Creating A Hugelkultur Bed

Creating a Hugelkultur Bed Below are some photos of a new hugelkultur bed we are creating. The bed is actually an expansion of a berry bed. The ground to the left of the first photo is where I have baby blueberry bushes. The ground to the right is a path and then a second and established berry bed.We are widening the berry bed and narrowing the path to make room for more green chile plants. For us, hugelkultur is a way to grow in areas that most would never consider use-able. I hope by learning to grow in marginal areas I can share what I find with others and also provide encouragement to others.

Sean is digging the trench where we are putting the Hugelkultur bed. We do not till our soil. But when we are establishing hugelkultur beds in very poor areas where there is only heavy clay or mostly subsoil, we've found that double digging the bed before adding the rotted logs, twigs, trimmings, grass clippings, pulled weeds and kitchen scraps works much better. Sean decided to get a little ahead in his Spanish and listened to a Pimsleur Spanish lesson while he worked. He kept repeating the Spanish words aloud while he dug. The ditch ended up being about 22 feet long and about 3 feet wide and 22 inches or more deep. In this first photo you are facing east. The photos do not show that this is a fairly decent slope.

Jill found her own way to dig. S

We experimented before deciding to do four beds and double dug two before ad simply heaped the rotted wood and rest heap with soil. I think because we mus and subsoil, the double dug beds did no ever again. They will remain strictly no microbes will live happily ever after.

A curious spider found his way into our way! Its a bad photo but if you notice the shovel you can see our curious spider ws fairly large AND you can see that the soil is very much red clay. You can also see that intrepid bermuda that tries to take over everything. Some spots in our yard are so bad that not even bermuda will grow!

At the top of the hill we struck halfway is no need to dig into good dirt. We c and mi

Michael, holding an ax, is down in the forest area behind our gardens, gathering rotted wood. You can't tell very well but he's standing inside half of a fallen tree that had an orginal diameter of more than 45 inches. (Michael is 6' 2'' inches tall so this stump is VERY large!) I am standing about 40 feet away and shooting this with a zoom.

The rotted stump in the previos photo other felled tree is about 20 feet long. hurricane. Typically we try to take ma branch where they will wash away othe havens in the dog's daytime 1/2 acre do slopes down into one of our dry branch gardens. You are facing north in the ph

Jill is watching her dad pile up the rotted logs. These logs crumble fairly easily in our hands. If I had a better camera, close up you would see that these are full of mycorrhizal hyphae. To the right you can see that Sean is gathering the wood and transporting it to the beds. The photo shows that Sean is standing in the ditch up to about his knees. He's nearly 6 feet tall. Those rocks, by the way, will be part of the border around the bed when we are finished.

I like to put part of the rotted logs in, then put the rest of the yard refuse such as twigs, trimmings, grass clippings, etc in next and then top that off with more rotted logs. Michael cleaned the gutters which were full of acorns. He emptied four large black garbage bags full of acorns and leaves from the gutters down into the bed too. The rotted logs, twigs, leaves, kitchen scraps and weeds piled to about 22 inches deep.

Michael is viewing the results so far to him is a baby blueber

If you are new to gardening and the rotted material brings mycorrhizal place for all the rest of the beneficial m provides

After the second layer of rotted logs, Sean is putting in grass clippings and then leaves. LOTS of leaves. We added a good bit of kitchen vegetable scraps in as well. Sean is my chile relleno and stuffed sopaipilla nut. He's a vegetarian so I make a mean green chile stew with potatoes and beans for him that he just loves to eat. He always works hard but he's very motivated to get this bed done as it is slated for green chiles!

We also added green mat dreadful ground ivy, pulled and ready t leaves and add kitchen compost too. lighten the pho

We haven't decided yet whether we'll top left of this photo. I don't think it grow

I thought you'd like to see what we get in the way of results. I took a little red clay from the bed we just started and placed it on top of a finished bed we did two years ago, for contrast. We keep the finished bed well mulched and I grew red clover in it last winter. Look at the difference!

The bed pictured above was established the left and sits adjacent to it. But we d keep it mulched and we did grow red c the contrast.

We mixed amendments into the soil that we've removed from the trench. I would normally mix in some finished compost but I have none right now. I mixed rock phosphate, calcium, lime, green sand and sand into the soil before we pulled the soil, all 22 or so inches, back over the pile. The last step was planting the entire bed in rye. I chose rye because of the steep slope, hoping to prevent erosion. The rye will help the materials in the bed degrade, keep the soil from washing away and bring some much needed nitrogen into the soil. Below is a not very helpful photo of how far we are now with the rye seed scattered on the mound. The mound, BTW, will in time level out as the wood decays.

We're not finished! In the spring the b we'll plant is pots! To help ensure our - 8 inch or larger paper mache' pots usi not sturdy ones but ones with just enou pots with soil and compost and then pla so do the materials in the hugelkultur b the pots and into the beds and beds wil

The first year you should not expect a

year and every year after that as long a compost and keep them well mulched o them. Organic gardening is about long

I covered the entire 22 foot area so that birds won't eat my seed. I buy sheer drapes at the thrift store for a dollar for this purpose, or I use burlap, cardboard and, rarely, plastic.

Hugelkultur is in a way like growing on top of compost piles. We also do that. Below are our latest compost piles just getting started. We use this method because we have little room for our plants and must find as much growing space as possible. These bins sit just outside of a dripline of a very large white oak as well as next to our forest. The bins will get about 14 hours of sun a day but the ground is full of oak roots, making the area nearly impossible to grow in. By filling each bin with compostable materials and then topping them with soil, we can grow potatoes. As the compost degrades, the level lowers and we can mulch the potatoes, encouraging a better crop. Dogwoods line the fence behind the bins and their roots also compete in this spot; I don't want to cut my dogwoods down!

Another problem with growing near th quickly, making the soil in this area dry

Below is a photo of the top of one of la growing in the top. The potatoes are ju finger on Jan 12th). I can easily cover two.

To help hold moisture in the bins, I plan to slide plain cardboard in along the sides to line the inside sides of each bin. My husband can bring a lot of cardboard home and we use it as fast as he finds it.

I'm thinking I could perhaps grow som or perhaps peas, bean or cucumbers an use that nice verticle space, that's for ce

I put about 3 inches of newspaper under each pile. This kept the roots of the trees out of the piles last year and I hope will do so again this year! Around the borders of each bin I planted Fava Beans just to see if I could improve the soil a little.

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