John Turbek

Regarding direct seeding into full size hugel beds.

I would very much appreciate any experiences with scattering a seed mix with say 20 - 30 varieties of veggies.
This sounds totally wild to me. But if it works well, then it is really awesome! A lot less work then transplanting.

wayne stephen wrote:Paul has posted multiple videos by Helen Atthowe who has done just that. She also has more on youtube. Pauls videos seem to be the latest and she explains pros and cons with different approaches to planting in clover.

Thanks.

I had seen the Helen Atthow videos in the past. I think I had even decided to go the white clover route vs red clover as it seemed that the red clover was too aggressive for the veggies.

The main difference that I perceive is that knocking back the white clover will be harder on a 6' tall huegel bed than on the flat field planting that Helen was doing.

Thanks all, very helpful.

Hi All,

I am getting started with planting my Hugel Beds this spring.

Back in 2011 I gained access to a bunch of soil from a neighbor expanding a pond. I built 5 100' long 5' tall beds.
Because it was the end of summer, I planted them in Annual Rye and White Clover thinking that the mulch and nitrogen would be a good fit.

IN 2012, the beds were covered in a lush white clover mulch, I didnt plant anything else into them.
My plan has been to direct seed some of these beds with veggies and others with some perennials.

As the time to do this is approaching, I am now feeling uncomfortable with how to proceed.

It recently occurred to me that white clover may have been a bad choice for the cover crop, as I now no longer have bare soil in which to broadcast seed.
Should I kill off the entire bed, or maybe just patches? I am unsure about how to kill back a large area of clover, a hundred foot long bed of clover is a lot!

I understand from these forums that it is preferrable to direct seed the beds vs using seedlings?

I have also heard that people will generally mix small seeds together and large seeds together and broadcast them onto the bed. Should this be my plan? I am having a mental block about mixing a bunch of different veggies (lettuce, corn, tomatoes, potato, broccoli, cabbage, Squash, cucumber, carrot, onion.. etc) on a bed.
Will that work alright?

Alternatively, I could raise seedlings of various types and poke them into the clover? Seems like a lot more work than the direct seed method.

I was thinking about planting several of the beds with Raspberry, Blackberry and Strawberry. Is there any way to poly-culture beds with those items in them? They seem like they mostly grow as mono-cultures
and I am not sure what to mix with them.


Thanks,
John