although he started doing this well before the permaculture brand emerged).  Simply, it's soil on top of a bed of rotten wood.  There are lots of very informative and quirky instructional materials on the Web about it (from vids on YouTube to discussion pages).  Also, Sepp has a great book that includes this and more.

Ok. The goal here is soil so alive that doesn't require fertilizer, mechanical tilling, or much water.  Here are the useful ideas I can extract from the available material in summary form:

• The rotting of the wood warms the soil (increasing growing times), fertilizes the soil, and keeps the soil moist.  It turns it into living soil.  
• Wood that isn't that rotten sucks nitrogen during the early rotting phase, so the more rotten the wood the better.
• Hugelkultur beds require years to mature.  However, they require little maintenance and can last as long as 30 years.
• You can bury the wood in a trench or build a raised bed.  Doesn't matter.  Your choice (watch water, sun, wind etc. flows).
• The buried wood acts as a moisture capture system.  So, it's great in arid areas, since hugelkultur beds don't require much watering.  
• There is the potential, if hugelkultur is done at scale (acres), that it could create substantial changes in the micro-climate (moisture, temp, water table, etc.) and turn barren environments into lush, productive landscapes.